Tag Archives: viking.Kyushu

Soul Food for Thought

8 Apr Miss Maude's

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Burger JointBLT Lamb Merguez Burger

On my recent, brief trip to New York to visit family and friends, I had a checklist of specific foods I wanted to eat there; I wanted nothing but good food experiences – nothing mediocre, nothing mundane. To these ends, the trip was beyond satisfactory. Fork-tender Greek-style grilled octopus, colorful piles of Ethiopian curries on spongy injera, a lowbrow burger, a highbrow burger, and butter beans with bacon and crème fraîche all made their way into my gullet, washed down with a variety of uniquely American indulgences: high-gravity craft beer, bottomless cups of coffee, and the notorious Twinkie milkshake, which was probably conceived either by some mad genius chef, or somebody’s six-year-old child.

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Yes, it was a five-day feeding frenzy on fantastic food – a very successful trip in my book. And though it’s hard to choose highlights from such a delicious holiday, my two favorite meals were probably a sampler plate from Miss Maude’s Spoonbread Too and good ol’ Akamaru tonkotsu ramen from Ippudō.

Miss Maude's

Miss Maude’s sampler plate included fried chicken, fried shrimp, barbecue short ribs and baby back ribs, candied yams, black eyed peas, and collard greens, a burly plate of food that was so good and perfect it could be in a museum – an exemplary soul food meal, Harlem, circa 2009. The ribs fell off the bone as if they couldn’t wait to be eaten, and the shrimp had a brilliant, fresh flavor that burst through the solid crunch and spice of its breading. I was especially impressed with the humble greens, wilted yet firm and unexpectedly tinged with a hint of smoke, like they had been cooked over a fire.

Akamaru

And then the Akamaru – well, we all know how I feel about Ippudō. Or do we? Ippudō is legendary. It was among the first bowls of really exceptional ramen I had in Tokyo, and it remained a favorite – somewhere in my top three, I’d reckon – over the course of the two years I lived in Japan, even after countless bowls of worthy competitors. The creativity displayed in Ippudō’s kiwami shin’aji and the ramen en flambé at its sister restaurant, Gogyō, cemented Ippudō’s status in my mind as one of the greatest ramen shops in existence. It seems silly, in retrospect, that I even considered not going there while I was in New York – the only city outside Japan lucky enough to boast an Ippudō.

Both of these meals (and yes, a bowl of ramen is definitely a meal – welcome to the site!) are sold as soul food. Miss Maude’s is soul food in the typical American sense of the word (and pardon my glib definition here): simple yet hard-to-get-right cuisine with loads of fat, protein, and carbohydrates originating in Southern Black households. The literature on Miss Maude’s and other restaurants serving this kind of traditional soul food often play up its homemade history; menus and reviews alike deploy comfort-food clichés such as “like Mom used to make,” “home-cooked taste,” and “just how you remember it” so repeatedly that crackers like me almost think that we actually did eat really awesome soul food growing up. Don’t we wish.

With this homey image in mind, the claim on Ippudō’s website that “Ramen is Japan’s Soul Food” struck me as a misappropriation of the term. Ramen, while hearty, frequently full of lard, and often relatively simple, it takes too much time and effort to cook at home (except, obviously, for the instant version); this, I thought, disqualified it as soul food. A Japanese visitor to Ippudō New York who could truthfully claim that his bowl of Akamaru was “just like Mom used to make” would have been raised by a very outstanding mother indeed.

Then I thought: what if the idea of “homemade” is allowed to extend outside the actual, physical home? While ramen isn’t really something that is cooked in the home in Japan, it is cooked at home in the sense that every town in Japan has a ramen shop, and, importantly, every region produces a different version of the dish that becomes a part of local culture and identity. Also, ramen is accessible – it’s cheap, fast, filling, and warming, and it provides a wonderful mélange of textures and flavors that just seems to make people a bit happier; in other words, it’s comfort food. So while ramen probably won’t elicit memories of the smell of pork broth wafting out of their kitchen when they come home from school, it’s likely to evoke a more generalized but no less affectionate nostalgia for their furusato, their old home – which may be their town, their prefecture, or (if they’re in New York), their country. And, for what it’s worth, Ippudō NY was just how I remembered it.

