tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56718433230431545012024-03-13T00:38:59.652-04:00Walking and TalkingManhattan-based writer and editor blogging about culture, food, health and Japanese American life. Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.comBlogger179125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-43607938177208189722016-09-02T16:06:00.000-04:002016-09-02T16:06:07.650-04:00In Minamisanriku, surveying the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kudo-san with a picture of the tsunami's immediate aftermath.</td></tr>
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On my last day in Minamisanriku, a small group of us from <a href="https://nancymatsumoto.blogspot.com/2016/07/growing-social-impact-ventures-in.html" target="_blank">World in Tohoku </a>signed up for a tour of the town's downtown coastal area, which was decimated by the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/world/asia/japan-earthquake---tsunami-fast-facts/" target="_blank">earthquake and tsunami</a> of March 11, 2011.<br />
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Until then we had been immersed in brainstorming ways to grow the organizations of a group of dedicated and inspiring social entrepreneurs. They were so positive, and so alive that it was hard to viscerally grasp the scope of the natural disaster that had spawned some of their ventures. I wanted to learn more about the effects of the disaster that left nearly 22,000 dead or missing and see with my own eyes the state of the ongoing reconstruction.<br />
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I had read accounts of the tsunami in which survivors described seeing "a white line" far out on the bay, which moments later had transformed into a giant wall of destruction rushing toward them. What had that deadly wave, rising at points as high as 30 feet, wrought, and what was being built in its place?<br />
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Our guide, Kudo-san, met us at the the community center where our retreat was held, and started with a wrenching video and overview of what had happened. A former insurance company worker, Kudo-san, 44, told us that he considers himself lucky: he, his wife and four children were all spared when over 1,200 other townspeople were not.<br />
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He and his family are among the 9,746 evacuees from Minamisanriku, and the close to 3,100 who are still in temporary housing. Yet that didn't matter because his family was intact, unlike so many others.<br />
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Located over 90 miles from coastal Fukushima, the site of the <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-accident.aspx" target="_blank">nuclear reactor meltdown</a>, Minamisanriku's fisheries, shellfish beds and seaweed harvesting are on their way to recovery, thanks to government and public support and the way the fishermen have banded together to share equipment and support each other.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At the still-desolate former town center,<br />a shrine to the disaster's victims.</td></tr>
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Kudo-san then drove us to the former town center, still a giant construction site dotted with cranes, giant mounds of dirt from the construction of new levee, hard-hatted construction workers and their vehicles. Before us was a shrine centered on a mournful-looking Jizo Bodhisattva as well as offerings of flower bouquets and bottles of sake, beer and tea for those who had perished.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The shell of the former Disaster Prevention Center.</td></tr>
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Directly beyond the road that bisected the construction zone stood the rust-colored skeleton of a building, the city's former Disaster Prevention Center. When the tsunami warning sounded, Kudo-san told us he saw workers at the nearby town hall flee to the three-story building, but he decided that it would be wiser to get to higher ground. He made the right decision; of the 50 or so town hall employees who reached the rooftop, only 10 survived when the tsunami tore through it. Among those who survived was the town's mayor, and among the dead was <a href="http://noxrpm.com/post/3878058545/the-embedded-video-clip-lasts-a-scant-10-seconds" target="_blank">Miki Endo</a>, 25, a Disaster Prevention Center employee who heroically continued to broadcast tsunami warnings over the town's loudspeaker system until she was swept away by the tsunami.<br />
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A bitter reminder to townspeople of the losses their families suffered, they would like to see the scaffolding torn down, Kudo-san told us. The Miyagi Prefectural government has a different view; it would like to keep the building's shell standing as a memorial and reminder of what happened. For now, the arrangement is that the prefectural government will maintain the building for 20 years and then its fate will be decided.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frozen clock marks the time of the earthquake.</td></tr>
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Next we traveled to the high ground above the town where three of its public schools are located. At one school, the clock was frozen at 2:48 p.m., the moment the magnitude 9.0 quake reached Minamisanriku. This was one of the town's designated shelter spots, and preparations were underway for the next day's graduation ceremony. Kudo-san told us that a teacher and a student walked to the edge of the hilltop school grounds where we stood to watch the approaching tsunami from what they thought was a safe spot. It wasn't though; because of the coastal geography, part of the tsunami squeezed around the town and slammed into them from behind, killing both of them.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Residents relax in front of their temporary housing.</td></tr>
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A good number of townspeople, lulled into complacency by the frequency of earthquake alerts and the much smaller but overhyped 2010 tsunami that resulted from an earthquake in Chile, did not respond quickly enough to warnings and were lost. But Kudo-san says that everyone now realizes "the importance of over-estimating, of assuming the worst."<br />
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Amid this barrage of overwhelmingly sad detail, Kudo-san seemed to want to impart a last, happier image. He remembered the irony of being surrounded by water, and yet not having enough of it. There was no electricity in the immediate aftermath, of course, but the water shortage was much more acutely felt. "For a family of four, we only got two buckets per day," he told us. The happy part was that every four days he got to take a bath at the hot springs of the nearby Kanyo resort hotel, which had been spared damage. "Those were our happiest moments," he said. </div>
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-87928146967381471152016-08-04T10:05:00.000-04:002016-08-04T16:49:27.413-04:00In Praise of a Classic Combo: Tempura and Soba<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tempura Matsui's shrimp and shiso leaf tempura with zarusoba.</td></tr>
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While ramen continues to be all the rage in New York, soba--its less macho and more <i>shibui </i>(austere, simple & elegant) cousin--has many pleasures to offer. During summer days of wilting head and humidity one of the great cooling-off dishes is a serving of <i>zarusoba</i>, the chilled noodles served on a bamboo mat and dipped into a bowl of soy sauce-based broth mixed with grated wasabi and sliced scallions.<br />
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Though there are a number of places in New York where you can find the classic combination of soba with shrimp tempura, the Michelin-starred East 39th Street specialty restaurant <a href="http://www.tempuramatsui.com/" target="_blank">Tempura Matsui</a> takes it to new levels of refinement. Here, chef Takashi Kiyomiya hand-grinds Japanese-grown buckwheat with a sturdy $500 <a href="https://www.nabunken.go.jp/org/bunka/jgd/pages/MikageStone.html" target="_blank">Mikage</a> granite mortar, or <i>ishiusu </i>(石臼)purchased in Japan. On a recent visit, Kiyomiya-san demonstrated how he places five grains of buckwheat (imported from Hokkaido) at a time into the mortar, turning its wooden handle three times per five grains. No wonder it takes two hours to complete one batch of noodles! Once that's done, the flour is sifted three times and then mixed with wheat flour (80% buckwheat to 20% wheat) and then water (45-46%) to create the dough.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miniature stone garden and pond, Tempura Matsui</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gifu Prefecture ceramic artist Hideki Hayashi's Mino-style plate.</td></tr>
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Sadly, after opening the New York branch of his restaurant, tempura master Masao Matsui, who had been suffering from cancer, passed away in February. The restaurant has forged ahead, though, and is now celebrating its one-year anniversary, headed by Chefs Shin Kato and Kiyoshi Chikano.<br />
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Tempura Matsui is not your weekly neighborhood hang-out, exactly--newly unveiled set menus range from $140 to $230. But the level of technique is very high, and diners can sit at the counter to watch Chefs Kato and Chikano (above in video) deftly tempura fry everything from scallops wrapped in nori to shrimp-stuffed shiitake, lobster and okra, using the blunt end of long wooden chopsticks.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The lobster tail extravaganza. </td></tr>
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If you really want to gild the lily this summer, the $230 menu includes Chef Chikano's lobster tail tempura with baby corn and seasonal vegetable tempura, as well as steamed lobster claws and a vinegar-soy dipping sauce. Or, you can add this course as a market-priced supplement to one of other set menus.<br />
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Wherever you are, I hope you stay cool this month and can find zarusoba and shrimp tempura someplace near you!<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-58824217498059792352016-07-25T06:48:00.000-04:002016-07-25T15:11:21.246-04:00Growing Social Impact Ventures in Tohoku, Japan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our learning journey team, led by Mio<br />
Yamamoto, bottom left in yellow.<br />
Photo courtesy of Shinya Sotowa.</td></tr>
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I've just returned from an eye-opening odyssey to the Tohoku region of Japan with the non-profit social entrepreneurship organization <a href="http://www.worldintohoku.org/" target="_blank">World in Tohoku</a> (WIT). Through WIT I was able to meet some of the people behind the dynamic <a href="http://nonprofitanswerguide.org/faq/leadership/what-are-social-ventures-and-how-are-they-funded/" target="_blank">social ventures</a> formed in the wake of the March 2011 <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/17/world/asia/japan-earthquake---tsunami-fast-facts/" target="_blank">earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster</a> and learn how they are trying to improve social, environmental and living conditions in the region.<br />
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Located in the northeastern part of Japan, Tohoku is a beautiful region filled with awe-inspiring bays and coastal coves, forests, deep-green mountains and fields, amazing seafood and warm-hearted people. They'll tell you how 3.11 affected them if you ask, but otherwise have a cheerfulness and openness about them that belies their experiences of loss and hardship. I'm thankful to WIT for allowing me to go below the deceptively placid surface of the region to see the struggles to rebuild that are underway.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qGt3nb_UPa4/V4_4NICNRNI/AAAAAAAACsQ/0vanDRFKBG8WWHfd60nxn-fXTDIMho4JQCCo/s640/Mammaru%2BMom%2B-%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qGt3nb_UPa4/V4_4NICNRNI/AAAAAAAACsQ/0vanDRFKBG8WWHfd60nxn-fXTDIMho4JQCCo/s400/Mammaru%2BMom%2B-%2B1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Visit to post-natal care organization Mammaru Mom Iwate. <br />
Photo courtesy of Mary Kearns.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
World in Tohoku was launched after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 by <a href="http://worldintohoku.org/who-we-are/" target="_blank">Mio Yamamoto</a>, who has a background in venture philanthropy and degrees from MIT's Sloan School of Management and Tokyo University. Although WIT has held a number of "learning journeys" to connect expert advisors with Tohoku social ventures, this was the first international collaboration. Our "cross-border Learning Journey" introduced nine Tohoku social ventures (five new to WIT's portfolio this year) with 10 U.S. participants and 10 Japanese participants. All of us were surprised at the depth of the collaborations that resulted from the week-long journey, and the strong bonds that were formed. The range of expertise Mio-san and her two-person part-time staff collected was impressive, too, spanning the fields of finance, fundraising, investment, entrepreneurship, arts and design, urban planning and sustainability, law and international development.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0gtV1-3oDXA/V4_4MPArZII/AAAAAAAACr4/rDcGvoWr35ULN17akzWbFVW4dmCRWAfywCCo/s720/DSC_0855.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0gtV1-3oDXA/V4_4MPArZII/AAAAAAAACr4/rDcGvoWr35ULN17akzWbFVW4dmCRWAfywCCo/s400/DSC_0855.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brainstorming a with the Meiten lacquerware team.<br />
Photo by Mio Yamamoto.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XUwigXmzXFc/V4_4MfdlCUI/AAAAAAAACr4/xQ5MWhMrJXIBJQs2Me0Tw-0NM6w6cJaNwCCo/s720/DSC_0816.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XUwigXmzXFc/V4_4MfdlCUI/AAAAAAAACr4/xQ5MWhMrJXIBJQs2Me0Tw-0NM6w6cJaNwCCo/s400/DSC_0816.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blueprint for growing pre- and post-natal<br />
support organization Kizuna Mail.<br />
Photo by Shinwa Sotowa.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The social ventures we visited and collaborated with included t<a href="http://www.kizunamail.com/" target="_blank">wo pre- and post-natal support organizations</a> for <a href="http://manmaru.org/" target="_blank">mothers and families</a> in Tohoku, a much needed service considering that stress levels were so high in the wake of the disaster that incidences of child abuse were reported. Another, <a href="http://asuiku.org/" target="_blank">Asuiku</a>, provides safe learning spaces and e-learning for poor and at-risk youths. To our surprise, we learned that poverty was a hidden fact of life in Tohoku before 3.11. "The disaster simply revealed the poverty," said Yusuke Ohashi, Asuiku's founder and director. In fact, childhood poverty in Japan is the fourth highest in the 35 OECD member countries, after Mexico, the U.S. and the U.K.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1pN8aXHWomQ/V4_4MwyhdeI/AAAAAAAACsQ/CwvqQIntSo0fbl0DEVBoHFUAIPIAe0POgCCo/s720/DSC_0337.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1pN8aXHWomQ/V4_4MwyhdeI/AAAAAAAACsQ/CwvqQIntSo0fbl0DEVBoHFUAIPIAe0POgCCo/s400/DSC_0337.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Expedition to the Watari Greenbelt Project.<br />
Photo by Shinya Sotowa.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Another social venture, the <a href="http://www.watari-grb.org/" target="_blank">Watari Greenbelt Project</a>, is dedicated to re-growing trees in the 2.5-mile long coastal area of Miyagi Prefecture, where a 400-year-old forest was destroyed by the tsunami. The staff from <a href="http://rilink.is-mine.net/" target="_blank">Replus</a> captured the hearts of all of us for their dedication to providing caregiving, training and education to people of all ages who are still suffering the physical and emotional toll of living in shelters and temporary housing.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lq4wHAWWd0s/V4_4MpFPTuI/AAAAAAAACsM/qyWvRMBGoYMuB83oI6ZTGU3aE6z6P-YcQCCo/s720/DSC_0510.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lq4wHAWWd0s/V4_4MpFPTuI/AAAAAAAACsM/qyWvRMBGoYMuB83oI6ZTGU3aE6z6P-YcQCCo/s400/DSC_0510.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cognitively challenging version of "rock, paper,<br />
scissors," led by Replus's Takayuki "Occhy" Ochiai.<br />
Photo by Shinya Sotowa. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Th2hhGXBZAarDx4EMcTn-bbUEvps6hT00WaSWZIraAaOK_1qJTZFuLNdh-oLW_-Iy7aONgY5DBgnEDUmCeDy_W_ykSvzcZceDULs50JDey3t-uxQHp7VXLIk8KgRhk7lsMh571BXHIV7/s1600/DSC05539.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Th2hhGXBZAarDx4EMcTn-bbUEvps6hT00WaSWZIraAaOK_1qJTZFuLNdh-oLW_-Iy7aONgY5DBgnEDUmCeDy_W_ykSvzcZceDULs50JDey3t-uxQHp7VXLIk8KgRhk7lsMh571BXHIV7/s400/DSC05539.jpg" width="357" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Meiten's "Meguru" line of lacquerware bowl sets.<br />
Photo by Nancy Matsumoto</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Two other ventures that generated much interest were Wataru Kainuma's <a href="http://www.urusii.com/" target="_blank">Meiten</a>, which aims to bring back the traditional craft of lacquerware in Aizu Wakamatsu, Fukushima, and World Chodoii Lab (World Just Right Lab) in Matsushima, Miyagi Prefecture. Kainuma-san told us that only two percent of lacquerware purchased in Japan is made in the country today--the rest, cheaper takes on the real thing, is imported from China. World Chodoii Lab grew out of founder <a href="http://logmi.jp/37777" target="_blank">Shinichi Chiba</a>'s own experience as a fifth-generation owner of <a href="http://tabelog.com/en/miyagi/A0404/A040404/4010846/" target="_blank">several cafes, a well-known cake shop</a> and a gift store in the beautiful coastal town of Matsushima. It's more of a design concept and philosophy, a sort of return to the "small is beautiful" idea of E.F. Schumacher. "After the tsunami," Chiba-san told us, "I thought, 'Why keeping making things we don't need?'" The Chodoii model shuns growth for growth's sake and holds that"good is better than big" and "happy is better than rich." Amen to that!<br />
<br />
