Yakinasu (grilled eggplant) is one of those incredibly simple but irresistible dishes... I can't help but order it whenever I see it on an izakaya menu. Sometimes we've even bought it at department stores to take home, as when Hiromi and I ate at her parents' home during my last trip to Japan.

Ideally grilled over Japanese charcoal with a shichirin, yakinasu can also be prepared on an ordinary grill or with a small flame on a gas konro. I used to rely on the broiler feature of my stove, but that requires very careful monitoring to pull off successfully.

You can use either the long, skinny 5-6" nasubi (Japanese eggplant) for this, or the 2-3" roundish ones reminiscent of kyō-nasu (Kyoto eggplant), sometimes called Indian eggplant here in the U.S. The larger European-style eggplants common in the U.S. are probably too big for this.

The one important question to ask when preparing this: Skin on or skin off? I tend to prefer the variations which keep the skin, mostly because it looks more appealing, but you can get a slightly smokier flavor if you're willing to sacrifice it. If you do that, you grill or broil the eggplant on all sides until the skin is more or less blackened, then wrap up the eggplant in aluminum foil, or place it in an airtight container to steam the skin until it becomes easy to remove.

When you remove the skin, you might dress the eggplant with some katsuobushi and soy sauce, or some nerimiso (sweetened miso sauce). Since I'm vegetarian, I make the latter.

For the skin-on version, I typically score the skin on either side, first lengthwise, then about 30 degrees off axis. I've chosen to cut the eggplants in half before grilling, and I rubbed the flesh with a little salt. Each side is grilled gently until the flesh slightly softens. After a few minutes of rest, the eggplant becomes a bit more tender thanks to residual heat, so it's better not to overcook it.

This version is ideal with some freshly-grated ginger, chopped scallions and a little splash of Japanese soy sauce.

No matter how hard we try, the two of us cannot eat a large pot of what amounts to be little more than mashed potatoes, regardless how many greens are involved.

So I decided to repurpose the leftovers a little bit. I melted some butter in a 6” skillet and added a spice blend (Kashmiri garam masala, I think) and turmeric, then poured it over the remaining colcannon in the refrigerator. I also added some frozen peas.

I improvised a dough by rubbing some of flour and salt with a bit of butter, then added just enough water to combine. I worked the dough together and let it rest for a while in the refrigerator.

I then rolled out the dough and cut it into small pieces, and Hiromi and I got to work stuffing them.

The first night I prepared them as just a little snack to go along with a couple of other dishes, but tonight I noticed I had some ungracefully aging pears in the refrigerator, and thought I should make quick use of them before something nefarious happened. I put together a simple chutney built on fenugreek, allspice, a little black pepper, and coriander, along with some fresh young ginger, onions, and a couple of fresh chilies, along with a bit of salt and unrefined sugar.

A couple of nights ago, I prepared some cranberry beans with some Chinese spices like star anise and some large white seed I’ve never learned the name of, and some fennel seed. I thought I was going to use these as a little bean side dish that never quite happened. By the time I needed them again, I had a far different craving, so I mashed the beans with some egg, flour and breadcrumbs, and pan-browned them in a nonstick omelet pan with a little oil. (They could just as easily be deep fried).

I was ever-so-slightly worried that the vaguely Chinese seasoning of the beans would fight with the vaguely Indian seasoning of the chutney, but actually they worked quite nicely together. The star anise and fennel added a nice depth to the bites of the cranberry bean cakes, and the chutney added a nice gently-fiery sweetness. We also found that the baby spinach underneath, motivated mostly by color, proved to be an useful utensil for carrying the bean cakes to our mouths, and added a little textural contrast.

We were supposed to do a supermarket demo at the Bellevue Uwajimaya today, but they were a little bit more crowded with Chinese New Year demos than expected and we decided not to become a fire hazard. We did have a fairly substantial delivery for them, so it wasn’t a total loss, but a bit of a complication to our carefully laid, if a little haphazardly executed, plans…

Since we found ourselves firmly planted in the Eastside, we went to eat dosas and utthapam at the Crossroads (Bellevue) location of Udupi Palace, a fairly decent south Indian restaurant that’s actually an outpost of a successful suburban Bay Area group of restaurants.  I used to come here fairly often when I was a Microsoft employee, and to its predecessor called Golkonda.

