is there ever a good time to bring up whale meat?

 It’s probably difficult to take an unbiased stance on the topic of hunting whales for whale meat. It is a reality however, that in certain places, like Japan (and where else?), whale has been hunted and eaten for hundreds of years. During the restoration after the war, whale hunters supplied the impoverished population with thousands of tons of whale meat to bolster food stocks.

MacAurthur, as it happens, encouraged this practice – possibly because it was a cheap source of food, and also possibly because excess whale oil was then taken back to the United States and Europe, where it was used in the making of many things from lamp oil to soap. In fact, it became such a main source of food that only a few years after the war, over fifty percent of the meat eaten in Japan was whale meat. It’s since the end of the war that whale meat became a staple of school lunch, and even though it lost its popularity as Japanese consumers were able to afford pricier meats, asking around I’ve noticed most people remember having eaten whale at school growing up.

The loophole - if you want to call it a loophole - that Japanese whalers have operated on since the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986 is a provision that allows countries to catch a certain number of whales for scientific research. The meat from these scientific catches is then distributed for sale and eventually reaches grocery stores and restaurants. Mm, science meat.

 

Because this is a very sensitive topic to a lot of people, I’ve tried my best to remain neutral, but you can probably pick up my bias anyway. For those of you that live under the “don’t fry it until you try it” mantra, I will just say this – I have eaten whale. A sashimi plate of it was pushed upon my nose under the pretext that it was a cut of beef served rare.

Upon eating the first bite, the old man who had invited me to try it burst out uproariously, “It’s whale! Haha!” I protested that he might have considered a method other than deceiving me into eating it, his words: “What are you, Green Peace?”

a sticky situation with honey, jam, and unlimited crackers

On a drive way out to Karuizawa in Nagano prefecture, I noticed the air getting cooler and cooler as we climbed through the mountains. The snow had nearly all melted away off the Karuizawa ski slopes by the time we got there, but the sakura cherry trees were still in full bloom. Having watched the flowers drop off those trees in my more tropical (well, tropical enough to have a few palm trees, anyways) town of residence a full month before, it was refreshing to see. But that wasn’t the main attraction for driving out into the middle of nowhere.

No, Karuizawa, wouldn’t you know it, is a well-known shopping destination. Fueled by the money pouring from a community of wealthy vacationers and retired salary men with a penchant for golf, this sprawling country club and shopping mall serves all the world brands names that you would expect – Burberry, Chloé, Dunhill, The Gap.

But it wasn’t hand-bags and suit jackets I was looking for. Down the streets and beautifully flowered lanes heading away from the mall, Karuizawa opens itself to the specialties of its region – honey, jam-making, and hand-carved wood furniture.

 
The beauty of these shops was the free samples! Bins of crackers lay out, with sample spoons for the testing and trail of every imaginable type of jam or honey. Fig jam, chestnut tree honey, blueberry and rum jelly. Barely avoiding a diabetic overdose, I munched my way through dozens of shops in search of the perfect cracker bite. I found it in a raspberry and red wine jam that became the purchase of the day. Kudos Karuizawa, now I just need some cheese.

Kamakura

Miko priestesses dance at a Kamakura shrine to gagaku music

dango roasting over a grill

Visiting Kamakura, an ancient temple site that has long been a standard omairi locale for the Japanese, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have already been to Todaiji and the Daibutsu, so the famous (although very slightly smaller) giant Buddha in Kamakura is a local next step.

Still, while the temples are in fact quite beautiful, there are so many of them and they are of a similarity such that looking at them one after the other is, well, tiring to say the least. There's only so much walking through gates and admiring of chrysanthemum flowers that anyone can take before their stomach starts grumbling.

sweet sake manju steam buns

Fortunately I happened across a section of town that offered hot food and treats from street-side stalls. Dango, dumplings made from sweet rice flour and skewered before roasting, are a specialty of the region.

I also enjoyed the soft fluffy texture of sake manju – steamed buns made with sake and sweet adzuki bean filling – on a bamboo bench while watching the crowds mill about shopping for trinkets and snacks. The three flavors pictured, from the left, were yomogi, kokutou brown sugar, and mochi rice. Yomogi is a Japanese variety of mugwort, but it's not nearly so bad as that sounds. Think of it as a leafy and faintly flavored kind of an herb. In Japan, it's mostly used as a kind of natural food coloring, although it does impart a nuance of vegetative flavor to the steam bun.
 
I munched on sweets and snacks for a bit longer before deciding that my stomach was telling me it was time for something more substantial.

Lunch led me to sausages. Thick, bratwurst-like sausages with local craft lager from Enoshima. A German experience is not exactly what I was expecting out in a rural and old-school-traditional Japanese town, but it was good nonetheless.

And it had the biggest line in front of its stall. I guess times do change.

warabi hunting

up in the hills over the Seto Inland Sea - a good place for warabi hunting

This weekend I was out rooting for warabi - edible bracken fern sprouts -  in the mountains above the Seto Inland Sea. You have to pick them while they're young, before the leaves unfurl and open up and they apparently become inedible. They sort of bury themselves under the dried leaves of the previous year's fern fronds, so you have to search them out.
 

warabi growing in the mountains

To prepare warabi for eating, you first boil up a big pot of water. Keep the sprouts in another bowl. When the water boils up, add a little baking soda to it.

Pour the boiling water over the sproutlings and leave them to soak overnight. Wash them again in cool water, and they're ready to go.

You can also then leave them in a mixture of water, soy sauce, mirin, and rice vinegar for a few hours if you want an authentic Japanese flavor to it.

Warabi sprouts are filled with a sticky, okra-ish fluid and might be considered an acquired taste, although the flavor isn't very strong in any particular direction.