This is just a quick summary of the WIT Learning Journey, which I will be writing more about, so stay tuned.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-22176011450291652892016-06-17T12:11:00.000-04:002016-06-17T15:48:04.384-04:00A Farmer and a Baker Talk Heritage Grains<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy2C582CLIErIidNbQlU6A3isqIV8mx-iHhSHSIXpVArCt4iPWfv7t_34rduxJ7qMSY9VDWyp9tbr0QW7BqphDf5J2O8eIh0sU1p9KcpnYwBkY2sLneLoLoEtfkQmNPi6VyPgUvLSWRXYz/s1600/IMG_0450.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy2C582CLIErIidNbQlU6A3isqIV8mx-iHhSHSIXpVArCt4iPWfv7t_34rduxJ7qMSY9VDWyp9tbr0QW7BqphDf5J2O8eIh0sU1p9KcpnYwBkY2sLneLoLoEtfkQmNPi6VyPgUvLSWRXYz/s400/IMG_0450.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mark Stambler's miche and sourdough.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's been a while since my last post, but I'm back at last, inspired to write by a chance encounter with a Northern California heirloom grain farmer, a Southern California baker and a rejuvenated form of wheat.<br />
<br />
The two humans, farmer <a href="http://farmermai.com/farmer/">Mai Nguyen</a> and baker <a href="http://stamblersbread.com/index.html">Mark Stambler</a>, gave a lecture at the recent L.A. Bread Festival, held at the city's recently revamped Grand Central Market.<br />
<br />
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Mai, a perky Vietnamese American with large horn-rimmed glasses who farms on five acres of land near Ukiah in Mendocino County, grows four different heritage grains. Her favorite is California's Sonora soft white spring wheat. Adapted from grains brought to Mexico in the late 1600s by Jesuit priests, it made the country's first wheat (instead of the usual corn) tortillas possible. By the early 1800s it was widely planted in California, which was then still part of Mexico. Sonora wheat is considered California's first landrace wheat, meaning it's a grain selected not for ease of production or length of shelf-life, like most modern hybrids, but for taste and texture.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Farmer and baker.</td></tr>
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Mai explained that the revival happened roughly seven years ago, thanks to the efforts of <a href="http://www.ansonmills.com/biographies" target="_blank">Glenn Roberts</a>, the San Diego native and founder of Anson Mills; <a href="http://commongrains.com/about-us/" target="_blank">Sonoko Sakai</a>, whose organization Common Grains focuses on reviving heritage grains in Southern California; and the <a href="http://wholegrainconnection.org/" target="_blank">Whole Grain Connection</a>, devoted to the proliferation and availability of sustainably grown whole grains. Despite this ferment of whole grain activism in the state Mai says that not only is it still hard to come by Sonora soft white seeds, finding quality seeds can be even more difficult.<br />
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As a baker, Mark likes Sonora for its softness and buttery scent, both of which make it well suited to pastries and cakes. Because it doesn't have a high gluten content it is ideally suited to making tortillas, he says. For bread making he mixes it with white flour to get a loaf with good "oven spring." He also knows how he'll have to adjust his recipe depending on where in the state the wheat was grown.<br />
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The most common question he hears about baking with heritage grains, said Mark, is how recipes written for store-bought flour from commodity grains must be adjusted. To him, it's simple: add more water if the dough is too stiff, and more flour if it is too loose.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Agriculture as practiced by Farmer Mai.</td></tr>
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Long cultivated in temperate to hot and dry regions of Mexico, Sonora wheat is well suited to similar conditions in the Ukiah valley, Mai notes. The grain's drought resistance is key to her success, because she dry farms, meaning that she relies only on rainfall to water her crops. She also practices no-till farming to prevent soil erosion, increase its water retention and maximize its microbial diversity. She uses a horse-drawn plow, which in addition to providing a way better farming experience than riding a tractor, reduces her carbon footprint and prevents topsoil compaction.<br />
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One of the challenges of being a small-scale grain farmer in an agribusiness-dominated commodity crop country is that it's hard to find appropriate-sized equipment. Mai was able to track down a small combine from a farmer in the Sierras. Though built for grain trials and nursery harvesting, it suits her needs just fine. Her purchase reminded me of a similar find that I wrote about in <a href="http://civileats.com/2015/10/30/farming-to-table-adding-farmer-to-a-chefs-resume-green-table-mary-cleaver/" target="_blank">this <i>Civil Eats </i>article</a>: the 62-year-old small combine that upstate New York farmer Ashley Hollister had to travel all the way to Ohio to collect.</div>
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Combines take care of all aspects of the harvesting process, including reaping, threshing and winnowing, and their three-in-one utility is where the name "combine" comes from. Done by hand, as it once was, the process is laborious to a crazy degree. </div>
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Mark has tried it himself. Growing the wheat is the easy part, he says. When his 10' by 6' plot was of wheat was tall enough, he cut the heads off with scissors. But the threshing, or removing the outer hull of the grain, took grit. Thrashing at his plastic bag filled with wheat with a stick didn't work so well, nor did smashing it with bricks. It wasn't until he ran over the wheat with his Honda Civic that he finally started getting somewhere. Separating the wheat from the chaff, or winnowing, was equally frustrating. He set an electric fan in front of a bowl and tossed the threshed wheat in the air so that the chaff blew away and the heavier wheat fell into the bowl. But he needed to do this repeatedly, and then still spend an entire afternoon picking through the wheat to finish the task. A day's work netted him about four ounces. The lengths DIY-ers will go to to live the manual labor life of our forebears!</div>
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For a busy farmer like Mai, the combine she bought is a must-have. It also beats out what she calls "the catastrophe that was last year's harvest." She hired the one person in her region with a mobile combine and was dismayed to learn she was to be the "guinea pig" for his new machine. The result was watching 20 percent of her crop scattered in the field. She plans to contribute the combine to a seed equipment cooperative she belongs to. Members have been scouring old barns across the country to find small-scale equipment that has fallen out of use as farmers have scaled up. The plan is to officially incorporate the group as as a seed cleaning facility, where, says Mai, "we'll be able to clean seeds for consumption and reproduction," as well as save them for future heritage grain farmers.<br />
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So having her very own combine has made her a happy camper and farmer. Good luck, Mai!</div>
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-33789202026704039212015-12-17T17:17:00.000-05:002015-12-17T23:26:52.981-05:00Talking Japanese School Lunches on Heritage Radio Network<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At Heritage Radio Network's East Williamsburg, Brooklyn studios.</td></tr>
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Earlier this week, I had the fun experience of being a guest on host Laura Stanley's Heritage Radio show and podcast "<a href="http://insideschoolfood.com/">Inside School Food</a>," along with Japanese documentary filmmaker <a href="https://vimeo.com/user6716675/videos">Atsuko Quirk</a>. Laura does a great job covering the nuances of the topic, and I recommend it to you. The school lunch plate, her show demonstrates, is where our beliefs about food justice, public health, childhood nutrition and education and sustainability all converge.<br />
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Laura occasionally widens her focus on the American school lunch to examine the noontime repast of kids around the world. On our visit the show, the topic was <a href="http://insideschoolfood.com/episode/lunch-lessons-japan/">the Japanese school lunch</a>. Atsuko spoke about the making of her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL5mKE4e4uU">wonderful film</a> titled <i>School Lunch in Japan: It's Not Just About Eating! </i>I added my two cents by describing the delightful experience of dropping in on a fifth-grade school lunch at Sanya Elementary School in Tokyo (part of a <a href="http://fpcj.jp/en/">Foreign Press Center Japan</a> fellowship tour earlier this year focusing on food, nutrition and Japanese cuisine).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lunch at Sanya Elementary School, Tokyo.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In sanitary white coats, caps and masks, Sanya<br />
fifth graders bring lunch food from kitchen to class. </td></tr>
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Atsuko decided she needed to introduce the Japanese school lunch to westerners after visiting her child's elementary public school lunchroom in New York City. She was appalled at what she saw: chicken nuggets strewn across the floor, indiscriminate food waste, zero clean-up effort on the part of of students, no discernable recycling measures and worst of all, a lack of gratitude toward the cafeteria lunch ladies.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The lunch line; students serving their peers.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miso soup week: student reports on regional styles,<br />
illustrated with photos of what they made at home.</td></tr>
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By contrast, what she depicts in her film, and what I saw at Sanya, was the midday class period when kids take the lead, hauling large pots of miso soup and accompany dishes from school kitchen to classroom on carts, setting up a buffet line, serving fellow students, listening to a description of where their lunchtime foods were sourced, and a mini history lesson on the traditions behind those foods. Student-led chants of appreciation and gratitude began and ended each meal. They even clean up after themselves, too, and at the end of the lunch period there are no leftovers!<br />
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On our visit to Sanya, we had our pants practically charmed off us by these adorable and enthusiastic kids, and were also suitably impressed with how the lunch period is handled. We learned that the Japanese government has been concerned in recent years at the rise in obesity and lifestyle-related diseases, thinness obsession among young women, the loss of traditional Japanese food culture and a series of food safety incidents that have highlighted an over-dependence on food from abroad.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Sanya garden, tended by students, parents and community volunteers;<br />
20 different kinds of vegetables are grown here.</td></tr>
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The Tohoku earthquake and nuclear disaster of 2011 shook the entire country up, explained school principal Ryoichi Yamagishi, and underscored concerns about food safety and sustainability. "Everyone is more aware of the importance of life," he said, the food they eat and where it comes from and the need for energy self-sufficiency. Since the disaster, Yamagishi noted, Sanya has cut its electricity use by half.<br />
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Even before the earthquake disaster, though, the <i>shokuiku </i>(food and nutrition education) movement was gaining steam in Japan. The goal of <i>shokuiku </i>is to increase food and nutrition knowledge, food choice skills and healthy eating habits, not to mention its emphasis on gratitude, table etiquette and local food production. The government passed the Shokuiku Basic Act in 2005; in 2010, the law was amended to require that at least 30 percent of school lunch ingredients be sourced locally. Last year Sanya won the coveted designation of "Super Shokuiku" school for the excellence of its food and nutrition education<i> </i>program.<br />
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Another aspect of the <i>shokuiku </i>movement that America's school lunch lacks is the incorporation of nutrition education and food and cooking literacy into the class curriculum. There are now more than 5,000 nutrition educators working in Japanese schools. They offer nutrition presentations during lunchtime, weekend cooking workshops for parents and students, and provide counseling for issues such as picky eating.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Voting on future lunch entree choices.</td></tr>
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The <i>shokuiku </i>curriculum is standardized. Second graders learn about local foods and practice simple knife skills and food preparation techniques. They have an <i>obento </i>(box lunch) assignment for which they must learn to make their own <i>onigiri </i>rice balls. In third and fourth grade they make their own <i>tamagoyaki </i>(egg omelet rolls) and by fifth and sixth grades, they are able to make their entire lunch.<br />
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Sanya also leases a rice field in the countryside, which students visit in the fall to help with planting and in the spring to assist in the harvest.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Giving thanks after eating. </td></tr>
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The day I visited, the menu included <i>Fukagawa-meshi</i>, a rice dish, <i>kenchinjiru </i>(miso soup with tofu and vegetables), <i>kibinago </i>(silver stripe round herrings) cooked in soy sauce, half of a Satsuma mandarin orange, and milk. A student announcer explained that the rice was a Tokyo-area specialty, traditionally made with clams, miso, burdock, carrot, garlic scapes and shiitake. "Twenty years ago there were many clams in Tokyo Bay," he explained, "but today they are mostly imported from elsewhere. The dish is a local specialty that was often served at Tokyo food stalls. Today's <i>Fukagawa-meshi</i> has clams in it, so please enjoy the <i>Edomae </i>(Tokyo style) flavors."<br />
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There's a lot to admire about Japanese school lunches, but Laura pointed out areas where the U.S. arguably does a better job: food and nutrition assistance for low-income students, for example, done in an unobtrusive way that doesn't stigmatize recipients.<br />
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For more on school lunches, check out <a href="http://www.cafeteriaculture.org/">Cafeteria Culture</a>, an amazing local not-for-profit organization Atsuko helps lead that has done much to make school lunches more sustainable.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-81555764296854974212015-12-11T12:18:00.000-05:002016-01-14T10:19:18.750-05:00Chef's Choice: Twenty-two Chefs Dish on Japanese Food Culture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One of the most entertaining reads of this fall for me was <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Chefs-Choice-Culinary-Japanese-Influenced/dp/1879834278">Chef's Choice: 22 Culinary Masters Tell How Japanese Food Culture Influenced Their Careers and Cuisine</a></i> by Saori Kawano and Don Gabor.<br />
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Kawano, the founder and president of <a href="http://korin.com/site/home.html">Korin Japanese Trading Corp</a>., the Tribeca Japanese chef knife and tableware store, and writer Gabor have put together a series of interviews that will appeal to the aspiring chef or culinary student as well as anyone interesting in eating and cooking Japanese food. Each interview is divided into sections describing the chef's influences, career path, cuisine, training and "a day in the life," section devoted to amusing or instructive anecdotes.<br />
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Each chef was selected for his or her affinity and love for Japanese cuisine, so it's not surprising that Japanese influences figure heavily in their cooking. Some even have to hold back to keep from overdoing it. Eric Ripert says he's channeled his exposure to Japanese cuisine into his food at Le Bernardin, and notes. "Now I sometimes restrain myself because I discover that ninety percent of the menu has a Japanese influence. Then we have to go back to French cuisine--at least a little bit!" Increasing globalization means that an aware chef is plucking influences from a wide array of cuisines. The challenge, Ripert notes, "is to be creative without being disrespectful of tradition," to help customers "understand other food cultures."<br />
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But what does that mean? Slavishly reproducing classic Japanese dishes, or riffing on them in a way appealing to western audiences? When foreign chefs depart from the traditional Japanese way of doing things it can be dismaying to Japanese customers. For example Wylie Dufresne, known for his intellectual, avant garde approach to cooking, makes a pumped-up dashi that registers on the palate like a pounding tsunami, not the gentle ocean swell of traditional dashi. Where Japanese chefs will immerse their bonito flakes into their konbu broth briefly, from ten to 30 seconds, Dufresne pushes the boundaries, going for a ten-minute soak. Japanese customers will complain; this is not the soft, gentle umami they are used to. "I don't know whether it's right or wrong, but it's different." says Dufresne.<br />
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Besides some mind-of-a-chef techniques, you'll learn a little about Japanese taste predilections. Cookbook author and teacher <a href="http://www.tasteofculture.com/">Elizabeth Andoh</a> discusses the importance of mouth-feel to the Japanese. Ingredients that might be off-putting to westerners, like the <i>neba-neba </i>(slimy, sticky, or stringy) texture of okra, <i>junsai </i>(watershield, a pond green covered in a transparent jelly) or <i>natto </i>(fermented soybeans) are beloved in Japan.<br />
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You'll also learn a bit about the history of Japanese ingredients in western cooking. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, French and American chefs began going to Japan, and Japanese chefs flocked to France to study and cook. David Bouley recalls the first time he saw soy sauce used by a French chef, by Joel Robuchon at his Saint Germain L'Atelier in Paris. Robuchon combined soy sauce with butter, ginger and lemon juice, a move that must have seemed daring at the time but now seems almost quaint.<br />
