Japanese nabe hotpot: perfect winter food

hat can be better on a nippy winter evening than a hotpot steaming with the heart-warming aromas of  seafood, mushrooms and green vegetables. There is no recipe, really. You just get together with your friends or family and put all and sundry ingredients in a pot of boiling water, dunk them in a sauce of your choice and wash down with beer or sake.

Well, it's not really that random. First of all, you put a piece of kombu in the water to make aromatic broth. Then put ingredients starting from tougher to cook ones in approximately this order. First in go shiitake, carrots, daikon and bigger pieces of fish. I use chopped salmon heads, the abundant cartilege makes for a fantabulous depth of the soup's flavour. I am not a big fan of fish balls unless they are home-made. Next go green vegetables (hakusai/pakchoi, Savoy cabbage, Chinese broccoli, kailan), oyster mushrooms, shrimp, mussels, crab meat, squid, clams. Last follow the gentlest ones that only need to be warmed up: shimeji, konnyaku, bean sprouts, kikurage.

My favourite dip is mix of miso paste and mirin - Japanese style. Also great is mix of chili sauce, fish sauce, lime juice and pressed garlic - Thai style. Korean dip is gochujang, ground toasted sesame, pressed garlic and ground ginger. Vietnamese dip is lime juice, ground ginger, nuoc mam, chopped chillies and pal sugar. Chinese dip is soya sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, sesame oil and a sprikle of hot red pepper.

Once the last bits are fished out and devoured with thanks, beat an egg into the remaining broth and add harusame.  

 

Japanese yuzu dressing recipe (柚子ドレッシング)

uzu is an East Asian citrus fruit whose fresh aroma can spruce up the most boring dish. One way to make use of its invigorating flavour is in a salad dressing. Unless your local Asian grocer stocks fresh fruit, feel free to substitute it with a more readily available yuzu vinegar. Lime is an okay substitute but the flavour just won't be the same.

• 2 tbsps yuzu juice or yuzu vinegar
• 2 tbsps soy sauce
• 1 tbsp mirin
• optional: 4 tbsps vegetable oil - plain sunflower or, for an extra punch, sesame

Shake the ingredients vigorously in a jar until completely homogeneous. Pour over salad right before serving.

Kuki wakame (茎わかめ): Japanese seaweed stems

h Christmas! The time to wash down lovely oven-dehydrated turkey and vein-clogging trifle with copious amounts of hangover-sure punch. Last year, however, I escaped the joys of London's festive season to eat raw fish on a hotel rooftop. As the tropical night's tightening embrace was squeezing more and more sweat out of my body, kuki wakame (茎わかめ) was what I had swapped the obligatory fart-inducing Brussels sprouts for.

Nominated as among world's 100 most invasive species, wakame kelp has stems whose lovely texture is simultaneously crunchy and jelly-like, described in Japanese as kori-kori. When used as food, they are called kuki wakame and have a nice flavour of seawind. Wind, however, is where all parallels with Brussels sprouts stop.

This Japanese-style aemono salad requires minimum cooking: the accent is on harmonising (aeru) the ingredients. So, here goes the recipe:

TBC

Chuka iidako: best way to cook baby octopi (中華いいだこ)

he only time when paedophilia is cool is when it comes to food. Think lamb and mutton. Or young chick and old cock. Although there may not be nothing wrong with old cock, we all still do prefer young blood to old tuskers in our kitchen.

Chuuka iidako (中華いいだこ)　is the Japanese idea of a Chinese recipe for baby octopi (in my opinion, that's the most decent sounding plural for octopus). Call me weird, that was as close to turkey as I got for my Christmas 2009 dinner. The rest was mostly raw fish.

Anyways, here's the recipe you were looking for:

10 baby octopussies (there you go!)
one can kidney beans
one can diced tomatoes
400 g minced beef
one onion
one stalk of celery
3 big chili peppers (quantity varies depending on the hotness factor of the peppers you are using)
salt, pepper, allspice powder, bouillon cube

1. Rinse the octopi well in running water. Smash the heads and remove the intestines. Bring a pot of water to boil, put a few tea leaves and the octopi for about 30 seconds.
2. Stir-fry the mince with a bit of oil in a frying pan, when the meat is done, add finely chopped onions and celery as well as the de-seeded and chopped chili peppers, crushed bouillon cube and the seasoning.
   
