Tag: cucumber

I would love to tell you all what I ate at Kobe, but I really have no idea. Now you may be thinking of course you have no idea it has been almost a month since you ate there. Well, that really has nothing to do with it. I didn't remember what I ate when I left there either.

Here is the problem. Once the fish is cut and put on to a piece of rolled up rice, it all looks the same to me; except for Tai which looks extremely different from the tuna.

So all I know is that I ate a lot of raw fish. Included in that line up was at least 4 pieces of Tai (Red Snapper), some Toro (Fatty Tuna), probably some Maguro (Tuna) and Albacore (White Fish), and one order of Hotategai (Scallops wrapped in Nori). I also had some Philadelphia and Cucumber Rolls and an order of Tomago (Egg Nigiri).

As you can see I ate a lot. I could have sat there longer and eaten more, but that would get mighty expensive.

After we left Kobe we went to the Orange Pearl Yogurt Store where I got a Strawberry Mango Smoothie. That helped to finish filling me up.

I have to say that Kobe is where I first fell in love with Tai. I had liked sushi before the Tai, but I did not yet have a love for it. Then I decided to order Tai. It came out looking different from the other fish. It is white with a slight red color to one side of it. And a slice of lemon tops it. Tai has a sweetness to it that is remarkable. If you aren't sure about sushi or have not yet fallen in love with it I must suggest trying Tai. It may convert you for life (I'm talking to you too Mrs. Savory!).

Kobe I love you and your Tai! I'll be back soon.

Well, as Tele has previously posted, the other night we went to Kobe. I think its a fine little sushi bar, and I must say that while I was there I fell in love with Red Snapper. That's some awesome fish, I tell you what.

The problem, however, is as much as I love sushi, I can almost never eat enough of it. I can eat .. well.. quite a bit more than I logically should be able to eat, and I fear that it's my voracious appetite that will condemn me to a) not eat enough at a sushi bar, b) eat so much at a sushi bar that the itamae and I have to battle in hand to hand combat because they have nothing left in the restaurant to eat, or c) I've eaten so much sushi that the Pacific ocean is declared devoid of life. A good example, is what I had to eat today. I had the following to eat:

• 4 cups of coffee
• 1 cup of tea
• 5 bottles of water (16 oz)
• 4 sandwiches
• 1 cup cheese popcorn
• 2 truffles
• 1 pear
• 1 stuffed pork chop
• 1 baked potato
• 1 bowl of cinnamon apples
• 1 bowl of coffee icecream

At the sushi place, if I recall correctly, I had:

• 5 pc cucumber roll
• 5 pc philadelphia roll
• 4 hamachi (yellow tail)
• 2 red snapper
• 2 crab roll
• 3 cups green tea
• 1 16oz sake

and we went out for frozen yogurt afterwards, in which I had a 16oz plain with pomegranate seeds.

I think I have a tapeworm. He and I understand each other.

Tonight, I'm doing lamb chops and tzatziki sauce. In fact, it's broiling while I type.

I started the tzatziki last night, draining some plain yogurt, grating a cucumber into it, and mixing in some dill, grated garlic, red wine vinegar, and pepper. It has been sitting in the fridge for a full day, but not without several inquisitive spoonfuls being borrowed...

Tonight, I mixed a stick of melted butter, some fresh thyme and mint, a couple squirts of dijon mustard, a quarter of an onion (chopped), some cayenne, and some black pepper and dill into a mess, then dipped the lamb chops in it and rolled them into breadcrumbs (pouring the rest of the mess in between them).

After broiling on both sides for five minutes apiece, I put a baguette from a local bakery on the bottom rack and turned the oven onto three-fifty. Give me a second to check on it...

Alright. The lamb is going to come out pretty soon; pictures (hopefully) at eleven.

...

Update: Rare is definitely the way to do lamb; it got barely any oven time after its broiling and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

The tzatziki had a little too much red wine vinegar; I'd suggest tasting it regularly and adding the vinegar (especially) at a slower pace. Remember that the tzatziki is going to be a bunch of separate flavors before it goes to the fridge, and taste accordingly.

Lamb is an interesting ingredient. It plays better with those obscure herbs in your spice rack than the standard American meats do; lamb with a little tzatziki is certainly a complex and wonderful experience.

Just a note: before tonight, I've had lamb three times and hated it each time.

One sushi bar ingredient I have a love-hate relationship with is kappa, known in English as the cucumber. Apparently, the Japanese term is based on a river goblin, named Kappa, who has a fondness for cucumbers. Nice circular logic, there; if I were going to name members of my family for the things they ate, I could name my daughter Random Scraps Of Paper and my wife Tasteless Vegan Filth. But I digress.

Cucumbers aren't exactly my favorite sushi ingredient, mostly because the fresh taste and crispness seems somehow wrong inside something made of raw fish; it tends to make me think I just bit willingly into a bone left in by some sadistic itamae, getting revenge for me not pointing my chopsticks towards magnetic north when I put them down on my plate. But in cucumber salads or sunemono, they come into their own.

Looking at online recipes, I saw an awful lot of recipes that include sake and rice wine vinegar. Since I'm too lazy to drive to Chinatown for one ingredient, and my children don't really need any extra sake in their diet (says the woman; personally, I believe that drunk children are sleepy children), I decided to play with the recipe a bit. And by 'play', I mean get retardedly creative.

I like rice wine vinegar, and I use it in an awful lot of foods. In fact, it's my second favorite vinegar upon God's slightly fermented green earth. However, I do hold true to the belief that the Japanese would have never invented rice wine vinegar if they'd had the miracle that is balsamic vinegar. I'd gush and all, but I believe the Masochist detailed his unending love for the purple here.

Now, people who know stuff about cooking, like to complain, and have way too much time on their hands to search the internet for blogs may interject that "balsamic vinegar is nothing like rice wine vinegar", on the basis that the first is sweeter, thicker, and much more complex. Thanks. Gee, I didn't know that. Of course balsamic and rice wine vinegar are different. Read the previous paragraph.

However, there is a very important factor here- the differences mean that you can't adulterate balsamic vinegar with salt and sugar in the same proportions as rice wine vinegar and end up with a similar salad topping. In fact, Italian cuisine purists might even argue that to adulterate balsamic with anything at all is akin to blasphemy, like some massive malediction called down upon Vatican City.

Luckily, I'm Protestant.

After cubing two cucumbers and mixing them with alfalfa sprouts (no mung beans... darn), I contemplated the balsamic like some sort of scrying pool. And the oracle revealed to me that mixing the vinegar with one third its volume in sugar and microwaving to combine was, as it were, All Good. And there was a tiny amount of salting and peppering, but not enough so as to offend the NeoRomans.

For a final flavor kick, I put about two tablespoons of sesame seeds on foil and put it under the broiler on high for about four minutes, just to toast them for salad purposes. And you know what? I thought it was superawesome. Our resident Tartologist thought it even better the next day (today).

So maybe I'm crossing roads that aren't meant to be crossed. The point is, make do with what you have, be aware of subtle (or blatant) differences, and always smile like a killer when someone else takes their first bite.