日本Fall 2013--Part III: In the Kitchen

Tomorrow will mark 4 weeks to the day that I left for my Japan trip, so it's past time I finish the wrap-up with the most noteworthy things Keizo and I made in his kitchen: a zillion gyoza (potstickers) and a delicious, not too sweet apple pie.

I suppose a zillion is a bit of an exaggeration, but since I was the one responsible for filling all of the wrappers and folding them into dumpling shapes, it seemed like many more than the 50 that came in the package.  I asked Keizo for a refresher course in gyoza shaping, and then got to work while he made the chahan (fried rice) to accompany them.  Keizo has mastered the art of fried rice; even following his instructions, mine never tastes as good.

This was the day that we rode bicycles all over town, so we easily put away about 35 of the gyoza between the two of us, and froze the remaining few uncooked ones for lunch the next day.

When Keizo was arranging with my calligraphy teacher to attend class on Wednesday, I told him to tell her we would bring dessert.  We had a large number of apples to use up from our apple picking adventure, and "hokey pokey" (which I mistakenly thought was apple pie a la mode) is one of Keizo's favorite desserts so making an apple pie was the obvious choice.  I had seen the recipe for Apple Slab Pie on Smitten Kitchen a few days before, and it looked to me like it had the perfect ratio of lots of crust to the right amount of not too soggy filling so Keizo and I squeezed into his gallery style kitchen together after dinner on Tuesday to make it. 

A few notes about the pie:

• As far as I can recall, this was my first time making a pie crust from scratch.  It wasn't nearly as onerous as I expected it to be, but Keizo generously cleaned up all the flour from the counter where we rolled it out, so I really only got half of the experience (the fun part!  Jeeze, that Keizo guy is pretty great!)
• The filling came together in a snap, no pre-cooking required.  I think we used 5? apples and went easy on the sugar.
• After assembling the pie, there was a difference in opinion about which part of the egg should be used to give the pie a nice glossy sheen.  I had never heard of using the yolk, but since he did clean up the big flour mess, I let Keizo do it his way.  

On Wednesday evening, we enjoyed a delicious curry dinner with salad and kabocha with Naoko-sensei and Hirosuke-san before the other calligraphy students arrived for dessert.  Naoko-sensei also made her famous apple crumble in honor of my visit, so we had the pleasure of tasting two very different styles of apple dessert side by side.  Our pie was sweeter and kept its shape better, while the crumble had a little tang to it and melted right into the accompanying vanilla ice cream.


Thus concludes the highlights of my fall trip to Japan.  The timing of my trip worked out really well in relation to my responsibilities at work and my need for a change of scenery.  It was also really nice to have such great weather instead of it being cold and blustery, but it will be really different not being there for New Year's for the first time in four (!!!) years.

Sophisticated Tastes

Outside of my apartment when I got home yesterday:

Grey and damp. Guess I won't be eating on the patio:

But I will gladly have one of these:

To sip while I work on my tres elegante dinner of convenience with a side of comfort.

There's the convenience, made a bit fancier with tuna and some frozen veggies stirred in.

The comfort started with these guys, spoils from last Saturday's trip to the Graves Mountain Harvest Festival.

First sliced...

...then diced and thrown into a big pot.

With 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 cup of water, 1 tsp cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg.

Then boiled 20-25 minutes, until resembling beef stew! (The result of some apples cooking faster than others.)

Thankfully, my home-made apple sauce didn't smell like beef stew, and tasted wonderful, all spiced and warm.

Two sublime antidotes to the weather outside.

Fall Break

Greetings from my apartment on a Monday afternoon. I usually have class until 5 PM, but today and tomorrow are "reading days" aka "Fall Break" so there are no classes. Some of my classmates have hopped planes and trains to go elsewhere, but I am using my time to relax and do the things I enjoy. Still, fall break is unbelievably awesome. I want one every month.

I woke up at 8:30 this morning, re-heated some leftover omelet from the other night and poured myself a big cup of coffee. Then I talked to Keizo on Skype for almost 2 hours (he's doing fine), made a list and went to the store. My frequent shopper card actually saved me $7.49 today, which more than covered my impromptu fashion magazine purchase. A quick lunch was eaten and I attacked one of the big items on my fall break to-do list: Apple Coffee Cake.

I found the recipe on Allrecipes, and followed it almost to the letter. I substituted Greek yogurt for the sour cream and my old, need-to-be-used-up apples (the inspiration for the whole endeavor) were over 2 cups when diced.

Apples were sliced and diced.

Don't be fooled by the healthy stuff on the top; there's a half cup of butter and whole cup of sugar under there.

And I am going to put even more sugar on the top!

Assembled and ready to bake!

The topping turned out more puddle-ly than crumbly, but I am certainly not complaining.

