Last night I was hunting down some heavy cream at Fremont’s PCC, which was out of stock at Trader Joe’s. I had already bought some eggs, but then I noticed duck eggs, and decided that I ought to have some.

This morning for breakfast I poached one of the duck eggs and grilled some asparagus, inspired by dinner at Columbia City's La Medusa last Friday. I wasn’t in the mood for a fried egg, but I followed La Medusa’s lead and sprinkled the asparagus and egg a bit of truffle salt from Ritrovo. I toasted a crumpet, upon which I spread a liberal amount of butter, and ate it with a bit of fig jam.

If I had any morels I think they might have found themselves sauteed in butter and somewhere near my poached egg.

If I was more in the mood for a Japanese vibe, I might have skipped the truffle salt and used some grated daikon, mustard and soy sauce for the egg and asparagus. Then it would really be “onsen tamago”. But somehow I thought the dish would taste best in a small Karatsu-ware bowl, along with a contemporary Arita plate for the crumpet.

I have been holding on to a jar of German Morellen, or sour cherries, for far too long. I was thinking to incorporate them into or place atop a cheesecake, but the next time I make a cheesecake it will probably be a green tea version. No matter how I reimagine this it is unlikely to require cherries.

I happened to notice that I had about two-thirds of a packet of sweetened kanten (agar-agar), which I must have previously used to gel a cheesecake or torte topping. It turns out that this amount is just about right for four cups of liquid, so I simmered the liquid from my jar of tart cherries and a little extra water with the remaining agar agar and placed the cherries into four small bowls.

When the liquid had simmered suitably, I poured it into the bowls and let it set. Then I got this simple, refreshing dessert. It’s not as sweet as it looks, and it only has the sweetened agar agar, and whatever mysterious things (mostly water and glucose syrup) might have been in the jar of cherries. It sure beats artificially flavored Jello desserts.

I guess I never got around to mentioning that last week I made some godoufu (godofu). It’s been a while since I’ve last done this, but I posted recently on eGullet about it and thought it would be good to revisit it. The pictured godoufu is served after it had only minimally set; it’s in ideal condition after chilling for a few hours. But, alas, hunger won out over flawlessness. I garnished it with some shiso, dressed with some shouyu and konbu-shiitake dashi. There might be a little bit of yuzu zest in there.

This is most of the spread.

A close-up of my not-quite-fully-set godoufu. When fully set and cut, it looks a little more like a bulging block rather than an amorphous blob. It tastes good either way: creamy with a mochi-like texture.

I made misoshiru with daikon and leeks, as well as nasu-no-miso ni. Nasu-no-miso ni is made in many different ways, but it’s basically a braised eggplant dish with miso, usually some mirin, sometimes some sugar. The eggplant is salted and rinsed to remove aku. Sometimes it’s pan-grilled and sometimes it’s deep-fried before simmering with the miso-based sauce. In west Japan it tends to be sweeter; in north Japan it tends to be saltier. Since I was making Arita-style godoufu, I chose to make it a bit sweeter to match the region.

Nasu-no miso-ni is often garnished with sesame seeds (either black or white). It always tastes best on the second day.

A very basic bok choy no itamemono served with a few raw pine nuts. The sauce is shouyu, mirin and my own dashijiru. This takes less than a minute to prepare.

Some simple sunomono with konbu and Japanese-style kyuuri.

This dinner may look moderately complicated, but the only time-consuming part was the godoufu, which takes about 50 minutes, not counting the chilling time to make it set. If, for example, I had my godoufu and tsukemono ready to go, this dinner could be prepared in its entirety in the time it takes to cook rice.

Individual Japanese dishes are rarely terribly complicated, but the time it takes to prepare Japanese food increases with the number of dishes presented. Fortunately, unlike other cuisines, most Japanese foods can be served lukewarm or chilled; other than soup, usually Japanese only serve one or two hot dishes. A number of simmered foods like nimono improve with rest. Ohitashi (blanched, lightly dressed vegetable dishes) are often served cold.