3. Drain kidney beans and add them to the pan together with the tomatoes.
   
4. Cut the octopi lengthwise and add to the pan. Stew on low fire for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Saba no misoni: mackerel simmered in miso (鯖のみそ煮)

isoni has nothing to do with the fashion house Missoni. It is a Japanese method of cooking in miso paste. Perhaps, the most popular misoni recipe is saba no misoni.

The recipe is simple, inexpensive and healthy. Here how it goes:

• De-bone 2 mackerel fillets and cut them in squarish pieces (like in the picture).
  
• Finely slice an inch piece of ginger, mix it with half a cup water, 4 tbsps sake, 4 tbsps mirin (or caster shugar) and 4 tbsps of miso in a pan and put on medium heat.
  
• Add mackerel and simmer for about 10 minutes on low heat. Make sure the fish is submerged in the sauce all the time.
  
• Add 2 tbsps of miso in the sauce at last, stir well and remove from the heat.
• Serve as a main dish with steamed rice or to accompany beer.
  

Takoyaki: Japanese octopus balls (たこ焼き)

ried octopus balls and fried ram balls may sound similar but there's a world of difference between the two. Despite its English name, there is nothing testicular about takoyaki. In fact, they are pieces of octopus deep-fried in a ball of batter.

A highly popular street food, they are as indispensible to Japanese innumerable and ubiquitous local festivals as candy floss to British fun fairs. Osaka, Japan's second largest city, is the country's takoyaki capital to the point where the takoyaki grill pan (takoyaki-teppan or takoyaki-ki) is said to be a part of every Osaka bride's dowry.

These days every fishmonger seems to carry octopus and the rest of takoyaki ingredients can be easily procured in your local Asian grocer.

1. Mix 2 cups of flour, 2 and half cups of dashi, and 2 eggs in a bowl. The flour/dashi proportion may vary depending on what kind of flour you use but the resulting batter should be as thick as drinking yoghurt.
   
2. Heat a takoyaki grill pan real well and brush every cup with a bit of vegetable oil (it should start giving out some smoke).
   
3. Fill the cups with batter to the brim. Put bite-size pieces of pre-boiled octopus, red ginger, dried shrimp (sakura-ebi) and come chopped green onion in each hole.
   
4. When the bottom half of each ball is nice and brown, turn it over with a toothpick and grill until the other half is the same colour.
5. Takoyaki are not supposed to be cooked till hard, a degree of softness (called torori in Japanese) is normally sought after.
   
6. Serve with takoyaki sauce (okonomiyaki sauce is an permissible substitute), a wee bti of mayonnaise (the lusciously unctuous Kewpie brand is the best)Top with a sprinkle of bonito flakes (katsuobushi) and ao-nori.

Real Nip grub: Asakusa@Camden, London

very Tom, Dick and Harry now have sushi lunches. Even the most culinarily challenged have at least tried miso soup. Wasabi is not italicised any more and even countryside supermarkets carry proper soya sauce. However, there is infinitely more to Japanese food than California-maki and grilled eel. To discover that you need to leave your high street takeaways and head out straight for Japanese expats' favourite hangouts.
Izakaya is the Japanese equivalent of the pub. It is where white and blue collar workers get together for a few drinks after office hours. However, unlike the English whose evening beers land right on top of lunch sandwiches, the Japanese eat before and while they drink. Your typical izakaya menu will feature not less than a hundred entries. That is real daily Japanese food, not sushi that are reserved for special occasions.
Asakusa, right around the corner form Mornington Crescent Tube station, is where you can find authentic Japanese cuisine as enjoyed in the Land of the Rising Sun. I find very charming its looks of a typical Tokyo watering hole back from the 70s. Even its name, Asakusa, is very becoming: in Tokyo, it's a very traditional, folksy area in the centre where Edokko, real Tokyoites, come from.

