Takenoko and Other Signs of Spring

They don't sell them in every supermarket, but this time of year you'll come across them sooner or later, whether it's in a high-end department store food basement or in a plastic crate on the sidewalk. That's right, tis the season to eat bamboo shoots. As a child, I spent many happy springtimes weeding my parents' lawn of the pesky, spiky shoots, which pop up at amazing distances from the parent plant and are not only adorable, with their layers of shiny brown outer leaves and mohawk of green fronds at the top, but also make wonderful play swords. The edible version enjoyed here are much fatter than those back home, and don't look like they could be quite as easily kicked over. They're still pretty cute, though.
Cute, but edible? I have to admit, takenoko is not my favorite vegetable. It's a lot of work to prepare if you buy it raw, so they're most often sold pre-boiled. Throughout the year, you can get vacuum-packed, pale-looking shoots in supermarkets, and in spring the pre-boiled shoots are sold floating in containers of water to be individually plucked and carried home, like a prize goldfish, in a little plastic bag. I can't help but feel that these are not the most sanitary conditions for a pre-cooked food, though this being Japan it's probably perfectly safe, and meant to prove that they're freshly cooked.

Bamboo shoots may be cause for us Westerners to stop and stare, but as I was preparing my shoot-avoiding lunch the other day, it made me think twice - after all, are those spiky, fat bamboo shoots really so different from that other springtime favorite, asparagus?

Korean Lunch at Taishikan

Though you might think, from reading my blog, that the only foreign cuisine to be found in Tokyo is French, that's very far from accurate. Not only is there a full range of western cooking, from very authentic pizza to the ever-popular Makudonarudo hamburger, but other east Asian countries are also well-represented. The other day I visited Taishikan, a Korean restaurant (the name means "Embassy" in Japanese) not far from my office, and from the moment the kimchi hit the table, it was like being in another country.

We removed our shoes before stepping up to be seated around a low table, and the menu was in Japanese, but otherwise everything was oddly dissonant for those of us accustomed to life in Tokyo as opposed to Seoul. The waitress spoke Japanese with an accent. The chopsticks were metal. And the food, of course, had the kind of fire you just don't taste a lot in traditional Japanese cooking, which is much more sweet than spicy. All the wonderful little appetizer dishes of pickled or fried vegetables had a sesame-oil aroma as well as the red chili heat, and my tofu soup, above, was like a liquid version of the same flavors, with some sliced green onions for crunch and the silky tofu for mild relief. It came with a silver box of rice.

One thing that Korean and Japanese culture share is a love of raw eggs - both my kinudofu chige and the ihiyaki bibimba, above, were adorned with that bright yellow yolk, which is quickly stirred into the dish and mostly cooked by the substantial residual heat of the stone bowl. Bibimba is the classic Korean lunch-in-one-dish: like Japanese donburi, it's a bowl of rice with toppings, but the Korean version features the rice actually cooked in the bowl, so it's nice and crispy on the edges, and the toppings are pickled vegetables and chili sauce, and often grilled meat. And of course, an egg.
I don't know if they offer dessert on the menu, but who needs it when there's Dessert Gum waiting by the door to pick up as you leave?

Taishikan

Roppongi 2-3-1

Minato-ku, Tokyo

Aux Bacchanales

When I go out to lunch with friends, we often eat at Aux Bacchanales. It's a French-style brasserie that opens onto an ivy-roofed terrace, and it's especially pleasant being able to eat outdoors this time of year when the weather is nice. The menu, which changes daily and is written on blackboards the waiter carries up to the table, is consistently good. There's always a choice of a fish or a meat main course, as well as soup, omelette, and quiche of the day and a couple of salads. Baskets of long, golden baguettes are positioned throughout the cafe, and a basket of baguette slices comes with lunch. Though the bread is soft rather than chewy inside, it has a crisp crust and nice flavor. In fact, there's a whole bakery attached to the cafe, which sells the best pain au chocolat I've found in Tokyo, as well as a variety of other sweet and savory breads and pastries.

On a recent visit, the fish of the day was grilled tuna, a substantial chunk of meaty fish served on an herb-flecked pilaf of barley, rice, and perhaps some other grains as well, all of it encircled by a creamy white sauce. It's delicious, and I especially enjoy the unusual choice of carbohydrate - barley isn't something you see much of in Japan, unless it's in the form of barley tea. There's just the right amount of sauce to be rich without making you feel like you just ate a pound of butterfat. And the tuna, though cooked through and a bit crisp at the edges, was still tender and flaky.

We ordered coffee after lunch, but they brought out cafe au lait by mistake. The waiter came by and apologized a few minutes later, offering to bring regular coffee instead, but we were quite contented with our accidental drinks. The milk was prettily not-quite-mixed into the coffee, and just barely frothy on top.