Viking Five: Chicken

28 Feb

On account that I find it fun and easy to compile lists of things, I am starting a new feature on my blog: Viking Five. These will be lists of what I consider to be exemplars of any given category. In most cases, I don’t have the experience or knowledge to create what might be called definitive “top five” lists, so these are simply five personal recommendations. Please add to the lists by leaving comments!

I’m starting the feature with a food that is often overlooked – but when it’s good, damn is it good. Chicken is so frequently bland and dry, a rather pointless thing to eat when prepared or processed witlessly, but if it’s prepared well, then there is almost no meat I’d rather eat.

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Zankou Chicken
Los Angeles, California

Taco trucks aside, there may be no LA food institution so cherished as Zankou Chicken. The darling of streetsmart food critics like Jonathan Gold, Zankou is beloved among all strata of Los Angeles society, including the loyal Armenians that invented it. It’s so good that Beck name checks it in a song about having a threesome on Midnite Vultures. I must say, there is something very nearly sexual about the buttery, delicately spiced skin and the voluptuously tender and juicy meat of a spit-roasted Zankou Chicken. And that garlic sauce is a wicked aphrodisiac.

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Yangon Restaurant’s Hot and Sour Deep-Fried Chicken
Bagan, Myanmar

All of the chicken I ate in Burma was really good, which I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that there aren’t any industrial chicken farms there. “Free range” isn’t even a meaningful category there, because the chickens just roam free around people’s houses. Our drivers had to hit the brakes a lot to dodge them – along with cows and lots of dogs. The Burmese chicken that stands out in my memory was a searingly spicy, addictively tangy dish of crispy and succulent fried chicken, perfumed with an immoderate amount of garlic and green onions.

Jitokko Sumibiyaki
Miyazaki, Japan

One thing I miss about Japan is the thrill of discovering new meibutsu. The Japanese present their unique regional cuisines to the rest of the nation with an enthusiastic pride, and the rest of the nation eats it up. Food and drink, along with flowers, temples, and hot springs, really seem to be what drives domestic tourism in Japan. For salmon, go to Hokkaido; for soba, go to Nagano; and for chicken, go to Miyazaki. There are at least two very famous Japanese chicken dishes originating in Miyazaki: the tartar saucy chicken nanban, and my favorite, jitokko sumibiyaki: literally, charcoal-grilled local chicken. It’s as simple as it sounds, and so very good. Miyazaki chicken has a firm texture and a fantastically buttery quality that sings beautifully with the smoky, blackened flavor of charcoal grilling.

Chicken Truck
Kitakyushu, Japan

One more for Japan – they do chicken right. At one of the schools where I taught, I used to walk to a nearby supermarket pretty much every day for lunch. I usually got some fruit and onigiri, maybe a pastry. But on certain days, there was this truck there. I think the truck was an outpost of a local restaurant, but I can’t remember the name of it. At any rate, this truck sold chicken – really good chicken. You could get the chicken wraps, or you could just go for a huge chunk of chicken, simply grilled with salt and pepper and probably MSG. I think it was the back quarter of the bird, neatly boned and flattened, full of fatty skin, just about as juicy and flavorful as chicken gets. It never failed to brighten my boring days as a human tape recorder.

Homemade Roast Chicken with Sausage and Chestnut Stuffing
Wherever you live

There’s nothin’ like a chicken you roast yourself – expecially when you rub it up with butter and herbs and serve it with a rich, moist sausage and chestnut stuffing. I’m not really much of a roasting guy (I’m more of a sautéing guy), so this week I took it upon myself to try something new. The result was a lovely, exceedingly juicy chicken with a delicate skin and deep flavor. Together with the stuffing, it is a rather rich dinner, so I served it with a palate cleansing salad of arugula and pea shoots with a lemon dressing.