Today, we ordered rasa vada (fermented lentil fritters in rasam, or spicy tomato soup) to start. We each had half of a pineapple utthapam (thick lentil pancake) with cilantro, and half of a dosa (thin lentil crepe) stuffed with an apparently Sri-lankan style shredded spiced coconut mixture.

These are served with coconut chutney and sambar… our lunch was full of fiber, and sustained us well past a normal dinner hour. Alas, we only had a cell phone handy to record our excessive consumption, so we ended up with a blurry photo.

I got a late start on both Thursday and Friday, but considering the pain my knees are causing me right now, it was probably for the better. Although I’ve been waking up reasonably early, we sometimes don’t leave the hotel until fairly late, and our relatively long distance from Meguro station means that it takes about 15–20 minutes just to get started on the long journey to Makuhari Messe in Chiba.

Thursday I met up with a the Japan forum manager from eGullet and spent most of the time in the international section, where I found most of the products I was most interested in importing were from companies I’ve seen in the last two years. My favorite discovery was a special gochujang from a medium-sized Korean producer, though I’m a bit afraid I’ll be beaten to the opportunity after they exhibit later this year at some big food trade shows in the US.

The most rapidly spreading single ingredient this year seems to be salted cherry blossoms and pickled cherry leaves, represented by all sorts of Japanese companies either as an ingredient or as a part of a packaged food, and exhibited by Chinese suppliers as well. If I hadn’t attended FoodEx for the last three years, I might haved assumed that presence was seasonally-driven, but I never saw such a presence of the ingredient in previous shows. In Japan it’s mostly used for sweets such as the classic sakura-mochi, but some companies even incorporated it into nattou or other savory foods.

Okinawa-based companies had, for the last two years, run a retailer-targeted booth that showed all sorts of Okinawan packaged foods, which probably explains the three or four Okinawa-themed gift shops I’ve run into since Tuesday without really trying. Now, most of the Okinawa presence this year seemed to be booths from specific companies, such as a company that produces a deep sea water-based soda drink and various bottled Okinawan fruit juices in hip packaging.

In the international foods section, I didn’t notice as much in the way of organic food products as I had in the Japanese area, but a Korean company had a huge assortment of organic products that, if I were comfortable importing refrigerated containers of products, I’d be very excited to bring in to the U.S. Right now, though, I don’t have the facilities or the distribution network to make that work very well.

Thursday night I met with the CEO/President of a Japanese tea company that produces incredible hand-tied flower ties primarily for wedding and banquet markets, but increasingly for the gift market as well. I first talked to her last year at the Hoteres trade show, and she wanted to make sure we met up before I left Japan this time. I think I’d really like to bring their products in to the U.S., because they are particularly innovative in the domain of flower teas, with unlikely shapes and some unusual designs of their more conventional tied teas.

Friday I had to fight with some heavy winds that caused train delays going toward Chiba… we caught a train that didn’t depart until about 80 minutes after its scheduled time, or about 30 minutes after we entered the train. It moved at half speed to avoid being derailed, and took more than an hour to arrive, about 30 minutes longer than normal… So I was expecting to be at the show around 1:30 on Friday, but didn’t arrive until 3:15, for a bit more than the last hour.

Fortunately, that was just enough to see the sections that I had previously neglected, mostly in the Taiwan section. Hiromi also got a chance to check out the shochu section, but of course, we both left relatively unaffected. For me, the most interesting shochu was a 3–year aged brandy-like shochu, but Hiromi was partial to a kind of imo-jochu that she discovered, and we talked with that company a bit, even though shochu is more complicated to import than I’m willing to handle right now. It never hurts to have an interesting supplier contact, though.

I’m off to restore my body in Gunma-ken tonight. Hiromi’s driving about three hours and I’m probably going to fall asleep in the car…

Mr. Wong, Mrs. Cheng, and two other key staff members of Bamboo Gardenhave arrived safely. I trust they are now getting some sleep. We had countless errands to run this afternoon, including nailing down the final schedule, routing the new candy shipment, and sending some media to the 99 Ranch promotions folks. Afterward, we made some attempt to find large quantities of cornstarch, which Mr. Wong was loath to bring on the airplane and risk misinterpretation by Homeland Security folks.