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Besides Andoh, there are only two other women included, Lee Anne Wong, who gained fame on <i>Top Chef </i>and now heads <a href="http://kokoheadcafe.com/">Koko Head Cafe</a> in Honolulu, and <a href="http://www.tealeaves.com/icons/toni-robertson.php">Toni Robertson</a>, Executive Chef of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group in Singapore. Growing up in a family of doctors, to satisfy parental expectations, Robertson became a U.S. Air Force emergency room medic and served in the Air National Guard before turning to cooking. The experience wasn't a waste though. She calls it "perfect training" for professional kitchen work because she learned how to remain calm in the midst of "controlled chaos."<br />
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Some of the most tantalizing tidbits involve the chefs' thoughts on individual ingredients. Marcus Samuelsson loves yuzu and smoked fish liver. Wylie Dufresne rhapsodizes about <i>kuro edamame</i>, or black soybeans, which he calls "a higher level of soybean that tastes almost like corn, peanuts, or a little of both," with a black outer skin but "an emerald green bean inside that shines through. When you pop the soybean out of its skin and eat it, it's so delicious and flavorful that you'll never want to go back to the other edamame."<br />
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Nobu Matsuhisa highlights the importance of ingenuity and imagination when faced with a lack of ingredients. When he arrived in Lima, Peru as a young man fresh fish was bountiful, but not Japanese ingredients. To approximate Japanese rice he tried mixing local rice with sweet glutinous rice. To come up with a facsimile of Japanese rice vinegar he mixed soy sauce, acetic acid, and then later wine, kombu and salt. Without fresh wasabi, he mixed powdered wasabi with horseradish and some local hot pepper.<br />
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Bouley advocates intuitive cooking "When you cook a dish that you're worried about, I suggest that you rely more on your senses... Stop thinking, because that's going to distract you." He gives the example of learning how to cook onions by paying careful attention to sensory input every step of the way. "What do they smell like they they are cooking and getting sweet?...What do they smell like then they are still full of water? They smell bitter, they smell acidy. Trust your senses and they will not lie to you."<br />
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The chapter on Australian chef Ben Flatt, who married his wife Chikako and then worked with her parents at their Noto Peninsula guest house Sannami, is fascinating. Flatt learned Japanese knife techniques, fermentation, pickling and seasonal cooking from his in-laws, and he and Chikako now run <a href="http://flatt.jp/blog-en/2013/03/post-28.html">an inn</a> and cook "Noto-Italian" cuisine at Flatt's by the Sea. They make 400 litres of <i>ishiri, </i>a fermented squid sauce, a year. One of his dishes involves <i>hinazushi </i>pickled fish that tastes like blue cheese paired with deep-fried flying fish wings and dressed with a mix of sansho leaf, olive oil and sugar.<br />
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All of the chefs, not surprisingly, recommend working hard, no matter how lowly your first position in the kitchen turns out to be, adapting to any working condition, and figuring things out on your own. A common criticism of American-trained chefs is that they need to be spoon-fed recipes and techniques, a far cry from the Japanese system, where no one teaches apprentices anything; they are expected to learn by watching how the masters do things.<br />
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Yosuke Suga, whose father ran a French restaurant in Nagoya and who worked for ten years as Joel Robuchon's trusted lieutenant, says that as an apprentice and later chef in both Japan and France, "nobody trained me or taught me recipes. I had to observe and absorb them." Today's culinary school grads, he notes, are alway on the lookout for the next best gig. "But even if the chefs are smart and learn the technique in just one year, they cannot learn philosophy or patience...it's difficult to trust them on a deeper level."<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-83332959582710543942015-10-22T16:13:00.001-04:002015-10-22T16:13:30.591-04:00In Upstate New York, Talking Tanka Poetry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1">Here's some of what I collected at <a href="http://www.tankasocietyofamerica.org/tanka-sunday-2015/tanka-sunday-2015-schedule" target="_blank">Tanka Sunday</a> in Albany over the weekend.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Tanka, the ancient form of Japanese poetry, is alive and well, I found out. Two lines longer than haiku (formulated in a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern instead of haiku's 5-7-5) it's being given new life every day by by ardent practitioners of the form, not just in Japan, but around the world. </span>Present at the<a href="http://www.tankasocietyofamerica.org/" target="_blank"> Tanka Society of America's </a>bi-annual meeting were poets from the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan, who shared their poems and discussed why it is they write tanka. </div>
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Pulled into this world of verse by a collection of tanka that my grandparents published in 1960, little did I know that it would lead to such a rich and warm community of like-minded poets. Included in the photo above, center, is <i><a href="http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/publications/children-a-ya/item/3070-the-sky-unchanged-tears-and-smiles" target="_blank">The Sky Unchanged: Tears and Smiles,</a></i> a collection of tanka about the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and nuclear disaster, many of them written by survivors themselves. <a href="http://www.tankasocietyofamerica.org/tanka-sunday-2015/tanka-sunday-2015-keynote-speaker" target="_blank">Amy V. Heinrich</a>, former director of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University, was one of three translators who rendered the poems into English, and also the keynote speaker at Tanka Sunday. </div>
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Here are a few poems from the book:</div>
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locally grown</div>
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vegetables</div>
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hardly sell--</div>
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I eat my heart out</div>
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this evening</div>
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Toko Mihara</div>
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Fukushima, June 2012</div>
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unkempt and unshaven</div>
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the town mayor</div>
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encourages his staff</div>
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"we can do it!"</div>
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all the while crying</div>
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Yoshihiro Yamauchi</div>
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Iwate, May 2011</div>
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<a href="http://www.graceguts.com/bio" target="_blank">Michael Dylan Welch</a>, the founder of the Tanka Society of America, also runs a small press for haiku and tanka books called <a href="http://www.graceguts.com/press-here" target="_blank">Press Here</a>. On the left in the picture above is his most recent tanka publication, a beautifully designed and produced collection of tanka by the late poet Pat Shelley, titled <i>Turning My Chair. </i>On the right, is the latest edition of <i>The Tanka Journal</i>, from the Nihon Kajin Club (Japanese Tanka Poets' Society). At 5,000 members strong it's the largest organization of tanka poets in Japan. Editor-in-Chief Aya Yuhki, who studied English literature in university, traveled from Tokyo to attend Tanka Sunday.<br />
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My friend and translator Kyoko Miyabe and I each gave presentations on our forthcoming English-language translation of my grandparents' book, <i>By the Shore of Lake Michigan. </i>Yet for sure, it was we who learned more about tanka from the assembled poets, not the other way around. </div>
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-46835949308615733012015-10-06T10:15:00.001-04:002015-10-06T12:08:58.113-04:00A Greenhouse Tour at Stone Barns<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guide and farm staff member Ryan Sokoloff, who started his studies at<br />
Cornell in neuroscience, but decided sustainable ag was more interesting.</td></tr>
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<span class="s1">Over the weekend, I visited <a href="https://www.stonebarnscenter.org/" target="_blank">Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture</a> in Pocantico Hills, the farm lab, four seasons farm and education center whose Rockefeller land and money have made it a Shangri-La for sustainable agriculture experimentation.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">It was the center's annual <a href="https://www.stonebarnscenter.org/products/harvest-fest.html" target="_blank">Harvest Fest</a>, where visitors, many of them wide-eyed future consumers, participated in egg collecting, hay rides, bread and butter making, pickling and carrot top pesto making, among many other things. The weather was cold and gray, and what the day lost in picture postcard ambiance it gained in a display of the kind of real-life weather that comes with the job of farming. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Destined for the salad plate.</td></tr>
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<span class="s1">My favorite activity was a tour of the Stone Barns greenhouse led by Stone Barns apprentice Ranan Sokoloff. The Stone Barns 22,000-square-foot greenhouse, he explained, involves 55 different varieties of vegetables that fall into around 10 different plant families. These families are rotated on a 10-year cycle. Each year, each crop family is planted in a new location so the different crops draw on different accounts of the soil's nutrition bank, preventing depletion. In between harvests "cover crops" like sorghum, winter rye and vetch are planted for the sole purpose of enriching the soil.</span><br />
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In preparation for winter, two types of crops are underway: those that are planted in the fall to be harvested in March or April (celtuce, tsai tsai, peas), and those that are planted and harvested continually throughout the winter (carrots, mustard greens, turnips, radishes, lettuce, kale, chard, spinach and mache). Since the growth rate of all of these crops is slower during the winter, it's important to plant successively in order to ensure a constant winter harvest.</div>
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An engaging guide, Sokoloff explained that winter crops are finicky, and must be started from seed and transplanted early enough in the season so that they can take root before the real cold hits. The greenhouse's electric heaters keep the temperature just above freezing, so it's no Florida. The season's heating bill is low enough to be easily recouped by sales, says Sokoloff<br />
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He compared this to greenhouses that grow tomatoes in winter. These heat-hungry plants need a steady 65-degree environment, which means that in the Northeast, the annual cost of heating a greenhouse makes it the lucky farmer who breaks even on tomatoes, while burning through lots of fuel. Yet worried about keeping customers through the winter, some farmers feel compelled to grow them. Something to think about when you reach for that alluring winter tomato, the apple in today's sustainable Garden of Eden.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bees and humans both love these. </td></tr>
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<span class="s1">At Stone Barns, added, Sokoloff, "You can eat delicious fresh food all year around. But no tomatoes. That's something you have to wait for."</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">White dahlias, blue bedder salvia.</td></tr>
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In the greenhouse, every square inch of soil is maximized. So often, longer-term growth plants will be inter-planted among shorter-term lettuces. The benefits of some greenhouse products just can't be measured, though. Sokoloff guided us to a row of beautiful white dahlias and spiky blue bedder salvia, noting that their benefit, besides providing beautiful cut flowers, is to attract vegetable plant pollinators and break up the disease and pest cycles of other plantings. The flowers have helped recruit an astonishing 114 varieties of native bees, an added value that Sokoloff notes "might not show in the bottom line."<br />
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<a href="http://www.stonebarnscenter.org/products/friday-after-thanksgiving-insider-s-tour.html" target="_blank">Farm tours</a> at Stone Barns are offered every Friday, and are well worth the price of admission.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-11611179949655771212015-09-04T11:55:00.000-04:002015-10-05T09:00:51.744-04:00A Mother's Farewell to Heart Mountain<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Heart Mountain, Wyoming. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Looking west over the center with its sentry namesake, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Heart Mountain, on the horizon. (NARA 538782)</span></div>
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Late last month I attended a <a href="http://heartmountain.org/pilgrimage.html" target="_blank">pilgrimage</a> to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, the former U.S. Government concentration camp where my mother and her family were placed for three years during World War II. My mother had not been back to Heart Mountain for 70 years, since she left as a girl of 12. She wanted to go, she told us, to see the mountain the camp was named after one more time. Its iconic shape, more like the angled smokestack of a cruise ship than a heart, had found a permanent home in her memory. While living in the prison camp she had even once had a nightmare about the mountain coming to life with flailing arms, rising up as if to smother her.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfH_YK1JfPcFkUjcXckfnmSgv90Qq5I_7FRl5lKJB5V06pl6lPxCelKRQyJo9lhr8jrCeoKL4ICdcXSyW90_uDGSFK-DnqwghzPJYakN3pxTs5U5A7A_4lHjrJUR7TZlqQGALhMKBuFLSW/s1600/5.12.44+Mom+at+Heart+Mtn..jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfH_YK1JfPcFkUjcXckfnmSgv90Qq5I_7FRl5lKJB5V06pl6lPxCelKRQyJo9lhr8jrCeoKL4ICdcXSyW90_uDGSFK-DnqwghzPJYakN3pxTs5U5A7A_4lHjrJUR7TZlqQGALhMKBuFLSW/s400/5.12.44+Mom+at+Heart+Mtn..jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My mother, circa 1944, with the iconic Heart Mountain and camp<br />barracks behind her. </td></tr>
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The camp was one of 10 wartime prisons the U.S. government set up in remote locations of the country, where 110,000 prisoners, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were forced to live. The victims of wartime hysteria and race hatred following Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, they were stripped of their right to due process, forced to sell most of their belongings and given low-wage jobs running their own prison, as doctors, nurses, mess hall cooks, garment workers, policemen and farmers.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihP5SCwDPuFltRtv19bU-D8qJWNi4BHcbo-oYHqbgohlUNsuTCa2DllqQxkkSU4CbykN34-wX04y7NpFNbMRvUgUS2GYp8dQFCyQXRAikDWn1_OulTH-_cWG7lRmjIO2hWWDBBXBOPwoWS/s1600/DSC04884.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihP5SCwDPuFltRtv19bU-D8qJWNi4BHcbo-oYHqbgohlUNsuTCa2DllqQxkkSU4CbykN34-wX04y7NpFNbMRvUgUS2GYp8dQFCyQXRAikDWn1_OulTH-_cWG7lRmjIO2hWWDBBXBOPwoWS/s400/DSC04884.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My mother in front of the mountain that still lives within her,<br />
here obscured by smoke from forest fires in<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">states to the west. </span><br />
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My mother claimed not to remember much else about camp. Yet as we made the 13-mile drive from Cody, where we were staying, to the site of the camp and as the mountain suddenly appeared in the distance, she gasped audibly and whispered, "Oh my god, I can't believe it." Tears came to her eyes, shocking her with their arrival. She was unprepared for the onslaught of feelings, she told us later, of nostalgia and sadness.<br />
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The weekend-long pilgrimage featured interviews with former prisoners, speeches by former U.S. Transportation Secretary and U.S. Commerce Secretary <a href="http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/min0bio-1" target="_blank">Norman Mineta</a> and former U.S. Senator from Wyoming Alan Simpson (the two became friends when Simpson's Cody Boy Scout troop visited Mineta's Heart Mountain prison camp troop for a jamboree) and moving performances by the spoken word artist <a href="http://www.gyamazawa.com/" target="_blank">G Yamazawa</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A restored guard tower and the smokestack<br />
from the prison camp hospital still stand.</td></tr>
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But what made the biggest impressions on me were the stories of the former inmates themselves (so reduced in numbers now that the only ones still living were, like my mother, for the most part teen-aged or younger when they were in Heart Mountain). As we walked the former prison site and toured the Heart Mountain Foundation's sensitively organized interpretive center, memories flooded back to her.<br />
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She remembered the windstorms that sent tumbleweeds scuttling across the camp, and how unlike now, no matter how far you looked in any direction, all you saw was sagebrush and that looming mountain. She remembered the harsh, sub-zero winters, and one snowball fight that landed her in the Heart Mountain hospital: it contained a rock that left her eye swollen and bloodied. Inmates, mostly from the Los Angeles area, were totally unprepared for the climate. My mother remembered that first winter how everyone ordered pea coats from the Montgomery Ward catalog. She remembered the servers in the mess hall walking down the aisle with gallon cans of sugar, doling out one teaspoon per person (paltry to a child to wanted more), and how she loved roller skating on the smooth cement floor of the laundry room. She remembered in summers, catching horned lizards in the desert, and a murder in the barrack across from her family's--fallout from a love triangle. "We had a little of everything," she commented.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One wing of the 150-bed hospital, where my mother was treated<br />
