The first course was inspired by a dish I had in Paris, of langoustines baked inside little ceramic pots with red wine and butter, topped with little rounds of toasty brioche. Owing to slim pickings at Sainsbury’s, I had to swap out the langoustines for lemon sole (they had NO shellfish except pre-cooked prawns!) and the pots for ramekins, but never mind all that, because the dish turned out nearly perfectly. It was always my intention to use soy sauce and sake in place of the red wine, and I topped it with a bit of challah and a poached duck egg. It was a gorgeous, buttery, umami mess. And it couldn’t be simpler to make: Get your oven on to 200ºC/400ºF and skin four fillets of lemon sole or other flatfish. Chop ‘em up. Rub a couple ramekins liberally with butter, then press the sole into them, but not too firmly. Top with a nice chunk of butter, then a little splash of sake, and a littler splash of soy sauce. Slice challah to form a cap on the ramekin. Bake for about 15-20 minutes. The butter, sake, and soy sauce all melt together and flood into the fish, and it is so so so good. While the fish is baking, poach a duck egg. Keep the yolk runny! Fish comes out of the oven, egg goes on top of the toast, a little grind of pepper and course one is done. For a dish with only six ingredients, the flavor is huge, and I’ll bet if you use cornbread instead of challah it would be even better.

For the main course I decided to try my hand at one of Heston Blumenthal’s signature dishes: Salmon Poached in a Liquorice Gel. Now, I knew I would never be able to perfectly recreate this dish, even though it is one of his less complicated recipes, because it involved ingredients that were simply impossible to get at such short notice (and would have been a bit extravagant at any time): black truffles, 15 year old Balsamic vinegar, transglutaminase, two kinds of gellan, etc. Not to mention the equipment – I would have needed a vacuum sealer and a thermal immersion bath to really do this recipe right. Luckily, that was never my intention: I just wanted to test out what seemed like unlikely but potentially mind-blowing flavor combinations, namely salmon + licorice + vanilla + grapefruit.

What I wound up doing was simply making a seared salmon dish with a semi-set licorice sauce instead of the gel, but other than that, and the missing truffle, the dish was more or less the same as it appeared in the Fat Duck cookbook, and none too difficult. First, get your sauce going. Pour a bottle of stout into a pot with a little bit of water, a little bit of soy sauce, and some powdered dashi. For the licorice, I’d recommend pure licorice if you can get it; I used soft licorice candy, and it wasn’t quite strong enough and didn’t dissolve properly. Anyway, chop up a good handful of licorice and toss it in the pot and simmer everything. When the licorice is nicely incorporated (use a hand blender if you have to) and everything is simmering, add a leaf of gelatin and cook a while longer.

Next, prep your garnishes. Peel some asparagus (or don’t – I didn’t) taking off just the outermost green layer, leaving the tops intact. Scrape out a vanilla pod and mix the seeds with about two heaped tablespoons of good mayonnaise, or better yet, make your own mayonnaise. Put 250ml or so of Balsamic vinegar in a pan and reduce into a thick, black syrup. Now comes the tricky part, but it actually is worth the effort, and it doesn’t have to be perfect – your home is not a Michelin-starred restaurant, so chill out! Get a nice, ripe pink grapefruit. Peel it carefully. Strip away the outer membrane from a segment, and gently tease out the individual cells without breaking them. Using a toothpick or a paring knife or tweezers, separate each individual cell from the segment. Discard any broken cells. You’ll need about one segment worth of cells per plate.

Finally, let’s cook. Get yourself a nice big hunk of salmon and get the skin off and the bones out. Heat some good olive oil or avocado oil in a pan until it’s nice and hot, but not smoking. Sear the salmon on both sides for about 4-5 minutes, cooking for 8-9 minutes in total. Meanwhile, sauté the asparagus in olive oil in a lidded frying pan, so they steam as they sauté. It will take about the same amount of time as the salmon, but less time if you did peel them. To plate, streak a little vanilla mayo on one side of the plate, and place a little patch of grapefruit cells along the other. In the middle, spatter a bit of the Balsamic reduction. Rest the asparagus across the plate, then rest the salmon across the asparagus. Spoon on some licorice sauce, season to taste, and you’re done.