The whole thing cooled off just in time for my afternoon snack!

Much better than a mealy apple and the perfect grab-n-go breakfast for when classes resume Wednesday at 9 AM.

Eating My Way East

It's been just over a week since I arrived in Charlottesville, and the details of my awesome cross-country trek with my mom to get here are already getting blurry. I have almost 400 photos documenting our adventure through 10 states and 3 time zones, and not a whole lot of time at this point to properly edit and caption them. But at least I will put the food related rundown here.

Day 1, Phoenix, AZ to Albuquerque, NM. The original plan was to get on the road about 9 AM. I opted to sleep rather than stay up late packing and we left around 11 AM instead. But, I got everything in the trunk and backseat of my Carolla that I wanted with room to spare. Go me!

Dinner in Albuquerque was at Little Anita's, where we split some sort of veggie enchilada platter that came with red and green chili sauce on the side and two fresh sopapillas for dessert. I'm glad I didn't try and eat it all on my own.

"Christmas style" a NM specialty.

I almost never get dessert at Mexican restaurants because I am too full from the rice and beans. I forget how yummy hot fried dough with honey is which is a shame.

Day 2, Albuquerque to Canyon, TX. The second day we ate lunch at Joseph's diner, along old Route 66 in Santa Rosa, NM. The dining area was appropriately decorated with old license plates and ketchup/mustard bottles on the formica tables. I ordered the Santa Fe chicken sandwich as shown below. Pretty good!

I also talked Mom into getting a piece of their homemade pie to go. I chose Coconut Creme over Apple and Lemon Meringue, despite Mom's slight nose wrinkle. Later, somewhere near Cadillac Ranch I pulled it out of the cooler and it made the whole car smell like coconut. Mom's tune changed when she had a bite, saying it was the best Coconut Creme pie she'd ever had. It was one of the best snacks I've ever had.

We stopped for the night in Canyon, TX a small town south of Amarillo. And ate really good Thai food for dinner, who knew!? I got the noodles, and my mom ordered the fried rice.

The tomatoes and fresh cilantro were very yummy additions to the fried rice.

Day 3, Canyon to Tulsa, OK. We spent the morning exploring Palo Duro Canyon, the nation's second largest canyon before getting on the road. Due to our later start, we stopped randomly in Elk City, OK for a lunch/stretch break. It being rather warm, ice cream for lunch seemed like a good idea, and this large ice cream cone sign did not disappoint. We split a chicken sandwich with fries and got our own ice cream concoctions.

Sadly there are no photos of the actual food. The rest of the food from the trip is not well documented. I was taking lots of photos of the scenery, and we often ate dinner rather late in dark restaurants.

Day 4, Tulsa to St. Louis, MO and day 5, St. Louis. We took a break in the middle of the country for a day, which allowed us to swim in the hotel pool a few times, bruise our knees and noggins at The City Museum and eat at St. Louis' frozen custard institution, Ted Drewes. Clearly we weren't the only ones with the idea on a balmy Sunday afternoon.

The long lines gave us a few minutes to choose what we wanted from the extensive menu.

We ended up with "Cardinal Sin," chocolate fudge and cherries, sundae style and a "Big Apple," apple pie a la mode, blended shake style.

Obviously, it was delicious.

Day 6, St. Louis to Louisville, KY. We really didn't have any bad days on our trip (we are so lucky!) but I think this was one of my favorites. We covered 4 states (MO, IL, IN and KY) spent the morning in a great park at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers (birds for Mom and a jogging path for me!) and visited the boyhood home of Abraham Lincoln (which is in Indiana, not Illinois, sort of messing up our lunch plans.) And that is all before we got to dinner at Lynn's Paradise Cafe in Louisville. Not sure what about it captured my eye in the guidebook, but I am so glad we went and very upset that I left my camera charging at the hotel. Completely wonky decor and rich, Southern food. It's described somewhere as the restaurant that Dolly Parton and Salvador Dali might open together, which sums it up well.

Day 7, Louisville to Beckley, WV. Our morning in Louisville was spent at the Kentucky Derby Museum, so now I can at least say I have been somewhere, even if I haven't technically seen anything since the Derby was not in session. The afternoon was spent driving through horse farms and into the hills of West Virginia. We arrived at our hotel, which shared a parking lot with this sign.

Mom and I decided pretty early on that since neither of us had been to one, we should try a Cracker Barrel on this trip. We had a chance to almost every day, since they are roadside staple in every state we passed through, but the stars didn't align until our last night on the road.

I started with a cup of veggie soup, which tasted like...veggie soup. Topped with corn bread though it was pretty good. I also ordered the blackened catfish sandwich, not pictured because it was one of the most uninspiring meals I have had in a long time (probably since my days as a counselor at sleep away camp!) Two pieces of white bread with a fish fillet on the top, served open faced with cole slaw and about 3 pickles slices on the side. Will definitely not be ordering that again.