Aux Bacchanales also serves some of the most beautiful and decadent desserts in the neighborhood. Though we didn't get anything this time, we admired the pastry case as we stood in line at the register to pay. My favorite is the tarte aux noix, which is like a pecan pie that's attained nirvana, but the strawberry tart looked extremely tempting today. There's also a tarte au chocolat, basically ganache in a pastry shell, that could put any other death by chocolate dessert to shame.


Aux Bacchanales
Ark Mori Bdg., 2nd Floor
Minato-ku, Akasaka 1-12-32

Baumkuchen at Nenrinya

Few cakes are as delicious as baumkuchen, their dozens of paper-thin layers each a bit caramelized top and bottom so that the wheel-shaped slices resemble a felled tree's rings. Though the batter is a simple buttery-vanilla flavor on its own, it attains an incredible richness from the unusual cooking method - the cake is formed on a horizontal rod that spins in an oven as layer upon layer is slowly added.
At Nenrinya, which is on the first floor of the Matsuzakaya department store in Ginza, you can see models of the cakes spinning endlessly in the shop window, entertaining the long lines of people patiently waiting to buy. There are also videos playing to show the real cakes being made, but they don't give away any secrets. I can't imagine how anyone came up with this idea, or even quite understand how it works - why doesn't the inside get inedibly dried out by the time the outer layers are on? I'm also not sure why the final product ends up looking like a vacuum hose or an accordian. But question not miracles. This cake is amazing, and who needs to know how it's done behind the green curtain?

Garden of Destiny

While out enjoying the gorgeous spring weather on Sunday, I passed through Hibiya Park. I used to walk here all the time when I lived next to my office, so I feel a bit nostalgic whenever I occasionally come back. Though I claim to set no stock by superstition, I'm actually highly susceptible to the allure of coincidence, and I always make sure to visit two particular areas of the park.
If you can read katakana, you know that this tree sign says "yuri no ki." It's what we call a tulip tree in English, and the literal translation in Japanese is "tree of lilies." But another, equally correct, translation, would be "tree of Yuri." So I always think of this as Yuri's tree. Too bad he lives 6,000 miles away from it.

Just a short walk across the park there's a pretty little rose garden. And wouldn't you know, one of the roses is Laura. It's pink and cream, pretty much the same color my skin would be if I lived in a garden out in the sun. And ... did you notice the year of this rose's origin???

Coincidence??? You decide.

Sakura Sweets

The cherry trees are blooming, and that means it's the season for pink pastries in every shop, from traditional Japanese okashiya to fancy French patisseries. Since cherry blossoms are so iconic, this would hardly be surprising except for one seemingly important detail: cherry blossoms aren't actually edible and probably don't taste very good. So what flavor is a sakura sweet supposed to be?

The easy answer is: it depends. In the sakura an-pan at the top, the filling is the typical sweet red bean paste flavored with flower-infused salt, which comes through sour and strong, the taste all the more apparent for being invisible. Sakura mochi, above, don't actually taste any different from ordinary mochi - a spongy rice flour dough (pink, of course, in this case), wrapped around smooth red bean paste - except that they're enclosed in edible sour-pickled cherry leaves and topped with a pickled blossom. It's the tartness of the pickled leaves and flowers that defines any sweets that employ real cherry-blossoms.

Sakura bread? Why not? I didn't buy this, so I can't tell you what it tastes like, but it's certainly pretty and pink. While we're looking at all these labels, a linguistic aside: the character for "sakura," 桜, is one of my favorites. On the left is the character for tree, on the right, the characters for a female and three lines that I like to think of as a crown (though I have no idea what they actually mean). It fits together well, and looks so graceful - plus, I like to think of cherry blossoms as being girly.

One of the more unusual interpretations of the cherry blossom pastry is Sadaharu Aoki's Sakura Eclair (note the golden glitter atop the pink icing - nothing but glamour for Monsieur Aoki). On the outside, it's a typical sakura sweet, pretty and puffy and pink.
Inside is where it gets interesting. Rather than the usual pickled leaf or blossom imparting a fragrant, mildly tangy filling, Sadaharu Aoki has a plain vanilla-bean pastry cream jazzed up with a bold dark-pink streak of sour cherry jam. And it's really sour - a surprising contrast with the sticky-sweet pink icing and mild custard cream.

Cherry blossom season is fleeting, and so are these sweets. You have to get them while you can - in a few days the blossoms will be gone, and most of these confections won't be in the shops for much longer.

