Autumn #16: Spaghetti Tacos?!?!? / 秋＃１６：アメリカ料理の波に乗る

Trendspotter The New York Times alerted the over-thirteen demographic to a new trend in October of this year: Spaghetti tacos. You may wonder about the wisdom of heeding both the Times and the whims of 'tweens. But it kind of sounds like fun. Right? Riiiight?
最近ニューヨークタイムズまで注目されたトレンドで、タコスにパスタ。子供のテレビ番組で冗談作られたス パゲッテイ入りタコスがアメリカの子たちに大人気！えええええっ？


The news reached me just as I was becoming fascinated with another child-geared food trend. After researching Kewpie mayonnaise for this experiment, I was haunted by Kewpie's advertisements for tarako pasta sauce. When it comes to advertising, I'm as impressionable as any child.
こ のニュースを読んだ時に、もう一つの子ども向き食トレンドに夢中だった。たらこパスタ！ 


It is probably a sign of my advancing age that I'm so fascinated by these childish whims. In any case, that is the outline of the backstory of what brought me to try my hand at tarako spaghetti tacos.
今晩のメニューの背景はこれで、チェル的なスパゲッテイ入りタコスを試してみよう！


Tarako is one of the many kinds of fish roe that greets the casual consumer at Japanese supermarkets. It is the roe of salted walleye pollack, to be specific (who named this fish?!?!??!). Once I was perusing my local market's roe selection, however, I was drawn instead to tobikko. Tobikko is the roe of flying fish, and it sure did look spry!
スーパーにいったら、たらこよりとびっこの方はおいしそうだった。それで、とびっこパスタタコス！

Lovely little bubbles of fishy saltiness.

おいしそうなとびっこ泡。

I set about making this cream sauce to pair with the tobikko, and drench my spaghetti in. I substituted hakusai for celery, sake for white wine, and shiso for dill, to make it a little more local.
とびっこに合わせるクリームソースを作り始まった。

A little less local is my undying devotion to avocados. I decided to crisp some up with batter usually used for making Japanese fried chicken. To the batter, I added some julienned shiso leaf.
アボカドから揚げも入れたらおいしーかなーと思って、しそと準備した。

These crisped up to look like this:

揚げたら：

The sauce started to simmer:

ソースは沸けば

And simmered:

沸くほど

And it was finally ready to be blended up and run through the sieve.

濃くておいしくなる！

In the meantime, pasta's boiling, and I'm rolling out fresh tortillas with a shochu bottle.

それで、タコスに使トルティーヤを作っている。

Rotating two pans and one pot of boiling water, watching that my toaster oven avocado don't burn... Childish as the inspiration may have been, this meal's preparation is certainly not for kids.
子ども向きの食べ物だが、パスタ、トルティーヤ、アボカド。。。今の台所に子どもは禁止！

Okay: Add tobikko to the cream. Sear some scallops, and get prepared to assemble the tacos.

クリームにといっこ。ホタテを焼いて、準備ができた。

 First: the tortilla.

まずはトルティーヤ。

Then, crispy avocado.

それで、アボカド唐揚げ。

Tobikko cream linguine.

With a garnish of sliced cucumber, topped with seared scallops...

キュウリ、ホタテ. . .

And, what the heck: more tobikko!

. . . ともっともっととびっこ！

And then, finally...

やっと、子どものように手でタコスをつかんで . . .

I let my inner child destroy the taco.

食う！

I read about it, but had to try it for myself. Happily, I report that my idiosyncratic and fishy version was a success.
成功！

Even without tortillas, the pasta with tobikko cream sauce stands up very well on its own.

トルティーヤがなっくても、とびっこクリームパスタでもおいしいね。

Ah, the joys of indulging in a little culinary innocence. The cream and carbs may shave years off of my life, but the taste sensations just added that much more wisdom to my tongue.

子どもに聞く必要あるね。ごちそうさま！

Autumn #15: Thanksgiving - Boiled, not Baked / 秋＃１５：アメリカの伝統、日本の材料

Thanksgiving! The gloriously secular celebration of eating! However suspicious its originating mythology may be, I have to admit that I can't suppress my enthusiasm for collective gluttony. And what else is Thanksgiving?
アメリカの感謝際！食いしん坊のとてもとても愛された感謝祭！

Last year, it was two ducks in place of a turkey. This year, lacking both turkeys and ovens, I decided that I'd take the opportunity to give thanks for the bounty of the shitamachi -- the "low city" -- in which I reside.
今年伝統的な七面鳥もオーベンもないチェルは下町の豊かさに感謝します！

Tokyo's shitamachi comprises the eastern neighborhoods of Ueno, Asakusa, Yanaka, and Tabata. It is here, according to Donald Richie, that "still retains what little is left of the feel of old Edo -- distinctly plebian, also fun-loving, less inhibited than those remains of areas where the military aristocracy, the shogunate, observed its rules of decorum." The most significant manifestation of this "fun-loving" shitamachi character is the street food. There are breaded and fried glories to be taken in hand, sweet bean paste of every imaginable configuration, and even -- if you are lucky -- the occasional "scotch egg": a hard-boiled egg ensconced in minced meat and fried. All this and more.
下町の魅力はいろいろですが、注目に値するのはその食い物。ミンチコロッケ、まんじゅうの勢ぞろい、たまにスコッチエグでも（揚げたったミンチに囲まれた卵！）。それに感謝します。

 

So I got a bone from a local butcher shop to start a mellow soup base for our hotpot Thanksgiving party of nine hungry people.