The Chicken

1 4.5 pound chicken (get the free range kind, you cheapskate)
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
a few bunches of fresh herbs (try rosemary, lemon thyme, oregano, thyme, and flat leaf parsley)
3 bay leaves
1 onion
1 lemon or orange
paprika
salt
pepper

  1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF (205ºC).
  2. Clean the giblets out of the chicken, if they’re in there.
  3. Rinse the chicken inside and out with cold water, then dry thoroughly with paper towel. The bird should be very, very dry on the outside especially to help crisp the skin.
  4. Finely mince the herbs and mash them together with the butter and a pinch of salt.
  5. Quarter the onion and lemon or orange and stuff them into the cavity, along with the bay leaves and anything else you have to flavor the chicken: celery greens, additional herbs, apple peels, and garlic cloves work well. Pin the skin together to close the cavity with a toothpick.
  6. Rub the herb butter all over the bird, then season well with salt, pepper, and paprika.
  7. Put the bird on a rack and place in the oven. Roast for 10-15 minutes at 400º, then decrease heat to 375º (190ºC) and roast for another hour and a half (basically, you should cook the bird for 20 minutes per pound, plus the initial 10-15 minutes at a higher heat to crisp the skin).
  8. Remove the chicken from the oven and let rest for 10-15 minutes before carving.
  9. Thicken the drippings and add a spritz of lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce to make a gravy. Add a bit of chicken stock and/or cider or beer if there aren’t enough drippings.

The Stuffing

500 grams sausage meat
250 grams cooked, peeled chestnuts, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
1 apple, cored, peeled, and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/2 pound (about six cups) stale bread, lightly toasted and cubed
about 1 1/2 cups medium-dry cider and/or chicken stock
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
about 1/2 cup fresh sage leaves, chopped
4 tablespoons butter
olive oil
salt
pepper

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.

  1. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook until browned. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain the grease.
  2. Add the butter to the pan. Sauté the onion, celery, and fennel seeds along with salt and pepper until the onions are translucent.
  3. Add the chestnuts, apple, and sage and sauté for another few minutes.
  4. Add the bread cubes and sauté until they have absorbed almost all the butter.
  5. Add the cooked sausage, then the cider or stock a bit at a time, until the bread is quite soft but not mushy.
  6. Scoop the stuffing into a buttered baking dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until top has browned. Serve with gravy.

Greetings from the Land of Higashikokubaru 東国原の国へようこそ

17 Aug

Since he was elected in January 2007, the governor of Miyazaki has unleashed a marketing blitzkrieg to inform the rest of Japan (especially the rest of Kyushu) about the southern prefecture’s gorgeous coastline, delicious chicken, and mysterious connection to Easter Island. His unwieldly name is Hideo Higashikokubaru, but most Japanese know him better as former comedian Sonomanma Higashi. Like most Japanese prefectures, Mr. Higashikokubaru employed a charming little mascot to promote tourism in Miyazaki; the twist is that he employed himself as that character, cleverly cashing in on his own celebrity.

So far, it has worked brilliantly. Mr. Higashikokubaru’s toothy grin is everywhere: on onigiri wrappers, adorning mangoes in supermarkets, on JR and JTB posters, in conbini windows, on bottles of shochu, and on countless bags of limited-edution junk food made in flavors of Miyazaki meibutsu. In Tokyo a couple weeks ago, his likeness was flying on a flag outside a curry shop – I’m not sure why. Just by sheer ubiquity of this weird little man’s infectiously happy countenance, my interest was piqued.

Of course, there were a few other factors that played into my decision to take a trip down there – and I went during my frenzied ramen-binging, apartment-cleaning, guidebook-designing, perfectly-useful-kitchenware-discarding final week in Japan, no less. In March, a close friend of mine rode his bike there to visit his family and participate in the Miyazaki Marathon – in which he ran next to Mr. Higashikokubaru himself! He had a fine time and made Miyazaki sound pretty sweet. So naturally I was excited to go to the Miyazaki JET beach party held in late May; but that fell through due to rain. And finally, I dipped into Oita for the first weekend in July, so by that time I had been to every prefecture in Kyushu – except Miyazaki. I felt that it just would have been such a shame not to go.

And I felt that way even more so after actually going there. But before I get into the awesomeness of Miyazaki itself, I want to talk about the awesomeness of the bus I took down there. It was an overnight bus called the Phoenix, operated by Miyazaki Kōtsū from Fukuoka to Miyazaki. I expected it to be a typical coach: bumpy, loud, uncomfortable, and cramped. But I was wrong. There were only three seats in each row, with an aisle between each seat; the seats themselves were quite wide, and they unfolded and reclined in a variety of delightfully sleep-inducing ways. Thick curtains blocked out any trace of light, and the ride was so smooth and quiet that when I awoke, I thought the bus had come to a stop. And not only was it awesome, it was a bargain! I reserved my tickets with the SunQ Pass, which cost only ¥10,000 and allowed me to ride any bus in Kyushu for three days! So that’s my osusume if you’re day-tripping to Miyazaki from Fukuoka.