for a facial wound, remains.</td></tr>
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Looking at a photo of the Heart Mountain swimming hole, my mother remembered "almost drowning" when she couldn't get out from under some sort of barrier. Later that day, on the short bus ride to a memorial site that commemorates inmates who joined the U.S. Army to fight in Europe, I spoke to another former prisoner, a retired Seattle newspaper editor, who had the exact same recollection. "I almost drowned in the swimming hole, he told me. There was a platform that all the kids would jump on, and I couldn't get out from under it."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The swimming hole still conjures memories of near-drownings.</td></tr>
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My mother remembered my Uncle Tosh leaving camp early to join the army, one of more than 750 prisoners who left Heart Mountain to serve in the U.S. armed forces during the war. She remembered that when he asked her what she would like from the outside, she requested an Andy Russell record and a ring with her birthstone, pink zirconia. Fifteen of those servicemen who left Heart Mountain to serve were killed in battle, leaving their families to mourn behind barbed wire. To the great relief of our family, my uncle was not among them.</div>
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My mother also remembered Kiyoshi Okamoto, the founder of the Heart Mountain <a href="http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Heart_Mountain_Fair_Play_Committee/" target="_blank">Fair Play Committee</a>, coming in the back entrance to her family's grocery store in downtown Los Angeles before the war to talk politics with her father. At Heart Mountain, when the military presented its "<a href="http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Loyalty_questionnaire/" target="_blank">loyalty questionnaire,"</a> the Fair Play committee drafted its stance: members were U.S. citizens loyal to the United States and willing to serve in the U.S. Army, but only if their legal rights were first restored and they and their families were released from the prison camp. The Fair Play Committee set itself apart from the "no-no" boys, those who refused to answer yes to two key questions: would they serve in the U.S. armed forces if asked, and would they swear unqualified allegiance to America and forswear any allegiance to the Japanese Emperor. Both groups, especially the "no-nos," were reviled by many who joined the U.S. armed forces, in part to prove their loyalty to America.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This photo, taken by prisoner Bill Manbo, shows the farewell held for<br />
"no-no" prisoners, who were transported to the Tule Lake Segregation<br />
Center in Northern California, where the "no-nos" were isolated.</td></tr>
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My mother, who is now 82, does not think she will return to Heart Mountain. But she accomplished what she wanted to, to see that heroic mountain one more time. When I sent her this post to read before launching it, she told me there was one important fact that I'd gotten all wrong: the dream about Heart Mountain coming alive was not a nightmare at all, but actually a <i>comforting</i> dream.<br />
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"I always had good feelings about that mountain," she told me. "It's the one thing I thought about when I thought about Heart Mountain at all." I realized that it was I who had projected onto that dream all my assumptions about what her repressed feelings about camp must have been. Surely behind her innocuous memories there lurked fear, anxiety and anger, or at least if they were not her own emotions, they were the internalization of those picked up from her parents and other adults near to her?<br />
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Could it be, I asked, that making Heart Mountain a protective symbol was her child's way of coping with loss and tragedy? "That could be," she admitted doubtfully, "it's hard to say."<br />
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Perhaps the deeper emotional truth of what happened to my mother 73 years ago will never be recoverable, and I suspect it is the same for many of the former incarcerees I spoke to. They remembered the daily events of school and play, the fun they had, but also the harshness of the climate and their living conditions. Today they recognize the gross injustice of the treatment they received so long ago, but its sting rarely pierces the stoic armor of Japanese <i>gaman </i>(endurance, patience and tolerance) and the practical <i>shikata ga nai </i>(it can't be helped) attitude that became the default response of so many who were imprisoned.<br />
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Or maybe, as the translator and Fordham University Japanese language professor Mariko Aratani said to me, it's impossible to understand the Japanese reaction to the concentration camps because it belongs to "a totally different paradigm" than the worldview of most westerners and more assimilated Japanese Americans.<br />
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For my mother, the trip "was sort of like closure," she told me. "Going back after all these years, and having all those hidden feelings emerge, I now feel like I don't need to go back again." </div>
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-63568707891891835152015-09-03T12:15:00.002-04:002015-09-03T12:15:25.867-04:00Remembering Oliver Sacks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As a correspondent for <i>People </i>magazine, I spoke to many people who were famous, infamous, formerly famous, hoping to regain fame, or on the cusp of fame. Though I've forgotten most of them, a few of my interview subjects left me with indelible memories.<br />
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Dr. Oliver Sacks was one of them, because of his brilliant writing and storytelling ability, the way his boyish delights still worked their magic on him at the age of 67, and for his seemingly enormous capacity for empathy--for his patients, family, friends, and even for one of the many reporters who were by then vying for his time. </div>
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We spoke in 2001 at his Horatio Street office in the West Village, for a story slated to appear in a special Oscar edition of the magazine. I was to ask the doctor to look back at the release of the film "Awakenings" eleven years earlier. The film was based on Dr. Sacks's <a href="http://www.oliversacks.com/books-by-oliver-sacks/awakenings/" target="_blank">1973 book</a> by the same name, which told in compelling detail of his experience treating patients who had been rendered catatonic after contracting sleeping sickness. When the doctor administered a new drug to them, L-dopa, they underwent astonishing "awakenings."The movie starred Robert DeNiro as Leonard L., one of Dr. Sacks's patients, and Robin Williams as a stand in for his own character.<br />
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Dr. Sacks, I realized, was a kind of an intellectual fan-boy, and he loved to share his enthusiasms. He scurried off at one point to retrieve his autographed copy of Eve Curie's biography of her mother Marie, a gift from his surgeon mother when he was 10. The one memento from the set of "Awakenings" that he wished he had kept, he said, was a beautiful rendering of the periodic table. He had just finished his manuscript for the book <i><a href="http://www.oliversacks.com/books-by-oliver-sacks/uncle-tungsten/" target="_blank">Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood</a></i>, in which he detailed his passionate boyhood love for chemistry. As we spoke, he he sipped tea from a mug imprinted with a the periodic table; another version of his beloved chart, in Basque (a gift from a friend), hung above his desk.<br />
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Although he would later write about his experimentation with drugs and his identity as a gay man, his then-forthcoming memoir detailed none of that, and, he noted, "finishes discreetly at age fourteen." But he did consider writing more. "The one thing I can't decide is whether to indicate that anything has happened, you know, subsequently, in the years thereafter," he said. "But I've certainly had enough about writing about myself for the time being, and will gratefully get on to other things, namely a book on botany (another of his passions), which became <i><a href="http://www.oliversacks.com/books-by-oliver-sacks/oaxaca-journal/" target="_blank">Oaxaca Journal</a>.</i><br />
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After telling entertaining stories about DeNiro and Williams, the conversation turned to the making of the film "At First Sight," which was based on Dr. Sacks's book <i><a href="http://www.oliversacks.com/books-by-oliver-sacks/anthropologist-mars/" target="_blank">An Anthropologist on Mars</a> </i>and starred Val Kilmer as a blind man who regains his sight. The doctor gleefully described his fascination with the fact that the film's producer, Irwin Winkler, shared the same last name as the discoverer of the element germanium, one of his own "favorite elements." Then he leapt from his chair once again to find a book on the giants of chemistry, and showed me the entry on Clemens A. Winkler the scientist. "I kept asking Irwin if he was related to THE Winkler," Dr. Sacks said. "I think he said, 'I'm THE Winkler.'"<br />
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But it was the doctor's obvious empathy for his patients that was most moving to me. He told the story, which he's told before, of how, in 1988, during a Tourette syndrome awareness week in Cincinnati, hundreds of Tourette patients converged and met others like them (many for the first time in their lives), and the "remarkable feeling of community" they found in each other. "I'm regarded as an honorary Touretter," he noted, adding, "in fact some of my patients think I have the real thing."So when a member of their group got thrown out of the local Wendy's fast-food restaurant for twitching and cursing, he joined ranks with 200 young adults with Tourette syndrome to descend on restaurant in protest.<br />
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The patients he had written about so empathetically in <i>Awakenings</i> were all dead by the time of our interview, but they were still very much alive to Dr. Sacks. "When I had my house in City Island," he said wistfully, "I used to keep all the files of the <i>Awakenings </i>patients out. In fact they were out till last year. Then I said, 'What's the use of having these files out?' But they never quite died for me."<br />
<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-64717190313927610522015-08-13T18:28:00.000-04:002015-08-14T13:35:01.763-04:00What I'm Reading: "Homemade for Sale" Cottage Food Business Primer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
You know all those small-batch products you're seeing at farmer's markets: pickles, jams, pretzels, vinegars, and other items you wish you had time to make yourself but are glad others are making for you? Well, their makers are worth supporting for a number of reasons. The first and most obvious is that if you shop selectively, you're getting delicious, high-quality, homemade products straight from the hands of the person who made it. Another is that if you believe in the value and transparency of local food systems, this is a first step in capitalizing yours. Reward a quality cottage food business and you're helping the next generation of makers establish a foothold in the local economy.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimNm7qEYsi74IHLd6-UsYp3nGhoszf1V6-I_be0UP2hcpcTZHqA8Twc4TC_Wzt5U3jhSkdAb49foE8VdbUl4PscOTZCtmVIDbXvVoLnEeuN_WZ9U0OPvTJCrHz5tWdmZC-H3V0mgHZs2A4/s1600/IMG_6781.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimNm7qEYsi74IHLd6-UsYp3nGhoszf1V6-I_be0UP2hcpcTZHqA8Twc4TC_Wzt5U3jhSkdAb49foE8VdbUl4PscOTZCtmVIDbXvVoLnEeuN_WZ9U0OPvTJCrHz5tWdmZC-H3V0mgHZs2A4/s400/IMG_6781.jpg" width="347" /></a></div>
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If you want to be the next <a href="https://jenis.com/about/" target="_blank">Jeni Britton Bauer</a> (Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream) or Beth Linskey (<a href="https://www.bethsfarmkitchen.com/about-us/" target="_blank">Beth's Farm Kitchen</a>), here's a great book to help you get started: <i><a href="https://www.newsociety.com/Books/H/Homemade-for-Sale" target="_blank">Homemade for Sale: How to Set Up and Market a Food Business From Your Home Kitchen</a></i>, by wife-and-husband team and back-to-the-land gurus <a href="http://www.innserendipity.com/ruralren/aboutjl.html" target="_blank">Lisa Kivirist and John D, Ivanko. </a><br />
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This user-friendly guide explains that the explosion of culinary entrepreneurs we're seeing at the greenmarkets and online (just check out <a href="http://mouth.com/" target="_blank">mouth.com</a>, or go down the list of <a href="http://www.goodfoodawards.org/winners/" target="_blank">winners</a> of the annual Good Food Awards) owes a lot to changes in state laws governing small-scale, independent home-based food businesses. Over 42 states have recently established such laws, making it easier than ever before to launch a business out of your kitchen.<br />
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<i>Homemade for Sale </i>covers everything from navigating your state's cottage food laws to product development, design, packaging and pricing; navigating zoning, licensing and legal hurdles; managing the books, and for those who want to, scaling up. Interspersed are profiles of successful "cookiepreneurs" and "profitable picklers," as Kivirist and Ivanko dub members of the kitchen entrepreneur movement, as well as tips gleaned from the couple's own experience of starting and running their <a href="http://www.innserendipity.com/inn/carbonsequest.html" target="_blank">carbon-negative</a> inn, Serendipity Bed & Breakfast, and their farm in southwestern Wisconsin.<br />
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Helpful tips include advice on making sure your baked good is a "non-hazardous" one (meaning low moisture and shelf-stable to prevent mold and harmful bacteria growth); offering samples of your product (check venue rules and local health department regulations first), and a word of warning to Canadians (where selling food made in your home kitchen is outlawed for all but farmers).<br />
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The promotion, advertising and public relations chapter offers plenty of helpful links to web design and social media sites, and to free directories on which you can list your business (<a href="http://forrager.com/" target="_blank">forrager.com</a>, <a href="http://etsy.com/" target="_blank">etsy.com</a>, <a href="http://localharvest.org/" target="_blank">localharvest.org</a> and <a href="http://agrilicious.org/" target="_blank">agrilicious.org</a>, to name a few).<br />
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Read this book and you, too, will feel that you can play a part in changing our food systems for the better and changing the way America eats.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-11232488892851029082015-07-14T11:21:00.001-04:002015-07-14T11:23:27.902-04:00Coffee Cupping: How to Taste like a Pro<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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If you hang around "third-wave" coffee houses or coffee geeks you probably have heard the term "cupping." Yesterday I learned the basics of how it works at <a href="http://www.irvingfarm.com/" target="_blank">Irving Farm Coffee Roasters</a>' spanking new <a href="http://www.irvingfarm.com/locations/the-loft/" target="_blank">Loft</a>, not too far away from Union Square.<br />
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"Cupping" is the term coffee buyers use for tasting and evaluating coffees. At my Intro to Cupping class, we learned there are three categories of aromas that we'd be looking for. <b>Enzymatic</b> aromas relate to the plant-based characteristics of the coffee bean, and include the floral, citrusy and berry-like. <b>Sugar burning </b>aromas are the result of the sugars in the bean meeting heat. Not surprisingly, these tend to the deeper end of the spectrum: nut, malt, syrup, honey, chocolate or vanilla. Then there are the <b>dry distillate </b>aromas, which go even deeper, into territory that might be described by expert cuppers as smoky (pipe tobacco), ashy, medicinal (camphoric), or warming (cedar, pepper).<br />
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Our instructor Josh Littlefield even provided us with this handy flavor wheel to arm us with some descriptive adjectives to apply to our smell and taste sensations later on. As with my sake tasting experience, a big part of being able to identify the different aromas you discern is having the descriptive vocabulary to attach to them. Those terms make it easier to remember and describe different coffees or sakes.<br />
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The tasting was a two-part process: first we tasted from coffee that had been brewed with 205-degree fahrenheit water poured over grounds and steeped for about four minutes. A "crust" forms on top, so we slid our spoons in at 45-degree angles to break the crust and scoop up clean brewed coffee. We slurped and inhaled at the same time to maximize access to the aromas, tasting five different coffees that ranged from super peanutty to tea-like, to umami-filled, to one that tasted like blueberries. Our favorite was the <a href="http://www.irvingfarm.com/losninos" target="_blank">Los Ninos honey process</a> from El Salvador, which instead of being put in a mechanical dryer, is left to dry in the sun, giving it richer, honeyed deliciousness. (To learn the full story of how this coffee farm, Talnamica, and its owners, Hermann and Nena Mendez and their daughter Mayita, became part of the Irving Farm family, read my <i>Edible Manhattan </i>story on Irving Farm <a href="http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/departments/bean-scene/magic-beans/" target="_blank">here</a>.) Unfortunately Irving Farm has only made a small experimental batch of the Los Ninos; it'll be gone soon.<br />
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We then tasted pour-over versions of the same coffees, which lost a bit in aroma bandwith compared to the steeped coffee. To get the fullest range of aromas, Josh recommended a French-press coffee maker.<br />