And it was good – the combination worked, and in fact it was the vanilla mayonnaise that really tied everything together. I loved how the different elements offset and underscored each other without becoming lost or muddled. It was surprisingly subtle, too, and I can only imagine how good it would be if prepared by the man himself.

Lastly, dessert. The dessert didn’t turn out quite right, if I’m honest, but it still tasted nice, so here it is. Coconut milk, milk, sugar, cream, and vanilla in a pan. Bring it to a boil. Add a leaf or two of gelatin and stir to dissolve. Break up some white chocolate into smallish chunks in a bowl, then pour on the hot coconut mixture and allow to melt. Whisk gently to dissolve any remaining chunks. Cool in the fridge for a good two hours. Meanwhile, chop up a couple ribs of rhubarb. Simmer them with lime juice, rose water, water, and sugar until very soft and syrupy, then allow to cool. Whip some cream to soft peaks, then fold into the coconut white chocolate to form a light mousse. Allow to set in the fridge for another two hours. To assemble, break up some ginger cookies and place them at the bottom of bowls or glasses. Sprinkle in some dessicated coconut, then add a spoonful of the rhubarb compote. Fill with the coconut white chocolate mousse, and top with more compote and more coconut.

Simple, yes, but I still managed to screw it up! What went wrong: I didn’t give the gelatin enough time to set, so the mousse turned out more like a kind of thick eggnog. But hey, ain’t nothin’ wrong with eggnog! We cleaned our teacups just the same, and rang in the New Year with satisfied stomachs, expensive sake, moderately priced beer, and cheap champagne.

MMXI will be MMXIting.

To the standard crème pâtissière I added a splash of Cointreau and a big pinch of allspice to make the filling more Christmasy. In my midwestern mind, the flavor instantly evoked a memory of pumpkin pie, an unexpected but delightful association brought on by the unique aroma of the spice combined with a thick, creamy texture.

Profiteroles are simple, but there’s definitely something uncommonly exciting about them. I like the way they mushroom up out of little blobs to become beautiful and delicate puffballs. I like the way they conceal their filling like a naughty secret. And I love the way their fragile crunch gives way to a flood of cool, sweet, intoxicating cream. Of course I will always love and look forward to the British Christmas staples of mince pies, trifle, Christmas cake and Christmas pudding. But even after all the old standbys have been sampled, who doesn’t have room left for just one little profiterole?

Tomorrow: we have nothing to sphere but sphere itself.

Not content to passively partake in the rest of the fests, my Uncle Erik and Aunt Sarah have created their own: Rib Fest.

Rib Fest is exactly what it sounds like: a festival of ribs. Each year, friends and family are invited to enter their barbecue pork ribs in a competition, to be evaluated and ranked by a panel of judges. This year, probably because of my reputation as the family snob, I was chosen as a judge in this epic “Battle of the Bones.”

Ribs were to be scored in four categories: appearance, bone release, flavor, and overall impression, all weighted equally. Each of the seven ribs I sampled were categorically delicious – to paraphrase a fellow judge, any of the ribs, if eaten in almost any other context, would have been the best meal I’d had that day. It was a tough job, trying to find flaws in really excellent hunks of meat.

But somebody had to do it, and I did my best. Ultimately, my top score went to a saucy, spicy, brawny entry cooked by someone named Juanita; her ribs were intense and satisfying, with well-articulated layers of smoke, cumin, turmeric, and chili powder. But in the end Juanita took second place – the other judges preferred the ribs made by a man named John. Flaky and tender and visibly falling from the bone, John’s ribs were also outstanding, pink and black with fire and smoke and mysteriously fruity from a can’t-put-your-finger-on-it secret ingredient (I later learned it was pineapple juice and sweet tea-infused vodka).

After the winners were announced, the inevitable debates arose. Most people seemed fairly content with our picks, but the “bone release” category was hotly contested. I was of the opinion (as were the other judges) that rib meat is best when it pulls cleanly from the bone without much effort. However, I also feel that meat can reach a point where it is too loose, or where the tissue connecting meat to bone has become more tender and loose than the meat itself, so that when you bite into it, you tend to pull the entire strip of meat from the bone rather than just the bite you wanted. I marked ribs down for this sort of overly eager bone release.