Ristorante Mario

My last night in Rome, I went to the closest restaurant to my hotel, Ristorante Mario. It was in my guidebook, which described it as a Tuscan restaurant loved by both tourists and locals, and sure enough, the warren of dining rooms was filled with a reassuringly eclectic variety of diners. The waiter led me through to the back room, where I sat at a small table covered with a cheery yellow cloth and nibbled a breadstick as I watched the next table over be served one of those gigantic, bloody Florentine steaks, which they divided up among the four of them.
Such carnivory was not for me, however. I ordered ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach. It arrived in a wonderfully fresh sauce of chopped tomato and olive oil, topped with parmesan cheese and accompanied by a nifty little cheese box whose handle, when swiveled backward, also lifted the lid. I piled on a bit more parmesan and enjoyed. To be honest, I don't remember the filling or even the pasta, but the fresh acidity of the tomato sauce (I know, I know, how fresh could it have been in March?) was truly delicious.
For my contorno, I chose another artichoke preparation: carciofi alla Romana. These are cooked to pure velvet and doused in olive oil. They were perfectly tender and could have been a meal in themselves accompanied by nothing but the crusty-outside, pillowy-inside bread (some of the only bread I've had in Italy that was worth writing home about).
And for dessert, I took another chance on tiramisu. Again, it was a different interpretation than I'd ever seen, but this time it paid off. The slices of spongy cake were thick enough that there was a clear delineation between the plain side and the side soaked in coffee liqueur, there was a perfect ratio of cream to cake, and best of all, there were crunchy little chunks of chocolate buried underneath as well as that puddle of chocolate sauce pooled on top. This is the tiramisu I will attempt to make when I finally undertake that challenge at home. It was a triumphant finish to my short but endlessly rewarding adventure in Roma.

Valzani

Before going to Italy I made a list of shops and restaurants, gleaned from websites and guidebooks, that sounded worthwhile seeking out. Of the three chocolate shops on my list, Valzani, which is in the Trastavere neighborhood on an unpromising-looking, narrow, winding lane, was the only one that a) I managed to find and b) was open at the time I found it. And what a find it is! Handmade signs label each confection; other signs proclaim that it's all "our own production." The chocolates come in all kinds of whimsical shapes - scaly fish, violins, lambs, cats - and an even more thrilling array of sizes.

Even an ostrich might be intimidated by the size of these chocolate eggs. Okay, I'll admit it, I had to buy one. I chose the smallest, which at 185 grams is still a pretty fantastic size. It came packaged in a cardboard box, which I finally opened tonight (I had already consumed the other chocolate I bought at this shop, a piece of walnut bark half and inch thick, some chocolate-covered candied orange peel, and a strange confection of crunchy candied fruit in a wafer shape coated in chocolate). At first I was perplexed - it didn't crack open when I squeezed it, even near the seam, and the glossy surface was so smooth it seemed a shame to break it. Finally, with no other choice, I tapped the side without the sugar flowers against the table (wisely, without removing it from its plastic bag). A few hard knocks and the back half broke into big pieces. Inside was a prize - a handpainted green butterfly ornament with a yellow loop of ribbon on top (for hanging on an Easter tree?). The chocolate, of course, was delicious - bitter, crunchy, thicker in some areas and thinner in others - just like I like it. I just wish there were more Valzanis in the world... though considering how addictive it is, it may be a good thing there's only one. And it's on the other side of the world.

Zeppole and Cornetti

In my frequently circular wanderings around Rome, I happened several times upon a bakery designated only "Forno" by the vertical yellow sign outside, though I finally realized that it was probably the Volpetti listed in my guidebook at the same address. There was always a line of people in the tiny space, which was three-quarters filled with cases of pastries and slices of pizza rustica and shelves of bread loaves. Finally I joined the line and ordered up a bag full of sweets: a chocolate cream filled sandwich cookie, a brownie-like bar of chestnut and walnut cake, a chocolate and nut filled scone, and the confection pictured above, a zeppole.
What is a zeppole? I had no idea, but there were handwritten signs posted in the bakery's windows advertising them, so I knew they must be special. I ate mine for breakfast the next day, and while it might not have been fresh from the oven anymore, it was still delicious. I was quite surprised to find the inside hollow and light as choux pastry, since the outside was hard and crisp, quite unlike a soft chou creme or eclair. The pastry was brushed with a sugar glaze but otherwise unsweetened, and it was the perfect compliment to the dense, rich almond filling and sweet amarena cherries on top. I particularly appreciated the way the piping of the filling mirrored the piped pastry base.
My two other mornings, I had a pastry much like the filled croissant above, one with chocolate and one with vanilla cream. The first one, from Tazze d'Oro near the Pantheon, was amazing - the pastry had a lemon flavor and was so full of chocolate that I made quite a mess and felt like it was smeared all over my lips. The vanilla croissant was much easier to eat (it's the one I got at Castroni) but didn't have nearly as much flavor. An interesting linguistic note - in Rome, these danishy croissants are called cornetti, while in Florence they go by the even more blatently inaccurate name of brioches. Whatever they are, they're the perfect accompaniment to a cappuccino, as millions of Italians and tourists can attest.

