Remember That One Time When I Taught a Cooking Class?

As William Bell, and then Otis Redding, The Byrds, Taj Mahal, Peter Tosh, Brian Eno and The Mother Hips, once sang: You Don't Miss Your Water Till Your Well Runs Dry.

Those boys were waxing metaphorical about a lady. I'm just talking about my oven.

I don't even know how often I used my oven at home, but now that I don't have one, it seems every amazing-sounding recipe I stumble upon, every comforting dish that I crave, requires one. I have never been much of a dessert baker, but the one thing I consistently preheated for was my all-time favorite oatmeal chocolate chip pecan cookies. I would often stir up a big batch, roll the dough into logs, freeze them, and slice and bake fresh cookies when the mood struck. You can keep a man with this recipe. A hot one. Who plays Scrabble.

So, when I was invited to teach a cooking class to a group of Japanese people, one of the first things I asked was "Will there be an oven?"

The cookies were an obvious choice, but deciding the rest of the menu was trickier. Suddenly, I lost all of my cooking confidence. First it was my fault: What if my recipes suck and they chase me out of Kanazawa waving dry, flavorless chicken legs? Then it was their fault: What if my delicious recipes don't appeal to their mild, Japanese palates and they chase me out of Kanazawa waving torch shaped hunks of wonderfully stinky blue cheese?

I wanted to present dishes I've made many times, that have an Americana quality, that are easy to make and don't require too many exotic ingredients. Finally, I settled on a menu: seared pork chops stuffed with garlicky spinach and blue cheese & roasted garlic, yogurt and scallion mashed potatoes. We'd have French bread and butter to nibble and the cookies with tea for dessert.

The cooking class was held in a community center in Nagamachi, Kanazawa's old, preserved samurai district, and I was completely blown away by the massive kitchen. It was equipped with half a dozen cooking stations, each boasting a gas range, digital oven, a sink and plenty of counter space. My current home kitchen is the size of a coffin and moonlights as a hallway, a place to store my shoes, a laundry room, a body waxing station (what?) and contains approximately zero counters.
As we got cooking, I realized I was in a bit of a delicate situation. I had to instruct a group of mostly older, experienced, home cooks who, for the most part, don't speak my language. When I caught the sole gentleman in the group violently stabbing the already mashed potatoes with a wooden spoon, I gently told him that they were done. He didn't understand, and with a sweet smile on his face, continued to maniacally assault the mash. I tried again. And again. Nothing could stop him from his hateful stirring. Jesus! Did his wife leave him for a potato? Was he having a french fry flashback? Pound pound pound! Finally, I did what many Japanese have done to me, a gesture I absolutely abhor: I crossed my index fingers into an X and held them in front of my face. He immediately released the spoon. "Finished?" he asked. "Finished." I answered.

Our crew worked together to crank out the dishes, and before long we were sitting on low stools, ready to eat, watching the blue cheese happily ooze from it's porky caves. I felt nervous again. Is the pork gonna be dry? Why didn't I make a vegetable side dish? Am I only contributing to the stereotype that Americans only like meat and potatoes? But, soon enough, I heard the familiar chorus of "oishi!" and relaxed into my lunch.

The abused potatoes survived their attacker, most definitely lump free and tangy with yogurt, and the cookies were just as they should be: crisp on the outside and soft and gooey inside, with the occasional crunch of a nut.

Perhaps my current state of singledom can be single-handedly blamed on my lack of chocolate chip oatmeal pecan cookie production. Yes, that must be it. Seeking: hot, Scrabble loving, man with oven. I'll bring the cookie dough.

Weekend in Nara: A Foreign Food Frenzy

I feel a bit sheepish writing yet another post about foreign foods. I'm probably supposed to be writing a detailed piece on the origin of the soy bean and recount how I spent several days carving a slab of tofu into the shape of a samurai before immersing it in soy sauce and serving it to a geisha. But I eat plenty of delicious Japanese food in Kanazawa, so when I blast off to a bigger city for the weekend, I'm all about fulfilling my foreign food cravings.

One thing I really miss about home is cafe culture. In Seattle I spent a fair amount of time hunkered down in independently owned coffee shops, sipping lattes and playing Scrabble, while the ironically tattooed baristas noisily foamed milk and contemplated their facial hair. As the rain continues to fall in Kanazawa, I long for a cozy cafe to read my book in at 9 o'clock at night. Turns out Nara is just the place to do this. The city has a number of adorable little cafes; all bright, colorful and modern in that shabby chic meets Ikea catalog kind of way. It is all a bit ironic (maybe even more so than a hipster tattoo) since Nara is famous for being one of Japan's oldest and most historical cities.