In Japan there are no starters, main courses and such. All food is served at once and shared between the eaters. The izakaya menu, hence, is broken down by the type of the dish: grilled, deep-fried, salads, marinated, liquid and so on. You order one or two of each type, some booze - normally beer or sake - and there you go. The Japanese hardly eat rice when they drink, I guess it gets in the way of getting tipsy.
All the traditional Japanese dishes we ordered came expertly cooked, if a tad on the smallish side. We went for:

• edamame (えだまめ)- steamed beans in pods with coars sea salt; half a hadful, really;
• sashimi moriawase (刺身盛り合わせ) - a platter of raw fish slices; kinda skimpy for the price;
• tempura moriawase (てんぷら盛り合わせ) - a platter of vegetables and shrimp deep-fried in light batter; very well done not a wee hint of oil!
• kurage no aemono (くらげの和え物) - lightly marinated jellyfish; slurpy and crunchy at the same time, just about 5 gram of it;
• korokke (コロッケ) - deep-fried mince and mashed potato croquette; crisp and moist where it matters;
• takoyaki (たこ焼き) - deep-fried octopus balls (not the testicles, but ball-shaped cakes!);
• ageashi-dofu (揚げ足豆腐) - tofu fried in light batter served with katsuo flakes; prefectly done but about 2/3 of the regular Japanese portion;
• nasu dengaku (なすでんがく) - aubergine broiled in miso; in Asakusa they make it glazed in sweet miso, very appealing to the eye!
• hiyayakko (冷奴) - silky tofu served in light dressing with katsuo flakes; the simplest dish of all, about half of what you'd be served in Japan;
• kaisou sarada (海草サラダ) - seaweed with a very light dressing；I expected the clear sourish ponzu-style dressing but it came with something faintly milky and mustardish that, nevertheless, was a very good combination;
• saba no misoni (さばの味噌煮) - mackerel stewed in miso; one and half very well made pieces;
• gyuniku no tataki (牛肉のたたき) - rare beef slices with marinade; the ground ginger and garlic dip was exquisite!

All that, two cups of tea, a bottle of bear and a glass of umeshu set us back 70 quid. My three mates insisted they were full (which I believe) but I left with a slight feeling of unfinished business. They say it is healthy to stand up from the table a tad hungry. Well, thanks for taking care of my health, Asakusa!



Pro's: An extensive menu of authentic Japanese food.
Con's: Miniscule portions. Not really cheap. Downstairs smells faintly of cats. The Big Izakaya Three are not on the menu: tsukudani, o-den and chawan-mushi.
In a nutshell: Gritty but great place for some real Nip grub.Asakusa
265 Eversholt Street
London, NW1 1BA
020 7388 8533

Yokan: Japanese bean jelly

apanese sweets, wagashi, are an exquisite affair little known abroad. Yokan, or youkan, is a paste of very fine bean flour, custard sugar and agar-agar.

What seems a simple mixture of basic ingredients, in fact, is a fine art. In Japan there are still a lot of artisan shop specialising in hand-made yokan that fetches very high prices among connoisseurs.

Strangely enough, the word yokan means "sheep broth". Originally, leftovers of slaughtered sheep, like bones, joints and ties, were boiled in water to produce gelatine to give yokan its jelly-like texture. That was the deal in China, where it was invented. However, in Buddhist Japan consumption of animal products (except fish and seafood) was banned for many centuries, so here agar-agar was used instead but the old name has stuck.

Hou-tou-gu (yamabushitake): the wonder of China

he wonder of Da Shan, Monkey Head Mushroom!" Gaudy red characters on a package in my local Chinese shop cried for attention. They got mine. I had no idea what was so wondrous about this weird-looking fungus but I would just google it once back home.

It turned out the characters did not lie. Decoction of this mushroom (猴頭菇 - hou-tou-gu) is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat or prevent such conditions as indigestion, thrombosis, dementia, neurasthenia as well as the ulcers and cancer of the stomach, duodenal and oesophagus. It is known to reduce to level of lipids in blood.The secret behind such an astonishingly wide strike zone is ascribed to the polysaccharides that address the root of those seemingly unrelated conditions.