I didn’t take any photos because it was a fried food and I was hungry, but a few days after I made my godoufu, I was trying to think of a way use up the remainder in a different way than I had tried before. So I cut the remaining godoufu and cut it into modestly-sized cubes, and coated with katakuriko. I deep-fried these cubes at about 375F. I served them in a bowl with some Japanese soy sauce, cold Japanese tea and daikon oroshi, much like agedashi-doufu. I was lazy that day and didn’t have any soup stock handy, but I did have some iced Japanese tea on hand, so I improvised. It worked fairly well.

I hate to compare something that most people have likely never tried with something else that most people have never tried, but it reminded me of tamago no tempura. This is one of the few kinds of food which I find a mystery, but basically tamago no tempura is like a poached egg that has been deep fried with a tempura coating. When I had it in a restaurant in Japan, it still seemed to have a relatively soft yolk, and the basic texture was “fuwa-fuwa” (umm… fluffy?) but with a nice crisp coating. My agegoufu was similar except it had a creamier texture.

Lacking sufficient motivation to cook and lacking sufficient inspiration on where to eat a simple, inexpensive dinner, I somehow found myself conspiring with Jennifer to come up with something entertaining for the evening, already well into the dinner hour.

Suddenly I had the idea to find something in Columbia City, a frequently neglected possibility for dining in Seattle. I noticed a little Ethiopian place that sounded inexpensive and tasty, and made my way southward, picking up my friend along the way.

We arrived slightly circuitously, but something caught my eye which had previously sounded less exciting in the particular set of restaurant summaries I had been perusing. It was La Medusa, a cute little Italian restaurant with an appealing menu. I mentioned something about how much I had been enjoying making roasted cauliflower at home recently, and we made our way across the street to sneak a peek at the Ethiopian place. It looked like a good Tuesday night place, but was a little noisy due to their Friday night musicial guest and wasn’t exactly what either Jennifer or I needed, so we trusted our impulse and returned to La Medusa.

We wandered around for a few minutes while waiting for a table to open up, but we settled on some chickpea fritters, roasted cauliflower with pine nuts, and some grilled asparagus with a fried egg and some hint of truffle salt. I ordered a glass of a Sangiovese and Jennifer got some Pinot Grigio. Somehow, in spite of eating too much pizza recently, I was still drawn to a fig, fennel and ricotta pizza. We skipped any other mains or pastas since it was already late and no longer particularly needed, but found ourselves more than satiated… still, we felt the need to indulge in a little chocolate espresso torte.

Everything was spot-on. Simple preparations, good ingredients, humble but reverential staff, and very attentive service made the whole experience very pleasant. The interior is spare yet attractive. Prices were commensurate with the quality of ingredients, but still a little less extravagant than less impressive options downtown or Capitol Hill. This is exactly the kind of Italian dining Seattle needs.

I have frequently ranted to anyone who will listen that Seattle attempts at Italian restaurants tend to miss the mark: oversized portions of boring pasta that make it hard to order a taste of anything else on the menu, spectacular prices, overly complex dishes that obscure rather than highlight the ingredients used… It’s refreshing to see that there are other alternatives to this approach.

La Medusa is no budget dining experience… I think the total bill, before tip, was about $55 for two, about $15 of which was from wine. I had originally been seeking out something more modest, thus the inclination to come for the inexpensive Ethiopian place. But it is a beautiful little space, and does an excellent job bringing out the best in simple things. The lower rents in the area probably contributed to a roughly 10–20% lower cost than an equivalent meal, if such a thing were available, in Queen Anne, downtown, or Fremont.

The space is actually fairly friendly to the young families that seem to be populating Columbia City, and we saw several (non-disruptive) children around the dining room. It’s an excellent little neighborhood place, but it’s definitely a place with enough appeal to draw me out of my Woodland Park/Fremont environs.

I went to a farewell party for Masalisa, the little tea shop in Ballard that I’ve been going to occasionally for maybe a year and a half. They will turn over the tea shop to another couple in a few days and then focus full-time on the new business, which, of course, I’m participating in as their sales broker. Actually I came straight from an abbreviated matcha latte demo at Uwajimaya to Ballard.

I always liked that space and I hope the new owners retain some of the character.

At the party I ran into a former MSN colleague and his wife, who runs Pare*Umbrella, a company that imports contemporary Japanese-designed umbrellas. I also met an employee of a sake distributor who knows some of the other importers I do, which just goes to show the circle of Asian importers makes up a very small world.

