Difference between revisions of "Food"

Revision as of 02:09, 28 September 2018

Japanese cuisine is highly seasonal, with many dishes using ingredients only available at the right time. Modern technology has eased this burden, but it is still traditional to eat certain foods at certain times of year.

Special thanks to Kuniko Saito's player for contributing the Winter entry of this guide!

Autumn

Some in Japan call autumn the 'season for eating.' Coming off the heat of summer, there's a trend towards savory dishes that celebrate the bountiful harvest, and nice warm comfort food to eat as the weather turns colder.

Sanma (literal translation 'autumn knife fish'), or Pacific Saury, are sleekly silver fish that rise fat and juicy for fishermen in the fall, considered an iconic centerpiece of autumn cuisine. They are typically served whole (even as sushi!), and when cooked, sanma are seasoned with salt and grilled over a charcoal fire. The crispy skin is a much-beloved part of the experience, often garnished with soy sauce. In early September, Tokyo's Meguro district holds a festival where many thousands of charcoal-grilled sanma are given away for free tasting!

Satsumaimo, or Japanese sweet potatoes, are purple on the outside, bright yellow on the inside, and are drier in texture, but sweeter and creamier in taste, than yams. Traditionally, they are roasted whole, on hot stones outside (lending themselves well to the centerpiece of a scene where characters tend, then consume, their roasting sweet potatoes while raking leaves or otherwise enjoying the season; they are also sold, steaming hot, out of the open backs of minivans, by men who attract their customers by singing an iconic lamenting song). Satsumaimo are also popular fried, mashed, or boiled. The stereotypical consequence of overeating satsumaimo is a popular source of fart jokes among the young (and sometimes the old).

Kabocha are essentially Japanese pumpkins. On the outside they're green rather than orange, and on the inside they're somewhat sweeter than the Western squash, with a rich, butternut flavor. In the fall, they're made into soups, barbecued, battered and fried as tempura (alongside maple leaves, Momiji Tempura, an unusual autumn treat!), and, yes, even used in Western-style pies.

• The most classic comfort food preparation of kabocha, however, is as a filling for breaded and fried croquettes, locally called korokke -- kabocha (also, satsumaimo) korokke are an often-homemade autumn snack. Watch out for the hot oil when it pops! Independent of season, korokke made with regular potatoes, or sometimes with ground meat, are popular throughout the year, and are sold at delightfully hot temperatures for pocket change prices at the konbini.

Matsutake pine mushrooms are the most prominent of the fungi that, nurtured by summer's high humidity, pop up for harvesting in the fall. Impossible to cultivate, they're highly prized and very expensive, starting at a hundred thousand yen per pound for the premium grade, and occupy a similar position of honor in Japanese cuisine as truffles do to the French. To make a few matsutake mushrooms stretch a long way, they are popularly featured in a seafood broth soup called Matsutake Dobin Mushi, which is served in a clay teapot. When eaten whole, their delicate, smoky flavor is best preserved by grilling them on an open flame, and they are sometimes sprinkled over rice. Cheaper mushrooms are also popular in autumn, with hearty mushroom broth sometimes replacing the standard cup of miso soup served alongside a meal.

Kaki, or Japanese persimmons, are ubiquitous in the fall, a sweet and tangy fruit found ripening on trees all over the country. Making a day out of a kaki picking trip is a common weekend treat. Besides eating them straight off the tree, they are often served chilled, or dusted with sugar and dried (a treat called hoshigaki).

Kuri, also commonly called by their French name maron, are Japanese chestnuts (with a similar omnipresence to kaki, seen on trees everywhere, but an entirely different taste -- creamy, sweet and rich). They're usually sold uncooked so that they can be prepared at home, but you can get bags of roasted kuri at your supermarket or konbini for a good sidewalk snack. Roasting your own at the end of a trip to a kuri picking farm makes for a good finale to a September day!

• Shinmai, or "new rice," comprises the first harvests of rice in autumn. Shinmai is said to be moister, sweeter, and more beautiful than ordinary rice, and starting in late September one of the best ways to prepare it is with kuri boiled alongside rice in the pot, creating a hearty sticky rice dish (kuri-gohan) with a tiny dose of sweetness. Gingko nuts are also a popular shinmai topping, because of their subtle flavor, which allows the rice's unique qualities to shine through.
• Boxes of kuri-kinton, or candied chestnuts, are popular gifts for friends and family in autumn -- in this treat, kuri are steamed, mashed, combined with sugar, then twisted into a bun shape. The snack is popularly enjoyed with a cup of hot tea. Kuri are also used in many other Japanese sweets, including kuri-manju cakes.

