This weekend I cooked with goya(bitter melon) for the first time, and it turned out awesome! I first tried goya in Okinawa as a component in a chop suey-like dish, and made it with the help of a friend. After you try this dish, you might grow to love the bumpy-cucumber-like hunk of bitterness. Goya Champura
Ingredients:
1 goya, cored and sliced thin into half-rings
1 onion, cut into (half) rings
a few cloves of garlic, minced
one half a loaf of SPAM, chopped into thin slices
one block of firm tofu, cubed
four eggs, scrambled
one teaspoon of sesame oil
one teaspoon of olive oil
two heaping tablespoons of miso paste
one tablespoon of toubanjan (red chili paste)
Directions:
Fry the goya, onions, and SPAM in the oil on high heat, until the onions become translucent and then add the garlic along with the miso and toubanjan and cook for a few more minutes. Add in the tofu and the eggs with some salt and pepper and cook until the eggs are done.
This dish shows off the versatility of spam, in its ability to tame a food as bitter as goya. Like it or hate it, but above all, respect the SPAM.
Note:
Due to the high sodium content of SPAM, I suggest going light on the salt. If you want to get seriously Okinawan, then you should eat this with a slowly stewed pig’s foot (this is so f*cking delicious that all negative connotations of pig’s feet will disappear once you eat it), grilled lobster and steak, a small, deep-fried red snapper without its filets (basically the head, bones, and tail), and some awamori, aged 20 years (100% kusu, of course!).
For more info on goya, and another goya champura recipe, check this page. Mmmmm… Goya Beer…
My sister Merin sent me this picture of a tank full of habu in awamori that she took while on vacation to Okinawa this weekend, in a place called Gyokusendo Kingdom Village. I wrote all about habushu and mamushizake in a previous post, and thought that they made this liquer with one snake per bottle, kind of like one worm per bottle of tequila. Sad, isn’t it?
But let’s end this post on a lighter note. Let’s enjoy some potty humor, again thanks to my sister:
Okinawa is, indeed, a place full of wonder…
There are a few things that I used to depend on for everyday cooking and I still use many of them over here, but I sorely miss Mexican food ingredients. I miss the abundance of tortillas, both flour and corn (I can get flour tortillas at Costco in Fukuoka periodically, but it is a pain in the ass). Good cheese is also hard to obtain, because it is prohibitively expensive (except for at Costco, once again). If you want cillantro, you must grow your own, and it will not survive the cold winter of Ubuyama without a heat source (you can obtain it at the Kuju Hana Koen, labeled as “italian parsely”, as a potted plant). I also miss frijoles and canned chilli. These are the ingredients that helped to get me through college.
I was excited to find all of the components for making tacos, including cheap avocados, but there was one ingredient I couldn’t find- tortillas. I tried eating the taco ingredients on top of rice, but rice sucks as a substitute. The only worse thing I can think of is putting the taco ingredients on a slice of toast! I was so disappointed that I thought about making my own tortillas, and found these instructions. Sorry, that’s just too much work for something that I’m used to shelling out 39 cents out for, for a ten pack.
Maybe that’s what made eating Mexican food so great when I came back home last Christmas. I love eating tacos, enchiladas, burritos, quesadillas, chimichangas, taquitos, nachos, and everything else that you can get at a taco truck, Tito’s tacos, Alerto’s, King Taco, and the other mexican restaraunts and taquerias that I remember.
I’m not sure about the rest of Japan, but Kyushu has almost no Mexican restaraunts that I know of, except for Plaza Del Sol in Kumamoto City. This place is pretty good, and the prices are reasonable, considering the rarity of many of the ingredients that they use. THey make decent tacos, burritos, nachos, and other dishes and the cooks are Mexican- again, something truly rare in Japan but not worth mentioning in California. One thing that did surprise me was their pickled vegetables (I forget what these are called in Spanish, help Dad!). The slices of carrots, jalapenos, and whole cloves of garlic are the best I have tasted anywhere.
If you are coming to Japan, and love Mexican food as much as I do I suggest you do two things:
1. Bring your own industrial sized bottle of El Tapatio (or Cholula for all of you rich people).
2. Eat AS MUCH Mexican food as you possibly can for the two weeks preceeding your departure.
This thing made me want to put on a blindfold, spin around ten times, let the force guide my bat straight and true, and smash it open to get to the candy.
