Stomachs on legs are proud to present

Most chefs need a drink after work.

If you are wondering why. Ritchie explains.

While a good 800 people line up to get into our work place after our dinner service.

We the cooks can't wait to get the hell out.

Usually staff drinks are held in front of the local 7-11 but thanks to Chef Shaggy and Chef Dan we have found the delights of frozen beer.

I know when you come come to Thailand you think it is cool to drink the local beers but trust me they are shit.

As shit as Heineken. So freezen the contents only adds to the pleasure. Especially as we build up to the end of the hot/dry season.

It's really hot here.



Bring on Songkran.

Fertility festival at Tagata Shrine, Aichi, takes place every year on March 15 when you can encounter phallus-shaped snacks.




In case you are wondering, they are chocolate-covered bananas.



...and okonomiyaki-coated frank.

Fashion designer Karen Walker enjoyed her candlelit dinner at home, and TV3 newsreader Samantha Hayes spent an hour in the dark, thinking about the impact of her lifestyle on the climate.

Really NZ Herald?

...naked egg slice rolls get hip. Kind of attractive but unappealing I'm afraid. Below is possibly the scariest looking marzipan bunny I've ever seen. (All items pictured @ Rewe supermarkt, Brüsselerstrasse, Cologne)

"Maki Itoh of Just Hungry shares advice for vegans in Japan—first off, to be careful because many traditional Japanese dishes use dashi, which is made with dried fish. "Just about the only things that are fairly sure to be dashi-free are plain rice and homemade pickles," she says (although she does share a recipe for vegan dashi). Looking towards non-traditional Japanese cuisine for vegan dishes may not be much easier. She suggests cooking for yourself if your stay is long enough (she shares recipes on Just Hungry and Just Bento), eating brown rice and whole wheat bread, and shares links to other vegan resources in Japan. Don't miss the comments from her readers for more suggestions on where and what to eat."

Link

I'm sorry but I just find this really really sad and pathetic...it's just plain miserable. Vegan survival in Japan? Only vegans would go to Japan and have to think in survivalist terms. That one would end up cooking for themselves while on holiday in Japan is equally abhorrent. It makes me want to weep

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Bobby Jindal's Republican Response
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

An old workmate of mine who goes by the Twitter pseudonym of MerceDeath posted the following update yesterday:
"巨大湯葉やばい!"
("Enormous Yuba, Dammn~!")

You know how milk sometimes gets a skin on top when it's heated - well, Yuba is the skin skimmed off the top of hot soya milk, containing the soy proteins in a concentrated and easily digestible form. When served fresh it is warm, a little bit slippery-soft, chewy, and savoury and can be eaten plain with a light dipping sauce. When dried it can be used in dishes both sweet (e.g. a mille-feuille made with strawberries and papery flakes of yuba) and savoury (e.g. as dim sum wrapper).

Yuba is delightful.




(By the way, the etymology of the name 'Yuba' seems strangely similar to the legend of Mapo Dofu: both are soy-derived dishes supposedly named after the skin conditions of kindly old ladies who offered the dishes to road-weary travelers. But the skin analogy is easier to understand in the case of Yuba than of Mapo Dofu, which consists of cubes of tofu simmered in spicy mince...)

I'm a big fan of Yuba, enormous or otherwise... and I trust the taste of MerceDeath. When we were colleagues, he told me he ate soymilk-nabe (hotpot) for dinner every single night, with or without kimchi flavouring. A true soymilk devotee. That's classy.

The key to his enormous yuba is simply to use a wide, shallow cooking surface: here's the recipe.

Basically you pour 400 ml of soymilk (unsweetened) onto a big flat electric hotplate surface with a rim such as the one below, and then heat it to 80℃. When a skin forms, you tug it off with chopsticks and eat it with a dipping sauce of your choice.

I'm not sure if making yuba in a fry pan would work just as well - I don't see why not? There must be some art to it, since most yuba is still made in Kyoto with what the Shunju cookbook calls 'time-consuming handwork'. Maybe the heat needs to be very even and the temperature very exact.
Using a fry pan, your yuba wouldn't be so enormous, either.

Only available at Shin-Chitose airport, Hokkaido.


And bento's from other airpots throughout Japan.

I saw them years ago in Tokyo, and alas, the Furaisu closed its doors in 2002.


What I remember is Ebi-furai (deep fried breaded shrimp) in a hand-roll, but seems like they also had Hire-katsu (deep fried breaded pork fillet) version as well.

