Winter #1: Drunken French Toast / 冬＃１：酔っぱらったフレンチトースト

The days keep getting shorter and shorter. In this land of the rising sun, the setting sun knows no daylight savings.
毎日の日暮れが早い季節に入りました。

But in this season of darkness, there is light, and you don't even have to wake up at six a.m. to catch it. It is the light offered by the simple things in life: simple sugars, and simple starches. And you may as well sleep in, since it's best served for brunch.
それでもこの闇の季節に光が見える：お砂糖とお酒に作られた光だ。

Japan has some delicious bread. True, it resembles the cake more than your standard rye. But even if it doesn't really fill you up or otherwise behave like "real food," it make real mean french toast.
日本のケーキのようなパンはおいしい。ちゃんとした食事にならないけど、せめてフレンチトーストに適当だと思う。

Japan also has great apples. Crisp, a little tart, and nothing like any mealy Red Delicious you may have had the misfortune to stumble upon.
日本のリンゴもおいしー。

Ah: these lovely little spheres, glistening and bright. These particular apples were ones I'd dragged all the way back from the Japanese Alps.
きれいね。このリンゴは日本のアルプスから持ち帰りにしたもので。。。

Also from the Japanese Alps, I had some leftover Japanese cognac-style brandy. Japanese bread, apples -- even beer -- may be wonderful. Japanese brandy is to be considered a last-resort beverage. It is okay, I guess, to sip it from a paper cup in the bath up in the freezing mountain air, but once I got back to civilization I couldn't really bear to take it straight.
軽井沢産ブラデーも持ち帰りで。まっ。日本で作られたパンもリンゴも（ビールも勿論けど）うまいけど。。。日本産のブランデーは。。。まだです。

The only thing to do, of course was to core the apples.
ですからリンゴの芯を抜いて。。。

After my messy job of coring these apples, I began to understand why people invest in apple corers.
何となくできたけど。。。

And then I soaked them in the brandy. After all, it may be morning, but I felt half-soaked in alcohol myself. I let them marinate until just sniffing the apples induced tipsiness.
ブランデーにいれた。香りだけで酔うまで入れた。

In the meantime, I grabbed hold of my day-old bread. The slices were so thick, that there were only three to a loaf.
それで、パンを。。

Soaked in egg and milk, I began to fry them up in butter, as I also got the apples going in another pan. Out of curiosity, I added black pepper to the apples.
パンと卵と牛乳に入れて、焼いた。リンゴもコショウいれて、バターで焼いた。

I barely burned off the brandy on the apples, and just one bite chased away the winter blues.
お酒の香りが残ったリンゴ。一口だけで冬のブルーズを忘れる。。。

 

Add walnuts, maple syrup.

くるみとメープルシロップで完了。

Life is quite simple. And in a world that expects us not to hibernate, at least we can do the next best thing and lean on sugars to render us semi-comatose all winter long. To those of us raised post-religion, this is the mass opiate.

人生ってシンプルじゃないですか。ま、酔ったらそんな感じがすれけど。

Oh, and I'll take my opiate with an egg on the side, please.

お酒と卵さえあれば、冬でもおいしい人生で幸せ。

ごちそうさまでして！

Autumn #12: One bad egg may spoil my lunch, but not the bunch / 秋＃１２：食通の卵。とそのあたり。

A little over a week ago, I had the great pleasure of deepening my intimacy with one of my favorite elixirs...
しょっちゅう焼酎！

Ah, shochu! So similar to humble water, yet so much more potent. In the sobering light of day, however, its glowing promise dimmed. The Japanese term for a hangover is "two-days drunkenness." With the help of a light case of food poisoning, the "two days" turned into a week of a self-pitying, vaguely unsettling stupor.
夜の輝きは朝の暗い苦労。二日酔いより一週間酔いになると、あら。。。食あたりの疑問も。

Thinking back, there were about four raw eggs of varying degrees of trustworthiness, and a rather pink mouthful or two of grilled chicken, all of which I had consumed either with or shortly after the offending shochu.
ちょっとだけ考えても、４個の生卵、生ぽいの焼き鳥。。。容疑者は少なくないね。

So, in reviewing my equations, I hit upon this formula: (copious amounts of shochu) + (raw eggs of suspicious extraction) 
それで、（焼酎）＋　（生卵、鶏肉）＝

One week of a diet based on Seirogan pills. The key ingredient seems to be creaosote, which Wikipedia (alarmingly!) informs me is a kind of coal tar.
１週間の正露丸ダイエット。

But I'm back on the horse! Or, rather, under the chicken! A little touch of salmonella is no fun, but a life without runny eggs is no life at all. What better way to celebrate the newly harmonious relationship between myself and my guts than with an omelet?
でも私とわが内蔵の関係が改めて仲良くなって、一個だけのいやな卵を食べるは食通の卵の運命と理解して、卵を防ぐなら人生の意味もないぐらいので、また卵を挑戦！オムレッツはいかがですか。

And the eggs here in Japan are so very yellow and seductive.Whisked with a little bit of miso and mirin, they are irresistible.
それとも、日本の卵は特に魅力的です。ほら、みそとみりんと混ぜって：

It is a sunny-side-up universe.
太陽の色。

I decided to make a whole brunch out of it, a meal that I've missed for the past few months. Still a little wary of bloody mary, I stuck to the basics: eggs, starch, some greens.
このオムレッツ懐かしいニューヨーク式のブランチを作ろうと思った。

For the starch, I turned to these happy little fellows who found me on one of my local wanderings:
ポテトのためにこの子を：

They are wee little yamaimo sprouts. Yamaimo is a monster of a root vegetable when it reaches full-size, and is most commonly grated into a lusciously slimy goo called tororo.

山芋の芽だ！






These little guys resembled a gang of starchy insects (hard to see how to make this posting less appetizing). Each was quite small on its own:
ちょっと虫の群れのようだ（本当にだんだん気持ち悪くなっているね）。一匹ずつは可愛い。

So, I threw the whole gang in a hot frying pan with oil. In the meantime, I put some sliced up eringi mushroom in the toaster oven.
群れをフライパンに。そうして、エリンギをトースターに。

Eringi mushrooms are incredibly fragrant and meaty.You would be doing yourself no disservice to just grill and devour them.
エリンギの焼くとものすごく味を生かす。。。

But we have an omelet in the works. So: potatoes pan fried, eggs beaten, mushrooms toasted. I also fried some tomatoes for good measure, and made a side salad with a prominent dose of shiso, Japanese mint-basil leaf. Shiso makes a mean cocktail ingredient, too (as bartenders at NYC's bozu and Angel's Share know), but my liver remains a bit shy.
そのオムレッツにフライトマト、しそ入りサラダ。しそといろいろなおいしいカクテルが作れるけれども、肝臓はまだ「酒なんかイヤ」っと強く主張している。

 

Brunch, a New York institution! ブランチができたよ！

I suppose some institutions can be imported after all. But even so, there is a twist.

クローズアップ！

The mini yamaimo turned out to be little treasures. Although they still vaguely (or clearly) resembled buggy bugs.

山芋の芽もこの食通の卵の口に合った。

Well, their buggy marching across my plate can't deter me. Not in the face of such deliciousness. A little ugly root vegetables, or even a little chicken sashimi, can't stop the adventurous palate. Yet.

やはり虫と似てるね。でも虫の形の芋も、ちょっとした食あたりも、この冒険的な食通を止められません！

まだ。