However, some cooks and diners argued that ribs are best when the meat doesn’t fall from the bone, and requires a little chewing or gnawing to get the meat off. I could not understand this; their explanations were filled with words like “technically” or “officially” – except for my Aunt Lisa’s, who simply said: “I like it when you have to gnaw at ‘em.”

Still, I’m not satisfied to chalk it up to “personal preference.” That’s a cop out. “There’s no accounting for taste” is a terrifically stupid axiom – there are all kinds of ways to account for taste! So this is very vexing to me. I just think there’s something wonderfully satisfying about ribs that lift off the bone with a gentle tug. It is one of life’s greatest small pleasures. Having to gnaw or tear at ribs isn’t the worst thing in the world, but I can’t understand why anyone would prefer it. And yet… people do.

Show of hands: who likes ribs that fall off the bone? And who likes ribs that don’t fall off the bone? And if you’re the latter: for goodness sake, why?

P.S.: Sorry there are no photos of the actual ribs; I didn’t want to clog my camera with sauce.

I’ve set up a blog for wedding updates. We’ll be using it in the coming months to update everybody on our wedding plans in both the UK and Wisconsin. Subscribe to the RSS feed!

Here it is: http://lauraplustim.com

Am I alone in the belief that the word “ultimate” has no place in the title of a recipe? One of the many joys of cooking is the experimental aspect of it. Even if your aim is to make a dish perfectly, exactly as it was meant to be made, chances are you’ll still have to tweak the recipe a bit to get the finished product just right. “Ultimate” means final. The end. The zenith, the conclusion, the last word. So when a recipe is presented as the “ultimate” of something, I take that as a challenge to do it one better.

For Laura’s birthday a few weeks ago, I made a cake. The recipe I used was called “Ultimate Chocolate Cake,” which I chose because it seemed to be the densest, fudgiest chocolate cake recipe out there. As far as I’m concerned, chocolate cakes ought to be rich, dense, and dark – essentially, my ideal chocolate cake is actually a brownie. So this “ultimate” recipe, which calls for sordid, indecent quantities of dark chocolate, butter, and sugar with flour kept to a bare minimum, looked just about perfect.

And it was. The resultant cake was weighty, moist, and as dark as earth; it was chocolate first and cake second. It was, in fact, so rich that I decided to make tart currant-nectarine sauce to offset it. But as exquisite as it was, the recipe as written ought to have been named “Penultimate” chocolate cake, for I swapped out the original, basic ganache for an experimental frosting formed by alloying Nutella with Bailey’s – making this even more debauched and delicious.

Of course, I could never presume to call my cover version of this cake the “ultimate,” either, and so I’m giving it a new, more accurate name. Please do tailor it to your own taste!

Super-Duper Chocolate Cake

For the cake:

200 grams high-quality dark chocolate, chopped
200 grams butter, cut in pieces
1 tablespoon instant coffee granules, dissolved into 1/2 cup cold water
85 grams self-raising flour
85 grams plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
200 grams light brown sugar
200 grams golden caster sugar
25 grams cocoa powder
3 medium eggs
5 tablespoons buttermilk

1. Butter a 20- by 8-centimeter cake tin and line the bottom. Preheat oven to 160ºC/325ºF.
2. Melt chocolate and butter together with coffee over low heat in a medium saucepan.
3. Sift together flour, sugar, baking soda, and cocoa powder into a large bowl. Beat eggs in a separate bowl and stir in buttermilk.
4. Pour the chocolate mixture and the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. Batter should be runny and smooth.
5. Pour batter into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour 30 minutes-1 hour 45 minutes. Cake is finished when a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely for 3-4 hours.

For the ganache:

150 grams high-quality dark chocolate
1 tablespoons golden caster sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons butter, melted
3/4 cup Irish cream liqueur
3/4 cup Nutella
6 Ferrero Rocher, crushed

1. Pour Irish cream into a saucepan and allow alcohol to cook off over medium-low heat for 15 minutes. Do not boil.
2. Add chocolate, sugar, cocoa, butter, and Nutella stir until smooth.
3. Allow ganache to cool to room temperature, then pour 1/3 ganache into a separate bowl and stir in Ferrero Rocher.
4. Slice the cake into two layers. Spread the ganache with Ferrero Rocher pieces onto the bottom layer, then replace the top layer. Spread remaining ganache evenly over the entire cake, smoothing with a pallette knife.
5. Serve with fruit sauce and fresh mint.