It is one of the Four Culinary Treasures of China, the other three are bear's paws, trepangs and shark fins. It is also known as Lion's Mane Mushroom, Bearded Tooth Mushroom, Hedgehog Mushroom, Bearded Hedgehog Mushroom, pom pom mushroom, or Bearded Tooth Fungus. Its Latin name, Hericium erinaceus, is only used in scientific literature while the Japanese name, yamabushitake (山伏茸) frequently occurs in commercial contexts.

tsukudani recipe tsukudani recipe tsukudani

Congee: Asian breakfast gruel (粥/おかゆ)

ice with seaweed and egg?" Marina flinches back, half in astonishment, half in politely hidden disgust. This lovely Russian girl is displaying surefire symptoms of an early gastritis, so I have made her congee or okayu （おかゆ） - a watery rice gruel reinforced with a beaten egg and some shredded kelp for nutrition. This is what is given to children and sick people in Pacific Rim Asia from Japan to Indonesia. But for Marina this is a sacrilege. The Russian rice kasha she is more used to is made with milk, sugar and butter, a far cry from my low-calorie savoury concoction.

Variations of this breakfast gruel are encountered wherever rice is a dietary staple. It is more on the watery side in China, flavoured with fish sauce in Thailand, rather bland in Korea, made with coconut milk in South India. In  Singapore I had it with frog meat, in Hong Kong with a thousand-year egg. The recipe below features in my breakfast at least a couple of times every week.
So here how it goes.

1. Rinse a handful of rice in running water. Add half a handful of shredded kombu, whatever dried mushrooms you have (torn in small pieces) and 6-8 cups of water. If you have some cooked rice leftovers, use those without rinsing.
   
   
2. Bring the pot to a boil, reduce fire and simmer until it reaches the porridge texture.
   
3. Add a beaten egg and a handful of green leafy vegetables.
   
4. Once cooked, flavour with fish sauce or shoyu,  garlic powder and finely chopped ginger.

Kombu: Japanese kelp

n Russian, it is called "sea cabbage" or laminaria and is normally the base ingredient for an uninspired pickled salad. When Yeltsin and his cronies were busy plundering Soviet assets, canned laminaria salad was one of the few items always available in food shops. This seaweed's taste would have forever associated for me with Yeltin's hunger winters, had I not rediscovered it upon moving to Japan. The Japanese know a myriad highly delectably uses for it and it is in Japan that I grew to love this multifarious kelp.

For hundreds of years in Buddhist Japan a ban on meat consumption ban was in force, so people had to come up with something else than veal or chicken stock for cooking. Kombu, as it is known in Japan, is one of the three main soup bases (dashi). It is of gentler flavour than the other two, which are made of dried flakes of skipper mackerel (katsuo) and shiitake.

When it is sold dry it comes in two ways: shredded (on the picture) or in sheets. It is always covered with sharp-tasting residual sea salt and hence is high in iodine. When consumed over a long period of time, kombu is known to reduce grey hair and darken your natural hair hue. Thanks to it, through the years I have gone from light brown to dark brown with not a silver hair in sight.

I use it to make stock for miso-shiru, to make congee or o-kayu for breakfast, to prepare delicious beer snack tsukudani.

Mirin: Japanese cooking rice wine (みりん)

ne late student night last century, in a Nagoya neighbourhood my mates and yours truly ran out of beer. Somebody suggested drinking mirin and, as intended, caused a massive brouhaha.

These days mirin (みりん), mildly alcoholic (14%) syrup is used exclusively for cooking. No one would think of drinking it. However, some 200 years ago, in Edo Period, mirin was a fancy booze. If you try it, you will understand why. For a cooking wine it tastes quite nice, rather like low-alcohol muscat. Mirin-based herbal liquors like toso (屠蘇) and yomeishu (養命酒) still have some currency in Japan but no one has yet thought of marketing them abroad as a novel Oriental drink.

As it has quite a particular flavour you can't just substitute it with white wine and sugar (although you can try!). Mirin is absolutely essential for cooking such Japanese classics as unagi-don or teriyaki sauce.