In Japanese cooking, warabi generally plays the part of small side dishes served with rice and fish. I'm also planning on coming up with some original dishes for this unique ingredient, but I'll get back to you on that later. For now, good hunting!

hanami bento

It’s blooming season for sakura – the Japanese cherry tree. When Japanese people think of cherry trees, they tend to think about blossoms, not berries. These trees do not fruit. For about two weeks out of the year, they blossom fully and beautifully, and then the petals quickly fall off as green leaves sprout and take their place. There is a word that exists to describe this one seasonal moment, when the pinkish-white petals scatter from the trees in swirls through the air – hanafubuki. Read literally the word would mean “flowers blowing like a breath of snow”, and that’s a good idea of the impression that you get by watching these trees. It's a beautiful time of year and a perfect chance to picnic.

for some reason the theme appeared to be cats

In good tradition everyone goes out to picnic under the flowers, with blue plastic mats, near-ridiculous amounts of liquor, and bento boxes full of food. This year the blossoming of the flowers seems to have timed itself up with the haru ichiban – the first warm spring wind of the year. Here’s the bento we had for lunch, made by the diligent and lovely Takako Nakayama. The stacking form of the bento box is a great way to keep food separated and to include a variety of items in your picnic basket. This has really put me in just the right mood for posting on some traditional bento side dishes, as well as picnic items!

shippoku at Marugame Udon

I guess I should explain some of these words here. Udon is a type of Japanese noodle, made with wheat-flour and saltwater, which is characterized by its thickness and stiff bite (what the Japanese refer to as having 'backbone'). Shippoku is a style that that udon is sometimes served in. Imagine a hearty soup crammed full of mountain vegetables and swirled with these thick noodles to get a good idea. Actually you don’t have to imagine, here’s a shot for you:
 

shippoku udon

The udon over at Marugame Udon is made to order and will definately fill you up, although locals complained to me over wait times (10-15 minutes? Which didn’t seem like a big deal). Probably this is because most udon joints, which serve it up as-you-order-it quick and cheap to boot, have created an image of udon as a kind of fast food. Salary men in business suits rush in alongside workers in rubber boots and paint splattered garbs, throw down a few coins, and slurp away. In a flurry of chopsticks they’re all rushing off again – maybe they sat down for 3 or 5 minutes - to get back to their jobs. I guess there's a lot of people that just don't have the patience to wait around for noodles while on their tight schedules.

While sipping on hot tea given to us by the hostess, I found the wait at Marugame Udon - with its old-fashioned atmosphere and relaxed pace - to be a refreshing change to the eat-as-you-stand debacle I often encounter. Sometimes a little wait can make food more tantalizing, giving your taste buds time to consider what’s to come. And the price, which was a few hundred yen more than other places, didn’t bother me much when I started eating the hearty home-styled goodness.

ichigo daifuku

it's not butter, but a traditional candy served with matcha

Today I attended a class in Japanese confectionery instructed by Mr. Suzuki of Shibayama Japanese Confectioneries in the city of Takamatsu. It was hosted in the commercial kitchen of their shop. The theme of the day was Ichigo Daikufu, which is an excellent dessert featuring fresh strawberries. Traditional Japanese cooking, including confectionery, cannot rely on ovens, and is mostly created in a pot over fire or with steam in specially made appliances. The confections at Shibayama are all handmade, focusing on seasonal flavors and traditional recipes.

Ichigo Daifuku (ichigo meaning strawberry, and daifuku meaning good fortune or “big luck” literally) is made by first encasing a whole ripe strawberry in anko red bean paste. This is then wrapped inside of a soft layer of dough made with mochi rice flour (a highly glutinous rice), water, sugar, and egg white whipped stiff. The wrapping is all done by hand and since the dough is extremely sticky, it’s very difficult to get the perfectly shaped balls that the pros produce.

strawberries, anko, and mochiko flour

The anko we used is only one of a variety of sweetened bean pastes that can be found in Japan. Shiroan for example, a white velvety variety, is made from lima beans. It may be strange to some palettes to think of mashed beans as dessert food, but sweetened beans can be found in many places all around Asia. 

Thinking about it though, even pork and beans tends to have an amount of sugar in it, so maybe it's not really that strange. Many beans have very neutral flavors and absorb the flavors around them well, so really they can go either direction towards savory or sweet. The beans used in making red anko are azuki (sometimes spelled adzuki) beans, with the largest growing region in Japan up north in Hokkaido.

 

the not-so-perfect result, but delicious!

Trying it out myself, the mostly difficult part was definitely wrapping the mochi dough around the inner core. It has to be done with speed, precision, and a soft touch – as the hot dough begins to cool, it becomes less flexible and harder to pinch together to finish the seam. And if things go wrong, they go wrong very quickly - that mochi rice can stick like hot glue. Suzuki-sensei described it as not pulling, which will tear the dough, but rather pinning it down with one hand and pushing with three fingers while working around the ball. The dough itself is made in a large rounded pot over a flame. First the mochiko flour and water are combined with sugar. Then, the mixture is poured into a large steaming machine and steamed so that the dough becomes super sticky. It is then returned to the pot, where the now heavy, thick mixture.is constantly stirred so as not to burn. The stiffened egg whites are folded in last.

Here are my rather imperfect results, which were none-the-less extremely delicious. I have developed a healthy appreciation for the pros, whose speed and accuracy in producing these perfect treats hides their years of acquired skill.

Me and Suzuki-sensei

Good times with strawberries! Oh as a last note, there is a variety strawberries of strawberries here known as Sanuki Hime - the Sanuki Princess strawberries - and they are excellent. Deep red and deeply sweet, this local berry is a real treasure. Bigger is not always better!