Hold your judgement. If you are told ‘they are all this’ or ‘they do this’ or ‘their opinions are these’, withhold your judgement until all the facts are upon you. Because that land they call ‘India’ goes by a thousand names and is populated by millions, and if you think you have found two men the same amongst that multitude, then you are mistaken. It is merely a trick of the moonlight.

Zadie Smith, White Teeth

Independence Day has always been my favorite holiday. Here’s why:

1. Sunshine.
2. Pork.
3. Beer.
4. Fireworks.

Of course, just about any Japanese summer festival also features this same happy quartet. And Japanese festivals are fun, too, but they just aren’t the same. I like Independence Day partly out of nostalgia, but I also like it because it’s uniquely American. It’s a holiday I can call my own.

We Americans don’t have a lot we can call our own. Apple pie? Dutch. Hot dogs? Austrian. Mexican food? Mexican. Sure, we have jazz, Pixar, and Mr. T, and as for holidays, we have Labor Day,  Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Day, and a smattering of other minor holidays. But all of them are pretty lame. When was the last time you threw a party and lit sparklers for Washington’s Birthday?

So it’s nice have an American holiday that’s actually fun. Thanksgiving is fun, too, but it’s in November, a month that burdens the human soul with an inescapable air of doom and melancholy. Thanksgiving food is arguably better (and perhaps less ordinary), but Independence Day is no slouch when it comes to cookery: ribs, burgers, bratwurst, and potato salad are pretty stiff competition for turkey and stuffing.

When I lived in America, it was the specific customs of Independence Day that I enjoyed (like the food and the fireworks – the parade, never really excited me). Its Americanness was immaterial, extraneous, unnecessary – I just liked hanging out with my friends and family, stuffing myself and watching things explode in the sky. But now that I’m a minority in a strange, inscrutable island nation, the fact that the Fourth of July is a distinctly American celebration is suddenly crucial. I feel as though I must assert my culture against the indifferent shrugs of British hegemony!

It’s not like I’m some kind of patriot. Alright, maybe I am some kind of patriot, but I’m not the gun-totin’, Limbaugh-lovin’, “Never Forget” kind of patriot. This bit of Fry and Laurie pretty much sums up how I feel about that sort of thing:

I can’t even really say I’m proud of America, or proud to be American. I can’t take credit for the achievements of other Americans, and my nationality is mostly a geographical accident. I am also not proud of America in any political sense, although the Constitution is pretty brilliant, and this Obama character seems fairly capable. But if I’ve developed a certain affection for America, I think it is a direct consequence of my expatriation. For one thing, I’m just nostalgic for America – I miss it. I miss my friends and family, but I also miss very particular American things, like In-N-Out burgers, enormously wide roads, the LA skyline, honeycrisp apples, and cheap ska shows. So there’s that sort of homesick aspect to my patriotism, but then there’s also a defensive quality to it. America gets picked on a lot – rightly so, in most cases. But sometimes criticisms of American culture are provincially ignorant; I am reminded of those French girls I met who dismissed all American cheese as abhorrent yellow trash. (Then again, I suppose the fact that processed cheese is usually labeled “American cheese” doesn’t help our reputation.) When confronted with attitudes like that, my reaction is “Hey, wait a minute! America isn’t all bad!” But of course, what I’m really saying is “Hey, wait a minute! I like America!” or even “Don’t tread on me!”

So as I trawled the world wide web for Fourth of July celebrations in London, I was thrilled to discover an event that will let me celebrate American cultural autonomy, indulge in one of my favorite American specialties, and subvert certain misconceptions about said specialty all at the same time! I’m talking about beer, people. American beer. The White Horse, an airy, elegant, ale-centric pub in Parsons Green, is having an American beer festival this weekend, coinciding with Independence Day. They boast the largest selection of American draft beer ever seen in the UK – and while some pubs would be satisfied to fill their lineup with any number of InBev-distributed, mass-produced lagers, the White Horse has corralled an impressive lot of craft beers from across the USA. Some of the featured breweries are Stone, Flying Dog, Victory, Sierra Nevada, Goose Island, and Dogfish Head.