I got in at about 7:00 in the morning, so I had lots of time to enjoy myself before my return bus left at 11:00 that night. After picking up a dry, chewy breakfast of famous Miyazaki smoked chicken (again, with Mr. Higashikokubaru’s face on them), I hopped on a bus to Aoshima, site of the Miyazaki JET beach party and the Devil’s Washboard 鬼の洗濯板, a bizarre, visually striking formation of volcanic rocks lined up into neat parallel rows by the movement of the waves.

The beach was beautiful, but shortly after I got there, it started to rain. I took cover under a palm tree and watched cute little crabs scuttle by, clicking across a confetti of sand, stone, and crushed shells. It reminded me of Thailand.


Soon I had had enough of the rain, and took refuge in an omiyage stand. Just as I was about to board the bus again, the rain stopped – a good thing, because my next destination was outdoors, as well. In the now-sunny skies, I took in beautiful views of the Pacific Ocean, puncuated by fishing boats, rock formations like that of the Devil’s Washboard, and inns advertising lobster dinners. After about 30 minutes, I had arrived at Sun Messe Nichinan サンメッセ日南, home to the famous Miyazaki Moai.

It was cool to see the Moai. It was ridiculous, yes, but it was also cool. If the informational placards told the truth, then they are the only life-size Moai replicas that the government of Easter Island has allowed to be built outside the island itself. And it will be quite a while before I make it to Easter Island, so I just basked in the uniqueness of it all and gleefully took photos like any good tourist would. It was a beautiful day.

It was a hot day, too, so I ducked into the air-conditioned Moai museum, then had some hyūganatsu kakigōri, and then left a bit earlier than I planned because I wanted to get away from the weird guy from Hiroshima who kept following me around. On the way out, I snapped a photo of a Higashikokubaru Moai on my keitai and sent it to a friend, who replied that it was “kimoi” (creepy).

As I was waiting for the bus back to Miyazaki City, a woman pulled over and offered me a ride. I wasn’t even hitchhiking! I was reminded of the hospitality I received on my first visits to Tokyo and Kumamoto. I declined, however, because I was looking forward to listening to my special Miyazaki playlist on the hour-long bus ride back. When I got in, I grabbed a quick lunch of chicken nanban チキン南蛮 – a local specialty of fried chicken topped with a vinegar-based dressing and tartar sauce. The name literally means “barbarian chicken,” and I wonder if the prototype for it was originally introduced by European missionaries and traders, who were originally called barbarians and were known for eating a lot of fried food and vinegar. Anyway, it was delicious – fresh from the fryer with a tempura crunch, juicy with vinegar to counteract the oil, and slathered with tartar sauce to counteract the vinegar. Certainly several notches above the sodden mess I was used to from Hokka Hokka Tei (though I like theirs, too).

After that I settled in for another sixty-minute bus excursion to Shusen no Mori 酒泉の杜 (literally “forest of liquor springs”) – a glorious tourist complex near Miyazaki’s border with Kagoshima in a rural town called Aya. Shusen no Mori was built by the adjacent Unkai buckwheat shochu distillery, but the fun does not stop there; on the multi-acre land there is a hotel, an onsen, a winery, a brewery, a one-stop shop for Miyazaki omiyage, and a shochu gallery, where customers are given free reign to sample any number of dozens of varieties of shochu – plus sake, liqueur, and truly awful attempts at wine.

The onsen was fantastic, offering a smörgåsbord of different kinds of baths; my favorites were the sake bath, which really had a nice smell of booze, and the electric bath, which delivered the somewhat disconcerting and somewhat wonderful sensation of a low-voltage electric current passing through your body.