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Here is another cool thing we got to sample: 36 tiny bottles of different coffee aromas (rose, coriander, hazelnut), synthetically replicated by <a href="http://www.lenez.com/en/kits/coffee/revelation" target="_blank">Le Nez du Cafe</a>, a kind of study guide or cheat sheet for coffee professionals or highly motivated amateurs.<br />
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And for a peek into the detail that the pros go into when they cup, here's a page out of Irving Farm's cupping notes, sprinkled with scribblings like "jam toast" or "cherry cola."<br />
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Josh told us that there are over 400 aroma/flavor compounds in coffee, more than twice that of wine, though he admitted that wine people might take issue with that claim to tasting complexity hegemony.<br />
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For those who are interested, every Thursday at 10 am, Irving Farm holds a public cupping at its Loft.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-88287687525062228922015-07-07T13:55:00.000-04:002015-07-07T13:55:04.739-04:00Cooking Teacher for a Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">From left, students Angel </span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Gutierrez, Melvin Carter, instructor Andrea Bergquist-Zamir, Carrie Pierre, Lewil Rodriquez, Martha Nunez and Dominique Icart.</span></td></tr>
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As a non-professional in the kitchen, I was happy to be invited to guest teach my second Japanese food cooking class at the <a href="http://www.wscah.org/" target="_blank">West Side Campaign Against Hunger</a> (WSCAH) recently. Chef Andrea Bergquist-Zamir has headed the <a href="http://www.nancymatsumoto.com/article.php?id=170" target="_blank">Chef Training Program</a> at the supermarket-style food pantry since May 2013, and has transformed it into a serious career training opportunity for WSCAH clients, many of whom face challenges ranging from lack of housing and documentation to mental illness. For some students, just getting to WSCAH or finding adequate childcare are major hurdles to overcome.<br />
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The first time I guest taught was in February. We made <i>ozoni</i>, the traditional rice cake soup served on New Year's morning (read my <i>Saveur </i>article on it <a href="http://www.saveur.com/article/travels/mochitsuki-japanese-new-years" target="_blank">here</a>) and <i>chirashizushi</i>, a sushi rice dish scattered with various vegetable and other mix-ins Since the students loved both dishes, and they worked well in the class, we decided to repeat the same dishes even though <i>ozoni </i>is not exactly a dish for summer.<br />
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Once again, I found the students an impressive bunch: enthusiastic, eager to learn, and determined to get the dishes right. They were also once again adventurous in their tastes, and they delighted in eating the dishes we made. One student, Awilda Santana, exclaimed to me, "We're so lucky to be here now, at this time in food, when so much is happening." I couldn't agree more. Santana, as she is known by her classmates, also insisted on giving me her beautiful apron (which another WSCAH client had made by hand) and her chef's hat.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Student Awilda Santanna</td></tr>
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Chef Andrea, who opted out of a high-powered career as executive chef of Marcus Samuelsson's Red Rooster and Merkato 55 to teach at WSCAH, is proud that graduates of her classes have landed jobs in a wide variety of restaurants and kitchens, from Shake Shack and Whole Foods to <a href="http://www.lucyswhey.com/" target="_blank">Lucy's Whey</a>, <a href="http://www.tfsnyc.com/" target="_blank">The Filling Station</a> and <a href="http://hotbreadkitchen.org/" target="_blank">Hot Bread Kitchen</a>, to name just a few. Connecting with people and giving joy and hope through the food of one's heritage is a powerful feeling, and I felt grateful for the opportunity to do so. Now I'm just hoping I get invited back!<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-61329872835093471292015-06-02T02:45:00.000-04:002015-06-02T02:45:28.733-04:00With Sake, Rules Are Made to be Broken: In the Class with John Gauntner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I'm in Las Vegas now, for <a href="http://sake-world.com/" target="_blank">John Gauntner</a>'s sake professional course. John is the foremost non-Japanese expert on sake, and the rise in popularity of his professional courses is testament both to his skill as a teacher and to the growing popularity of premium sake in the U.S. He's taught the course over 30 times, and this, he told us, was his largest class ever, at 70 people. </div>
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The three-day course packs a massive informational punch, but some of the best parts are John's digressions and stories. Here's one he told to prove two important and related points: one, "exceptions abound" to any rules of thumb that you might try to apply to sake, and two, you can "rest assured that some of what is taught here will be contradicted by someone somewhere along the line." </div>
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To prove his point, John told the story of visiting the <a href="https://www.asahishuzo.ne.jp/en/" target="_blank">Dassai brewery</a> in Yamaguchi Prefecture about 10 or 15 years ago, to meet its president, Kazuhiro Sakurai. It is unusual for sake presidents to also serve as master brewer, or <i>toji</i>, of their breweries, and Sakurai was no exception. One day, though, his <i>toji </i>quit on him, and Sakurai was in a bind. Impulsively, he decided he would take over as <i>toji</i>. He shook up a lot of things, including the brewing schedule. Instead of brewing for six months of the year, which is the way things have traditionally been done, he started brewing year round. To solve the problem of not having freshly harvested fall rice year round to brew with, he decided to freeze part of his rice crop to use in summer. He let John in on the secret to making good sake with this method: you had to mill, or polish the rice <i>before</i> freezing. </div>
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Some time later, John visited the <a href="http://www.esake.com/Brewers/popups/rihakupop/rihakupop.html" target="_blank">Rihaku Brewery</a> in Shimane Prefecture. Chatting with the brewery president, he learned that Rihaku makes a special New Year's sake that ships every year on New Year's Day. But if they used local rice harvested in October, they would not have completed sake ready to ship on time for New Year's Day. So they decided to use rice from the previous year, which they had frozen. His secret? "You <i>must not</i> mill the rice before you freeze it."<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-85007895552368619002015-05-08T09:49:00.003-04:002015-05-08T09:49:43.855-04:00On Translating Haruki Murakami, and New Japanese Storytellers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From left to right: Roland Kelts, Jay Rubin, Ted Goossen, <br />Motoyuki Shibata, Aoko Matsuda, Satoshi Kitamura.</td></tr>
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Literary translation and Japanese masters fictions were the topics last night at a <a href="http://www.japansociety.org/" target="_blank">Japan Society</a> talk that brought together two North American translators of international cult favorite <a href="http://www.harukimurakami.com/" target="_blank">Haruki Murakami</a>, a Japanese translator of American fiction, an emerging Japanese novelist and a top Japanese illustrator.<br />
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Is translation art or merely the mechanical act of transcribing one language into another? What happens when the novelist who is being translated is an accomplished translator himself? What inspires the longtime translator to attempt penning a novel? These were some of the issues addressed in "The Magical Art of Translation: From Haruki Murakami to Japan's Latest Storytellers."<br />
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Jumping right into the craft of inspecting words and phrases, panelist <a href="http://people.laps.yorku.ca/people.nsf/researcherprofile?readform&shortname=tgoossen" target="_blank">Ted Goossen</a>, a Murakami translator from York University in Toronto, expressed uncertainty that there was anything "magical" about the act of translation. His colleague <a href="http://rijs.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/j_rubin.php" target="_blank">Jay Rubin</a>, emeritus Japanese literature professor at Harvard, opined that yes, translation did involve some sort of magical alchemy, yet flatly denied that the process was in any way creative. Okay, every person has his or her own take on the matter.<br />
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<a href="http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/interview-translator-motoyuki-shibata-manga-murakami-and-monkey-business" target="_blank">Motoyuki Shibata</a>, who recently retired from his post teaching American literature and literary translation at Tokyo University, pointed out that both Murakami and his predecessor, <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/222867/Futabatei-Shimei" target="_blank">Futabatei Shimei</a>, (whose novel <i>Ukigumo</i>, or The Drifting Cloud, published in 1887, was one of my grandfather's favorites), both wanted to break free of the stifling Japanese literary conventions of their day. Shimei, a translator of Turgenev, wrote his first fictional paragraph in Russian, and Murakami, who has translated Raymond Carver, wrote the first paragraph of <i><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/05/haruki-murakami-first-novel-retranslated-english-hear-the-wind-sing" target="_blank">Hear the Wind Sing</a></i> in English.<br />
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Rubin was incited to write his first novel, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Sun-Gods-Jay-Rubin/dp/1634059506" target="_blank">The Sun Gods</a></i>, out of sheer anger, he explained, over the illegal roundup an imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. His book is set in Seattle and the Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho before, during and after the war. Rubin was shocked to learn of this chapter of U.S. history when he was in graduate school, and urged audience members to read <a href="http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Monica%20Sone/" target="_blank">Monica Sone</a>'s <i><a href="http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Monica%20Sone/" target="_blank">Nisei Daughter</a> </i>to learn more about the period.<br />
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Rising Japanese novelist <a href="http://granta.com/contributor/Aoko-Matsuda/" target="_blank">Aoko Matsuda</a> said that she valued her translation work (of the writer Karen Russell) as much as her fiction writing, explaining that both occupy the same part of the brain that tries to fix free-floating voices on the page, and that both have made her "love literature more and more."<br />
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Picture-book artist and illustrator <a href="http://www.satoshiland.com/index.html" target="_blank">Satoshi Kitamura</a> deftly brought the discussion of translation into the realm of images, explaining that he is trying to translate the feeling and tone of the text into pictures. He's worked with poets John Agard and Charles Simic, and showed work from those books as well as his charming illustrations from the children's book <i><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/yes/oclc/881146210" target="_blank">The Yes</a>, </i>by Sarah Bee. Shibata interjected here, saying that often when he feels that a poetry translation of his falls short it is Kitamura's illustration that helps bridge the gap and make the translation feel whole.<br />
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Panel moderator <a href="http://www.japanamericabook.com/" target="_blank">Roland Kelts</a> told us after the discussion that far from micromanaging his translators, Murakami adopts a fairly "laissez-faire" attitude, leaving his translators free to do their work unhindered. The panel also introduced me to new Japanese fiction writers that I'm eager to check out. Several, including <a href="http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/authors/item/16-mieko-kawakami" target="_blank">Mieko Kawakami</a> and <a href="http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/authors/item/681-hideo-furukawa" target="_blank">Hideo Furukawa</a> have been published in the journal of new writings from Japan <a href="http://monkeybusinessmag.tumblr.com/" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Monkey Business</a>, which is edited by Goossen and Shibata.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-68109277376788435982015-04-28T10:15:00.001-04:002015-04-28T10:37:39.108-04:00The Birth of Sake: A Look Inside Japan's Yoshida Brewery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cooling just-steamed rice at Yoshida Brewery. Photo by Yasuyuki Yoshida.</td></tr>
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Those who love sake or Japan or both will want to see <i>"</i><a href="http://www.birthofsake.com/" target="_blank">The Birth of Sake,</a>" director Erik Shirai's love letter to his ancestral country and its people, and a glimpse into the grueling work and hard-won camaraderie that are part of the fermented rice beverage-making process. I caught the last showing of the film at the Tribeca Film Festival, where Shirai won a special jury mention in the best new documentary director category.<br />
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Shirai, who worked as a cameraman on Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" travel show, says he stumbled upon his subject when he met the young scion of the 140-year-old Yoshida Brewery, Yasuyuki Yoshida, 27, at a promotional event. The brewery sells under the <a href="http://www.tedorigawa.com/products/" target="_blank">Tedorigawa</a> label, a half dozen types of which are <a href="http://www.sakayanyc.com/shop_all.php?prod_id=78" target="_blank">available</a> in the U.S. and are prized for their elegance, finesse and balance.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Toji Teruyuki Yamamoto checking on his product up close. Photo by Erik Shirai.</td></tr>
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At the heart of the film are <i>toji </i>(master brewer) Teruyuki Yamamoto, 68, and Yoshida, who is being groomed to take over the post of <i>toji</i> and become president of the brewery when his father retires. Yamamoto brings his pet bird with him to the Ishikawa Prefecture brewery every winter when he arrives for the six-month sleepover that all brewery workers have to commit to. He treats his sake "mother" and main mash with as much loving care as his bird, and talks of making sake in terms of raising a child, a process that requires constant attention, occasional crisis intervention and more experience and intuition than book smarts.<br />
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Second-generation Japanese American Shirai, noting that the actual brewing process is repetitive and not that dramatic, delves into the personal lives of his cast of characters to add dramatic tension and comic relief, revealing the pressures on both Yamamoto and his protege Yoshida, the strained relationship between the <i>toji </i>and his son (who is also part of the sake-making team) and the loneliness and exhaustion that are part of the sake-making process.<br />
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Shirai explains that the film came about after he met Yoshida at an American promotional event and took him up on a casually offered invitation to visit the brewery. The visit turned into a two-and-a-half year project, with Shirai and producer Masako Tsumura traveling to Ishikawa to film three different sake-producing seasons as well as gather footage on the sake makers during the off season. Beautifully shot, the film pays tribute to the rarely-seen work of these craftsmen, and their efforts to keep the artisanal sake-making tradition alive in the face of decreasing market share and increasing automation.<br />
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The bad news is that you will have to wait a bit to see the film; Shirai is in talks with distributors now and there is as yet no release date. You can keep abreast of new developments, though, through the film's web site or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BirthOfSake" target="_blank">Facebook</a> page.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-42682218097831605422015-04-05T09:08:00.001-04:002015-04-05T09:08:45.077-04:00Happy Ritual Spring Holiday!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I'm a sucker for spring flowers and holiday decor, as some of you may have gathered. Since spring break often means travel, I've collected spring photos from a number of different cities.<br />
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This year it was Amsterdam and London. In Amsterdam, we came across an alluring sign that read <a href="http://urbancacao.com/" target="_blank">Urban Cacao</a>, and found colorful chocolate eggs (above) that look like they've been spun by an ecstatic cult of yarn artists. Actually they are the playful work of Dutch chocolatier <b>Hans Mekking</b>.<br />
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Here's another one of his avant garde Easter egg works:<br />
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In London, it was all bunnies, chocolates and pastel treats at <a href="https://www.fortnumandmason.com/" target="_blank">Fortnum and Mason</a>, though since my family is partial to hot cross buns, we were all eyes for these specimens:<br />
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Back in New York, the great Upper East Side bakery <a href="https://wmgreenbergdesserts.com/" target="_blank">William Greenberg Desserts</a> is Passover Central for those in search of unleavened kosher desserts. Greenberg carries an array of sponge cakes, special Passover lemon tarts and many varieties of macaroons. The demand for these items is so pressing they're placed under wraps in big metal carts that block the bakery's storefront windows, and pre-boxed to keep up with demand.<br />
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I did, however get this shot of freshly baked and bagged macaroons.<br />
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In true New York fashion, you can get both Passover and Easter desserts at Greenberg, and many tips on how to serve sponge cake, as I did. </div>