Everyone knows how to make French Toast, but I consider my version to be top shelf. My favorite thing about FT is that I almost always have the ingredients, and it is a quick meal. Try this version out:
Ingredients:
bread, left out from the night before or toasted to get rid of moisture
eggs
whipping cream
peach schnapps or kahlua
butter
bananas, sliced
maple syrup
sugar
confectioner’s sugar
cinnamon
Directions:
Scramble the eggs and add some whipping cream. Also add peach schnapps or kahlua, sugar, and cinnamon. Dip the bread on both sides, allowing it to soak in the egg mixture. Fry on both sides with butter (this is important!) on medium heat (you want the sugar in the FT to brown nicely, but not to blacken- there is a thin line between carmelization and carbonization. if it starts to smoke, you’ve cooked it for too long or used too strong of a flame).
Next for the topping. Add a generous tab of butter to the pan, and keep the flame at medium high. Carmelize the banana slices on both sides, making sure not to burn them. If you do it just right, they should be a deep, crispy shade of brown and will taste awesome! Powder the FT with cinnamon and powdered sugar, hip up some fresh whipped cream and top the FT with it, along with the bananas and some maple syrup.
This recipe was inspired by my mother, who used to make fried bananas for me and my siblings when we were little, and who also stressed the importance of using butter to cook with. Olive and canola oil have their time and place, but using margerine or some other butter substitute is unacceptable. And don’t get me started on the butter-flavored lipids that they squirt onto movie theatre popcorn! Margerine wasn’t meant to be eaten in the first place- it was developed to be mixed with gasoline along with other components to make Napalm (I’m pretty sure, but I can’t find any sources on the net). Mmmmm… Napalm…
The view from the top of the caldera was unusually clear yesterday. In case you’re up here, the rest stop on the 339 right before it T intersects with the 45 sells awesome takoyaki.
Let’s face it, nature is a dirty place, dirtier than places like the middle-class suburbs, but mostly cleaner than third world countries, slums, and shanty towns where the population’s excrement co-mingles with their drinking water. Ah, the suburbanites have the luxury of crying about how tragic it is that their kids won’t get to experience the outdoors, and make a contribution by joining the Sierra Club and making once-a-year donations to Greenpeace.
Get most of these people out into nature and enjoy the irony as it unfolds. They want the mountain lions, coyotes, and other wild animals out of their neighborhood at any cost after someone or someone’s pet gets attacked, yet teach their kids the importance of biodiversity and of the humane treatment of cute and furry animals. They pay more for organically labeled food, and yet soak those irksome weeds with Round-Up, having no understanding of the consequences of toxic runoff that seeps into the water. They go outside and cover themselves in deet to keep away the insects (Nature bad!), bust out the bug spray when the ants come and raid the picnic, and plug in the bug zapper whose kill ratio is 5 mosquitoes to 95 of possibly beneficial insects. They make a huge fuss if there isn’t a nearby flushing bathroom stocked with toilet paper, running water, and soap. Watch the honors students cry when you tell them that they have to go into the forest behind a tree, dig a hole with a branch and wipe with broad evergreen leaves (make sure to avoid plants with clusters of 3 leaves)! Now what do you think of composting on a personal level, kids? You know what the difference between a jungle and a rainforest is? Being there yourself burning the leaches off of your friend’s private areas versus watching Steve Irwin getting attacked by wild animals on TV.
We like to pick and choose our nature, wanting to interact with the clean and cute stuff, while avoiding the stinky, disease ridden, ugly stuff. A butterfly is good, a bunch of mealworm-like caterpillars collectively excreting white threads out of its butt is bad.
Most of us like nature, but only at a distance.
We like our houses sterile, devoid of nature except for a few groomed plants and pets that we keep unnaturally clean. When nature comes creeping in, we swat it with a rolled up newspaper, suck it up, sweep it out, douse it with chemicals, make adjustments to the places from which we think it came more inaccessable, and wipe it down with bleach afterwards just to make sure that all traces are removed. Don’t say that you wish that people were close to nature unless you fully understand what this means, and are willing to put up and move out to Walden pond. Chances are that you can’t hack it, unless it’s on the Discovery Channel.