Masa and Lisa’s son charmed the crowd by performing renditions of Queen songs on a children’s amp and guitar setup, and a 5–piece ensemble of attendees played Okinawan shamisen and sang folk songs. It was the last chance to eat Masa’s Matcha Roll Cake, though I think he changed it a bit on this last occasion. A few people brought snacks, and I felt like a slacker because I didn’t bring anything except some dragon beard candy samples… I would usually cook something for an occasion such as this.

Today the heat of the last few days finally subsided… on Friday I was stuck in a car most of the day in 90 degree (Fahrenheit) weather, and Saturday I served a tremendous amount of iced matcha latte samples (soy and regular) at Uwajimaya. Today I only made it hot… It cooled quite considerably.

Most of today I was feeling a little blue and didn’t get much done today except filling an internet order and making a couple of phone calls.

As customary with a small number of internet orders, I drop off packages at a location in Ballard, so I had forgotten that Tall Grass Bakery in Ballard doesn’t open the retail part of its shop on Mondays, so I went there when they were busy baking breads for wholesale orders. They keep the front door open because it would probably otherwise be too hot, but the shelves were bare. Someone outside the shop confided that he had learned a new batch of bread would be ready in a few minutes, so I waited and took the first available loaves, which happened to be fat baguettes.

I stopped at Ballard Market and picked up butter, cheese, and greens, and took advantage of the bounty to make a hurried sandwich from a fresh-from-the-oven still warm-to-the-touch baguette. I’m not sure I’m feeling a whole lot better, but this sure didn’t hurt.

I was too much a slacker to photograph either endeavor, but yesterday morning I made some buckwheat waffles, and at night I realized that I still had a bit of batter left. I thinned the batter a bit and added some chopped pickled takana and leeks, a tiny bit more salt, and produced something along the lines of pajeon or okonomiyaki, dressable with Japanese mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce. The buckwheat or soba flour added a nice nuttiness.

This morning, however, I was resourceful enough to get my camera ready. I made a matcha-kinako waffle batter (powdered green tea and toasted soybean powder waffle batter) dressed up with a little bit of matcha whipped cream and kuromitsu (black sugar honey syrup). I’m a little bit low on kuromitsu, so I substituted a bit of buckwheat honey when I ran out of kuromitsu, but the effect was similar.

The green tea of course is more visible in the cross section. By the time I got this far, I was too hungry to photograph it.

Matcha-Kinako Waffles

1 tsp. Matcha for Cooking
1 tbsp. Sugar
2 tbsp. (20g) kinako (toasted soybean flour)
1/2 cup flour
1 level tsp. baking powder
1 tbsp. butter, melted
1 egg
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp. milk

Sift dry ingredients into bowl, whisk egg, melted butter, and milk in separate bowl. Mix wet and dry ingredients briefly with a fork until mostly consistent. Bake in a waffle iron according to manufacturer’s instructions. In my small waffle iron, this makes a bit more than 2-7” diameter thin waffles. The recipe can readily be doubled or otherwise multipled..

You can substitute about 4 teaspoons “Matcha latte mix” for the sugar and matcha. I used about 1 teaspoon matcha latte mix for 3 tbsp. of cream to make the whipped cream topping. Dust with powdered sugar and straight matcha.

I don’t think I’ve been so optimistic in a long time.

With only a few days of active sales efforts, I’ve had pretty good luck getting new accounts this week. Central Market in Shoreline took delivery of the Matcha Latte today and the Mill Creek location will start carrying it soon as well. A gift shop in Redmond called Wagamama (selfishness?) started selling it as well.

Cafe Zoe in U-District and Aruba in Fremont started serving the Matcha Latte as well.

I faced another set of irritations with a shipping vendor for the new shipment of dragon beard candy. It was frustrating, but it worked out more quickly than the last time we used them. I think I’m likely to dump that vendor because they don’t file papers with the right people when needed and it causes no end of headaches. Fortunately my customs broker has been on top of things and fixes them quickly whenever possible.

I’m not getting enough sleep this week, alas.

