After a heavy breakfast and hearty lunch on a very lazy homebound Saturday, I thought it best to keep dinner lighter, so I had a big salad and a little more bread.

What did I have handy? Some Belgian endive, one bulb white and one red. A lime. Some tea seed oil, mustard, honey... That would work as a dressing. A little more of the robiola due latti from my unhealthy pizza fritti last weekend... not the most natural fit for this kind of salad, but at room temperature, it has a luxurious quality that certainly doesn't hurt.

When I was living in Germany many years ago, I was impressed at how big a full-scale German lunch was in contrast to relatively modest, mostly cold dinners. Granted, that's tradition: contemporary practice is all over the map. But many Germans still say they must eat "warm" for lunch and are perfectly content to have a simple evening meal of bread and cheese and sausage.

Sometimes I think it's better to eat that way... though I'm most in the mood to have a complete meal at dinner. I just don't feel comfortable taking two hours off of work to go make a nice lunch at home... in smaller towns in Germany, that was perfectly feasible.

But sometimes I just want to have something comforting and slightly refreshing.

Since I already had a big protein-rich lunch, some greens and cheese were perfectly in order. I didn't really have dinner until an insanely late 9:30 PM, so anything more elaborate would have probably been terribly overwhelming. This was just what I needed.

After our lunch at Bretagne, we again set out in entirely the wrong direction in search of the new Omotesando Hills building. Fortunately, this landed us at Pierre Hermé, where I convinced Hiromi that we needed to try some macarons. We had an "Earl Grey" and a "Arabesque", the former filled with a sort of Earl Grey tea infused ganache, and the second made with an apricot filling and possibly a hint of cardamom, with a secret center made with pistachio. The Arabesque also had a tiny bit of apricot in the macaron shell itself. The Earl Grey was well balanced as far as sweetness, and I loved the flavor of the Arabesque, but it could have been a little lighter-handed with the sugar.

It was a bit strange to me to taste macarons that have just come out of refrigeration... In Seattle at the few places that produce Parisian-style macarons, that's rather atypical, so the outer shell has an initial crunch that's really nice. However, the fillings are never nearly as nice, save for the matcha one at Fresh Flours.

Anyway, we reoriented ourselves and found our way to the sort of luxury mall known as Omotesando Hills.

It was right next to La Bretagne, really.

We felt so not clever.

After meandering through half of the floors, we decided to stop in here.

Hasegawa Sake Shop

Hasegawa is a sake shop with a small but elegant tachinomi baa, or stand-up bar. You can order 20-50ml samples of any of today's featured sake, a few types of shochu, and in my case, a yuzu liqueur.

Yuzu liqueur and sake

The yuzu liqueur of the day (they have two or three) is about 10% alcohol, which places it into the same proof as wine or sake; however, I believe they call it a liqueur because it was not brewed like sake, but made from distilled alcohol. Hiromi had a nice sake, though I forgot what it was called.

Had we planned a little better, I would have ordered a shochu first, but I thought we were just here for one quick sample. Hiromi got curious about other items on the menu, and she ordered a nice umeshu. I felt obligated to order something else, but I didn't want another sweet drink, so I ordered today's shochu, which I think was made with buckwheat (soba).

This is a great place to stop in and try a few things before committing to a full bottle of something you've never heard of. Most of the sample-size servings are 200-600 yen, so it's in the same class of indulgence that coffee would be. You can also order some tiny salty snacks to nibble on along with your drink.

The staff is very professional and knowledgable, and they'll answer your questions about anything on the menu in great detail (in Japanese, at least).

Early this morning I drove to Beaverton, Oregon for in-store demos, and it was incredible how thick the fog was along the way. As I approached Olympia, it got progressively thicker. I thought it might be a morning thing, but on the way back home in the evening, the fog was about as dense.

The weather has been pretty cold recently. I set myself up near the front of Uwajimaya and occasionally thought it would be nice to have something even warmer than my yellow Merlino wool sweater. The opening and closing doors brought a lot of cool air whooshing past my little spot.