These are some of America’s finest breweries, and it’s exciting to have them represented in England not only because their beer is delicious, but because it provides an opportunity for Londoners to glimpse the innovation and diversity that have become hallmarks of American craft brewing. Like American cheese and American politics, American beer is misunderestimated abroad – few people are aware that the United States produces anything but Bud, Miller, and Coors. I see this festival as an exposition of beer that has the potential to change perceptions about American gastronomy, at least in some small way. I also see it as a chance to drink dangerous amounts of Stone Smoked Porter with Vanilla Beans… mmm.

American Beer Festival at The White Horse
3 July – 5 July 2009

1-3 Parsons Green
London
SW6 4UL
020 7736 2115

November sucks (and pardon my northern hemisphere/temperate climate-centrism here) because that’s when winter really hits. You can feel winter coming in October, but there are still leaves on the trees, the days are reasonably long, and it isn’t too cold just yet. But when November rolls around, it’s full-on winter: all grey skies, lifeless landscapes, and unpleasant wetness. But it is a month of adjustment; by December, I’m used to it. By February, however, I’m sick of it; it is the nadir of the year. February isn’t the darkest month of the year, and in most of the places I’ve lived, it isn’t the coldest and it isn’t the wettest, but it sure does feel like it (surprisingly, in London February is actually the least wet month on average). Even sunny Los Angeles is not immune to the climatological ills of February:

(Color altered for effect.)

So what to do to cope with February, Old Man Winter’s loathsome last hurrah? I offer three solutions:

1. Draw anthropomorphic squirrels ad nauseam. Works for me!
2. Celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. If you’re single, just take it as an excuse to drink Scotch and eat chocolate.
3. Try your hand at baking. I don’t bake very often, but now that I’m unemployed and have easy access to a convection oven, I have no excuse not to. Baking is meditative, time-consuming, and fun, and it fills the kitchen with delightful smells and warm air. And did I mention that when you’ve finished, you get baked goods?

Here are a couple of easy recipes I made last week for a party. And I say they’re easy because even I, a complete novice to baking, made them without any trouble. The main inspiration behind them both was the always delightful Borough Market.

Red Currant, Pine Nut, and Cardamom Oatmeal Cookies

In the United States, currants are eaten rarely and almost exclusively dried. I don’t know why – it’s not like we can’t grow them there. In England, and I think in much of central Europe, both black and red currants are a favorite flavor in baked goods, candies, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages as well as savory dishes. The red ones are perky and sharp, with a cranberry-like sourness, while the black ones have a richer, plummy, pruney taste. This recipe would work well with both; red is what I found, so red is what I used.

I liked the way the fresh berries popped open in the oven; when they came out, the heat had turned them into little patches of sweet red goo. They still hung on to their tartness, which complemented the buttery pine nuts and spicy, aromatic cardamom nicely.

If you can’t get fresh currants, you can use chopped cranberries or cherries, or you can try it with dried currants. This is based on a recipe from Bon Apétit.

2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup fresh currants
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups (packed) dark brown sugar
2 cups oats

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Whisk eggs and vanilla in small bowl to blend. Stir in currants.
3. Sift flour, baking soda, salt, and spices into medium bowl.
4. Using an electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Add sugar and beat until smooth.
5. Add currant and egg mixture and whisk to blend.
6. Stir in flour mixture, then oats.
7. Butter and flour baking sheets. Drop batter by spoonfuls onto sheets, spacing 1 1/2 inches apart. Using moistened fingertips, flatten cookies slightly.
8. Bake one sheet at a time until cookies are golden brown, about 13 minutes. Cool on sheets.

Chestnut and Ginger Brownies with Kinako Frosting

Cravings for Japanese junk food, rediscovering one of my favorite blogs, and my inability to leave recipes alone led to this recipe. Laura has a Marie Claire cookbook with a good brownie recipe in it, but I knew I wanted to tweak it somehow – originally I was thinking mochi brownies with black beans and kinako frosting, but I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, and besides, we were out of mochi.

