Tag Archives: food

Tonjiru and Nanohana

Tonjiru and Nanohana, Rice and Pickles

The Asian recipe for this week is Tonjiru – or, Japanese pork and miso soup with root  vegetables.  I’ve made it a couple of times and love its ease, tastiness and generally healthy (are pork belly and “healthy” allowed in the same context?) contents.   I also like this soup since it’s so flexible, and you can add or subtract ingredients to your liking and taste.  For instance, the version below uses sato imo, or taro root instead of potatoes, and omits goubou (burdock root). Instead of just using Akamiso (red miso), add a little of the sweeter Shiromiso (white miso) for balance.  Also, the amounts below are estimates, so please adjust as necessary.   The rest of the meal included nanohana no karashi, or broccoli rabe/ rape flower with mustard dressing, rice of course, and pickles. Continue reading

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But What About the Food?

Beautiful way to start our meal - Kikunoi Roan

Hassun course at Kikunoi Roan: skewer of miso-marinated avocado, smoked salmon and Tai liver; grilled squid with nori seaweed and egg yolk; fava beans, mountain yam “butterfly;” poached egg-bearing octopus; Tai sushi with Kinome pepper leaf; Yurime lily root petals; Udo stalk petals; ikura.

Indeed, what about the food?  The trip was planned after all, in CCDD fashion, around food.  It’s been absolutely glorious – from the high-end to the low, from street food or market stands to Michelin-starred establishments and smoky izkayas, train station ekiben or small ramen-yas filled with salarymen… we’ve been eating very, very well.

In Osaka, I think I quite had my fill of takoyaki; DD kept wanting to sample these wherever we went, and we ended up tasting some from 4 different vendors.  We also loved sushi fresh from Kuromon market and Endo Sushi in Osaka’s Central Wholesale Fish Market, similar to, but not as big as Tsukiji.

Okonomiyaki in the Dotonbori

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The Arrival

Taken around 19:10pm

HIkari Shinkansen at Shinagawa Station

While long, the process of getting from Narita to Osaka, I’m happy to report, was quite straightforward and utterly lacking in any sort of stressful near-misses or complications.  Essentially we arrived at Narita Airport around 3:10pm, got through customs and immigration and finally made our way down to the train station by 4:45pm.  There were so many helpful individuals at Narita, whether it was the information desk clerk in the basement floor of the airport near the train stations, or the JR clerk who exchanged our JR pass vouchers for actual passes, apologized profusely when she found out the next rapid Sobu express to Tokyo was leaving in about 3 minutes (we declined and opted to take the next one arriving in another hour), most helpfully booked us reserved seats on the Hikari Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka-Shin, and gave us exceptionally detailed directions in great English.

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