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After such a long, bitter winter, I long to see more spring crocuses, daffodils and tulips. This London flower display was an early harbinger of spring in March:</div>
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Whatever spring ritual you are celebrating this month with family and friends, I hope it's festive, delicious and fun. </div>
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-18473093229945917622015-03-19T18:10:00.000-04:002015-03-24T14:35:29.591-04:00One Soup Three Dishes: The Foundation of Japanese Cuisine <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Five of the six courses that made up lunch at Fujita Japanese Cooking Studio</td></tr>
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For all the incredible variety to be found <i>kaiseki, </i>the traditional multi-course Japanese meal that evolved from the tea ceremony, when you break it down to its fundamentals, you'll arrive at <i><a href="http://www.expo2015.jp/en/foodculture/b_block/06/03/" target="_blank">ichiju san-sai</a></i>, or "one soup, three dishes." Mentions of this meal-making concept can be traced back in literature over 1,000 years, and many attribute the healthiness and nutritional soundness of Japanese cuisine back to this ancient concept. The packed Japanese breakfast tray is an early morning riff on the concept, as is many a dinner on Japan Airlines, where the miso soup is poured from a plastic pitcher into paper cups.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An example of the packed Japanese breakfast tray,<br />
this one at Tokaitei in the Dai-Ichi Hotel, Tokyo.</td></tr>
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Learning about these basic building blocks of Japanese eating were part of a crash course in Japanese foodways that I participated in as a member of an eight-day food fellowship trip sponsored by the Foreign Press Center/Japan.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fujita-sensei working on fresh sea bream.</td></tr>
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We spent one morning in the small kitchen of Takako Fujita, a cooking instructor whose school, <a href="http://www.fu-ji-ta.com/" target="_blank">Fujita Japanese Cooking Studio</a> is tucked away in the unlikely Tokyo business district of Toranomon. We watched, agog, as Fujita-sensei and her assistant Naoko Sugiyama, both dressed in traditional kimono, conjured up an excellent six-course lunch with a minimum of movement and no fuss. It was a technically understated yet flawless performance that evoked the tea ceremony, only with more utensils and a foundation of kelp and bonito instead of matcha tea powder.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fujita-sensei salting pork back rib slices for her rice dish. </td></tr>
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Fujita-sensei, now in her twenty-first year of teaching, says she knew nothing about cooking when she was in her 20s. It wasn't until she married that she took up the study of cooking as part of her "bride's training," she adds. For our lunch, she started by working on a dish of rice cooked in stock. It was a traditional <i>takikomi-gohan,</i> or seasoned rice cooked with mixed vegetables, but with a twist--the addition of thin slices of pork back rib meat. It's a dish Fujita-sensei created recently for for a <a href="http://sp.nhk-book.co.jp/text/detail/index.php?webCode=06461112014" target="_blank">Japanese cooking magazine</a>. Rice, like pickles, is a standard accompaniment to the soup and three dishes of <i>ichiju san-sai </i> and so much a given that it goes without mention.<br />
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The "soup" in this iteration was an unusual one, centered on <i>hanpen,</i> a cloud-like version of fish cake that has been pounded and spongified with grated mountain yam and beaten egg whites. The <i>hanpen</i> slices floated in a clear dashi made with <i>konbu </i>(kelp) and <i>katsuobushi </i>(grated dried bonito) and garnished with mitsuba (a parsley-like green). As if it weren't light enough, Fujita-sensei added beaten egg whites at the end to up the lightness ante.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Simmered yellowtail with ginger and pickled plums.</td></tr>
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The <i>san-sai</i>, part of the meal, or "three dishes," usually consists of a main dish and two side dishes. The main more often than not involves fish. In our lunch, it was a beautiful dish of yellowtail simmered with ginger and <i>umeboshi</i> (pickled plums) with just a little added mirin, sugar and salt. The secrets here were to employ the traditional Japanese method of <a href="http://nancymatsumoto.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html" target="_blank">sprinkling a little salt on the fish</a> to draw out impurities, and to add ginger skins to the broth. In addition to adding flavor, the ginger skins balance the broth and take away any overly strong fish flavors, Fujita-sensei told us. As in this dish, she often uses milder, Kyoto-style seasoning in her class, she says, "because lighter seasoning is more popular" among her students.<br />
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The two secondary dishes of <i>ichiju san-sai </i>usually include a vegetable dish and a legume or soybean-based dish, rounding out a balanced meal with plenty of fermented foods. Long before the start of the fermented food craze that is sweeping certain artisanal corners of America--touted for its probiotic-promoting goodness--the Japanese had build a nation on miso, soy sauce, sake, mirin and pickled and preserved products.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Fujita-sensei and her assistant Sugiyama san bidding us farewell.</span></td></tr>
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For a savory dish of stewed taro dressed in a mix of sesame paste, white miso, sugar and mirin, the tips Fujita-sensei gave us were to boil the taro very quickly in water used to wash rice and a splash of mirin. This keeps its color light and also hastens cooking. The dish was called "Rikyu-style," after the famed sixteenth-century tea master Sen no Rikyu, who apparently loved sesame seeds.<br />
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Fujita-sensei says that as in other developed countries, fewer and fewer young Japanese are learning to cook from their mothers or grandmothers, adding that not many young people are interested in cooking traditional dishes. After Japanese-style<i><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/05/japenese-cuisine-washoko-unesco-britain-chefs" target="_blank"> washoku</a></i> cooking was named a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, however, interest in their native cuisine has revived somewhat among young people, she says.<br />
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For more on <i>washoku</i>, and how the Japanese government is working to spread its techniques, flavors and spirit around the world, check out my Discover Nikkei article on the <a href="http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2015/3/10/mystique-of-washoku" target="_blank">Washoku World Challenge 2015</a>.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-88976596992771921072015-03-13T12:18:00.000-04:002015-03-13T14:33:36.188-04:00When Cheese Met Sake: The New Franco-Japanese Alliance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hakkaisan Sparkling Nigori sake with (clockwise from<br />
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The Japanese brewed beverage sake seems to be everywhere now...or is it just me?<br />
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Probably a little bit of both. Ever since I started writing about sake I seem to have entered a parallel sake-loving universe. Last night was a good example. <a href="http://frenchcheeseboard.com/" target="_blank">The French Cheese Board</a> hosted a sake and fromage pairing at its storefront on West 39th Street near Bryant Park.<br />
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For all of you cheese lovers, the space includes a small cheese store with a well-curated selection of French cheeses that rotate on a monthly basis as well as French butter. There's also a handsome kitchen and a gallery. Charles Duque, managing director of the FCB, and <a href="http://www.akikokatayama.com/about/" target="_blank">Akiko Katayama</a>, a Japanese food writer and culinary diplomat, were our hosts.<br />
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In Japan, sake has been steadily declining in popularity since the mid-1970s, and so venturing into foreign markets (the U.S. and France are two top targets) is paramount for the industry. What I didn't know is that the same is true of artisanal cheese in France. The encroachment of cheaper mass-produced and foreign products has put small cheese-makers on a similar quest to open or expand foreign markets.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The cheese store at The Cheese Board.</td></tr>
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Necessity may have driven French cheese and sake together, but as sommelier Keita Akaboshi first showed me, sake and cheese can make a beautiful combination. Katayama, our teacher for the night, explained that one reason is that the high umami content of sake matches well with the umami in cultured cheeses. Japanese researchers have discovered 700 to 1,200 different flavor compounds in sake, compared to approximately 600 in wine, and around 400 in whiskey and other spirits.<br />
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She also taught us how to read a sake label. Most premium sakes will include what's known as <i>Nihonshu-do</i>, or a sake meter value, which tells you the sweetness or dryness level; the higher the number the dryer the sake. The first of three <a href="http://www.hakkaisan.com/" target="_blank">Hakkaisan Brewery</a> sakes we tried was a sparkling <i>nigori </i>(unfiltered) sake, with a sake meter reading of -25, which is quite sweet. Acidity levels are also given, in this case a 1.7, higher than average to mask or balance its sweetness. Amino acid levels are also noted, with higher number indicating a richer-tasting sake and a lower number a lighter sake.<br />
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The sparkling sake was paired with a triple creme brie Brillat Savarin, the idea being that its high acidity would cut through the fat.<br />
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Next, a tokubetsu junmai, a smooth, much less sweet bottle, was paired with an 18-month-old Mimolette, the hard, nutty, orange cheese that gets its color from annatto seeds. Our favorite pairing, though, involved a Bleu d'Auvergne and an ashed chevre from P. Jacquin and Son, both of which were paired with a very sweet <i>kijoshu </i>sake. The blue is classified as a PDO, or Protected Designation of Origin, meaning it can only be produced in the region of the Auvergne by specially designated cows who've been raised on equally specific grass.<br />
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The high acidity of the <i>kijoshu </i>(made by adding more sake instead of water to the mix to give it a more viscous quality) balanced its extreme sweetness (sake meter value of -30). On the cheeses, it had the effect of taking the edge off their pungency while pulling out their umami. As Celia, my companion in tasting said, "It was our 'aha moment.'"<br />
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To learn more about what I've learned about sake, take a look at <a href="http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/departments/liquid-assets/rise-rice/" target="_blank">this article</a>, on the rise of sake's popularity in New York City, and <a href="http://punchdrink.com/articles/the-yeast-hunters-revitalizing-japans-ancient-sake-tradition/" target="_blank">my most recent story</a>, on a Japanese sake yeast expert who is pinning his hopes for the industry on the discovery of new yeasts taken from native flowers.<br />
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<i>The French Cheese Board</i><br />
<i>26 West 39th Street</i><br />
<i>New York, NY 10018</i><br />
<i>(212) 302-3390</i><br />
<i>Web site: http://frenchcheeseboard.com/</i><br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-72429088780028634142015-02-06T11:54:00.001-05:002015-02-06T19:40:14.143-05:00Notes on Sake: New York, Tokyo, Hiroshima<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The bar at Saikai.<br />
Photo: Paul Wagtouicz</td></tr>
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An article I wrote on the <a href="http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/departments/liquid-assets/rise-rice/#.VNLNJWSuqK9.twitter" target="_blank">growing sake scene</a> in New York City appeared this week in the drinks issue of <i><a href="http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/" target="_blank">Edible Manhattan</a>, </i>which, confusingly enough, contains stuff about Brooklyn, too. In it, I describe how the rice beverage from Japan is enjoying an unprecedented surge in quality, refinement and experimentation.<br />
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I happen to be in Japan now, on a sake brewery tour of the Fukuoka region of Kyushu island, and will tell you more about that. Firtst, though, I'll mention a few sake-serving establishments in Manhattan that didn't make it into my last article. All of them are on the Lower East Side, which must mean I need to get down there more often. There's <a href="http://sakamai.com/" target="_blank">Sakamai</a>, on Ludlow Street, though the sake there is not the only star on the drinks menu; it's got serious competition from the dazzling cocktails of bartender Shingo Gokan. A few other places come via one of my sake brewery tourmates, Vancouver sake educator <a href="http://vancouversake.com/" target="_blank">Elise Gee</a>. She loves <a href="http://www.azasunyc.com/" target="_blank">Azasu</a> and its sister restaurant <a href="http://www.yopparainyc.com/" target="_blank">Yopparai</a> (which means "drunk" or "drunkard" in Japanese), so I'll be checking those out soon.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saikai chefs Xiao Lin, left, and Wing Chen, right.<br />
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In the West Village, at<a href="http://www.saikainyc.com/" target="_blank"> Saikai Dining Bar</a>, Masa alumni Wing Cheng and Xiao Lin offer their elevated version of pub or izakaya-style cuisine. Saikai's beverage list, the work of general manager Paul Lee (also formerly of Masa), is similarly impressive. Since chefs Cheng and Lin change up their menu often, Lee ends up rotating his beverage selection frequently.<br />
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This means that the sakes on offer at Saikai exceed the 25-label published list. You might want to inquire about several premium junmai daiginjos: the aged sake Yume wa Masayume, the gently fruity Miyosakae Tenmi, and the elegant Niigata Prefecture sakes Kubota Senshin and Kikusui Kuramitsu. Come spring, says Lee, Dashichi brewery's Houreki, a limited production kimoto style junmai from Fukushima that's richer and earthier than daiginjo sakes, will return to the list. For those who look for bottles bestowed with awards, this is the only kimoto-style junmai to have won gold in the Japanese Brewing Society's national competition.<br />
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For Valentine's Day, Sakai will be offering a special six-course, $80 menu, $120 with sake pairings. While the menu may change slightly since the chefs never stop tweaking it, they are sure that the theme of the dinner will be <a href="http://oceana.org/" target="_blank">the ocean's bounty</a>. You can expect Kumamoto oysters (which, I was told as we drove through Kumamoto Prefecture today, came from there ages ago but now has no connection to the region), a seafood sashimi selection, a seasonal, truffle-enhanced Japanese grilled fish, live king crab legs with yuzu whipped cream, and a lobster pasta with saffron sauce.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The charming and adorable Marie Chiba<br />
at Nihonshu Moto, Tokyo</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At Koishi Sake Bar in Hiroshima,<br />
Imada Shuzo's Fukucho junmai ginjo.</td></tr>
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I have to mention two great sake bars I've visited on this trip, <a href="http://recipes.eat-japan.com/features/2011/tokyotrendsake" target="_blank">Nihonshu Stand Moto</a> in Tokyo, which was recommended to me by Rick Smith of the East Village sake shop <a href="http://www.sakayanyc.com/" target="_blank">Sakaya</a>, and <a href="http://koishi-sakebar.com/" target="_blank">Koishi (Pebble) Sake Bar</a> in Hiroshima, the sake maker Miho Imada of local brewery <a href="http://www.esake.com/Brewers/popups/imadapop/imadapop.html" target="_blank">Imada Shuzo</a> likes. The first is a tiny yet polished bar that is standing room only, and the second a larger two-story establishment with a cozy bar on the lower level. Both are real and pressing reasons to want to return to Japan.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-88725318216286612462014-12-29T13:29:00.000-05:002014-12-29T13:39:36.273-05:00Yana Gilbuena's SALO Series: Bringing Pinoy Cuisine to all 50 States<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yana setting the table for her Minneapolis pop-up.</td></tr>
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Among Asian cuisines, Filipinos think of their food as the overlooked stepchild of the family, getting no respect and looking in from the outside as the popular siblings hog the limelight and field prom invites. Given its underdog status, the act of taking a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SALOseries" target="_blank">moveable Filipino feast</a> on the road to all 50 United States--the mission of Pinay pioneer <a href="https://twitter.com/saloseries" target="_blank">Yana Gilbuena</a>--is an act of patriotism, daring and possibly craziness.</div>
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As a people, Filipinos are passionate about and justly proud of the foods of their homeland: every one I've met has regaled me with stories of grandmas, aunties, mothers and fathers who live to cook and eat, preferably surrounded by hordes of relatives and often packed into small spaces. </div>
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"Oh man, food culture in my family," says Gilbuena, a Brooklyn-based chef who grew up in Iloilo Province and arrived in America in 2004 at age 20. "Every day, every hour revolved around food. We'd have breakfast at six, merienda (the light repast that fills the yawning gap between regular meals) at nine, lunch at noon, then siesta from one to three, wake up just in time for merienda, and then dinner at six, no excuses." Dinner came after angelus, the devotions and Hail Marys that, for Yana, meant it was almost time to eat again.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Des Moines, Iowa, meet real Filipino cuisine.</td></tr>