I went to the Pike Place Market cheese event today and tried to jockey for position to taste samples from various unfamiliar dairies, and a couple of familiar ones.

A woman with very good pitching skills from Ritrovo introduced a truffle salt, which I thought was quite nice; hydrated in some olive oil, the taste was at least as nice as a decent truffle-infused olive oil. They sampled the salt dressing some cheese curds and olive oil. I was sold… tonight’s dinner included some blanched broccoli with olive oil and this very salt. Very simple, very earthy.

I also acquired some fennel-studded soft aged chevre cheese from Rollingstone Chevre in Parma, Idaho, and some “Camellia” fleur de Chevre from Redwood Hill Farm of Sonoma County, California. I had a bit of buffalo mozzarella acquired recently at PFI, so that was the mild end of the spectrum. Accompanied with a very nice fig jam and some quince paste. We had a bit of a Chateau Ste. Michelle Canoe Ridge Estate Merlot, which was moderately complex and nice, a gift from Kaori’s boyfriend.

I think my only regret was not picking up a supply of the Rollingstone brandy-aged chevre or any blues, but I don’t want to go completely broke.

I chatted a bit with Ilyse of Ritrovo and exchanged cards. She spent a few years in Japan and said some of her customers have been requesting yuzu, so perhaps there’s some potential mutual assistance in the future. 

I did have a demo scheduled today, but I didn’t get started until almost 2pm. I needed a bit of lunch so I stopped for a quick bite on the way. I was kind of feeling frustrated by the idea of encountering more slow traffic at the Bellevue Uwajimaya store, so I didn’t really feel like rushing over. But actually Bellevue Uwajimaya was busier than the most recent Sunday demos I’ve done there, perhaps due to dreary drizzly weather. Sales weren’t bad at all; the matcha latte in particular moved fairly fast. Beaverton yesterday, by contrast, was incredibly quiet, due perhaps to relatively pleasant weather and a new nearby supermarket’s grand opening.

Friday afternoon I did a little afternoon demo at Seattle Uwajimaya, where the traffic was fairly light as well. Apparently I ended up at the least busy stores on Friday and Saturday, alas… It’s hard to predict.

My new shipment of dragon beard candy probably departed on Sunday but the shipper probably messed up FDA prior notice, so I guess it will be delayed as it was last time.

On eGullet, someone asked about what to eat in Fukuoka, but most of what I could think of was not particularly special to the city, alas. But it triggered a memory of godoufu (ごどうふ, more likely to be rendered in English as godofu), of which I’m a huge fan.

When I visited Arita on an outing in March 2000, I tried this mochi-like soymilk-based “tofu” in a little restaurant on my way to go ceramics hunting. Served three ways in the picture below: in the center is godoufu with ginger, soy sauce, and possibly some daikon oroshi. On the upper right is a bowl with godoufu, some sea vegetables, and dengaku-miso type topping but still served cold. This might have had some ginger or some ground sesame seeds in it… My memory has subsequently faded. The suimono in the bottom right has a smaller cubes of godoufu, some tamago-yaki, and some fu. The rest is standard teishoku fare; tsukemono on the upper left, chawanmushi below that,  rice, and some mostly vegetable tempura. (Ah, and shiso… mmm).

Godoufu has a nice chewy texture and could easily find its way into both sweet and savory dishes. I think you could serve it with some kuromitsu and kinako to get something approximating soy milk warabi-mochi (豆乳のわらびもち). You could have it replace siratama or mochi in an oshiroko/zenzai (sweet red bean “soup”). It might even be an alternative to the jellies often found at the bottom of cream anmitsu or mitsumame… As is usually best with Japanese foods, simple preparations are likely to be the most impressive.

If you ask the average Japanese person about godoufu, they’ve probably never heard of it. It’s fairly specific to Saga prefecture, though like most regional specialties, through the magic of mail order and perhaps the mura-kara-machi-kara-kan type places, you may have a chance to get this in other parts of Japan. It is completely nonexistent, to my knowledge, in the US.

I have attempted to describe the process to make godoufu. I’ve probably made it about four times successfully, with usually very nice results, save one time when I scorched the bottom of my pan.

I think I have a weekend project ahead of me sometime soon.