Castroni

Jet-lagged, I woke up early on Saturday morning and was already out sightseeing at the church of Santa Maria del Popolo by seven, getting in a bonus viewing of Caravaggio altarpiece paintings before my nine o'clock reservation to the Vatican Museums. On my way from the church to the Vatican I stopped for breakfast at Castroni, a charming food shop and coffee bar not too far from the Vatican Museum entrance, though far enough away to be outside the tourist district.
The front of the shop was decorated with giant chocolate eggs and packed with Easter candy, while the aisles further in held the more commonplace stock of dried pasta, olive oil, biscotti, and even foreign foods like Asian sauces and English jams. In the narrow section between front and back was the little cafe, where a crowd of locals and tourists had already lined up at the bar. Feeling like I was finally getting a feel for Italian customs, I went and paid for a cappuccino and a pastry at the cash register before approaching the bar and ordering my breakfast.
The cappuccino was good, with plenty of foam to eat with the spoon, and the pastry was thankfully easy on the powdered sugar so I was able to stay neat and tidy. But it was the shop itself, rather than the meal, that was really memorable. I loved having breakfast surrounded by jars of jelly and bags of chocolate, as if I'd stumbled into a gingerbread cottage, minus the witch!

Trattoria Le Grotte

As anyone who has ever relied on me to choose a restaurant, especially in a foreign city, can attest, I'm perfectly capable of wandering around in indecision for hours before settling on a place most likely as good as the first one to be considered. In order to avoid wasting time this way in Rome, I decided early that I would just go to the restaurants near my hotel, and not worry about tracking down those my guidebooks gave the highest marks since they were likely to be far away and require reservations anyhow. So on my second night, after a wonderful day of the Pantheon, the Borghese Gallery, and a special Caravaggio exhibition at Scuderie del Quirinale, I walked back to the street where I was staying and into Trattoria Le Grotte.
The first sight to greet me as I entered the dining room, with its wine-cavern architecture and its walls frescoed with crude depictions of Rome's famous sites (particularly crude following the incredible paintings on all the walls I'd spent my day within), was an antipasti bar that looked frighteningly like a cafeteria counter. Things improved once I was seated further inside, at the center of the inner room, a great vantage point for people watching and observing plates of food come and go. The service station was just a few feet away, and I watched with interest as the waiters filleted fish that had been cooked on the bone in huge metal baking pans, or sawed up the hard-crusted bread into slices for bread baskets. The Sicilian-style tuna I ordered, a couple of cutlet-thin pieces of fish cooked through and drowned in a garlicky sauce of cherry tomatoes and olives, was not plated tableside - I guess tuna is a little too large for them to cook on the bone. It was slightly tough, but the pieces were thin enough that it didn't really matter. The olives were delicious, juicy and with seeds intact.
I had read that it was artichoke season in Italy, and since artichokes are one of those vegetables you just don't see very often in Japan, I was looking forward to eating them every chance I got. I ordered them "alla Giudia," which means fried to a crisp. The outer leaves actually blew up into shattering, hollow balloons, while the interior was moist and creamy.
The tiramisu I got for dessert was the most disappointing part of the meal. It was supposedly homemade, but in this case that simply meant assembled two minutes earlier. The cookies were still completely crisp, and there was none of the melding of flavors that's really the whole point of tiramisu. The custard was good, but there was so much cocoa sifted over that I almost choked on my first bite. Oh well, you live you learn - who would have thought there was any such thing as a bad tiramisu? Otherwise it was a pleasant restaurant, busy but not packed, and the waiters were attentive and friendly. One of them ran after me as I was leaving the restaurant, forgetting my shopping bag with the books I'd bought at the last museum. Now that's service!

Matzo S'mores

The tour of Rome isn't over yet, but as it's currently Passover I want to interrupt with a holiday treat: matzo s'mores. As much as I genuinely like matzo, which comes in lots of flavors and is basically a big break-apart cracker, I have to admit that it's not terribly photogenic. But toasted marshmallows and chunks of dark chocolate always enliven things. After a lot of trial and error, I've determined that it's best to put the matzo on a plate, broken into four pieces, top each piece with a marshmallow, and toast it in the toaster oven without the chocolate. When it comes out, quickly sink a broken piece of chocolate into the top of each marshmallow - this melts the chocolate while making the marshmallow spread out across the breadth of the matzo. If you like, you can toast half the matzo plain and use it as the top half of sandwiches, though it's much less messy to eat if you leave them open-faced. While matzo will never taste like a graham cracker, it does mimic millefeuille pastry or phyllo rather well - when buried under gooey sugar and chocolate, one crunchy flaky base is much the same as another, and you'd never guess this was the bread of affliction.