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With such an upbringing, it's not surprising that Yana eventually found her way back to food and cooking, though only after working as a behavioral therapist, antique hardware specialist, and furniture maker and marketer. </div>
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In 2011, she quit her job, loaded all her belongings in a van and drove across country to New York. Landing in Greenpoint, she found a day job, and on her off hours pursued her hobby of cooking tapas for friends. The Pinoy restaurant <a href="http://www.maharlikany.com/" target="_blank">Maharlika</a> had just opened, showing Filipinos that their beloved food could hold its own in the East Village; Brooklyn's ground-breaking <a href="http://www.purpleyamnyc.com/" target="_blank">Purple Yam</a> was another beacon of Filipino food. Yet despite these options, Yana realized that if she had a late-night hankering for Filipino in her neighborhood there was nowhere to turn. She wanted to see even more of it available. </div>
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Living in a borough crawling with food artisans and entrepreneurs, a pop-up seemed like the natural next step. Yana wanted to incorporate the emerging farm-to-table movement into her pop-up while injecting her own culture into the mix. She did extensive research on the varied regional cuisines of her homeland: Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao, and began throwing parties and pop-ups. Through the bartering site <a href="https://ourgoods.org/" target="_blank">Our Goods</a>, she found a guy with a loft space seeking someone to design a table for it. She contacted him, offering her furniture design expertise in exchange for his loft for her first pop-up. Both had been members of the now-defunct 3rd Ward art collective in East Williamsburg. "We ended up making the table together," Yana says, then used it for a pop-up dinner for 45. </div>
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In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan hit the region of the Philippines where she had grown up. In response Yana hatched a plan for a Greenpoint fundraising dinner, raising $1,200 for typhoon victim relief funds. To keep the momentum going, she conceived of doing pop-ups in all fifty states. She had met Ayesha Vera-Yu, the founder of the relief organization <a href="http://www.ruralkids.org/" target="_blank">ARK</a> (Advancing Rural Kids) and bonded with her over the fact that Vera-Yu's home province, Capiz, and Iloilo were both hit hard by Haiyan.<br />
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The two formed a partnership, and the SALO 50-states series of pop-ups was born. A portion of the proceeds of each dinner will to go ARK to help build a school in the Visayas devastated by Haiyan. So far Yana has held 41 dinners, including a spread for 80 at Christ Church on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., a whole pig feast in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and enthusiastic support from local farmers and producers in Des Moines, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska. During<br />
Christmas week, Yana could be found cooking at a private residence in Atlanta and a hunting resort in Alabama.<br />
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She plans to wrap up the series in Hawaii in April, though she's not sure exactly where on the islands her grand finale will take place. After it's all over, she says she'll return to the Philippines to see the school she's helped build, tour islands she's never visited before, and do more culinary research. Next up: SALO Europe, an ambitious 50 countries in 50 weeks. </div>
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Oh, and if you happen to be in New Orleans this New Year's week, Yana welcomes you to local Philippine cuisine hotspot <a href="http://www.milkfishnola.com/" target="_blank">Milkfish</a>, where her <a href="https://eatfeastly.com/meals/d/19174328/?rf=fwebcmktshrecopy" target="_blank">next pop-up</a> is slated to be held on January 4. Good luck, Yana!</div>
Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-85725645529892151942014-11-15T12:28:00.000-05:002014-11-17T12:00:37.682-05:00Juri Dreams of Bringing Japanese Deliciousness to America<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When you travel in Japan, one of the things you notice is how much extraordinary food there is, and how so much of it never makes it across the Pacific to our market shelves.<br />
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I realized this anew while researching <a href="http://www.ediblemanhattan.com/departments/place-based-taste/delicacies-by-the-sea/" target="_blank">this article</a> about the wonderful products of Saga City, Japan. Yuzu kosho, a beautifully aromatic form of preserved citron chili pepper, is one of Japan's most distinctive condiments, and I tasted the best I'd ever sampled in Saga. There were fantastic sesame seeds, oils and biscuits, delicious green tea, nori, and <i>kasuzuke:</i> clams, squid and <i>udo (</i>a root cousin of ginseng) that had been marinated and pickled in a sweet, pungent and addictive paste made of sake lees.<br />
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Although the makers of these products have traveled to New York several times to showcase their goods at food shows, none have yet to appear in stores here, or are even available online to international customers. The versions of them that do exist tend to be wan substitutes made by large food corporations.<br />
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This is where an intrepid young woman named Juri Kumagai comes in. She's working toward her masters in the <a href="http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/nutrition/food/ma/" target="_blank">NYU Food Studies Program</a>, and one of her goals is to promote Japanese foods in America through market research and branding expertise.<br />
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One of the barriers to the import of Japanese artisanal foods, says Juri, is that often Japanese producers don't understand food trends in the U.S. and so are unable to adapt their products sufficiently. For example, the demand for gluten-free products in America has reached the point where, according to one survey, as many as a third of Americans are trying to avoid gluten. Juri points out that there are many Japanese products, such seaweed (<i>nori, hijiki,</i> <i>wakame</i> and <i>kombu) </i>or rice crackers, whose makers could brand them as gluten free to attract some of that large market.<br />
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Another example of the potential benefits of branding expertise for artisanal Japanese food producers came up recently when I spoke to sake sommelier <a href="http://www.forbestravelguide.com/tastemaker/chris-johnson" target="_blank">Chris Johnson</a>. He pointed out that sake is free of gluten, sulfites, histamines and congeners (byproducts of fermentation that can cause hangovers). For certain customers, many who might otherwise have no interest in sake, knowing this is what will make them try sake.<br />
<br />
Juri's interest in promoting Japanese foods began when she became aware of the power of Japanese food to serve as a cultural bridge. As exchange student at the University of British Columbia she discovered that all her friends loved Japanese food. She became the go-to person for supplying sushi rolls for parties. Back at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, she wrote her graduate thesis on cultural interactivity and the sushi boom. She returned to the States and took a job at the Japanese consulate handling scheduling for visiting ministers and Diet members. Here, she saw Americans' interest in the foods of Japan expand to include expensive ramen (an oxymoron in Japan) soba and even vegetarian <i>kaiseki </i>cuisine.<br />
<br />
As an aside, while she loves that ramen has become another cultural bridge between the two countries, Juri shares her compatriots' surprise that Americans will happily fork over $15 plus tax and tip for a bowl of would typically cost 700 to 800 yen ($6-7) in Japan.<br />
<br />
For an NYU course on food and culture, Juri wrote a paper on the Japanese school lunch program, and how it is an important tool in teaching young children Japanese values and social skills, from group harmony and loyalty to how to serve food to others. Kids learn about table manners and expressions of gratitude, and traditional seasonal foods are incorporated both into school lunch menus and class lessons.<br />
<br />
Today, fewer and fewer Japanese school children are learning about such traditions at home, Juri says, and in fact "school may be the only place they learn about it." Parents are busy working, and perhaps not interested in the ways of older generations. The tradition of multigenerational extended families is also breaking down, so there are fewer families in which grandparents might pass cultural traditions down to the children of the family.<br />
<br />
This is true of other traditional skills, too, such as brewing green tea or washing and cooking rice. Many young Japanese children have never even seen a teapot in the home, since canned and bottled teas are sold everywhere, and so much more convenient.<br />
<br />
When I asked Juri if she was worried that, in order to cater to perceived American tastes, Japanese artisanal producers might end up turning their products from superior to average or mediocre goods, she responded, "I think Japanese producers need to make their products somewhat palatable for the U.S. market if they want to make a profit. But I do not think they have to make their products fully 'Americanized'" in order to be successful here.<br />
<br />
This reminded me of a conversation I had with chef <a href="http://www.patinagroup.com/restaurant.php?restaurants_id=31" target="_blank">Yuhi Fujinaga </a>about his former restaurant on Sixth Avenue, Bar Basque. When he made his plancha-grilled Chatham cod with pil pil the way he loved having it in Spain, his Spanish customer were thrilled, but his American guests less so. You can guess which version won out.<br />
<br />
Though I hate the idea of any great dish having to be watered down to suit the masses, if much wiser and more practical marketing minds than mine (that's you Juri!) can help small Japanese producers find a market here, I'm all for it. Many of them see expansion overseas as a dire imperative, and we need to do what we can to help.<br />
<br />
I hope that Juri is successful in her endeavors and that one day we will see more of the thrilling variety of regional, artisanal and unusual food products of Japan in our favorite markets in New York and across America.<br />
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-79093714156818642262014-10-17T15:32:00.001-04:002014-10-31T19:00:34.832-04:00San Francisco Asian American Soul Food: Hog & Rocks, Kin Khao<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chef Robin Song's housemade Korean pickles<br />
at Hog and Rocks</td></tr>
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Living in New York City, we’re pretty spoiled when it comes
to food. But after a long weekend in San Francisco, it’s clear the hilly city
by the bay gives even Brooklyn a run for its money in any DIY/small
batch/pop-up/locally-sourced throw down.
Add the unfair advantage of year-round great produce, and all of New
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change for San Francisco's annoying parking meters (only about a quarter of them
accept credit cards) and it turns out it’s <a href="http://www.tastingtable.com/entry_detail/sf/7969/Gourmet_Mores_French_imports.html" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Gourmet and More</a>, home to a pop –up fresh pasta shop spread out in
the back patio room. Just the fact that there is a “back patio room” is enough
to make me want to live in SF. </div>
</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXFvsou11wyZ_2AeasBHBFccky1cXc7SVtAFupz5sZ7bBItOldDBKB3GawAvIt_g0RZQ93Wq0zP193F2YuWsAninkCSVi8Qqpg9M8J2EBlkzJnEvEUJPyVhCseUkZL7yrQoaWaU7R9mcEH/s1600/IMG_3712.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXFvsou11wyZ_2AeasBHBFccky1cXc7SVtAFupz5sZ7bBItOldDBKB3GawAvIt_g0RZQ93Wq0zP193F2YuWsAninkCSVi8Qqpg9M8J2EBlkzJnEvEUJPyVhCseUkZL7yrQoaWaU7R9mcEH/s1600/IMG_3712.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A small portion of the cheese cave at Gourmet and More,<br />
in the Hayes Valley neighborhood.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="color: #0000ee; font-family: Cambria;"><u><br /></u></span><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwKSC_p9YX4FeIrauF9kJomEufcCB127qtVIjgqjXoQfZhytgyuCuePhWWEz7oM2qxnFFCQO76Cd6RsiHrANQ8dEHa-LXyitTKAvyOkz4zZHDLqhuYzCSMsiATwAfpNZd9DW_2b8k-axv7/s1600/IMG_3715.jpg" height="400" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="300" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mattarello's <i>uova da raviolo: </i>if only there had been<br />
a pot of boiling water in the back patio!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
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Then the Mattarello pasta people, John Pauley and Anna Li, who learned how to make <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/0/20447024">San Domenico-style</a> <i>uova da raviolo </i>from a Bologna master, tell you you have to walk across the street to taste one of the best cakes in the city, <a href="http://20thcenturycafe.com/">20th Century Cafe</a><span style="background-color: white;">’s Russian honey
cake. Hypnotized, we did just that. At that point we felt like we had to get
off the street fast or the hand-crafted food would never stop flying at us. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Cambria;"> </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6L51ubtaWqyIMOx02djlSGFdeofO8QNd7HliScYgQV-tR1d4oozNAMGPvWcCUY3HPsLcgQf6EIce-9hDiAWFFx23nLx9dE67Kq__jojbCSZZ41bGdtoLp10xfDS42EyIobxoqRHuqu-HH/s1600/IMG_3718.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6L51ubtaWqyIMOx02djlSGFdeofO8QNd7HliScYgQV-tR1d4oozNAMGPvWcCUY3HPsLcgQf6EIce-9hDiAWFFx23nLx9dE67Kq__jojbCSZZ41bGdtoLp10xfDS42EyIobxoqRHuqu-HH/s1600/IMG_3718.jpg" height="400" width="332" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">20th Century Cafe baker-chef-proprietor<br />
Michelle Polzine's Russian honey cake.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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So we had much stand-out food and drink of all varieties,
but I’ll fill you I on just two more places, since they fall into that most
beloved (by me) of categories, Asian American soul food. Since writing <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/stinky-spicy-and-delicious-the-radical-reinvention-of-asian-american-food/259864/#disqus_thread">this
story</a> about that stinky, spicy and delicious category I’ve seen the trend get bigger and more ubiquitous. </div>
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Technically, though, I don’t think that one of the two
places, Pim Techamuanvivit’s <a href="http://kinkhao.com/">Kin Khao</a>, really
qualifies, since the proprietress of this self-described “Thai eatery” was born
and raised in Bangkok, and her food shows no signs of Americanization. But after
tasting the restaurant’s burnt eggplant salad with soy lime dressing, toasted
coconut, shallots, mint and cilantro; its elegant green curry with rabbit loin
saddle and meatballs, and a gutsy pad kee mao with ground pork, bird’s eye
chili, bell peppers and holy basil, we begged Pim to bring her show to
New York. I’m saying it again, Pim. Please. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1p9OqqIbovwWLY7nYDYTcDc5Rqal9cz1d67nD2Vi0ZXqOz6tnH1BfmHTT_6d3hyphenhyphen1ditpGVFJSFZdjW8V3bSvqkPplnxHEQBkTM56OxVH_SFGVgQhtOma7vLWZyfhhWxyNRVZHkiq0Itxb/s1600/IMG_3724.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1p9OqqIbovwWLY7nYDYTcDc5Rqal9cz1d67nD2Vi0ZXqOz6tnH1BfmHTT_6d3hyphenhyphen1ditpGVFJSFZdjW8V3bSvqkPplnxHEQBkTM56OxVH_SFGVgQhtOma7vLWZyfhhWxyNRVZHkiq0Itxb/s1600/IMG_3724.JPG" height="400" width="356" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looks like confetti but it's really delicious sashimi.</td></tr>
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The next night there was no doubt we were in AA soul food
territory at chef <a href="http://www.chefsfeed.com/cities/3-san-francisco/chefs/904-chef-robin-song">Robin
Song</a>’s <a href="http://www.hogandrocks.com/">Hog and Rocks</a> in the
Mission District. You might think the place is a run-of-the-mill, albeit
handsome, sports bar until you taste the grub. Excited Giants fans watched
their team shut out St. Louis for the first game of the National League’s
championship series, so the mood was festive to begin with. We relied on Song’s
unerring aim for the spicy-sour-sweet pleasure receptor zone to put us right there
alongside the stoked Giants fans, but in a baseball-free way. The first clue
that we weren’t in the <a href="http://www.doubleplaysf.com/">Double Play Bar
and Grill</a> came when a dish of freshly caught Channel Islands yellowtail
sashimi showed up accompanied by roasted purple yams and dressed with, among
other things, sudachi, the mouth-puckering citrus fruit that originated in Tokushima
Prefecture, Japan.<br />
<br />
Song sprinkles his food with a hiker’s backpack full of
interesting fruits, vegetables, herbs, and says his plates are designed to
complement bartender and Brooklyn native <a href="http://www.7x7.com/eat-drink/we-wanna-be-friends-hog-rocks-bartender-michael-lazar">Michael
Lazar</a>’s exciting cocktail list. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZqlr4ibMETiQ5Zq-AAmlUxh5OuR8v7lWL4c8GTFjUe6IGklXX646q-E51CI07rCSK9JLIGYCyxfh9t9h1OrO64n4wql3CYuqPJIKxCBbYKVg6CjCtZMkcu8vdfRz_xDsnJLOCB_c1UV8r/s1600/DSC03859.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZqlr4ibMETiQ5Zq-AAmlUxh5OuR8v7lWL4c8GTFjUe6IGklXX646q-E51CI07rCSK9JLIGYCyxfh9t9h1OrO64n4wql3CYuqPJIKxCBbYKVg6CjCtZMkcu8vdfRz_xDsnJLOCB_c1UV8r/s1600/DSC03859.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of my favorite dishes at Hog and Rocks:<br />
hay smoked beets with buttermilk avocado<br />
dressing, on one of Song's hand-thrown plates.</td></tr>
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The yellowtail, for example was also dressed with yuzu,
jalapeno, radish and wild coastal agretti, a bitter/salty accent that served as
a bridge connecting the dish with a super-herbacous Coastal Collins. The
ultimate locavore cocktail, the Collins is made with Alameda-based <a href="http://www.stgeorgespirits.com/spirit/terroir-gin/">St. George Terroir
Gin</a> (distilled with an assortment of botanicals gathered from nearby Mt.