それで、近所の肉屋さんで買った豚の骨を鍋の汁に。

Broken open, of course, so the marrow can seep out.

骨髄が流れるために折った骨。

I blanched the bone, and put it in a pot to simmer with an apple and star anise.

骨をリンゴとスターアニスに煮た。

I let it go for eight hours or so, adding bits of vegetables along the way.

このままで８時間ぐらい。少しずつ野菜もいれた。

For example, I added some daikon -- a kind of radish, the name of which translates literally as "large root."

例えば、大根を。

This particular "big root" was about the size of my arm.

この大根は文字通り大きくて、腕の大きさぐらい。

The daikon is pretty benign as radishes go.

可愛いね。

So once the bones had simmered and simmered and simmered, I added a touch of soy sauce and sugar, and assembled the shitamachi bounty we'd use for our tableside hotpot thanksgiving feast.

骨が煮て煮て、その間下町の恵みを集まった。

Napa cabbage. Of dinosauric proportions.

白菜の爆弾.

Tentacles peeking out from a fishcake casing. This is getting very Jurassic.

ゲソにハロー。

To distract my arriving guests, I had prepared some crudites (And yes: I still like to pronounce them to rhyme with "Luddites." Croooo-deee-teh, la deee da).

お客さんがだんだん来るので少しだけ前菜も準備した。

Chili-miso and yuzukoshô dipping sauces... just to tide us over until...

野菜とチリみそソース、柚子こしょうマヨ。それで我慢できるかな。。。

Everybody in the pot!

ジャーン！

Alongside this hotpot, we also simmered a pot of this chicken broth, to which I had added ginger.

もう一つの鍋にこのチキンスープを使った。

 

Holy hotpot! Nothing secular about my feelings toward this food. Hotpot as a communal meal does have something of a primal urgency. We were stripped down to our natural state: just a tribe collecting around the fire, literally grunting into our food. Never mind that the fire was fueled by propane, or that our appetites were whetted not through vigorous cooperative hunting, but through the consumption of cans and cans of beer and malt liquor.

無宗教の感謝際だが、鍋に参った。

Plucking our dinner from the primordial ooze.

みんなが火に集まって、昔の人間のように。

First, a little from pork-bone pot.

まずは豚骨鍋から。。。

Then a little from chicken hotpot...

それでチキンも味見を。。。

And when the nine hungry pilgrims feared that they were at the end...

最後の最後の恐れがあっても。。。

 

Udon noodles descended into the broth like manna.

うどん。と。。。

For the pork-bone pot, rice and eggs soaked up the last of the broth real nice.

豚骨の鍋にご飯と卵を。

Just one last little detail really set this rite right...

この下町のごちそうさえあれは、他にいることないでしょうね。

Fried garlic shards. Happy thanksgiving!

一つだけが必要：揚げたニンニク。ごちそうさま！

Autumn #14: In the Soup / 秋＃１４：I love ゆ

Winter is creeping up on us here. The days are shorter, skin is drier, feets are colder, moods are heavier.
冬が私にこっそり忍び寄っているじゃん。日暮れがだんだん早くなって、肌がだんだんかさかさに、足下はだんだん冷えて、心がだんだん重ーくて。

Time for soup.

スープの季節だ。

I've been reluctant to attempt any ambitious broths here, since I can literally walk out the front door and eat a cheap bowl of noodles bathing in a well loved soup of bones and other various choice tidbits that has been stewed for days. The details of such potions can be found here, at my favorite ramen blog. But since I'm celebrating Thanksgiving with nabe -- Japanese hotpot -- I thought I'd try my hand at loving up some soup.
日本は世界中愛されたラーメンの天国なので、別に自分が時間をかけて、骨から汁を作る必要がないね。でも今年の感謝際は鍋で祝おうつもりで、ゆっくりでスープをやってみようと思った。

My idea was to pair chicken with yuzu, to flatten any ambitious cold viruses. Yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit. It's kind of the ugly cousin to the beloved mikan -- mandarin orange. Its juice is similar to that of the grapefruit, but it is certainly unfriendly to the casual curious eater.
チッキンスープに柚子を使おうと思って、風邪を防ぐために。

As you can see, it is humorlessly jammed full of seeds.
みかんより醜い柚子を開けても中身も種いっぱいで、まるでみかんのへんてこないとこと考えちゃう。でも柚子にでも魅力あるね。

