Jodie was telling me about some incredible soy milk she had. It came in a small black popper and tasted delicious, despite being unflavoured.
Tonight after eating at the local izakaya we went past a convenience store for dessert. Jodie got banana soy milk; I got the black one. The guys behind the counter seemed to think it was funny.
If only I had read the label! It’s still a bit of an effort. It turns out I bought high-quality black vinegar! But it’s clearly meant to be drunk – it came with a straw and everything. I guess it doesn’t taste that bad, but I had hoped to go to bed soon.
[photopress:img_6241.jpg,thumb,alignleft]Apparently we’re not allow to renew our visas from the office in Kyoto. I wouldn’t have thought they’d be specific to any particular area of Japan. And so we wasted both days of our weekend, going to the immigration offices in two cities.
It wasn’t all bad, though. We really haven’t explored Kyoto enough. We found a brilliant little cafe near the office (in Marutamachi). It has small gum trees out the front and a most of the menu is vegetarian. They have odd cushions.
I recently bought a takoyaki grill, and on Friday I tried it out. I hadn’t had takoyaki since becoming vegetarian (on account of it containing octopus). I had been missing out, but I won’t any more!
Instead of octopus I used mushroom (hence the title of this post), but otherwise it’s the same stuff. Actually I think the title is incorrect since the kanji reads differently depending on where it appears in a word. It should probably be the less amusing “kinokoyaki”.
Japanese people have responded to this without surprise so much as with disbelief. They look at me as if I’m quite balmy. I haven’t told them that after the takeyaki I also made chokobananayaki for dessert.
I’ve always wanted to bake a whole pumpkin. Living in Japan Having no oven turns out to be only a minor hurdle – just use a saucepan.
I figured I could heat the air in the pot by keeping the lid on tight and using a low flame. People grease trays when they cook in ovens, don’t they? So I put some oil in too. But the pumpkin started to fry. I realised that the water in the pumpkin would evaporate anyway, so it’d end up steamed. Helping it along with some extra water stopped it from frying and worked really well.
It’s easy: cut the lid off a small pumpkin and scoop out the seeds. Put some seasoning in (like curry paste) and replace the lid. Put it in a saucepan with an inch or so of water. With the lid on the saucepan, bring the water to the boil then turn it down low. Poke it with a skewer to see if it’s ready. I think mine took about 20 minutes. Then I stuffed it with bread and leftover spaghetti sauce, and cooked it for another 5 minutes.
The nice thing about this is the skin of the pumpkin stops it from all turning into mush. Just make sure the water doesn’t all evaporate. If you put a bit of oil in you’ll hear it sizzling when the water level gets too low.
I’ve heard of lots of recipes for whole baked pumpkin, including cooking custard in it. For some things I think you should stuff it at the start of cooking instead of at the end. Let me know if you how you fare!
Finally, try to accompany it with something. Last night I ate half a pumpkin. Even with the stuffing, it was just too much all at once.