Enter Borough Market, where I happened to stumble upon a pack of prepared chestnuts. Later I spotted a bit of ginger chocolate at Sainsbury’s, and I had my new recipe (I’m rewriting it here with simply ginger and chocolate). The kinako frosting recipe is from Delicious Coma, which has always been my favorite Japanese food blog, and it’s becoming one of my favorite Los Angeles food blogs since the author moved there last year. The frosting is amazing, by the way.

150 grams butter
250 grams dark chocolate
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 tablespoon baking soda
1 cup prepared chestnuts or marrons glaces, chopped
1 tablespoon grated ginger
2 generous tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. Melt 150 grams of chocolate and butter together in a double boiler or in the microwave. Stir until smooth.
3. Beat eggs and sugar together until mixture is pale and thick.
4. Fold in chocolate mixture, followed by sifted flour and baking soda, ginger, chestnuts, and remaining chocolate, chopped.
5. Butter an 8″x8″ square baking pan and pour in batter. Bake for 30 minutes or until brownies are set.
6. Allow brownies to cool for at least 30 minutes, then spread evenly with kinako frosting and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Cut into squares and serve.

I don’t have a photo of the brownies, but please enjoy this picture of what I made for lunch on Valentine’s day instead:

Mmmmmmm.

Viking Lasagna

Pasta (adapted from a recipe by Mario Batali)

3 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup rice bran
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons sweet vermouth
1 teaspoon olive oil

1. Mix all ingredients using either the well method or with a food processor or electric mixer.
2. Dust your countertop with additional flour or bran and knead the dough until it is firm, homogeneous, and dry. The dough should not stick to the countertop.
3. Form the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and allow to rest at room temperature for one hour.
4. Cut the dough into eighths and process into lasagne, about nine inches long, according to your pasta maker’s instructions. Alternatively, the dough may be rolled out into very thin sheets and then cut into lasagne.
5. Dust finished lasagne with a small amount of bran to prevent sticking, cover, and set aside.

Filling

3 small eggplants, thinly sliced into long strips
3/4 bunch maitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
about 3/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano
about 3/4 cup grated Mozzarella
about 1/2 cup Ricotta
about 1/2 pound mixed ground beef and ground pork
1 tablespoon pine nuts
1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 or 3 large green olives, minced
7 or 8 capers, halved
1/4 teaspoon garam masala (substitute five-spice and curry powder)
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
salt and pepper, to taste
olive oil, for frying

1. Salt sliced eggplant and allow to sit for about 15 minutes to sweat.
2. Mix cheeses together and set aside, reserving about 1/4 cup Pecorino Romano.
3. Combine meat, capers, garam masala, marjoram, fennel seeds, and pepper in a mixing bowl.
4. Rinse off salted eggplant and drain and dry well. Toss or brush eggplant with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
5. Warm a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add eggplant and fry until both sides are browned, about 2 or 3 minutes on each side.
6. Remove eggplant from heat and set aside on paper towel to drain excess oil.
7. Add about 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the same non-stick skillet. Sauté pine nuts, onion, garlic, and olives until slightly browned.
8. Add meat and cook just through, making sure to break up any large chunks. Drain excess fat and reserve.

Sauce

about 20 ounces diced canned tomatoes in juice
1 small eggplant, peeled and diced
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 bunch maitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
2 or 3 large green olives, chopped
2 tablespoons Balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup red wine or fruit liqueur
dried thyme, to taste
dried basil, to taste
dried oregano, to taste
1 bay leaf
1 dash Tabasco sauce
salt and pepper
reserved fat from meat (see above)

1. Warm reserved fat over medium-high heat. Add eggplant, onion, garlic, mushrooms, olives, salt, and pepper and cook until onions become translucent.
2. Add tomatoes, vinegar, wine or liqueur, herbs, and Tabasco sauce and bring to a boil.
3. Cook uncovered to reduce until sauce reaches desired consistency

Assembly

fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
olive oil

1. Boil about 6 cups water in a large pot. Brush excess flour or bran from fresh lasagne and add to water.
2. Cook for 2-3 minutes or until firmly al dente. Remove from pot and rinse under cold water, then drain and dry on paper towel.
3. Lightly coat a 9-inch bread pan with olive oil.
4. Layer pasta, eggplant, mushrooms, meat, sauce, and cheese two or three times until pan is full. Top with pasta, sauce, parsley, and grated Pecorino Romano.
5. Cover with foil and bake at 350º (180ºC) for about 20 minutes, then remove foil and continue cooking for another 15-20 minutes.

