Whatcha Got Cookin'?

 

For someone who doesn't like to cook, I seem to enjoy collecting cookbooks. I'm fortunate now that my mother-in-law does most of the cooking for me and Yoko. She'll cook for herself and my father-in-law, often fish and other healthy meals. They eat around 6Pm almost on the dot every night. Because of our work schedules, Yoko and I eat much later. I usually wait until Yoko gets home so her and I can eat together. Because my mother-in-law knows that we like meat and such, she'll usually cook a different main dish for us, but whatever she made as side dishes for herself and my father-in-law, we will eat as well. Because of all of this, I rarely have to cook.   q    

The Sauce And Salad Approach

I don't like Japanese food very much. That may be a shock to my readers, considering many of you know I live in Japan. And authentic, real-life Japanese food is very different from what is labeled Japanese food in America.

Sometimes my friends ask me how Japanese food is different from American cuisine. I often answer by stating what there isn't in Japan; like turkey, cold cuts, and chili. Most people understand that every country has different ingredients. But there was more to it than that and it took me a while to figure it out. So, I came up with the Sauce vs. Salad approach.

These two are a metaphor for how American and Japanese food are different. Bear with me on this. American food is Sauce. I don't mean it uses a lot of sauce for cooking, but the American style of cooking is like a sauce. Sauces bring together many different ingredients to create a new flavor. You combine tomatoes, herbs, spices, and other foods that, when finished, don't taste like one particular thing. The sauce doesn't entirely taste like tomatoes or herbs or spices. It is something new combined from all the ingredients. I think casseroles are a good example of this: many things coming together to create a new taste.

Japanese cooking uses the Salad approach. In salads, many items are brought together but retain their individual flavors. When you get a forkful of lettuce and tomatoes, you are going to taste the lettuce and tomatoes in equal measure. They are together, but not combined. They are their own flavors. Japanese cooking is like that. Dishes are made to enhance the natural flavor of the main dish. Tempura is great example. Although it is a fried coating, like fried chicken, the coating itself is flavorless and light. It is used to compliment the shrimp or pumpkin or whatever it is covering. The main taste isn't the tempura coating, it's the food itself. Dipping sauces and coatings are used to compliment the main ingredients. Thus, it is like a salad: many ingredients together maintaining their own flavor.

Which means, at least for me, many dishes taste the same in Japanese cooking. If you have five dishes that have shrimp as the main ingredient, and the goal is to enhance, not coverup or change the flavor, then you will get five dishes that taste like shrimp. Every food has a strong presence of the main ingredient. Since I am not a big seafood and vegetable fan, that limits a lot of Japanese food I like.

Most of the foreigners I've met in Japan fall into two groups: they love Japanese food or hate it. I'm in the middle. I'll eat it, but I prefer American food.

I hope my readers have found this post informative. Leave comments if you have them. As always, thanks for reading.

Comfort Foods

I admit I am a picky eater. But I wouldn’t say I have comfort foods in the traditional sense; there isn’t anything I NEED to eat when I’m sad or depressed.

But I guess I do have comfort food, in the sense that I have a lot that I miss from America. And when I can get it here in Japan, I pounce on it.

Import stores charge a fortune for their goods, nearly twice as much, and sometimes more. And they can’t get everything. I don’t order much food from the internet. Truthfully because I have never really looked into it, plus I’m afraid of what the shipping costs will be, especially for frozen/refrigerated items.

So I content myself with Jupiter, the import store in Hiroshima. If I had pick my comfort foods based on what I have bought the most of from there, it would be: A&W Root Beer, Van Camp’s Pork and Beans, Hormel Chili, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. These might seem like everyday staples of a grocery store, but believe it or not they are almost nonexistent in Japan.

Almost every Japanese person I know hates root beer. It’s because the same flavoring it uses is also used to flavor medicine here in Japan. Hence their nickname for it, “medicine cola.” Chili is almost impossible to make due to a lack of dried beans (or almost any bean) in stores. You see where I’m going with this? I can deal with big social and cultural differences, but little things like the this, every day foods you’d expect in almost every country, is really fascinating. And sometimes frustrating.

I’m not a big fan of Japanese food. While I believe I fit in rather well culturally, and I think I’ve adapted nicely to Japan, food is the one thing I really cling to. I’m very “American” in my choice of food. My wife Westernizes quite a bit of our cooking and she likes Western food, but can’t eat it every day. But I’ll pick Western over Japanese any day. Give me tacos instead of okonomiyaki.

What about you, reader? Any comfort foods. Comment, like, or reblog. As always, thanks for reading.