Winter

The prototypical dish for winter cuisine in Japan is the hot pot, also known as nabemono. Ingredients are combined in a pot and boiled, forming a rich broth; it is typically shared, with individual diners plucking out their favored morsels, and the broth typically mixed with rice at the end and consumed as a final course. Eating nabemono with your friends would be an excellent reason for a social scene; gather together, stick your legs underneath the kotatsu, and enjoy the warmth of friendship and flavor.

Nabemono is very versatile. Indeed, the name can be translated as "cooking pot stuff." Here are some common styles of nabemono; all of them can be considered to have vegetables such as bok choy and daikon involved, as well as varieties of mushroom.

• Sukiyaki: Thinly sliced beef (sometimes pork) simmered with vegetables and a soy sauce/sugar/sweet rice wine sauce. Before eating, the hot ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw beaten egg. Common at year-end parties and suitable for all ages.
• Shabu-shabu: Thin sliced beef is boiled in water or broth and eaten with dipping sauces. This dish may be considered similar to the "fondue" style meals available in America. It is quite suitable for service with fine ingredients, particularly wagyu beef and other marks of conspicuous consumption.
• Yosenabe: A combination style of nabemono which combines all sorts of things and cooks them well together: meat, seafood, tofu, egg, and vegetables. A common "homestyle" meal, often with a thicker sauce than is typical for nabemono.
• Yudofu: Nabemono prepared in a kombu stock and featuring tofu as the primary protein, with citrus and spicy sauces. Socially considered as vegetarian, though small amounts of fish are typically involved.
• Chankonabe: A nabemono dish that is a common restaurant meal, it was originally a heavy dish eaten by sumo wrestlers to put on weight efficiently. Very high in protein, often with chicken, fish, beef and various vegetables, chankonabe is a good meal for growing young'ns when served in less heroic proportions.
• Ishikari-nabe: A Hokkaido specialty, this hot pot features salmon and potato as well as butter.

Oden is another characteristic winter dish, prepared in a manner similar to hot pot but made available as its own individual dish in many venues. Featuring boiled eggs, daikon, fishcakes and a soy/dashi broth, most convenience stores have a bubbling pot of oden to sell by the cup during the winter months.

Tori zosui is another winter favorite; a thick rice soup with chicken, often prepared with leftover rice and served with sliced scallions on top. It's an excellent and popular way to warm up after a bitterly cold day.

Winter Holidays

There are also some specifically traditional holiday dishes, associated with an individual day or days. Your character is likely to eat them, and may well help prepare them!

• Christmas Cake: These cakes are typically a simple sponge cake, frosted with whipped cream and decorated with strawberries plus a chocolate plate that says "Merry Christmas!" Something of a more structured strawberry shortcake. It is eaten on Christmas Eve, which is, in Japan, typically celebrated as a romantic holiday a la Western Valentine's Day, and is thus perhaps the hardest night of the year to get a table at a nice restaurant. Yule Log cakes are also popular.
• KFC: There is a tradition of obtaining Kentucky Fried Chicken meals as a Christmas dish, in part because turkey is an absolute unknown in Japan. A 1974 advertising campaign started a tradition, and now a bucket of KFC "Christmas Chicken" (with salad and a cake) is typical fare on Christmas, often ordered months in advance to beat the lines.
• Osechi ryori: An umbrella term for food prepared specially for the New Year's period, these dishes come in a huge range of ingredients that are meant to encourage good luck and fortune for the upcoming year. They are typically sweet, sour, dried or otherwise preserved, as they come from a time before refrigeration was common, and when many markets would be closed for some time. Traditionally, nothing should be cooked on New Year's Day, so the preparation of osechi is finished before New Year's Eve. Osechi ryori is arguably the most important meal of the year, with each dish serving as a symbol or wish for the coming year. The food is even eaten in a special way by using chopsticks that are rounded on both ends; one side for the humans to use, one side for the gods. There are so many varieties that space would prohibit easy discussion. A more detailed discussion is present at Wikipedia including a plan for a three-tiered "jubako" box.
• Toshikoshi soba: This is eaten at night on New Year's Eve. A simple meal with buckwheat soba with toppings such as seaweed, fried tofu, or vegetables. The long noodles are said to symbolize a long life, their consumption representing "crossing over from one year to the next," the meaning of toshi-koshi. Another theory is that it is very simple to make - a relief after preparing several days' worth of osechi for the upcoming celebrations! It is often considered bad luck to leave any of your toshikoshi soba uneaten.
• O-zoni: A soup eaten during on the morning of New Year's Day, considered very lucky, featuring local ingredients and lots of mochi. While many areas have their own specialties, the typical Kanto-area meal uses a soy sauce/dashi broth, squared and grilled mochi, and meat and vegetables to preference.
• Nanakusu gayu: Eaten on January 7th, this is a collection of seven wild edible herbs eaten with rice in order to ease the stomach after all of the things listed above, which have been eaten over the course of several weeks.