In the end, I had extra ingredients, especially pasta, so I made another lasagna-moussaka type thing with extra sauce, sliced onions, and a mixture of beaten eggs. That’s in my freezer now. I’ll let you know how it turns out. After that I still had extra pasta, which I microwaved with clotted cream, dried herbs, and a splash of sweet vermouth. It was delicious.

Simple Almond and Raspberry Tiramisu

about 12 ounces Mascarpone
about 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
about 12-15 lady fingers or amaretti cookies
1/2 cup espresso or strong coffee, cooled
1/4 cup Amaretto
1/4 cup Crème de Framboise
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon roasted almond oil (optional)
about 1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder
freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
fresh raspberries (optional)

1. Blend together cheese, sugar, almond extract, vanilla, and almond oil until homogeneous and set aside.
2. Combine coffee, Amaretto, and Framboise in a bowl. Dip lady fingers into coffee mixture until soaked (but not soggy) and arrange on the bottom of bowls or a baking pan.
3. Spread out one half of the cheese on top of the first layer of lady fingers.
4. Add another layer of soaked lady fingers and then another layer of cheese.
5. Dust with cocoa powder, cover, and refrigerate 1-4 hours before serving. Serve with fresh nutmeg and raspberries.

For a city as densely developed as Tokyo, they sure find a lot of room for cherry trees. We enjoyed a picturesque hanami stroll along the northwestern perimeter of the Imperial Palace moat, and then into Yasukuni Shrine, where tall, close-together trees created a downy pink canopy beneath a pristinely blue sky.

After breakfast in Kurokawa, we took another lovely bath, then packed up and left for our next stop: Aso. Our perpetually pleasant innkeeper drove us to the bus stop, and just a few minutes after he dropped us off, he was back again, to give us a complimentary tourist map of Aso! What a guy.

Then we were on our way. The bus ride was uneventful, as bus rides tend to be, but the view from the winding mountain road into the sprawling Aso caldera, green with agriculture and encompassed by high, volcanic mountains, was gorgeous. I suppose it’s a shame I don’t have a picture, but I figured one taken through a shaky bus window wouldn’t turn out very well, so I just relaxed in my comfy coach seat and enjoyed the moment.

We had booked a stay at another onsen resort, but before checking in we headed to Moo Moo Farm (formerly Friendly Farm), an establishment that offers hands-on encounters with the rural idyll (plus lots of dogs, for some reason). I don’t remember how I found out about this place – I think it might have been through the official Aso tourism website – but I’m glad I did. They have a restaurant and a rather sad souvenir shop, but Moo Moo Farm’s main draw for me was a series of fun, farmy workshops and experiences (taiken 体験) such as butter making, pony rides, and bread making. Also, there were ostriches, just for good measure. Anyway, we chose to do three activities – calf nursing, cow milking, and sausage making – which we had to reserve ahead of time by phone. (In the summer months, reservations are required only for the food workshops.)

First up was cow-milking. Our coach was a kindly young woman who explained, with wisdom and respect in her voice, the finer points of mother cows and their delicate dispositions. She reminded us that the cow (named Bell, or possibly Belle) is an animal, just like ourselves, and as an animal, we should treat her with respect, and also watch out for sudden… uh, evacuations. Then she showed us the milking technique, which took a lot more finesse than I expected. Then again, I expected it to look something like this:

Here’s what it looked like in reality:

Bear in mind that I’m from Wisconsin, born and raised in America’s dairyland (it says so on our license plates). And when I grasped that squishy pink udder in my hand, I felt I had grasped something important; no, something elemental, something at the very core of my being. At that moment, I thought to myself, “This is me!” It was like holding my own heritage in my hand.