Maybe it's better be called a mutant onigiri (rice balls) than hand-roll rushi... since it's probably rolling regular plain steamed rice, not sushi rice (with vinegar & sugar).
But surely the idea must have come from hand-roll sushi.

The name Furaisu comes from furai (deep fried stuff) and raisu (rice), of course.

"Students eating dinner in college were given a basic ration of a joint of meat and a glass of beer, but Darwin was apparently quite fastidious about forking out a further 51/2d per day for vegetables."

(source)

Every innovation in noodle technology brings us one step closer to souvlaksa: the ultimate Greek-Malaysian fusion food. Jay Rayner spots doner kebab flavoured instant noodles. His thoughts:

There was a moment, a taste echo, that reminded me of belching half an hour after having eaten the real thing – stop grimacing, for god's sake; this is a doner kebab flavoured Pot Noodle we're talking about. What did you expect? Proust? – but it was soon gone. Instead all that was left was that sickly-savoury, chemically-enhanced indeterminate flavour that all of them have.

I'm never sure if the aftertaste is a flavour or just salt and umami overload.

Sorry for bad quality pictures... it was very dark and my camera sucked.

Brown rice & veggie nigiri:


Also, tofu quiche.


Both from Gaya-Aoyama, Tokyo.

I've been there in good old days when they were still a regular (i.e., not claiming "organic") izakaya.

It was a pleasant surprise when they turned into a healthy beige food capital.

They actually have both strictly macrobiotic veggie and non-veggie menus, so it's actually quite handy. A good variety of shochu and sake too.

You can also smile at the Japangrish introduction:

Since The GAYA restaurant originated in Yoyogi-uehara in Jun.28 1987,we've been struggling for our wishes that all guests get full of vitality and more healthy day and night．We've been branching out having hope to offer Delicious cuisine,Good drink, and Pleasant talk.

What is the TRUE TASTY?
What is real necessary for vitality of guests?

Since mad cow disease problem occured,we've thought of safety of food seriously and considered what our restaurant should be like.In truth,we had made an effort to purchase ingredients as low price as possible and hardly thought about the environment in which vegetables and meat grew.We started to concidered the importance of food deeply and we must change the stance of our restaurant.

We resolved to try opening up ORGANIC IZAKAYA!!

“All dishes the guests have build their bodies．”We'll always keep this in our mind and decided all ingredients and seasonings are natural. We call this “REAL FOOD".
Please have dishes,drink happily and laugh heartily．
Both a healthy mind and healthy body are true vitality．All of us try as hard as possible to help all guests with their vitality from now on.

My favorite line... What is the TRUE TASTY?

Brown rice sushi roll with tofu & veggie filling:


From a macrobiotic conference in Vermont a few years back.

I will not apologize for ordering a melted cheese-topped shrimp tempura roll; I have no patience for sushi purists. Wrap some seaweed around some pork floss and birthday cake, sprinkle salmon eggs and glitter on top: you have made legitimate maki. A "cheese-topped shrimp tempura roll" sounds good; this partially-combusted slice of wanksta petroleum loaf was just a carcinogen. It tasted like ashes.

America's Next Top Model alum Elyse Sewell continues to eat adventurously in HK & Mainland China
(Source)

While I cheer the return of a first garden, I do have some concern that Mrs. Obama was shamelessly (and publicly) goaded into it by Alice Waters, Michael Pollan and others, and that like many a neophyte gardener, she may be a tad naïve about what lies ahead.

There’s the expectation that the first family (including the president) is going to be pulling weeds, “whether they like it or not,” she insists. Really, now, who could not like pulling weeds?

Let me tell the Obamas something that they are soon to discover for themselves. Gardening is weeding. In fact, I don’t know why we even call it “gardening”; we should just be honest and call it “weeding,” for that’s how you spend 90 percent of your time in the garden. The president has all of 15 minutes a day of leisure time, and his wife wants him to put down the basketball and weed? If you’re wondering why Michelle Obama is the first first lady to have a vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt, here’s your answer: it’s hard work.

Still, I wish the Obamas and their garden well. Maybe this really is Mrs. Obama’s idea. She is exactly right when she says, “A real delicious heirloom tomato is one of the sweetest things that you’ll ever eat.” To which I’ll add, a garden makes a house into a home. And if there’s anything this country needs right now, it’s a sense of place, of home.

- William Alexander in the NY Times