Cooking Chopsticks

I sometimes wonder how you cook in USA without a pair of chopsticks. In Japan, we use a certain type of chopsticks for cooking. They are called saibashi, and much longer than usual chopsticks. Usually, they are made of bamboo, and have small hole on their ends to bind a pair with a string. This way, you can hang them when not in use.
Saibashi is essential for my cooking. You can use them for mixing powder, beating eggs, stirring pots and so on. When you deeply fry something, like you make tempra in deep heated oil, you cannot put a battered shrimp in the frying pan without them. I know a Chinese cook will use skimming ladle for the purpose, but it is much easier and cleaner to use saibashi. It may be alright for a professional cook who must cook many servings. But if you want to fry only several pieces, the skimming ladle is too much. And we drop a small portion of batter into heated oil to check out the temperature. This trick is done with chopsticks. Every mother will teach how to do it to their daughters.
It is amazing to see how those two simple sticks of bamboo can do when you watch a Japanese cook. But we don't notice it because chopsticks are so common in Japan. But once when I broke my saibashi in my kitchen and couldn't find a replacement for a while, I realized how I needed them. I cannot make a simple omelet without them. How can I use a beater for a egg or two? Most of the eggs will stick to the beater, and only a portion will go into frying pan. And how can I boil dried spaghetti without them? If I will not stir them with saibashi, they will stick to each others and stay hard. And when you want to try the tenderness of them, saibashi can easily pick up one string of noodle. I cannot imagine other tools can do it. May be tongs? I don't know.

You can find saibashi in some historical pictures. In ancient days, Japanese aristocrats never want anyone to touch their foods with hands. They ordered their cooks never to touch foods. So, they had to use chopsticks to cook. Some pictures, I think from 17th century, illustrate this procedure. They hold fish and vegetables on the cutting board with them and making sashimi and other dishes. Saibashi has a long tradition indeed.
In these days, we are too busy to cook traditionally, and use many pouch-packed foods. Some bags have small holes on their shoulders. It is a design to make people easier to pick a bag from a pan of hot water. We stick a saibashi into the hole and pick it up. If there are no saibashi around the kitchen, we cannot eat even those ready-to-serve foods.

Tea - without a ceremony

I believe English people love tea, and my wife who lived in England when she was young agrees on it. But she always laughs at me when I speak of the traditional brewing that I've read of. She tells me that she had seen no such thing as traditional English tea brewing. Yes, they like to drink cups of tea, but almost all of them use tea bags and hot water from electric kettles. No traditional leaf tea and tea spoon with kettle on the oven. Those are the illusions from centuries ago.

Japanese tea ceremony is known to the world, but almost nobody drinks tea with the famous tea ceremony today. Japanese people drink many cups of tea in a day. You simply put dried leaves of tea in a tea pot, then pour hot water. Nothing els. Just drink it whenever you feel thirsty. If you feel like, you can have a cup of strong tea with a small piece of sweets, like you do in a tea ceremony, but you don't turn the cup around, nor use small piece of cloth, fukusa. You can have tea while you are eating your dishes, while you are working, and even when you are walking. The tea itself is different from the powdered tea, matcha, used in tea ceremony. They are harvested, steamed, twisted, and dried. Not fermented like Indian tea or Chinese tea.

I have learned the basic of tea ceremony for half a year from an old master, then stopped as a beginner. There are many who can practice traditional tea ceremony, if you include a beginner like me. Maybe one out of ten or twenty Japanese knows how to perform a basic tea ceremony. The rest know about it as good as Americans know. Back in the 18th century, there was a joke about a retired merchant who wanted to perform a tea ceremony, but didn't know how. He put a spoonful of soap into the cup just to make it look like masters did.
In Japan, tea ceremony has been something a person should learn, but nobody wants to. Just like European classical music, most people have heard something about it, knows one or two master's name. But only a handful of people knows enough to perform it good.

So, when you go to Japan, and somebody asks you for a cup of tea, don't expect too much. He might be just asking if you are thirsty or not, or simply wants you to go inside a coffee shop with him. We drink tea without a ceremony. Many young people even don't use a tea pot. They simply buy a bottle of tea from an automatic vendor. Still, You can safely say that Japanese people love to have a cup of tea.