Actually, I didn’t feel like that at all. I was mostly just focusing on the matter at hand: trying to coerce some milk out of the large mammal before me. However, upon reflection, the whole situation does strike me as somewhat strange. I spent all of college and most of high school wanting to live in Japan after growing up in Wisconsin. And what do I do now that I’m here? Milk a cow. I mean, WTF?

Anyway, we were done milking in a matter of minutes, at which point we tossed the spoils to a pair of hungry pugs, who wedged their heads into the bucket and began pushing it along the floor in a panicked attempt to lick up as much of the fresh milk as they could. Then we headed for the barn, where we were to nurse calves with warm milk in big baby bottles. It turned out to be a feeding frenzy. The calves became unmanageably unruly as they scrambled for the warm milk; the whole thing was over in about sixty messy seconds. I only got one picture out of the experience.

Then we played with the dogs, ate soft cream, and made sausages in our final workshop of the day. Considering it was our first time, I think the sausages turned out pretty good! However, I do think our coach overcooked them and they tasted a little dry in the end. But they were still palatable, though their porky aroma was somewhat overwhelming on the bus ride to Sozankyō 蘇山郷, our hotel.

I have more exciting things to write about than our lodgings on this leg of the trip, but I must say that it was a fantastic deal at only ¥14,000 per night. It included a nice little private bath, a sizable breakfast, and some of the best service I’ve ever received – and I live in Japan! The bar’s shochu collection was quite impressive, too. Highly recommended if you’re in Aso.

We spent just an hour or so relaxing at the hotel, and then we set off to what would be the highlight of the trip: the hifuri kamiwaza 火振り神事 at Aso Shrine, one of many fire festivals held around this time of years in and around Aso. Because of its somewhat alarming volcanic activity, the Aso area, and sometimes the whole of Kumamoto Prefecture, is known as hi no kuni, or the country of fire. At the festival, which loosely translated means “divine fire throwing,” the nickname proved to be more than just poetic.

I knew that the festival’s main attractions was some sort of spectacle involving people throwing fire; what I didn’t know is that this spectacle would be performed by whoever the hell wanted to give it a go! Here’s how it works: festival leaders light two or three big stacks of hay on fire, in the center of a long, narrow courtyard in front of the shrine. Then, eager members of the crowd rush to grab small bales of hay bound with rope (about one foot in diameter, and about two feet long) from large piles in various places throughout the courtyard. They unwind the rope, dip their bale into the flaming haystacks, and whirl it around their heads like crazy people.

It was like a culture of pyromaniacs. There was no dearth of volunteers for this, despite the fact that nobody had been trained or briefed on the dangers of swinging large fireballs around. It was not at all rare for a rope to burn through, sending flaming hay flying into other participants, into reporters, or into the wide-eyed crowd. It was madness. And it was awesome.

Needless to say, I had to give it a try.

I have had a lot of fun in Japan, and I have done a lot of really interesting, exciting things. But I’m afraid I can’t think of any other experience I’ve had, in Japan or any other country, that comes close to the thrill of wrangling a flaming bale of hay above my head, in close proximity to others doing the same thing. It is really very dangerous, and yet nobody seemed to get hurt over the course of the hour-and-a-half-long fire-flinging free-for-all.

There was also something going on about a goddess princess’s wedding ceremony. As good an excuse to play with fire as one could probably come up with, I suppose.

After that big, explosive climax, the rest of the trip consisted of much-needed falling action: a couple baths, a few beers, a ¥1000 glass of shochu, a big Japanese breakfast, and a pleasant denouement atop Mount Aso. Mount Aso is apparently the largest active volcano in Japan, and one of the largest in the world. We got up there by bus and by ropeway, and at the summit, the air was brisk and tinged with the smell of sulfur. On the way up, I wishfully half-expected to see bubbling streams of magma and barely-solidified black rock. Instead, there was the almost equally striking view of a steaming-hot, bright turquoise pool of mineral-dense liquid (I hesitate to call it water, because it didn’t look like any water I’ve seen before) in the volcano’s deep crater.

That’s about it. It was an amazing trip. Granted I haven’t been to Oita or Miyazaki yet, but I’m pretty sure after this long weekend that Kumamoto is my favorite prefecture in Kyushu. I will miss Kumamoto quite a bit when I leave Japan this summer.