Spring

Spring cuisine is all about appreciating the beginning of the growing season, as shoots and ferns unfurl from the ground, and petals blossom on fruit trees. These events are cause for major public celebrations, and, in turn, the fruits and vegetables in question are heavily featured in a variety of dishes.

Besides the bounty of the rich brown earth, there are naturally seasonal selections from the deep blue sea:

• Tai, or Red Sea Bream, are rich-tasting fish that are in season in spring, and famously symbolize good luck in Japan. Besides eating them as sashimi or grilled with salt, Tai-chasuke is a dish where tai is served on rice with dashi fish stock poured on top.

• For people who can't abide the fish, but still want their good luck, there is also Taiyaki, a traditional Japanese sweet named after and shaped like tai. They're filled with anko (sweet red azuki bean paste), and often served at cherry blossom viewing parties (called hanami).

• Ika (Squid) is available good and fresh throughout the year, they're sweetest in the spring. Hotaru-Ika (firefly squid) are particularly popular served as a snack accompanying drinks, prepared in a variety of ways, including as sashimi, sauted, or boiled in soy sauce.
• Magaki (Pacific Oysters) are in season from late winter to spring, where they become bigger and sweeter. They're often served in an all-you-can-eat format, grilled, steamed, or even fried.

Sansai are much-beloved Japanese mountain vegetables that sprout in spring and are enthusiastically consumed. Many are picked from the wild; indeed, most are difficult to cultivate on a mass scale, and they're often quite bitter and tough until boiled or otherwise processed to consume. Besides serving them raw in salads, seared on the grill, or battered and fried as tempura, there are numerous specific dishes unique to a given mountain vegetable.

• Nanohana are the young spring shoots of rapeseed plants; though they're available in plain green at supermarkets for most of the year (and are closely related to broccoli -- the florets, stems and leaves are all edible), in spring they are prized for their bright yellow flower buds, which arrive in late March, in between the plum and cherry blossoms. Wandering through yellow fields of nanohana is a much-beloved practice, and fields outside of Tokyo are planted and sculpted into mazes, not unlike corn mazes in North America during Halloween. Unlike many sansai, nanohana isn't bitter or tough, so no pretreatment is required to enjoy it. Flowering nanohana is traditionally used as a side dish called ohitashi, where it is briefly boiled until tender, and served with soy sance, dashi, bonito flakes and/or toasted sesame seeds. Karashiae is a similar dish, but the soy sauce is seasoned with spicy mustard.
• Takenoko (literally "child of bamboo") is a bamboo shoot, which can only be picked in a very tight window of the correct size and tenderness. Even then, takenoko must be boiled in rice bran water (with a couple of hot chili peppers added to, paradoxically, increase the bamboo's sweetness) for over an hour, to soften the flesh and reduce its bitterness. Takenoko-gohan, or bamboo shoot rice, involves steaming precooked takenoko in rice (sometimes with fried tofu and shiitake mushrooms), flavored with soy sauce, dashi, mirin (sweet rice wine) sake and sugar. As a solo entree, larger pieces of bamboo cooked in a similar seasoning blend are served as takenoko no nimono ("simmered bamboo shoots"). Takenoko is also featured prominently in stir fry, in the spring.
• Other sansai, essentially all of which require advance parboiling, include Fuki (Butterbur), in which both the stalks and buds are used; spiraling, curled Kogomi (Ostrich Ferns) which are blanched and simmered; Shungiku (Spring Chrysanthemum) which are often served with a sesame dressing, or added to soups and hot pots; Tara no Me (the fresh shoots of the Angelica tree, sometimes called the "king" of sansai) which are particularly popular as tempura; Wasabina (Wasabi Mustard Greens) often used in salads; and Yama Udo (Mountain Asparagus) which is typically thinly sliced and pickled in miso, vinegar and sugar, or, if served fresh, can be grilled or sauteed.