My friend Kate and I decided to indulge in both the old and the new Nara: we photographed ancient temples and gawked at Japan's largest bronze Buddha statue & then frolicked off to munch on organic doughnuts and Israeli falafel.

Third Place Cafe

I have never been able to muster up much excitement for a muffin. "Muffin shmuffin!" I've always thought. Actually, I have never thought that. But I've just now discovered that it's really fun to say out loud. Anyway, when muffins come in flavors like black sesame, matcha (green tea) with black beans & walnut my interest has been piqued. The owner of Third Place Cafe says her muffins are American inspired, which is to say huge, and she bakes them fresh all day long. My black sesame was still steaming when she popped it into a paper bag for me to take home. I longed to lounge around in the European feeling, sunlit, cafe but alas sightseeing called.


Floresta

The people behind Floresta are pretty smart. They positioned the doughnut case right in front of the shop's wide open entryway, so that you can't possibly walk by without being magnetically pulled in by the enchanting little o's. The doughnuts are made with organic, natural and free range ingredients and they actually taste healthy. Yes, healthy doughnuts, an oxymoron for certain. That is, unless you tuck one away for the next morning. Whereas my "natural" doughnut was tasty eaten on the spot, my Early Gray flavored one released its hidden greasiness overnight and left a nasty, oily film in my mouth. Kate and my favorite thing about Floresta? A message written on the company's brochure: "The owners wish to provide safe and delicious doughnuts for everyone." Amen. Dangerous doughnuts are a serious problem and it takes a lot of courage to be proactive, really step up to the plate, and actually do something about it.

Falafel Garden

Traveling with a vegetarian isn't for the weak. Especially in Japan where nearly every dish is spiked with dashi, a fish based broth. Yes, vegetarians are nice people (well, sometimes), and perhaps they have higher morals than I do (I eat animals, but I recycle, OK?!), but getting in between me and my dinner is serious business. So I was seriously excited to stumble across Falafel Garden while doing some pre-trip restaurant research. Kate and I talked about Falafel Garden for the week leading up to our trip, we talked about Falafel Garden on the train ride to Nara and we talked about Falafel Garden while sitting in Falafel Garden. The quality of this highly anticipated meal could make or break the trip. The familiar panic set in while I scrolled the large menu. I only had one shot to get this right. Would only a fool order the grilled eggplant and baba ganoush pita sandwich? Should I get a falafel since the place is called Falafel Garden? I finally decided on the chicken shwarma sandwich and threw in a side of hummus for good luck. It worked. The chicken was super juicy and flavorful, the pita was packed with fresh veggies and each bite was smeared with the creamy hummus. Turns out I didn't only have one shot to get it right. FG does take-out, so I was able to enjoy an incredibly drippy, overstuffed falafel sandwich on the train ride home.

Café Wakakusa 

Absolutely starving, and therefore too hunkry (hungry + cranky) to track down another restaurant from this super helpful guide, Kate and I took a chance on a no-frills okinomiyaki joint whose name may forever remain unknown. I had been unimpressed and uninterested in the popular savory pancake for several months, but this little greasy spoon unexpectedly restored my faith. Full bellied and rehydrated, we were able to continue our cafe quest and ended the night at Cafe Wakakusa. Inside, everything from the walls to the floor to the cafe owner's pants and shirt were different shades of vivid green. I decided to stick with the trend and ordered a matcha latte. Kate was entranced by her mug of hot chocolate, topped with zigzags of chocolate sauce. A fashionable couple (is there any other kind in Japan?) came in, slurped up big bowls of yummy looking pasta, and left. We listened to soft Japanese lounge pop (a band which I now love and still can't find mention of anywhere online) and I begged the owner to open a second branch in Kanazawa.

XXX

This now (mostly) concludes the food portion of this post. Here are a collection of photos from our weekend trip in Nara, a quaint, easy to navigate city outside Kyoto that is now one of my favorite places in Japan. We also took a side trip to Akame Shiju-hattaki Falls, a beautiful forest about an hour outside of Nara for a day of hiking and waterfalls.

Nara's most famous temple, Todai-ji, was built in 745 and houses Japan's largest bronze statue, a 15 meter tall Buddha perched on a lotus flower. In person, it is truly a beautiful and mesmerizing piece that is hard to walk away from.

The cherry blossoms were already blooming.

Nara is famous for a huge, sprawling park that is home to thousands of free roaming deer and just as many moss covered stone lanterns.