Before turning on full-productivity mode, we stopped at Cafe Besalu for a little breakfast and caffeine, with a little bit of chatter. After that, I was either on the phone or driving somewhere or writing up a shipping order for the next 5 or 6 hours. We mellowed out around 5:30 pm, although it took me a good 30 minutes to make it from Queen Anne back to Fremont due to heavy traffic. I did some prep work in the kitchen and came back after they had time to take a shower.

I did manage to make them a little dinner, but I think we didn't eat until about 8:30.... I made a potato pizza with sage pesto, chanterelles, and thin slices of eggplant, a mixed green salad with yuzu vinaigrette, a little squash-potato soup, some grilled mushrooms with basil and garlic, and some green beans with lion’s mane mushrooms and ginger. We finished off the pear sorbet which I think I mentioned here a few weeks ago, and it still tasted pretty decent.

The schedule for Bay Area is now settled, though I think the actual time of day might still need clarification.

• December 15: 99 Ranch Daly City, 250 Skyline Plaza, Daly City, CA 94015
• December 16: 99 Ranch Cupertino, 10983 North Wolfe Road, Cupertino, CA 95014
• December 17: 99 Ranch Richmond, 3288 Pierce Street, Richmond, CA 94804
• December 18: 99 Ranch Foster City, 1070 Foster City Blvd., Foster City, CA 94404
• December 19: 99 Ranch Milpitas, 338 Barbar Lane, Milpitas, CA 95035

Beyond their slightly mustardy flavor, mizuna greens share some of the peppery character of arugula. I had a bit more mizuna with perhaps less than a day left in its usable lifespan, so I thought I really needed to find a way to make good use of it.

I still had some pizza dough retarded in the refrigerator from a few days ago, which can only hang on so much longer...

Pretty odd leftovers

Even better, I also had some buffalo mozzarella, already open, which also has only a little time left, and some aged, intense gouda-like cheese whose name I forget.

Oddly enough, I also had an ear of corn that needed attention.

Americans don't put corn on pizza.

Although the carefully constructed menu of an "American" pizza place near my dormitory in Marburg, Germany, whose signature "American pizzas" almost invariably included either corn or canned mandarin oranges, might make certain people think otherwise, Americans do not put corn on pizza.

I've seen corn on pizza menus in Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea, but Americans do not put corn on pizza. The only time I ever ate corn on pizza was when we had lunch delivered from Domino's Pizza when I was on a business trip to Hong Kong about 7 years ago. Because that lunch involved the dual tragedy of eating mediocre chain pizza inches from hundreds of other culinary treasures, pizza with corn did not make a good first impression.

Never again would I ever have pizza topped with corn, I thought.

And then I made a small exception.

Thursday night I was out at one of Seattle's very few izakaya, and our table had at least two butter-shōyu dishes: one with renkon, or lotus root, and one with lightly sauteed potato shreds only slightly different from a dish previously featured. One we didn't order, for whatever reason, was "corn butter"... so I made up for that tonight.

I scraped all the kernels off my corn cob with a knife and sauteed them in butter, later adding a splash of soy sauce.

Originally I was thinking this would just be a nice little side dish. And then I did something that I'm not, by nature, inclined to do.

I put the corn on the pizza.

The mizuna pesto, like most basil or arugula pestos, featured garlic, olive oil, and pine nuts. It served as an excellent base, though I think it would be even better from mizuna a day or two fresher. I still don't know what possessed me to add the corn, but its salty, buttery goodness was not harmed by its appearance on a crisp foundation of pizza... and the herbal notes from the pesto were surprisingly complementary.

Corn on a sweeter base, such as more conventional tomato sauce, still seems bizarre to me, but I'd do this one again.

Saturday, March 20, 2004

This morning I packed up my larger suitcase, which is now full of product samples and related pamphlets, in preparation for an early Sunday departure to Kansai airport. I think there’s a little bit of clothing somewhere in there as well. Actually I have little desire to carry this overweight suitcase with me, so I made arrangements to deposit it at the Yokohama area hotel where I’ll be staying on my return.