The last few days I tended to eat leftovers with slight modifications. I still have a little bit of my squash gratin left over, but it gets pretty soft upon reheating. I didn't eat a proper lunch on Saturday, when I was doing a demo in Seattle. I don't know if I wasn't hungry or if I just forgot to eat.

I was happy to find some yuzu-shichimi seasoned potato chips at the Bellevue Uwajimaya on Friday. I might not indulge on a regular basis, but the taste was pretty nice.

Today I was blown away by a Hong Kong confection that’s sort of like a grown up version of cotton candy with a nice crunch, nice flavor, and beautiful packaging. I think it was the most compelling item of the day… they have no agent in the U.S., and it’s definitely a top candidate… it has a compelling story (a 2000 year history, supposedly), it’s handmade, it’s usually not available outside of the area where it’s made, and it has great packaging.

I also tasted some truly amazing oolong tea, and my enthusiasm seemed to carry over to the booth organizer, who gave me 5 packages of tea that were being sold at the show for 2000 yen each (a little less than $20/100 grams). The aroma on the prepared tea sampe was very complex, almost fruity… completely unexpected. It’s a Taiwanese product, organically grown, and mostly sold in Japan.

I talked to one Japanese guy who spent some time in Portland and worked as a buyer for Costco in a previous life, and we discussed importing some Korean yuzu tea and jujube tea into the US. The quality of their yuzu and jujube teas is very good, and they have some other stuff like Aloe drinks and thin yuzu-flavored drinks I was less excited about. We’ll probably meet again before I leave. He’s very interested in expanding the market outside of Japan, as it’s apparently struggling here.

There was a mae-sil cha and red shiso cha concentrate from Korea that was pretty nice… nothing artificial about them and a nice pleasant flavor.

I looked at a lot of Korean and Thai products… the highlights for me were definitely this Hong Kong confection and that oolong tea. I even found some nice ceramics from a Taiwanese potter… It’s rare for me to find Chinese-style pottery that I have much enthusiasm for, but the tea ware he was selling was quite stunning coming out of a high-production studio.

When I got home, I noticed a message from a Japanese soy milk producer that I talked to yesterday; they produce a yogurt that tastes very normal… not very soy-like. They have some very milk-like soy milk also, which I was less enthusiastic about; I actually like soy milk to taste like soy beans, unlike most Americans, but I have until now never been a fan of soy-based yogurts. The texture is sort of typical for Japanese yogurt interpretations… very custardy, rather than the European smooth texture, but still nice. Anyway, it turns out that if I find some sort of export agent they may be able to work with me; they don’t do any direct exports and they don’t have a huge production capacity as yet.

I ate with my friend Hiromi tonight at an izakaya-type place and had some nice early-harvest grilled bamboo shoots, some soba-based gnocchi with butter and a little shiso, and some croquettes with embedded crunchy soba groats. Also we had dashi-iri tamago-yaki, which are sort of thick omelets with soup stock in them. Not so exciting were yakimiso (I love Takayama’s hoba-miso specialty… this wasn’t it), and some soba-gakki (sort of soba dumplings) with camembert inside, which were a little dry.

I think I’ll go to FoodEx in the morning and then go to the Hoteres show in the afternoon tomorrow. I’ve probably covered most of the floor at FoodEx by now, though I think I missed a few things in the center. Anyway, I have a few candidate products that I really feel impressed by that want representation in the US, so I think I have a place to start.

The last couple of weekends we’ve been taking advantage of the fiddlehead fern fronds found at Sosio’s. Go get them before they disappear for the rest of the year!

We’ve been preparing them using our usual nimono-style treatment… Blanch briefly in a boiling solution of water and baking soda to remove aku, or bitterness, shock in ice water, then gently poach in dashi (or really, any soup stock), soy sauce, sake, a little mirin, and, if needed, additional salt and sugar.

Maybe I’ll do them another way before the season ends, but somehow this simple version pleases me the most.