After rehydrating myself and cutting my foot on the corner of a step, I moseyed over to the shochu gallery, where I tried four kinds of wine (all of them undrinkable or borderline-undrinkable), a few tasty sakes and liqueurs (including one made from hyūganatsu!), and fifteen or so different shochu. I got to sample one variety that had always intrigued me: Mayan no Tsubuyaki, or “Mumblings of an Old Man.” I didn’t like it very much – it was a bit too rough, I thought, like something a mumbliing old man might drink – but I’m glad I got to try it.

I then stumbled across to the omiyage center, where I picked up some hyūganatsu sweets and Miyazaki chicken chips for my taiko group. After that I had a few beers from the on-site brewery – much better than the wine – and then went back to Miyazaki City, hungry for dinner.

I ate at a place called Dogenka Sentoi-kan どげんせんとい館, which I chose more or less because they offered a free pint of Hideji lager if you mention their website. The name of the place means something in Miyazaki dialect that I don’t understand, befitting their dedication to local food and culture. I ordered the Miyazaki jidokko omakase course, which, among many other things, included famous Miyazaki grilled chicken. The method of preparation was as inscrutable to me as the name of the restaurant, but I understand that Miyazaki chicken is grilled in a basket, and the texture is meant to be springy – or even crunchy. Springy it was – but it was also ebulliently juicy and tender at the same time. Its flavor was thick with charcoal smoke, and I was sad when I discovered I had eaten it all.

By this time I was pretty drunk on shochu and Miyazaki craft beer, and pretty sated with chicken (I just realized now that I had chicken for all three meals that day). So I walked around what appeared to be the remnants of a festival downtown, then headed back to the bus center. Inevitably, I got lost on the way there; the cabbie who eventually picked me up was friendly, though he insisted that I have a piece of gum after I initially declined his offer. “I offer it to everybody,” he explained, as if aware that I was worried that I had bad breath.

Then It was back on the Phoenix for another restful trip. Back in Kurosaki, I stopped at a conbini for something to drink, and I spotted Mr. Higashikokubaru’s balding, jovial face yet again on a packet of candy. This time, I smiled knowingly back at him.

Kumamoto, Part 3: Aso 熊本の第三部：阿蘇

29 Mar

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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.

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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: (more…)

Kumamoto, Part 2: Kurokawa Onsen 熊本の第二部：黒川温泉

27 Mar

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One of my first-ever entries was a travelogue about Kumamoto City, a place that made me fall in love with Japan all over again over the course of three days filled with hospitable people, delicious and exotic cuisine, ska music, storied history, and beautiful art. I vowed to return; and I have – twice! I took my parents there last spring, and over the summer I took my friend Vijan, to let them take in its consummate Japaneseness: the castle, the garden, and of course, the beer, ramen, and horse meat.

I never did feel compelled to write about Kumamoto again, though, because I didn’t really have anything new to report after my subsequent visits. But this weekend, I travelled to the quite volcanically interesting far northeastern regions of rural Kumamoto for a much-needed countryside getaway, and the newness and excitement of the trip refreshed me in the same way my original visit to Kumamoto City did. So without further ado, here it is: Kumamoto, part two.

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The first stop on our journey (by train, then bus) was Kurokawa Onsen, a hot spring resort area famous throughout Kyushu for its gorgeous scenery, especially in the fall, when the maple leaves glow red in the crisp, blue mountain air, and in the spring, when the plum and cherry blossoms burst open and their pale petals cover the mossy ground like snowflakes. Or that’s what I hear, anyway; we came a bit too early to see Kurokawa in all its exuberantly floral glory, but it was beautiful nonetheless. With time to kill before our check-in time, we took a leisurely stroll to admire the vibrant terrain around us after a surprisingly delicious lunch and a glass of refreshing Balsamic vinegar ginger ale at a cute little hilltop cafe.

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However, even all of Kurokawa’s natural splendor couldn’t entice us away from Tairōkan 大朗館, our ryokan, once we checked in; the service, the food, and the baths were just too nice and too inviting to neglect. Despite hearty recommendations from six of our friends (three couples), we weren’t so sure about the place when we first got there. It was lodged awkwardly in a row of shabby, nondescript houses, and there was nobody there to greet us upon our arrival. And the lobby smelled of teacher’s room coffee – something I had really hoped to get away from during our trip.

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But despite first impressions, it turned out to be a lovely stay. (more…)

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