Udon.
Under a blue-
tiled roof, stomp the dough like
wine grapes to the west. Chew, sip, gone.
Udon…
Read moreThe Cookbook I Moved to Japan For
If I can’t travel, I cook. I’ve never been to Mexico, and used to think I hated the cheesy-beany glop that claims to be its cuisine, but that all changed when I found Rick Bayless’s first, Authentic Mexican. I’ve never been to Thailand, but back when I was so new to cooking that I’d never even baked bread or knew what to do with most of the vegetables in the produce section I scouted out lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and turmeric root (before it was trendy) to make everything I could from Vatcharin Bhumichitr’s Vatch’s Thai Cookbook. French, Italian, Chinese, you name it.
Unless you named Japanese. Then I was stumped. Raw-fish sushi was a nonstarter and back then the only ramen I knew about was the hangover-cure with a toxic flavor packet you got in college. Despite its name, Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art was encyclopedic and forbidding.
Then, one happy day, I came across a reference to Elizabeth Andoh’s Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen, and in keeping with the frugal habits of grad school poverty I checked it out of the library…
Read moreCauliflower and Yuzu, or, In Praise of a Japanese November
When we arrived in Japan four months ago, I knew that I would of course continue to cook Western food (洋食, youshoku) but wanted to dive right into Japanese food as well (和食, washoku—和/wa is the oldest Japanese word for “Japan” and still appears in words like wagyu, i.e. super expensive artisal Japanese beef).
However, this ferverous intention was thwarted first of all by the delayed arrival of our kitchen equipment, then the approximately seven typhoons that struck the island in our first six weeks, and finally by my abject illiteracy in the local grocery stores.
But even as weather and language lessons began to cooperate with my culinary ambitions, I was checked by the unexpected unavailability, or extreme price, of certain ingredients. For instance, celery is crazy expensive in Japan, which may explain why it tends to be packaged one stalk at a time! And though milk, butter, and yogurt are available and not too pricy—though sour cream and buttermilk appear to be nonexistent—they cost so much more than, say, tofu (29¥ a box, which is about a quarter) or beansprouts (19¥), that said dairy products got mentally transferred from the category of “daily necessity” to “luxury items.
What particularly afflicted me, though, was the matter of cauliflower and yuzu…
Read moreWorldly Pickles
Over a decade ago I met a social scientist who was trying to track how and why people share medical advice and beliefs. She studied the still very young Facebook to see what kinds of articles or blogs got shared and reposted, trying to discern the pattern of social distribution of medical knowledge.
What intrigued me about her work was the sudden realization that, in some way, we are all our own doctors now. We believe what we choose to believe about medicine, and discard or ignore the rest. There are no omniscient authorities anymore. I don’t think this is due to the inroads of quacks, or American individualism gone to extremes. It’s more a matter of how confidence in the medical establishment has been shattered among those who continue to be sick, overweight, and uncomfortable despite their obedience to the old rules. I gather there is even a growing crisis within the sciences themselves, as the repeatability of experiments proves more elusive in matters of health and psychology than previously acknowledged, not to mention a fresh appreciation of the incredible complexity of natural systems—from the whole planet’s climate to the biome of our guts—that makes testing for single variables difficult, if not downright misleading.
Truth be told, this is just a long-winded and semi-apologetic preface to my own bit of somewhat arbitrary, selective medical wisdom. In short: your gut will feel better if you feed it home-fermented foods…
Read moreReading “Silence” on My First Visit to Japan
I have known about Silence for a long time, and its basic plot, and deliberately avoided it because it seemed too painful to bear. But on our first trip to Japan, amidst the beautiful cherry blossoms in full bloom and warm welcome by our future colleagues, I decided I was ready to brave it. I am glad I did...
Read moreWhy Japan? —Well, Why Not Japan?
The first time Andrew and I heard about the church history job at Japan Lutheran College and Seminary, we laughed. “Tokyo—ho ho ho!” It was too far away, the language was too hard, the time was not right. I estimate that milliseconds after (if not exactly before the foundation of the world) God responded, “Sarah and Andrew—ho ho ho!” and set in motion the process that would lead to our being called there, Andrew to the church history job and me to pastor an English-language congregation in Tokyo...
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