Class photo day! 

 One of Akame Shiju-hattaki's 48 waterfalls.

Every city, town and village in Japan seems to have it's own culinary specialty, even if it's just a very slight variation on a popular national dish. This old gal is serving up one of the best sweets Kate and I have tasted in Japan. It's a delicious twist on taiyaki, typically a little fish-shaped cake made of pancake batter and filled with adzuki bean paste. In this case the batter was sweet potato puree. It was soft, creamy, sweet and earthy. Perfect with a cup of tea, or in my perfect world, a glass of milk.

When in Japan, Learn to Make Tortillas

My friends, the time has come. The time has come to stop living a life without tortillas. I don’t even know how I made it this far. You see, back at home, the humble tortilla was a part of my daily life. Nearly every night I dragged one across the flame of my gas range until it warmed and softened, blistered and charred. I’d tear off strips and christen each with a few drips of Tapatio or Sriracha. Sometimes I drizzled the whole thing with truffle oil and a sprinkle of garlic powder. It's a reliable comfort food on it's own, and even better when wrapped around any number of tasty bits and pieces. I know I said all those nice things about rice, but the truth is you can't wrap that shit around anything!

I was golden for about three weeks after Cathy personally delivered a jumbo pack of flour tortillas, along with two cans of beans (refried and black), to my apartment door in Kanazawa. I rationed as best I could, while still dutifully sharing the bounty with my equally needy BFIJ two doors down. We feasted on pork fajitas, chicken shitake burritos and spinach and cheese quesadillas. We sliced avocados, sautéed onions and peppers and topped every chile and cumin scented creation with a dollop of plain yogurt. And then they were gone.

Then one day I realized: I can make tortillas! The ingredient list is short and basic and they don’t require an oven. Truly authentic tortillas call for lard, but I found plenty of recipes online that substitute easy-to-find vegetable oil.

Despite the lack of lard, I set out to make the tortillas as authentically Mexican as possible. I balanced a cutting board over the kitchen sink to create a countertop, rolled out the dough with a tall-can of Kirin and cooked them in a nonstick frying pan. With every roll of the can, Mexican grandmothers everywhere felt a sharp, stabbing pain in their hearts. They clutched their chests as the dough met the Teflon. Their daughters frowned, diagnosed them with heart burn and sent them off to bed with a handful of Tums. Lo siento, abuelitas.

It took a bit of fiddling with the heat and the thickness of the dough, but by the end I had a short stack of chewy tortillas, bubbled up in places and properly spotted with char marks. Perhaps they weren’t the best tortillas in the world, but they certainly seemed to be the next morning when I wrapped one around a heap of scrambled eggs and avocado. Not bad for a ghetto rigged operation conducted by a Jewish girl in Japan at midnight on a Thursday night.

God Bless the Burrito: Osaka Weekend: Part I

I've said it before and I'll say it again: burritos bring people together.

Example #1:

When I marched into Bank of America last year, primed to pull every last cent out of my account and move them all to a less sheisty institution, it was the love of burritos that kept me loyal to B of A. I sat down with one of the suit-and-ties, expecting the inevitably boring bank transaction, the lame banker jokes and the fake, forced, laughter. But then...

"You're from California?" he asked, squinting at the computer screen. "So am I!"

It's only logical that a conversation about California quickly turned to burritos: how we love burritos, how we miss burritos, how we don't love Seattle burritos, how we should run away together and eat burritos until sour cream pulses through our veins and we cry Tapatio tears.

The next thing I know he's reversing the charges on my account, permanently removing a monthly checking fee that had plagued me for years, moving my savings into a high interest account and giving me homemade chocolate chip cookies from his desk drawer. I considered canceling my afternoon plans so we could have cocktails in his cubicle. The other bankers ceased their fake guffaws. They were on high alert; they detected real laughter. They were suspicious as to how two people in a bank could be having such a good time.

It's the burritos, man. I'm telling you. They breed trust. They are a gateway drug to friendship. I would never trust a burrito hater and I don't recommend you do if ever in the unfortunate situation of being faced with one.

What does any of this have to do with Japan? Well, if you just calm down for a second I'll tell you. Jeez.

I'd been hearing about El Pancho, a Mexican restaurant in Osaka, for months. Two different people have told me that when they visit the city, they try and eat all of their meals here. I have to admit I was skeptical. One of these people is from England, the other from the American midwest. Not exactly the food capitals of the world. Uh oh. I felt a bad bad side of me start to creep in. I was morphing into my evil alter ego: Snobby McFoodie Pants. First I thought: "Pffffft. What do you bitches know about tacos? Have you even had real Mexican food?" Then I thought: "Pffffft. You're in Osaka! A food lover's paradise! Why would you eat that fake ass Mexican bullshit when you could be eating amazing Japanese food?"