To avoid paying the alcohol tax on mirin sales, there are two close substitutes in the market: shio-mirin (塩みりん) with 1.5% added salt that supposedly makes it unquaffable and mirin-fu (みりん風調味料, on the picture above), which tastes the same but only contains 1% of alcohol. It may take quite in effort to buy real stuff, hon-mirin　(本みりん), abroad, but the substitutes are actually not that bad at all.

As thanks for reading this far, here I will reveal Japanese housewives' little secret: marinade of equal shares of mirin, sake and shoyu enhances the taste of white fish without interfering with its flavour. Just soak fish filets for half an hour and cook as usual.

cloud ear fungus aragekikurage

Auricularia polytricha

Miso: Japanese soya bean paste (味噌)

n the olden days of self-isolation, Japan was a strictly Buddhist country. In culinary terms it meant that meat consumption was banned. For protein, the Japanese had to rely on fish and beans. When others would be content chewing on fried fish and boiled beans, the Japanese went to great lengths to diversify their diet. Beans alone come in a myriad of often unrecognisable, yet very delicious guises.

Miso is one of those. Essentially, it is salted bean paste fermented with Japan's official national micro-organism, Aspergillus oryzae, known in Japanese as kouji-kin (麴菌). The paste is also augmented with ground grain such as rice, barley, mullet or buckwheat. Fermentation makes beans more easily digestible and, in fact, even medicinal. Miso consumption is credited with a slew of health benefits starting from hypertension control to curing radiation sickness.

As it always goes with food in Japan, there are hundreds of regional varieties. They all can be divided into four big categories:

1. shiro-miso, which is of a blonder hue as in the top picture,
   
2. aka-miso, which is dark(er) brown,
3. kuro-miso is the darkest of them all,
4. hatcho-miso has the strongest flavour.

Most famous regional varieties include:

• Hatchou miso (八丁味噌) - Aichi Prefecture
• Nagoya miso (名古屋味噌) - Aichi Prefecture
  
• Sanshu miso (三州味噌), slightly bitterirsh miso widely used in kaiseki dishes - Nagoya Prefecture
  
• Kujo miso (郡上味噌), based on a mix of barley and beans - Gifu Prefecture
• Gozen miso (御膳味噌), red sweet-tasting miso with a high content of ground rice - Tokushima Prefecture
  
• Kinzanji miso (金山寺味噌, 径山寺味噌), the base paste is made from beans, rice barley and vegetables - Wakayama Prefecture
  
• Aijiro miso (相白味噌), blonde sweet-tasting miso - Shizuoka Prefecture
  
• Hokkaido miso (北海道味噌) - Hokkaido Prefecture
  
• Tsugaru miso (津軽味噌), spicy-tasting red miso - Aomori Prefecture
  
• Akita miso (秋田味噌) - Akita Prefecture
• Sendai miso (仙台味噌), spicy tasting miso with rice and with coarsely ground beans, can be consumed raw - Miyagi Prefecture
• Aizu miso (会津味噌) - Fukushima Prefecture
• Echigo miso( 越後味噌) - Niigata Prefecture
• Sado miso (佐渡味噌) - Niigata Prefecture
• Etchu miso (越中味噌), light miso with whole rice grains, aka "water miso" - Toyama Prefecture
  
• Kaga miso (加賀味噌) - Ishikawa Prefecture
• Seikyou miso (西京味噌) - Kyoto Prefecture
• Fuchu miso (府中味噌) - Hiroshima Prefecture
• Sanuki miso (讃岐味噌) - Kagawa Prefecture
• Shimabara miso (島原味噌), barley-based - Nagasaki Prefecture
• Satsuma miso (薩摩味噌), sweet-tasting barley-based miso - Kagoshima Prefecture
• Edo Amamiso (江戸甘味噌) - Tokyo Prefecture
• Shinshu Miso (信州味噌) - Nagano Prefecture
• Sakura Miso (桜味噌) - Osaka Prefecture
• Akadashi (赤だし) - Kyoto Prefecture - 豆・米調味味噌
• Sotetsu miso (蘇鉄味噌) or Nari miso (なり味噌), made from detoxified cycad fruit - Okinawa Prefecture and Amami Islands in Kagoshima Prefecture
  

Apart from its main role as the base of miso-shiru soup, miso is a very versatile condiment. One of the effects of fermentation is the increased content of amino acids that our taste buds perceive as savoury. This makes it a welcome ingredient in many dishes. It is used to pickle vegetables in the marinade called miso-zuke.