I’ve written about them before, but the easiest flavor comparison to make is to white asparagus. They’re slightly bitter, as you’d expect from white asparagus, and some of the sweetness and you’d expect from asparagus, but they have a bit more of a foresty aroma.

They usually only have a 4-8 week run, depending on factors that I don’t yet know how to predict. I think they’ve come in a bit early this year, as I’ve gradually been trained to expect them sometime in April. But if morels can be early, so can warabi. In any event, if you want to give them a try, get them while you can.

Working in a minimally-stocked kitchen that's completely different than your own is pretty tricky.

Our weekly apartment was equipped with a rice cooker, a saucepan and a frying pan. We had a few plates and bowls, but nothing close to what I'm used to at home.

But after a bunch of elaborate, not to mention expensive, restaurant meals, we wanted to make something on our own.

Haru kyabetsu to nerimiso

We have spring cabbage made with a quick homemade sweetened miso... this is sort of a typical izakaya dish nowadays. We soon discovered that the lighter colored leaves from inside the cabbage were much more tender, and decided to reserve the dark outer leaves for an itamemono on another day.

Three nice side dishes made ugly

We didn't really have all the fundamentals... just mirin, soy sauce, salt, pepper and instant dashi. We had no vinegar, and we had only a small amount of miso. We didn't actually have any cooking oil; just some butter, meant for toast for breakfast.

I normally don't use instant dashi since it's not vegetarian, but when I'm on the road and only cooking a few meals on my own, it's a bit harder to stock a bunch of konbu and dried mushrooms, so we relied a bit on a few granules of that dashi for a few things. Although I'm not really a fan of the flavor of instant dashi, some dishes just don't taste right if you only use water. Since I already have to relax my vegetarian habits when eating out in Japan, I elected to make another small concession to reality, and I used small amounts of it in one or two dishes.

Since we only had a few plates, elegant platings had to be sacrificed, but we found some sort of solution.

Our side dishes included, from left to right: An egg scramble with some cheap maitake mushrooms and leeks, an ohitashi made with sakura no shiozuke, or salted cherry blossoms, and grilled bamboo shoots with butter and soy sauce. They may not look like much, but everything turned out slightly better than I expected.

Yuba and myouga

We love myouga, sometimes explained as ginger shoots in English, and it's hard to get in the US. Myōga looks a bit like the bulb of a shallot but has a gently spicy mild ginger flavor. I sliced some with the scary, flimsy knife supplied by our weekly apartment and scattered the slices inelegantly atop pieces of cut yuba, and carelessly drizzled some soy sauce over the yuba.

I miss fresh yuba when I'm in the US. The best I can do is dried or, on rare occasions, previously-frozen... unless I'm willing to commit to sitting in front of a nabe for an hour or two as I slowly peel off pieces of yuba from simmering soymilk. I don't do that so often.

Our dinner

Hiromi prepared a miso soup, which I nearly ruined by adding too much instant dashi. Since I never have any instant dashi at home, I didn't know how much is "normal" for soup. It turns out that the answer is very little.

She also blended some more salted cherry blossoms into the rice to make sakura-gohan, and whipped out the kuromame nattou (black bean nattō) before I could blink.

After a really fancy lunch in Omotesandō, this more humble dinner helped us balance our extravagance without feeling like much of a sacrifice.

Hwayo Soju

I had bought an "expensive" bottle of soju while in Korea at about KRW 11,000, or $11-12. The mass-produced stuff like Jinro and Chamiseul goes for less than $2 a bottle at your average convenience store, so this would be considered a bit extravagant. Anyway, tonight we cracked open this bottle and each had a glass of Korean shochu on the rocks with our dinner.

It's smoother and cleaner-tasting than the mass-produced brands, but not quite as nice as the better Japanese varieties of shochu. The flavor is relatively neutral  but still has a hint of complexity. I'd buy it again if I were in Korea.

I'm sure I've said it before, but I think I'll say it again... I don't think I can get enough of farro, or spelt. It doesn't take much to tempt me with farro...

Cooked in a rice cooker, it's easy to throw together on a weeknight.