Kotatsu and Rice Cooker

It's almost ten years ago, I was befriended with a young girl from Texas or somewhere in the south of United States; I don't quite remember where. She was an assistant English teacher for elementary and junior high schools, hired by the local board of education for two years contract. She told me she had a big family in her hometown, with many brothers and sisters. Her mother was a Mexican immigrant, or USA had annexed the land where her ancestors were living. In which way, her mother spoke Hispanic language, and cooked good Mexican foods.
Just before she left Japan, she told me that she intended to bring two Japanese gadgets home. One was a kotatsu, a kind of heater, and the other was a rice cooker. She pointed out that those two were the best innovation that Japan has ever produced. I don't know she was right or not in her opinion, but sure, those are uniquely Japanese.

Kotatsu is a traditional Japanese warmer. Basically, it is a table for Japanese rooms, only a foot high. You will use those tables sitting on the floor, cross-legged or folding your knees. A kotatsu has a heater under the table and usually used with a spread of quilt to cover it. On top of the quilt, usually a board for a table top is set. You push your feet under the quilt to get warm while you eat, read, work on the table, or just relax lying down on the floor. It is a seasonal tradition of winter in Japan. Almost all Japanese family has a kotatsu or two, even three or four for each room. Cheapest one only costs about 40 dollars, while a heavy, decorative furniture styled kotatsu may cost more than 1,000 dollars. Anyone in Japan can afford a kotatsu suitable for his status. It is comfortable and economical, because it heats only your legs and hip, not whole room and uses much less electricity.
Originally, a kotatsu was a small pod to burn some piece of charcoal and a frame to cover it safe. You put it under your cover for the cold of the night. The essential of this kind of warmer is now an anka, a small electric heater to push into your bed, while the small frame of old kotatsu got bigger to became a table. When they started to use it for the daytime use, the top board was put, and kotatsu of today was established.
There is a variations to the kotatsu I mentioned above. It is a horigotatsu, a ditch style kotatsu. This may be more suitable and comfortable for the people in the USA. This kotatsu is installed in a tatami room with a three feet square dint. This way, you can sit down on the floor like you sit on a chair, instead of cross-legged. This style is often used in a traditional Japanese house with charcoal heater, instead of the electric heater.

Japanese rice cooker was developed after the Second World War. During the war, there were shortage of materials and fuel in Japan. People tried to cook with electricity, using simple heating wire in between the lights-out. But they never get a good result. The rice cooked with electricity never tasted good. Traditional way of cooking with firewoods or charcoal were the best.
But during the reconstruction era after the war, an engineer had set out to invent a good electric rice cooker. His story is long, almost a legend. I once read it a long time ago when I was a child. He had studied the way a good cook cooks his rice, and copied the process on the machine he was developing, and finally made a good cooker to set a standard for the rice cooker today.

The girl from Texas told me that they eat much rice over there, but never tasted a better dish of rice than the rice cooked in Japanese rice cooker. I think this was only a compliment, but she hoped the rice cooker she will bring home will help her mother a lot. This should be true.
I told her that "It is very nice of you to want to help your mother, but what the use of kotatsu in Texas, anyway? I've heard it is a very hot place, so you don't need a heater in your house, isn't it?"
Her answer was that it is indeed cold at night and morning, but not so cold that you need a heater. A kotatsu can warm you just right.

Ten years since then. I wonder what she is doing now. Does she still use her kotatsu and rice cooker? Elvia, if you see this, please write me an e-mail!

Japanese Foods

You can find Japanese foods at supermarket or at Japanese restraint. You know enough about sushi and tofu. But there are many Japanese foods you don't know.
Basically, there are three kinds of Japanese foods.

A. Traditional Japanese foods, such as sushi and tempra.

B. Foods that Japanese people refer as "Japanese Foods" (washoku in Japanese.)

C. What Japanese people actually eats, including junk foods.

For the people outside of Japan, "Japanese Foods" means above A. But above B, including A, is more Japanese. And there are foods typically Japanese but no one refers them as Japanese foods. For instance, dish of curry with rice is already a traditional Japanese taste, but it is referred as Indian foods in Japan. I am sure that Indian people will not find it Indian at all. Or, you can find many junk foods in the supermarket in Japan. There is a salty fried twisted crumbs taste like shrimps, called Kappa-Ebisen. This little snack was there forty years ago when I was a kid. These are foods in the category C.
You may be tired of hearing about the foods in the category A, and I don't know much about them. So, I will talk about other Japanese foods. I will also mention about the foods I cook. They may not be typical Japanese, but sure tastes good!