Other ways to use miso in cooking include:

• miso udon
• basting mix for dengaku, yakimochi and corn on the cob
• marinades
• misoyaki sauce

Edamame: Japanese beans in the pod (枝豆, えだまめ)

hen the Japanese go out to drink, it always involves lots of food. That would surprise London's office crowd who customarily guzzle their after-hours beer straight on top of their lunch Prêt-a-Manger sandwiches.

In Japan, you eat and drink. Once again, unlike greasy chips, fatty chicken wings and salty nuts so popular in the West, Japanese beer snacks are the epitome of wholesomeness. In fact, many of them sound like the dream food of some health-obsessed Californian vegan. Take hiyayakko (冷奴), silken tofu with seaweed, or kimpira-gobou (きんぴら牛蒡), stewed burdock and carrots salad.

In the Japanese equivalent of the pub, izakaya, you are also very likely to be served your beer with edamame (枝豆), steamed beans in the pod. They are very easy to prepare: just steam them for a few minutes and sprinkle with sea salt. Some like to boil them in salty water but, in my perception, it leeches out the gentle flavour.

You can also marinate edamame in miso paste. Just cover the beans with miso and leave for about 8 hours without pods or twice that time in pods. Rinse off the miso before consumption. Serve with beer or sake.

Chazuke: making use of yesterday's rice (お茶漬け)

very national cuisine has great ways to deal with yesterday's leftovers. In Italy they top pizza, the British "devil" them, in Japan cold rice is made into a flavourful breakfast called chazuke, or to sound daintier, o-chazuke.

It is a simple dish: pour some green tea into a bowl with cold rice and sprinkle it with a few condiments. Cha stands for "tea" and zuke for "submerged". Kind of makes sense, innit. Depending on the region or individual preferences it can be anything:

• tsukemono pickles;
  
• salted plum umeboshi;
  
• nori (seaweed);
  
• furikake (savoury rice sprinkle);
  
• roasted sesame seeds;
  
• tarako (鱈子) (salted cod roe);
  
• mentaiko (明太子) (marinated pollock roe);
  
• salted salmon;
  
• shiokara (pickled seafood);
• nozawana (野沢菜) vegetable;
• and, last but not least, wasabi.

However, the Japanese made it even easier: most chazuke these days is instant. That is, all it takes is to open a pack.

Kikurage: the mushroom of many names (キクラゲ, 黑木耳)

nown in the past as Jew's ear, these days it is safer to call it kikurage (キクラゲ) by its Japanese name. Its alternative name, jelly ear, is not very widely recognised, while the Latin name, Auricularia auricula-judae, is too cumbersome. The Chinese name hei mu er (黑木耳) will hardly ever catch on, will it?

Once I had to ask Floyd to buy it for me in a Chinese shop. None of the names seemed to work although hei mu er proved outside Floyd's linguistic abilities. Finally, he gave up on seeking help from the shop's people and, after quite an effort, managed to locate it himself. The bag said "Black Fungus".

Kikurage is sold dry in most Asian stores. It expands a lot when soaked in water (takes about 30 minutes). The pictures below is the same mushroom as above before soaking! It has a faint earthy flavour and gently crunchy, agaric texture for which it is mostly prized. I don't know what kind of coincidence it is, but kikurage is only popular in the traditionally Confucian countries - Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan and Vietnam. It is not particularly click with the rest of Asia.

In traditional Chinese medicine hei mu er is believed to possess anti-thrombosis properties, that is, it de-clogs your arteries and veins. By extension, it is believed to promote longevity. Polysaccharides that it contains have a tumour-preventive effect.

I use it in a variety of dishes: from sashimi (it is one of the few mushrooms you can eat raw) to noodles and sweet-and-sour chicken. It does not need much cooking and can be added just a couple of minutes before the dish is ready.