It's just comfort food, so I never do anything fancy with it... After the berries are cooked, I almost always always mix it with some some variation of caramelized onions/shallots, sauteed carrots, occasional celery, and often a little cream. But what else does farro need? It's like rice, except that it's a bit nutty... it's not a dramatic dish. What can you say about spelt, anyway?

I added some pine nuts when I sauteed the onions, and they toasted up nicely. I also added some Cowgirl Creamery nettle-wrapped St. Pat cheese, which is only available in the springtime. The nettles are just a little prickly-tasting and slightly bitter, but they add some character to a simple creamy cheese.

This time I made a little cucumber salad and roasted cucumbers to go along with the farro. It's tossed with a simple vinaigrette with a really good balsamic vinegar.

I wasn't terribly hungry, so you'll see that this isn't a very large plating. I served it with a small glass of wine. If I had had a larger appetite, I would have had some sort of lentil soup or minestrone or something along that line.

I think I had some ice cream later. I'm so bad.

I sent Hiromi these photos from tonight’s dinner and she called it “obaachan no ryouri” or grandma food.

The results were nice, but not flawless..

I was experimenting with making nagaimo dango in soup, and I overruled my initial impulse of making the dango using only wheat flour, nagaimo and a pinch of salt. I thought the texture might be more interesting if I added some katakuriko. This seemed to make the dough very sticky and my experience making gnocchi didn’t provide useful sensory reference points to judge the consistency, so when I boiled the dango, they got a bit chewy.

On previous occasions, I’ve used katakuriko and blends of katakuriko and kuzuko in dango recipes, but I was generally following a recipe that wasn’t terribly temperamental. In this case, I added two unknowns: the nagaimo, and the katakuriko. I think it will take a few experiments to get the ideal texture.

I made one of my favorite variations of hiya-yakko, made with yuzu-kosho, which is a paste made from the ground rind of yuzu and ground chilies, and a splash of Japanese soy sauce. A few years ago I served a very potent yuzu-kosho with some godoufu or another similarly mild side dish, and a knife-tip portion of yuzu kosho. I guess my plating needed some work; in Japan, I have seen similar presentation, and I knew the flavor was quite powerful. But one my guests thought I had mistakenly dropped something on the plate. When I explained the flavoring, they realized that it was the perfect amount for the dish in question, but it was a bit surprising to them. This time, I used a fairly substantial amount; roughly a third to half a teaspon. Actually, my yuzu-kosho has lost a bit of its aroma over time and I only had small amount left. So this amount was just about right, and not overwhelming.

I also made some quickly fried Japanese eggplant, dressed with nothing more than grated ginger, some sesame seeds, and a little Japanese soy sauce. This is one of my absolute favorite ways to serve eggplant, because it is so incredibly simple and flavorful. For this preparation, I usually slice the eggplant for this quarter lengthwise, then halfed crosswise, but I thought this might be a bit too visually repetitive, since I planned to serve another eggplant dish sliced lengthwise. I chose instead to use a rolling cut (mawashi-giri).

I also made some dengaku-nasu, which I nearly lost to neglect. I roasted lengthwise-sliced halves of eggplant, then added a mirin-sugar-miso paste which is a classic topping for broiled tofu, called “dengaku-miso” or “neri-miso.” My dengaku-miso is usually smoother and thicker than it was tonight, so I was a little frustrated that it wanted to slide off of my eggplant. My broiler also cooked a little faster than I expected so I almost over-caramelized the topping.

This was dinner… I added some tsukemono after I set everything out.

I prepared a small delivery to the Women of Color luncheon organized every 3 months or so by Assunta Ng. When I can, I have been providing some promotional giveaways and coupons for a gift bag that they offer to attendees.

Part of the day I was also trying to debug some stored procedures intended to help me quickly add multiple similar items to my online store. Due to various quirky little bugs, it turned out to be more distracting than immediately productive, but I know I need to do this work to simplify my life. I am not quite finished, but I’ve done enough work that it speeds up adding the metadata for the photos I’m putting up right now. Actually, though, I’m kind of debugging the code one addition at a time, so this particular batch may not be finished very quickly.