Tamalpais), lemon, pickled huckleberries and bay laurel. Song does spicy well,
too: his salt and pepper wings, which pack a delightfully punishing lime and
pepper-laced wallop, found their cocktail counterpart in Lazar’s version of
Carter Beats the Devil, the potent mescal, reposado tequila, lime, agave and
chili tincture mixture. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQgdn1wNxusHFSt8BZprLeLJjz_WW2cMcANFplo2ntVL46NBdBaxC0cMdc9f0jNCqRIwt8Qw7CMTzEHZ7QYYwVmTn3ERKLJ6x45ie8bvqCIyJEskF1BbaJNrujLgkMHFgNkBBYry15txKD/s1600/Blood+Sausage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQgdn1wNxusHFSt8BZprLeLJjz_WW2cMcANFplo2ntVL46NBdBaxC0cMdc9f0jNCqRIwt8Qw7CMTzEHZ7QYYwVmTn3ERKLJ6x45ie8bvqCIyJEskF1BbaJNrujLgkMHFgNkBBYry15txKD/s1600/Blood+Sausage.jpg" height="268" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Highly addictive: Chef Robin Song's spicy fried rice cakes<br /> and Korean blood sausage. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Besides the menu’s “hogs” (country pork pate, jamon serrano,
prosciutto and the tater tots-with-attitude that Song calls “trotter tots”) and
“rocks” (oysters including Kusshi from British Columbia and Church Points from
Washington), the chef has been experimenting with a weekly Korean pop-up menu that
starts after hours on Thursdays. We sampled an array of pickles that he makes
for the pop-up, including napa cabbage, beets, anchovies and turnips, and a
delicious plate of spicy fried rice cakes, blood sausage and fermented chili
topped with a slow-cooked egg. The glutinous rice for the cakes is made with
dashi to add extra depth, and the spicy, sweet, sour, sticky and addictive dish
possessed all the attributes of Asian American stoner food.</div>
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A cook who found his path in life after trial runs as a successful
drug dealer (until, he says, “I grew a conscience”) and apprentice sound
engineer, Song says it was a stint with chef Daniel Patterson’s <a href="http://plumbaroakland.com/">Plum Bar + Restaurant</a> in Oakland that
made him realize he wanted to find a truer expression of himself in food. He also gave up bicycle racing and now throws clay on a pottery wheel instead. <span style="color: black;">Plans are afoot to open a new, two-part
Korean establishment: one portion called Junju, an extension of his pop-up
serving fast, casual Korean pub fare, and a smaller counter serving Song’s take
on Korean barbecue in the form of a tasting menu. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">My one regret: not making it to Thai American chef <a href="http://sf.eater.com/tags/james-syhabout">James Syhabout's</a> Oakland side of the bay, where his mini-empire of restaurants has doubled in size since my last visit. Next time!</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-24315452291234428952014-09-19T15:17:00.001-04:002014-09-19T15:17:11.299-04:00Sake's Turn to Sashay Down the Runway<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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If last week was fashion week, this week it was sake’s turn
to sashay down the figurative runway, at the annual <a href="http://www.joyofsake.com/">Joy of Sake</a> celebration held last night at Chelsea’s Altman Building. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis6l2CLC-v4ZJi69hCKElat-FfF9krBkFWqWCrijO6RsH_OjFhkPswehA0zw1oH5qNvW8H06nAWMpXwf6skT3mPOBSOv6-woCHKb8uNUh-fj4mhm-q5tsh0_1QQnfrKfDMDTUucpwOBI7I/s1600/DSC03694.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis6l2CLC-v4ZJi69hCKElat-FfF9krBkFWqWCrijO6RsH_OjFhkPswehA0zw1oH5qNvW8H06nAWMpXwf6skT3mPOBSOv6-woCHKb8uNUh-fj4mhm-q5tsh0_1QQnfrKfDMDTUucpwOBI7I/s1600/DSC03694.jpg" height="400" width="307" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shuji Abe, of Kokusai Sake Kai, left, and Yasuyuki Yoshida<br />
of Tedorigawa Masamune brewery welcome guests.</td></tr>
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About 600 guests ogled and tasted an impressive 370 sakes
from 159 breweries throughout Japan. The event, now in its 11<sup>th</sup>
year, was inspired by the Honolulu-based <u><a href="https://www.facebook.com/kokusaisakekaihi">Kokusai Sake Kai</a></u>
(International Sake Group) which in 2001 launched an informal annual sake
appraisal to help promote Japanese sakes to the West. (Judges don’t rank the sakes, but offer gold stars to the ones they like best, and silver to the next highest rated sakes.) From there, it was a
natural step to take the sakes they had judged on the road. This year’s road
trip started in Hawaii in July and from New York will travel to Tokyo, giving
over 3,000 people the chance to taste the best sakes from Japan, some of them
not available outside their mother country.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMSnYj8bQ0FCTKVp5S3W6CZeZvDkzXAZYZeFliJplvBxACF0WOawSFVwN-JDJLaLSTL6ggXvvLHTkQfB1I8qNWaPWv6NCrqCYlYPm0I56XOUESSczt_zAqIEgSRG6bTDewVjMZX-ECWY76/s1600/DSC03701.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMSnYj8bQ0FCTKVp5S3W6CZeZvDkzXAZYZeFliJplvBxACF0WOawSFVwN-JDJLaLSTL6ggXvvLHTkQfB1I8qNWaPWv6NCrqCYlYPm0I56XOUESSczt_zAqIEgSRG6bTDewVjMZX-ECWY76/s1600/DSC03701.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Haneya Daiginjo</td></tr>
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The sakes set out at the Joy of Sake included aromatic,
gold-starred <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">daiginjo</i>s such as the
Kariho Kaei from Akita Seishu Brewery, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the Haneya Daiginjo from Toyama’s Fumigiku
brewery <o:p></o:p></div>
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As the doors opened to guests, Chris Johnson, sake
consultant and self-styled “sake ninja” who created the sake list at branches of the recently opened <a href="http://cherrynyc.com/">Cherry</a> in Chelsea and Williamsburg, gave a few words
of advice. Noting that many would want to crowed the tables bearing the most expensive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">daiginjo </i>bottles, ranked A and B
according to the percentage of the rice kernel that remains after polishing
(the more polished the higher the grade), he suggested that the tables bearing
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ginjo</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>junmai</u></i><u> </u>styles should be mined for their many gems as
well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">As Chris Pearce, the organizer of The Joy of Sake, noted, "Many
newcomers to sake go for the <i>daiginjos</i> and <i>ginjos</i> first because of their fruity
aroma." They can understand them as they would wine, while the <i>junmais</i>,
which Pearce said are often more about texture and crispness, can be
harder to relate to. "Over time though," he added, "many people
gravitate to<i> junmai</i> labels."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0qcIuzGijP52ASoYNzTT38xNNQLr7sh_Ro83eoH_IeUBMICYmgvboAB3LTAzT4Ba0V5Y0sqw9eXF7PzD6ML4pcUFo-9bP8tyNhZe33eKTS8Z-Ds-i4y0MDe-LYJkShsnaQDGXXDS7bm99/s1600/DSC03699.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0qcIuzGijP52ASoYNzTT38xNNQLr7sh_Ro83eoH_IeUBMICYmgvboAB3LTAzT4Ba0V5Y0sqw9eXF7PzD6ML4pcUFo-9bP8tyNhZe33eKTS8Z-Ds-i4y0MDe-LYJkShsnaQDGXXDS7bm99/s1600/DSC03699.jpg" height="400" width="305" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not all premium sake needs to be served cold:<br />
this Toyo no Aki Junmai dry sake benefits<br />
from a little warming up.</td></tr>
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Pearce and many of the sake makers were on hand for another
blow-out sake event, held the night before at chef-owner Marco Moreira’s Union
Square-area restaurant <a href="http://tocquevillerestaurant.com/">Toqueville</a>. There, guests dined on a ten-course menu
with sake pairings including a pristinely fresh series of nigiri sushi by chef
Masato Shimizu. The most unusual pairing was a rich aged sake from 1997, <i>Kamoizumi “Sachi,” </i>known as a <i>koshu </i>or “old sake.”</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://onefivehospitality.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sakedinner01.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://onefivehospitality.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sakedinner01.jpeg" height="400" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tasting notes at the Toqueville sake dinner.<br />
(Photo courtesy of One Five Hospitality)</td></tr>
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Food featured in a fine way at the Joy of Sake event as
well. Since sake is best tasted along with some delicious bites, cooks from 14
New York City restaurants were on hand to supply them <a href="http://www.enjb.com/">En Japanese Brasserie</a>
provided the perfect foil to the supremely balanced sakes with a delicious
Italian black truffle <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chawanmushi </i>(steamed
egg custard), while <a href="http://sunnoodle.com/ramenlab/">Sun Noodle Ramen Lab</a> went for a more assertive izakaya-style
chilled tantan ramen with spicy pork and sesame sauce, ideal
with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">junmai </i>sakes. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">En Japanese Brasserie's </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">black truffle chawanmushi.</span></td></tr>
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Wylie Dufresne, chef of wd~50, put the finishing touches on his sunflower miso, shiitake, daikon and <i>tonbur</i>i
tasting, reliably bringing the most exotic ingredient to the party. The <i>tonburi, </i><i> </i>also known as firebush or common red sage, has seeds that look and
crunch like caviar but taste a little like artichoke. A big fan of sake, Dufresne said, “it goes
well with food at both restaurants (wd~50 and Alder) because they’re
brighter and not super-heavy.” Sakes, in fact, he added, are a lot like his own
food: “clean, well-balanced and with a
good use of acidity.”</div>
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671843323043154501.post-29836423017623946292014-08-25T16:04:00.000-04:002014-08-25T19:33:30.883-04:00Choice products from Spain's Growing Organic Movement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCzinSpf6q8u13v6nzxCKmTLeVAZhFPu_xP951Dn1g0BMjk4uk0L8QP4-Z_Jt7PXMFTgfwPqDG3npH9S-ixslJZZiXZZeIigQoXTSHUrXzzG9jtOMKgTpH9s3c7R5YMq8Kg0oMShyhyphenhyphenVCZ/s1600/DSC03642.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCzinSpf6q8u13v6nzxCKmTLeVAZhFPu_xP951Dn1g0BMjk4uk0L8QP4-Z_Jt7PXMFTgfwPqDG3npH9S-ixslJZZiXZZeIigQoXTSHUrXzzG9jtOMKgTpH9s3c7R5YMq8Kg0oMShyhyphenhyphenVCZ/s1600/DSC03642.JPG" height="277" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The best kinds of trips are those that continue to yield pleasures and surprises long after they are over. Our March break trip to Spain turned out to be exactly that type. Last week, five months after our return, a connection made in Spain boomeranged back into my life in a happy way.<br />
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The story centers on chocolate, a delicious dark organic chocolate made with olive oil by a boutique company in Madrid, <a href="http://www.chocolateorganiko.es/index.php/english.html">Chocolate Organiko</a>. I came upon it at a small shop in the enchanting Barrio de las Lettras neighborhood of Madrid. It was meant as a gift but you know how it goes--I ended up devouring it before I could bestow in on another, and fell in love.<br />
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Chocolate Oganiko started in 2006 when husband and wife Carlos Ortiz and Eugenia Pozo set up a small chocolate workshop<span lang="EN-US"></span>. The venture may have been an expression of Carlos's genes, or at least of the family's underwear: his grandfather bought and sold products from the Spanish colonies, roasting his own new world coffee beans and transforming his cocoa beans into chocolate. His grandmother, meanwhile, made underwear for her children out of the soft sacks used for cane sugar, cocoa, and coffee beans.<br />
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Ortiz and Pozo decided their product would be completely organic, sourced Trinitario cocoa beans from small growers in the Dominican Republic and Trinidad, and set to work. When I tried to find out if I could buy the brand in the U.S., I found one of the company's European distributors, Inés Arteaga. While her Barcelona-based company, <a href="http://organicgourmetbcn.com/es/">Organic Gourmet</a>, will ship to the U.S. only for special requests made by snail mail, she informed me that the online shop <a href="http://www.tienda.com/food/products/ct-74-3.html?site=1">La Tienda </a>does handle online U.S. orders. (I've since found an even more complete selection of the Organiko line at <a href="http://chefshop.com/ChocoLate-Organiko-C569.aspx">ChefShop.com.</a>) Inés and I struck up a friendly correspondence, and I gave her some advice on jazz clubs in New York for a trip she was planning with her family.<br />
<br />
This week, I met the Arteaga family at the Metropolitan Museum: Inés, husband Manel (Manuel in Catalan), daughter Clara and son Pablo. Inés's passion for organic products stems from her upbringing in Navarra, in northwest Spain. Her father tended to a small organic farm, but instead of following her love for the land, Inés at first pursued careers as a pharmacist then winemaker. It was after those experiences that she decided she wanted to return to the ideal of organic farming, but on the retail end. Her Organic Gourmet mail-order business, launched in 2012, is dedicated to promoting and selling the finest organic products of Spain.<br />
<br />
As in the U.S., many conventional farmers in Spain are gradually going organic. But while the rich agricultural soil of Spain and the know-how of its farmers has made it the number one producer of organic vegetables in Europe and the fifth in the world, almost all of the country's organic bounty is exported. It's a little like what writer <a href="http://paulgreenberg.org/">Paul Greenberg</a> has been telling us America does with its high-quality wild fish catch.<br />
<br />
In Spain, the growth and export of its best organic produce is driven by two factors: outside consumer demand from wealthier EU countries, and a Spanish economy that has been in crisis for the last six years. Unemployment hovers at 26%, and if we think millenials have it bad in America, the unemployment rate is 50% for the 6 million Spanish youths under 24. Buying organic is not in the average person's budget in a country where everyone from PhD holders to sex workers have had to leave the country to find work. While we were in Spain, protests erupted in Madrid, and everywhere we saw the graffitied slogan "22M Marcha a Madrid" raising awareness before a March 22 "March of Dignity" to protest austerity measures, evictions, unemployment and widespread poverty.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-tR3LDK3/0/L/i-tR3LDK3-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-tR3LDK3/0/L/i-tR3LDK3-L.jpg" height="251" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
So you can see why Inés's business, which is supporting small producers who are trying to help their country go green, might have had a rocky start. In any case, her excellent products are carefully selected for quality and taste, from jamón ibérico, honeys, olive oils and vinegar to <a href="http://organicgourmetbcn.com/es/algas-comestibles-ecologicas">seaweed chimichurri salsas</a>, these delicious <a href="http://organicgourmetbcn.com/es/panes-y-reposteria?p=2">sweet and savory biscuits</a> from Paul and Pippa, and of course Chocolate Organiko. If you are living anywhere in the EU, check out the website and do your part to invigorate Spain's economy!</div>
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Nancy Matsumothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17858688364860943849noreply@blogger.com0