I'd also add some fragrant mitsuba, which is not dissimilar to parsley.
それに三つ葉を。

Mitsuba is also a little unfriendly. Be sure to at least blanch it, or it pricks the mouth.
三つ葉も熱湯に通さないと友好的でないね。

A wonderful pot of soup requires a certain kind of commitment. It's not a particularly high maintenance relationship, but it does require a long period of tending to, even if with just a bit of one's energies. It's more like a steady, healthfully rooted relationship, that still needs someone to skim the goop off of the top and keep the fire lit.
すばらしいスープを作ることに傾倒しなければなりません。あまり多くを要求する相手じゃないけど、スープはいい付き合いのように根気がいる。

Hours of tending the hearth yielded a light and tasty broth, brightened by yuzu.
何時間が経ってからこの軽くて柚子で明るくしたスープ。

Perhaps more gratifying still was the stewed chicken meat I extracted from the soup, sliced up and served over rice with mitsuba and chili sauce.
もう一つの楽しみはその煮た鶏肉！それを切って、ご飯に載せた。

  

 Also have to eat your vegetables...

野菜も食べなきゃね。。。 

Napa cabbage in sesame vinegarette...

白菜のサラダ。。。

And grilled asparagus.

と焼きアスパラ。

They seem happy to have each other.

幸せ。

Oh... and those mysterious bits on the rice: Those are the chicken skins I grilled on top of the asparagus.

それでもう一つご飯に載せたものがあるね。それはアスパラと一緒に焼いた鳥皮。

I have to fatten up for winter, you know.

冬の覚悟で太らなきゃ。

ごちそうさま！ 

Autumn #13: Strictly Roots / 秋＃１３：ルーツに戻ろう

Cashing in on the carb-hungry 1980s, my parents supported their young family with a pasta restaurant.
８０年代のアメリカででんぷん食品ブームがあった。それで私の両親がパスタ料理屋さんよやりました。

This meant that my earliest memories include not only eating spaghetti with my hands, but also learning how to separate egg yolks from the whites. In retrospect, I'm not sure what the Health Department would have made of snotty nosed kids in the food prep area. Also, I'm really curious what the Department of Labor would have made of Cheru, age 9, standing on a turned-over milk crate and pre-rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Aside from an accelerated education of swear words from the staff, it was here that I first learned the bitter dynamic inherent to labor and management. I demanded more than 25 cents an hour, threatening a tantrum strike. My parents threatened to charge me for room and board. I remained on that overturned milk crate.
最初の思い出の中に手でパスタを食うこととパスタ生地を作ること。９歳のチェルは皿洗いとして働いた。その経験で初めて労働者と経営者のつらい関係を味わった。時間給が２５セントで、もっと欲しかったチェルは一人ストライキと指名しようとしたとたん、両親の方から下宿の値段上げの発言。チェルは皿洗いを続いた。

This is a long way of saying that I feel I have an intimate connection with pasta.
ごく簡単に言うとパスタと仲の良い間柄あります。

So please forgive me if a lot of my improvisations are pasta-centric.
それで、このブログでパスタ料理がちょっと多めで許してください。

Tonight, I decided to add some spice to my pasta dough with ichimi togarashi.
今晩のパスタを一味唐辛子で辛くしようともって。。。

Lovers of Japanese soup noodle dishes will recognize the package, although the more common expression is not this just-chili powder, but the seven spice -- shichimi togarashi -- version. After adding a little heat, then, I rolled out the dough and roughly cut myself some broad noodles.
これを入れてから粗切りのパスタを切った。

While my lovely, albeit roughly hewn, noodles stood by, I then contemplated another root. This one had nothing to do with metaphors; it was a total stranger to me.
この荒削りのパスタが待ちながら、もう一つのルーツをじっと見つめた。

Having an irresistible affinity for strangers, I picked this one up at the farmer's market. The name read yurine: lily root. It was supposed to be both similar to, and yet unlike, a potato, according to the farmer.
ユリネです。百合の根らしい。ファーマーズマーケットで買った私が農業さんに作り方を聞いてみるとユリネは同時に芋と似てると似ていない。へえええええ。。。

Once I loosened it up a bit, it fell apart into these lovely petal-like segments.
切ると花弁のような形。

In the soup with it! To match the floral theme, I brewed it up with chrysanthemum leaves in a light consomme.
お汁に！花がテームですので菊の葉とコンソメを。

Save the flowers for the romantics. I'm a realist, happy with the roots and the leaves. As long as they are edible.
花はロマン派にいい。唯物主義の私には葉と根でも結構です。食べれるならね。

And what of my patient pasta? It got treated right, pan-fried with butter and fragrant eringi mushrooms.
それで待っているパスタは？勿論愛情含めて、パーターとエリンギでソテーした。

Whether the epiphany comes from eating a hot yam on an Harlem street, or pasta in my tiny Tokyo kitchen, there's something to be said for roots. Especially the delicious ones.
ルーツを大事にした方がいいという考え方ありますね。おいしいなら、大事にしましょう。

 ごちそうさまでした！