However, I would stop at a Cracker Barrel again for this:

The Baked Apple Dumplin' with about a pint of vanilla ice cream on top. I am happy to report that the meal ended on a (sugar) high note!

Day 8, Beckley WV to Charlottesville, VA. The drive between the two cities was only about 2.5 hours but we stretched out our last day as long as possible and didn't arrive in C-ville until about 5 PM. After checking out of our hotel in the morning, I stocked up on some locally made food for my new pantry (maple syrup, jam, honey mustard and orange basil salad dressing) and we headed out of town. Our route took us past White Sulphur Springs, home of the Greenbrier Resort.

Mom didn't think it would be appropriate for me to start school on the East Coast without knowing about the Greenbrier, so we took a small detour, left my road weary Carolla with the valet (ha ha) and went inside for lunch. The main building was decorated by Dorothy Draper, who I would like to rejoin the living and decorate my apartment. Bold florals, tropical colors, black and white marble and real hand towels in the bathroom!

Feeling not quite dressed for the dining room, we headed to the pool (via shuttle!) for a meal of salad and "fresh potato chips" with blue cheese crumbles.

The salad lived up to its description, the one downside was the large chunks of veggies were a bit hard to cut with the faux cutlery.* Mom and I were expecting the fresh chips to be more like fries, but their thin, crispy appearance didn't stop us from dunking them in the extra blue cheese dressing and eating them all.

*which our very friendly waitress rinsed off and put into a fancy bag for us when my mom said we wanted to save it (cringe, although I kinda wanted it as a souvenir too)

After exploring the Greenbrier, it was almost past time to get on the road. Neither of us really wanted the adventure to end, but we had a lot of work ahead of us in Charlottesville to get my apartment set up. There are only so many things you can fit in a Carolla, and furniture isn't one of them! Thankfully, my housemate is a wonderful person and she took me out the next day to pick up a futon and some used items at the Habitat for Humanity store.

After seeing cousins and a massive trip to Target, I had to put Mom on a plane back to AZ. It was a bit rough saying good-bye, not because we wouldn't be seeing each other for a while, but because we had such a good time together. Thank you for everything Mom!!

The apple doesn't really fall far from the tree, does it?

The Baking Boyfriend

[Sorry Keizo, this is too good not to post. The title of the blog is Two Betsu Bara afterall.]

Imagine you are a professional rugby player given a few days off. You went to Korea with some friends, but now you are back in your apartment looking for things to do with all this new found free time. You stumble on some awesome, made-to-order cooking videos on YouTube and decide to make an apple pie. From scratch. Complete with lattice top.

AMAZING!

Of course, you are very humble about it, saying that it doesn't really taste as good as you thought it would, but your girlfriend is really impressed and says that no one can tell that from the photo so she is going to post it anyway ;-)

As you wish

One of my favorite foods from my first stint in Japan was okonomiyaki, a thick pancake like concoction with a variety of different add ons. The name itself loosely translates to "as you like grill" and fillings range from pork and seafood to kim-chi, mochi and cheese. It's most popular in the Kansai region of Japan, but you can find okonomiyaki restaurants down here in Fukuoka, and the mix is sold in just about every grocery store.

In an effort to use up the last of the now sort of wilted cabbage, we brought out the table top gas burner and grilled up some okonomiyaki for dinner. I admit that it doesn't look like much in the photos; it's one of those foods you have to eat to understand.

Cooking right at the table! You can sit down and prepare dinner at the same time!

Hot off the grill with all the necessary condiments: okonomiyaki sauce (brown), nori flakes (green) dried fish flakes (light brown) and some mayonaise (do I really need to say what color that is?)

Up close, ready to dig in.

While the mix made four pancakes, Keizo and I were uncharacteristically reserved and only ate one each. This left room for dessert, so we tried a recipe for baked apples from the tajine cooker recipe book. Sliced apples, butter and sugar cooked over medium heat, then topped with ice cream and some cinnamon. An excellent way to end the meal.

Taste of home

I am happy to report that the amount of cabbage and hakusai in the fridge has diminished considerably. We've been using it in almost every dinner for the past two weeks; steamed, in salads and cole slaw and in my mom's delicious HEARTY STIR FRY.

Her recipe easily makes enough to feed eight hungry people. When combined the pasta, cabbage, apples, sausage and cheese barely fit in the largest pot we have in our kitchen. Despite the fact Keizo ate three ample servings, we still had to split the leftovers between two different Tupperware containers. Fortunately, it's just as good reheated as it was the first time around. Thanks for the recipe Mom!