Nature is disgusting. Sure there are beautiful things in nature, but to say that all things natural are beautiful is a dirty, rotten lie that is easily exposed. Have you ever watched a hippopotamus give birth on the National Geographic Channel, or scattering shit with its tail to spread its scent around? Have you watched a seagull eating an umbilical cord that was still attached to a newborn elephant seal crying out for its mother? Have you seen chimpanzees cannibalizing bastard infant chimpanzees to get rid of offspring that they know was fathered by another group of chimpanzees. Has a three inch long millipede with the girth the size of a roll of pennies ever died in your bathtub, hiding an egg cluster somewhere in the vicinity? Did the eggs start to a year ago, letting loose a few dozen mini-millipedes in your bathroom? Did they start to appear again a year later, even after you disinfected the whole bathroom several times since with cleaning agents and bleach? After the tree huggers get a little too close to the poison oak, they start to think more practically.
If you feel strongly about living in “true” harmony with nature, then you might as well back up your words through action. Don’t throw away the moldy bread, let it grow and flourish, and to spread its spores among the other foods. Don’t sweep out the dust or vacuum, as you will be upsetting the fragile habitat of the dustmite! Don’t clean your toilet because the shit-spatters and pubic hair are a micro-ecosystem for coliform bacteria- a garden rich in microorganisms from your intestinal tract. Sure, if you do this then you might have the balance with nature that you wanted, but at what cost? You will be known as the smelly dirty hippie who never cleans his or her toilet.
Yoshihiro: Dad, do you remember that you said I could have a pet if I brought up my grades? Yoshihiro’s dad: Hmmmm… You have been getting good grades in school. I think you’re ready for the responsibility. You can pick any cow you like. Toshiki, pass the steak would you? Yoshihiro: Can I have the calf with the big eyes? Yoshihiro’s dad: Why not? What’s her name? Yoshihiro: Britney! She’s so cute, just like my cow! Yoshihiro’s dad: Great Yoshi-kun, make sure Britney eats a lot every day, and don’t make her get too much exercise. On another note, have you boys noticed that beef prices at an all time high, thanks to the BSE situation in America? We’re going to Disneyland this Summer! Yoshihiro: What’s wrong Toshiki? Toshiki: I can’t find Mary. I looked everywhere, but she just isn’t on the farm! It’s all my fault dad. I lost her… forgive me! Yoshihiro’s dad: There, there son. I forgot to tell you that I had to send Mary away to Bovine University. You want her to be happy, right? Wow, this steak is awesome! Toshiki: Yeah… I do, but I don’t understand… Yoshihiro’s dad: Great! Glad that’s settled. Yoshihiro, can you pass the A-1?
Yikes! We got our drug education from DARE (at Courreges Elementary), who did a decent job of educating without too much propaganda. Do you remember seeing Dianetics…
Dianetics junior much better then Krishna,
Dianetics junior much better indeed,
And all you people there, your tremendous,
Except the people in the middle,
When you’re toking up a big ass bowl of weed,with me, and KG
All Right! Oh Yeah! All Right! Oh my god!
Would all the ladies in the house say Yeah! (Yeah)
C’mon, all you motherfuckers say a prayer! (prayer)
Cause when you fight, you gotsta fight fair!
You mother fucker, huh? You mother fucker,
You know what time it is?
It’s Tenacious D time you motherfucker blow!
Fuck yeah!
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
Dude, that was TNT…
(Tenacious D rules!)
…commercials on during Saturday morning cartoon breaks? The volcano spouting lava looked so cool, and the persuasive voice oozing the words “It will change your life forever!” almost made me want to read the book (I can’t believe I can still remember this! is it a testament to their skills of persuasion?)! Good thing I was only 5 years old, and had to depend on my parents to read anything harder than Dr. Seuss out loud to me.
Keep it together, Kit… Keep it together! More info on Mindhead.
This is the Higothai flower, the flower of Ubuyama village. As some of you may know I used to hate bees. They used to sting me quite often. even though I avoided them, they would regularly land on me and jab me with their stingers. One time, I had to take a Tae Kwon Do orange belt test even though I had been stung on the sole of my foot- I passed, but it hurt like hell. I have since overcome my fear, and so I was able to get really close to this one.
