Why we didn't have Chinese food for ChristmasChristmas dinner for Jews is Chinese food -- old New York custom. Right? We thought we would finally join in this tradition, which we've never observed in our past.Well, not tonight. The one Chinese restaurant that we thought was open seemed to have left the phone off the hook, so we figured they we…
Latke DinnerOur latke dinner included latkes, leg of lamb, and lemon layer cake. I made the cake from scratch instead of from a mix this time. In the photo: Elaine and Larry, here to enjoy the holiday.Also to celebrate, we saw the movie "Hugo" with Ben Kingsley and Sasha Baron-Cohen this afternoon. It was great…
BreadI just read Bread: A Global History by William Rubel and "Barms and Leavens -- Medieval to Modern," an article about bakers' yeast, brewers' yeast, and sourdough starters, by Laura Mason, in the collection titled Over a Red-Hot Stove: Essays in Early Cooking Technology edited by Ivan Day. Here's a p…
The Belly of ParisI just read Zola's The Belly of Paris in a new translation by Mark Kurlansky. It's the topic for the next meeting of the culinary history book club I belong to.What a masterpiece! The perceived conflict between thin people (who crave social justice) and fat people (mainly the small shopkeepers of th…
Does this look good to eat?The plastic food in restaurant windows really didn't look all that good to me. But it was useful since I can't read Japanese. I did not eat at this restaurant, which I think was a chain.…
Food is not MagicalHaruki Murakami's new book 1Q84 conforms to his normal genre: magical realism. It's also very long: 925 pages, described as a doorstop in one review. In an earlier version of our real world, a book this huge would have been completely impractical as airplane reading -- but I bought the Kindle versio…
Wagyu Beef !For dinner we found a Wagyu beef restaurant not far from the guest house where we are staying. The extremely marbled and tender beef is sliced thin so that you can quickly grill each piece on an in-table wood fire. The kitchen (shown above) also prepares a number of dishes from other parts of the co…
Sushi ChefWe sat at the sushi bar in a tiny restaurant while this chef made us sushi -- he bought this amazing piece of tuna at the Tsukuji market this morning.…
Street FoodIn the temple grounds at Asakusa we passed a number of food stalls, with many varied types of food that people could eat as they walked. Later, on our way from the Ueno subway station to our guest house, we passed another row of such stalls near the temple in Ueno Park. The food ranged from complete…
Lunch at AsakusaAfter a water-taxi ride on the Sumida River we arrived at Asakusa, a huge shopping district surrounding a temple and pagoda. It was time for lunch, so we selected a very traditional looking restaurant named Tatsumiya specializing in Edo Hot Pot. Unlike our experience at yesterday's traditional resta…
Traditional JapaneseIn Ueno Park we found a traditional Japanese restaurant named Insho-tei (or Innsyoutei). we ate there this afternoon, after viewing the special exhibit of Kamakura Buddhist art and other exhibits at the National Tokyo Museum nearby. We enjoyed a variety of mysterious small bites of food, miso soup, …
Japanese Food!For lunch today, I had a bowl of ramen noodles, as described on the sign above (click on it to enlarge). At the counter in the noodle shop I happened to sit next to a Buddhist monk named Malcolm, whose father is the hereditary head of a nearby Buddhist temple. His American mother went to the Univers…
Conference BanquetThis is Japan, where the luxury food for a really high quality banquet is French. In fact, we have been her 2 days without having any Japanese food! The first night was a smaller dinner, at an Italian restaurant. Many of the details of this banquet showed how the Japanese have adapted French food to…
