The World Of Cooking

[pargoletta]

I'm having a fun experiment tonight. I'm cooking Japanese food, for the first time ever! I've chosen two recipes from the Ethnomusicologist's Cookbook, from the Tokyo chapter. I'm making Tofu To Kinoko No Takikomi Gohan, which is rice cooked with tofu and mushrooms, and Sakana No Foiru Yaki, which is fish steamed in foil with miso and vegetables

Comments

[valmora]

- if at some point you manage to find some fried tofu (in a store, eg), get it; it's one of my favorite things. Fried tofu with chopped scallions on top is something I would eat every day if I could. No joke.

- if I had known in advance you were making these things I would have dropped by the Chinese market 10 minutes away from me and picked up some of the mushrooms to give you tomorrow! Enoki are kind of cute.

LET ME KNOW HOW THE FOOD TASTES.

*schemes to acquire own copy of Ethnomusicologist's Cookbook*

[pargoletta]

One major cooking booboo aside (I forgot I was supposed to stir-fry the mushrooms with the tofu before adding the whole shebang to the rice, and I cooked the shrooms and the rice together), it ended up pretty tasty. Making both recipes was a major league pain in the ass -- I don't think I'll do them both at the same time again -- but I liked the results on both dishes, and they did go well together.

I'm definitely going to have to do the rice again, if only because I've got half a packet of Hot and Spicy Smoked Tofu to use up. But not for a while. There's a lot of rice left over.

In other news: The Ethnomusicologists' Cookbook. A book with an extremely specific target audience. Not just people who like to cook, but people who like to cook and who also know what ethnomusicology is. My dad was so amused at the narrowness of this audience, and the fact that he knew someone who fell right into that narrow range, that he ran out and bought it for me as soon as he read about it in the New York Revew Of BooksI guess I didn't mention

[pony_rocks]

Oooh, that's a good recipe you chose, it is! :D

I love cooking - as you may remember - and I am often cooking Japanese, as this cuisine has so much more to offer than just sushi. Buta kakuni, for example, or various soups (butajiru) and treats like yakitori etc.

[pargoletta]

I'd say (and I suspect that valmora would agree) that it was not half bad for a first attempt. The fish is definitely a keeper. Excellent, would cook again. I may fiddle with the proportions of rice and dashi for the tofu rice next time, and try and remember to stir-fry the shrooms before they go into the rice. The rice especially turns out to make really tasty leftovers, which is always a plus in my (cook)book.

[impulsereader]

That cookbook is fascinating - a narrow audience, indeed.

I've had a go at relatively easy Japanese dishes a few times with fairly good results. Expanding my skills in this area is something that I always mean to take more seriously. It's just so much easier to walk up the block to our favorite little place which has such good home-style Japanese.

I'm glad you ended up getting positive results!

[pargoletta]

I like to bring my copy to conferences and get the contributors to autograph their recipes. Sometimes, it's a nice way to get a conversation going.

I also like going to the two-and-a-half Japanese restaurants in Hyde Park (one of them is a Japanese-Italian restaurant), but it does get a tad bit expensive to go all the time, even with the student discount. This way, I get the fun of making something with the joy of being able to eat it relatively cheaply at home.

[impulsereader]

I can see that would be a very good conversation starter. If you've given out a recipe - book or no book - you like to hear how it's gone over.

Our place is quite affordable, thankfully, and I tend to get treated when we go out which I exploit quite shamelessly.

Japanese-Italian? What is on the menu there?

[pargoletta]

Behold! The menu at the Sit-Down. The only Japanese-Italian restaurant I've ever seen.