The hotel in Yokohama is near Bashamichi, where Hiromi and I wandered around last Saturday. It’s a little dodgy… although it’s a full service hotel, it’s at the low end of the scale; a sign at the front door advertises short-term rates for those who might need a room for a few hours in the afternoon. The lobby lounge is occupied entirely by Russian guests who must have discovered the place in a guidebook. My friend Hiromi found the place online, but it doesn’t offer the usual amenities, like a credit-card secured reservation over the telephone, so I also made advance payment on the room for next week while checking my baggage.

We had lunch at a little kissaten-style place nearby which has dozens of varieties of tea and a few interesting tea beverages, but we’re in a bit of a rush, so we order only a couple of simple dishes (a Japanese style dish called omu-raisu, which is an omelet with seasoned rice, in this case made with various mushrooms; a spaghetti arrabiata, described in Japanese as an “angry Italian” dish; soup and salad) and then we move on.

Afterward, we meet Hiromi’s friends, both named Sanae, and go shopping in preparation for nabe dinner party. Nabe is the kind of dish that is nearly always ignored by U.S. Japanese restaurants; it’s a very rustic, humble, communal one-pot meal that is for Japanese in winter what outdoor grilling is for Americans in the summer, except, perhaps, without the heroic grill-meister bravado.

In this case, we were having a miso-seasoned nabe filled with various mushrooms, tofu, a kind of translucent noodle, and greens, with a little bit of kiri-tampo (toasted mochi).

I contributed by making a hijiki (black, noodle-like seaweed) dish with renkon (lotus roots), carrots, and sora-mame (fava beans), and a little dessert of oboro-doufu (very soft, custardy tofu) with boiled sweetened azuki beans and a ginger syrup.

The Sanae whose home we were visiting has a 5-year old boy and an approximately 2-year-old girl. The girl was a bit of a fan of the renkon in the hijiki dish and said “daikon choudai” (please give me some daikon) to her mother a couple of times… she hasn’t quite learned the word renkon yet. Another one of Sanae’s friends also made use of the blanched renkon and carrots I had leftover by pan-frying them in a little butter with a sprinkling of salt, making an elegant and simple appetizer or drink accompaniment.

Everyone was fairly sleepy after dinner and I was one of three people who dozed off occasionally near the couch. I need every bit of rest I can get, as I only have time for about four hours of sleep tonight.

Along with our lentil pie we wanted a lighter, refreshing little eggplant side dish to share.

We adapted a Renu Arora recipe that calls for deep-frying eggplant. We didn't really want to break out the deep-fryer on a hot day, so we went with a less oily alternative.

Using our gas konro (basically a single-burner camping stove), I roasted batches of Japanese eggplant on all sides on a moderate flame, letting the eggplant get soft without scorching the skin too much. I put them in a container with a tightly fitting lid for a few minutes while preparing some other things.

Then I toasted some freshly ground fenugreek and mustard seeds in a bit of oil with some fresh chilies. After a minute or two I added turmeric, garam masala, red pepper powder, ground coriander seeds, and salt. I then adding a generous helping of whole milk yogurt, stirred the ingredients, and worked in the eggplant, sliced lengthwise in quarters then halved in the middle. This needs to gently simmer for 5 or 6 minutes on low heat.

At the table, add fresh cilantro to taste. (Hiromi likes cilantro).

Fire roasting creates a pleasantly smoky character while concentrating the eggplant flavor, without adding unnecessary fat.

The dish tastes nice served warm or even at room temperature, and makes a nice addition to a lunchbox the next day, if you have any left.

The last couple of days I have alternately been craving sappari foods and the completely unhealthy. Yesterday I decided to try an experiment... I tried wrapping some soft, vacuum-packed yuba that I bought in Kyoto in October around some mochi with a little bit of nori for color, then fried them in some oil until golden. After I fried them, I set them in a bowl of kakejiru, which is basically seasoned dashi (japanese soup stock) with soy sauce and mirin in it.