Mung bean sprouts: the pure energy of life (もやし, 豆芽)

ruly, truly, one man's food, another man's poison. I remember how I scared my Moscow friends when I brought a bag of bean sprouts to fix some Chinese food for them. They decided they were in for a feast of creepy Asian worms.

Bean sprouts are widely used in Pacific Asian cuisines. They are known as moyashi (もやし) in Japan, dou ya (豆芽) in China, kongnamul (콩나물) in Korea, tauge in Indonesia (and Holland), thua ngok (ถั่วงอก) in Thailand. In Iran, they are traditionally prepared for the New Year's festival Navrooz. There they symbolize the power of new life.

In Thailand, folk wisdom has it that bean sprouts, when consumed raw, increase sexual drive. It come as no surprise if you consider all the life energy of enzymes and vitamines of freshly sprouting seeds!

I use them for a number of dishes: from Indonesian gado-gado to Chinese mapo-dofu. I can chew them raw much to the consternation of my friends. But I don't mind as it defo gives me a huge perk once in between the sheets! +wink wink+

Hanami picnic in London: the best of Japanese gastronomy and aesthetics (ロンドンの花見)

he Japanese custom of hanami, enjoying the beauty of cherry blossoms, came about under the influence of China's refined Tang Dynasty in the 8th century AD. It originated as a sacred ritual for the imperial court: Shinto priests would offer sake to sakuras so as to divinate the new year's harvest.

Before too soon, the Japanese figured out that pouring sake on trees was a waste and that is how gastronomy replaced religion. By the 12th century the custom of having meals under blossoming cherry trees spread to all the walks of life of the Japanese society.

There is a philosophical meaning attached to this pastime: the empirical observation of the transience of youth and beauty allegorised by the cherry blossoming lasting but a couple of weeks a year. However, as the laconic Japanese saying goes "Hana yori dango", "Dumplings before flowers", that is, "To hell with blossoming spring flora, let's tuck it away!"



This week Victoria and Ekaterina came to visit me from Moscow. We had planned a picnic since a while ago but were very unsure about the weather. Luckily, today turned out a glorious day. We bought our Japanese grub at Rice and Wine Shop and Kulu Kulu Sushi on Brewer Street and moseyed on over to St. James's Park.



There is no set menu for hanami. Perhaps, the only seasonal entry would be hanami-dango: a skewered trio of rice flour dumplings with sweet red bean filling. For our picnic we had:

• miso-shiru;
• a big order of nigiri-zushi;
• o-nigiri: nori-wrapped rice dumplings with various savoury fillings;
• chuuka-wakame: shredded seaweed salad with Chinese sesame dressing;
• loads of edamame, soybeans in the pod;
• boiled spinach in peanut sauce, certainly a newcomer to the Japanese diet, yet none the less enjoyable
• hanami-dango and Japanese green tea to polish them off with.

All this Oriental exuberance set us back mere 38 pounds for three. Not shabby at all for Central London, is it?

My Moscow banker girls also indulged in a bottle of Australian semillon. The wine got them in a very cheerful mood and we went on to gorge on some very nice cake from Patisserie Valerie on Piccadilly Street. A hunky Turkmen guy in the Prêt-a-Manger next door supplied us with free coffee (thanks to our ladies' charm) and we finished our dessert just on time to catch our Handel's Royal Fireworks Music at St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

I had spent about a month looking for best hanami spots in London. Although there are a lot of cherry trees in the city,only a few locations are suitable for picnics. Email me for a list!

It is quite funny to recall just how much negativity I experienced when trying to put together a hanami event in London. I failed to interest a single Japanese person. My guess that there are two types of Japanese in this city. First, those who came here out of their will tend to distance themselves from their native culture: they would rather go to a pub than eat sushi in a park. Second, expats who were sent here and who are way too busy for anything else but sleeping it out after a week of hard labour.

I have also noticed that the Japanese are very sceptical about the non-Japanese being able to appreciate the finer aspects of their culture. Truth be told, to an extent it has proved true. However, luckily for me, Victoria and Ekaterina overwhelmed me with their enthusiasm for the whole undertaking. It is to their pro-active curiosity and positive energy that I owe most of the success of my first hanami picnic in London.