Quinoa is a miraculous thing… not exactly a grain, but nothing like a bean, it has a fairly high protein content, and serves well as a vegetarian main dish. It also looks almost alive when it’s cooking, as the germ starts making its way out of the seed.

I once served quinoa to a bunch of Japanese friends who were kind of afraid of the dish, because they watched the germ squirming out of the quinoa in a wormlike fashion. But they took to it instantly, as it was richly satisfying served with some bitter greens and mushrooms.

Tonight I made a not very exciting dish with quinoa, broccoli, confettied bell peppers, tomato, and onions. I stirred in a bunch of basil pesto, sans cheese, and served it with a little more pesto and harissa. I usually cook this with a bit of  vegetable soup stock, and lacking this, the dish suffered a bit and required more aggressive seasoning. I might have been able to use a lighter hand with the pesto had I a bit more complex of a base note.

Tonight’s dish looks a little bit like a 1970s vegetarian creation, but it did actually taste fairly nice. It did benefit from the harissa, though.

For some reason I get wistful whenever I think of the various ningyo-yaki (shaped waffles typically stuffed with sweet bean paste) and dora-yaki I have eaten on my many trips to Japan. From a highway service area or a department store basement, fresh, warm ningyo-yaki are impossible to resist.

Maybe they speak to my inner child.

Maybe it's just the sugar rush.

Well, I don't have a taiyaki (fish shaped) waffle pan in my otherwise well-stocked kitchen, so at home I have to settle for dorayaki, the pancake-like equivalent. These are often served cold, but they're even better just a few minutes off the stove. You can make a batch of them and keep them in the refrigerator as an afternoon indulgence for up to 3 or 4 days.

I also don't have pancake rings or an electric griddle, so my dorayaki end up being the size of my smallest nonstick omelet pan. That means mine need to be cut up into quarters for individual servings, or perhaps folded, if i used a thinner batter.

Dorayaki aren't exactly the same thing as the pancakes you'd slather with syrup. The American pancake is, by itself, not distinctly sweet; it typically only has enough sugar to make the pancakes brown nicely. Every dorayaki recipe I've seen, on the other hand, is full of sugar or honey, and distinctly heavier-handed with eggs. That's partially because the fillings are a bit less sweet than the typical syrup topping, and partially because this is a snack rather than a breakfast item.

Mine are sweeter than normal American pancakes, but not as sugary as the typical afternoon snack version that Japanese dorayaki vendors tend to produce. The key is to eat them in much smaller quantities than you might eat pancakes... they're heavier than they look.

Measuring things precisely is still sort of anathema to me, but I used about 3 egg yolks, one whole egg, 2/3 cup buttermilk, a shy teaspoon of baking soda, about 5 ounces (by weight) of all-purpose flour, maybe a tad less than 1 cup. Cake flour might be better, but I never keep it around.  You'll also need two tablespoons vegetable oil, a few tablespoons of honey, and a generous pinch of salt. The batter needs to be mixed until lumpy, like regular pancakes; it's easiest if you mix all the liquid ingredients first.

Recipes in Japanese vary widely. Some use all sugar, some use sugar and honey, some are all honey, and some incorporate mirin. Some are lighter and fluffier, some are thinner and aspire to be a little mochi-mochi (chewy, but not tough). Almost none use buttermilk; if you only have regular milk, use that, but switch to baking powder instead of baking soda.

The pancakes need to be cooked on medium-low heat with the slightest brushing of oil in the pan.

Take two pancakes and make a sandwich with them using any kind of anko, anko cream, or maybe a thick custard. I used koshi-an (finely sieved sweetened red bean paste) bought at Uwajimaya this time, but this is also good with ogura-an (coarse red bean paste), uguisu-an (mung bean paste), and probably even zunda (sweet edamame paste). If strawberries are already good where you are, consider putting a halved strawberry in there.

If you make the pancakes bigger than 3" or so in diameter, cut them into halves or quarters before serving.