The flavor was just about right, but I need to learn some tricks to keep the mochi from bursting the yuba and nori apart. The presentation left a little something to be desired. I tried using some toothpicks to hold everything together, but it wasn't quite enough. I might try using thinner cuts of kiri-mochi next time, and I might skip boiling the mochi first, just to see how it expands. I recall having some fried nori-wrapped natto in Japan, and some fried nori-wrapped yuba in a Chinese restaurant in Seattle, but I can't remember eating any of nori-wrapped fried mochi. The yuba seems to like being fried... the texture was really nice.

I had set out to take some photos of the results, but I wasn't quite happy with how everything looked when I finished, although I did appreciate the flavors. I'll try again someday.

For lunch today, I made a nice soba with a little bit of rolled yuba and some scallions. I also served the soba in my kakejiru, which I've had in the freezer for awhile. It didn't seem to suffer, though.

The last few days I've finally made some serious progress on my internet store, so next week sometime I expect to have some of my new products up on YuzuMura.com. I decided that I'm going to use an off-the-shelf solution that meets most of my needs; after I get it set up, I'll say goodbye to bCentral, which has worked for a basic shopping cart but doesn't meet my upcoming needs.

Unfortunately, I've been waiting for a new shipment of Dragon Beard Candy to arrive for most of the week... A comedy of errors with a new freight provider means that, even though the cargo arrived last weekend, it won't be able to be processed by my customs broker until Monday. Considering how little inventory is available on the store shelves of Uwajimaya stores, this is an irritating problem.

I've gotten a lot of walking in over the last week. Since I have been carless, I've been walking to Ballard to do various errands most days. That gives me a little more than an hour of low-intensity exercise... I should get myself jogging again, though.

My apartment is now barely livable. After a series of new shipments, including the arrival of additional shipping supplies, and attempts at making passable photographs of products by turning my kitchen table into a makeshift studio, I barely have enough room to walk. I also have some gutted electronics in my living room, as I was trying to complete a low-cost upgrade to substitute for my briefly malfunctioning, and subsequently repaired, laptop computer. That upgrade process did not go smoothly, and the evidence of the trouble is right in

I started hunting for some low-cost storage and office space, but my choices are not enviable. The closest one is probably the best fit for my needs, though it might be a little small; the cheapest one has some unpleasant features, namely the proximity of a constantly humming transformer, and a lack of light in the section more practical for office space. Another one is more versatile but has a high total cost and is kind of out of the way; although reasonbly convenient to my home, it's convenient to nearly no one else in the city, located in northern Magnolia.

I'll try to nail down my solution for space next week, before I fly off to Hong Kong. I will go to Hong Kong to meet with my candy supplier and see their retail locations and their production facility. A couple of days later, I'll attend, and to some extent, participate in FoodEx 2005 in Tokyo. This trip will be pretty short, but I'll also try to cram in a visit to a yuzu farm in west Japan if I can arrange everything in time.

Last Sunday I managed to snag some sichuan pepper at the Beaverton Uwajimaya. After years of absence from the US market, this was a pleasant treat. I cooked some yu-tsai (na-no-hana) with ganmodoki and sichuan pepper, as well as some fresh peqin chilies. It was simple and had a pleasant numbing taste... Except for a dish I had back during the fall festival with a friend who somehow obtained some smuggled sichuan peppers, apparently from Canada, I haven't had a dish featuring sichuan pepper for years. I'm thinking of revisiting a dish my Chinese neighbor in Marburg, Germany used to make, which was basically thin sliced potatoes sauteed with sichuan pepper and a little salt.

I've had some bad luck with atsuage recently... this week marked my second recent attempt to make a stuffed atsuage that turned out to already have passed its prime. The expiration dates seemed fine, but the taste was strangely sour... two different stores, two different brands, two different disappointments. I was happier eating my eringii, carrot and greens filling.

Today in Beaverton I saw a familiar brand while doing a demo... Representatives from a company I met at FoodEx last year, Fuji Oil's Soyafarm, were demoing some tofu nuggets meant for the US market, and some fried reheatable yuba-wrapped edamame. I still prefer Soyafarm's soy milk yogurt and soy milk; that company had the nicest attempts at soy milk yogurt I have ever tested. But I would recommend with only the slightest of reservations the yuba-wrapped edamame. My only complaint is that they were a little salty, and maybe a little microwave-soggy. I don't know if there are ways around those defects; the salt might have been added for the demo purposes only, for all I know.