Now, five months into my stay in Japan and desperate for anything wrapped in a tortilla, I was determined to track down this El Pancho during my weekend trip. Because burritos also breed good luck and sympathize with the directionally challenged, El Pancho turned out to be right down the street from the club where I was going to see an improv show. It was perfect! I'd treat myself to a Mexican dinner and head to the show. I managed to find the restaurant in the crowded Shinsaibashi district, walked into the elevator, and went to push the number 8, but it was already glowing.

"Are you going to El Pancho?" the Japanese girl asked in flawless English. I told her I was. "Are you meeting friends here?" I told her I wasn't. Two minutes later I was sitting at a long table with her and twelve of her chatty friends, most of them foreigners like me, ordering a Dos Equis and drooling over the extensive menu.

"How do you all know each other?" I asked the girl on my left.
"Oh, we all work for the same company here in Osaka. We're English teachers for AEON."

Dudes. Would you believe me if I told you that's the same school that I work for? Well, it is! Weird, huh? A very coincidental coincidence made possible by the magic burrito. So that is exactly what I ordered. Not a magic burrito, but a chicken one topped with red enchilada sauce, melted cheese and crowned with splotches of sour cream and guacamole. Some of the gals and I also split a quesadilla. There was Cholula on the table and two legitimately spicy homemade salsas served with chips. Admittedly, it was not the best burrito in the world, but it was pretty good (really good for Japan: the only other "Mexican food" I've had here involved cut up hot dogs floating around in a greasy cheese puddle) and I was in heaven. Not even Snobby McFoodie Pants dared to rear her ugly head. I was eating refried beans! There was hot sauce! It was like the crisis in the Middle East had finally ended. Time reversed and the earthquake in Chile never happened. People finally stopped saying "That's what she said!" Everything in the world was right again.

God bless the burrito.

Things I Miss: Episode 1: Brunch

Something was missing from my Sunday mornings. I couldn't quite figure it out. I did a mental checklist. Hangover? Check. Obscene laziness? Check. Book and magazine reading in bed? Check. It took a couple months, but I finally nailed it. Brunch! There is no brunch!

In Japan, breakfast is not usually a public affair. A typical morning meal is eaten at home and consists of rice, miso soup, grilled fish and pickled vegetables. The rice might be topped with a raw egg or, horror of horrors, natto: fermented soybeans with the consistency of snot and the smell of rotting kittens (I know, I'm sorry, but doesn't that sound like it would be the worst and the saddest smell?). Natto is the antithesis of brunch. Natto is bad. Brunch is so so good. There is really no better way to spend a weekend afternoon. All you need is a collection of your favorite messy haired friends and a plate of fluffy biscuits suffocating under a healthy (I do not use this adjective literally) blanket of sausage gravy. Extra points for a Formica table, bottomless coffee and delirious fits of laughter inspired by lack of sleep and the events of the night before.

I brought up the topic of brunch with Yoko, my BFIJ (Best Friend In Japan), who agreed that something had to be done immediately, if not sooner. We would have to forgo the Formica, the bottomless coffee, the biscuits and gravy, the restaurant, the pretty much everything I mentioned above, but damn it! There would be brunch!

In recent weeks, it seems all we do is have brunch. We are good at brunch. Last week we whipped up some excellent pumpkin spice pancakes, but there is one particularly simple meal that has us smitten. First, split a baguette of crusty bread. Then send a smear of soft butter, studded with chopped garlic, down both sides. Next, sprinkle with shredded cheese. Japan has no respect for cheese, so we are forced to use a flavorless and processed pre-shredded "white cheese." You should use a mix of freshly shredded Parmesan and mozzarella or Havarti or Gorgonzola or one of the other delicious cheeses that you are lucky enough to have access to, you bastard. Pop the bread into the toaster oven to melt and crisp around the edges. Meanwhile, fry some sunny side up eggs with salt and pepper. Make sure the yokes are nice and runny so you can stab them with your fork, let the velvety orange mess drip all over your bread, and make noises while eating them that are more appropriate for the bedroom than a brunch. Oh, but don't eat yet. You forgot the fresh basil, silly. Tear some up and scatter it across the bread before topping with your perfect egg. Shake a little Tapatio over the top, serve with a fruit salad, and you're in the business of brunch. Take that, natto.