Ichigo (strawberries) are in season in Japan from December to March, making them the go-to fruit for early spring. They're much beloved for their ability to brighten up this dreary time of year, and appear everywhere, in everything. Particularly fancy breeds of premium berry are marketed as high class gifts in department stores, but anyone can buy normal strawberries -- including going out to greenhouses to pick them, a spring activity known as ichigo kari.

• Daifuku are a very popular traditional Japanese sweet, comprised of a glutinous rice ball filled with sweet white or red anko, but in spring, they're sold with an entire strawberry inside, and called ichigo daifuku. These are hawked from the food stall to the konbini and back again, and are best enjoyed with a cup of green tea.
• Strawberry shortcakes in Japan are sponge cake and whipped cream layer cakes with fresh strawberries between the layers and on top (Christmas cakes are usually strawberry shortcakes), which is a little different from the cake with the same name in the West.

Ume, the Japanese plum, is the first major tree to blossom in spring, and its flowering is avidly anticipated by the populace (though without quite the intensity of the excitement surrounding sakura blossoms, see below). Accompanying all this hype are uses of its fruit flavor. Since ume is often pickled as unbelivably sour, salty umeboshi, it's available year-round, but when the weather starts to warm and spring is around the corner, ume-flavored chips (which are sort of like fruity salt and vinegar chips) and other snacks and sweets, appear on the shelves of the supermarkets and konbini.

Sakura blossoms are the main event for the celebration of the arrival of spring (even though ume come first and are also celebrated separately). In Tokyo, they begin to bloom in April, and as the public eagerly follows the cherry blossom front (as forecasted by the weather bureau, as it moves from South to North) to find out exactly when the blossoms will pop, you'll find sakura-flavored (or at least sakura-colored) everything; there's Sakura Kit Kats, Starbooks lattes, donuts, tarts, roll cakes, ice cream, taiyaki, mochi, and more. Sakura fever turns the shelves of the supermarket bright pink.

• Sakura-mochi is the iconic traditional sweet associated with hanami (as well as Hinamatsuri, the Girls' Festival, celebrated on March 3rd); it is the sweet, pink mochi of spring, wrapped around anko and topped with an edible leaf from a sakura tree (which is the only part of the sweet, actually, that involves actual sakura).

Bento

Hanami (literally, "flower viewing") is the traditional Japanese custom of throwing a party under flowering trees (especially sakura trees) in order to properly appreciate the blossoms in the brief time that they're around -- only a week or two a year! People gather in huge numbers, play or listen to music, and hold elaborate feasts on picnic blankets. Although there are often food stalls in larger parks, preparing and packing your own food is common, making this a great place to discuss bento, the Japanese boxed lunch.

• Making yourself a great lunchbox is satisfying, but the true importance of bento comes from the feelings you put into preparing them for other people. It's a chance to imbue love into every bite -- parents make bento for their children if they can, and giving a specially prepared bento to a friend (or crush!) is a great demonstration of affection.
• Bento boxes (which can, themselves, vary greatly, ranging from elegant to cute to steadfastly functional to straight-up disposable -- and the same is all true of the chopsticks packed with them) are usually designed with a few subdivisions, to separate small portions of multiple dishes, such as rice, meat, and pickled or cooked vegetables. Everything tends to be served in bite-sized pieces, for convenience, and it's not uncommon for individual pieces of food to be cut into whimsical shapes, such as apple-rabbits, hot dog-octopi, and so forth.
• Taking the decorative element one step further, kyaraben ("character bento," as in anime/manga character) and okekakiben ("picture bento") arrange all of the elements of a bento into a recognizable image. Such meals require snapping a picture on your cell phone to immortalize your beautiful lunch before eating it!
• Not all bento are made by a loved one; anyone can buy bento from convenience stores or supermarkets, and some restaurants specialize in takeout bento. You can even purchase bento at railway stations (ekiben), which is a surprisingly old tradition with a huge variety of offerings, where local specialties compete for the appetites of travelers. Purchasing a box lunch at a station shop -- or while on a train, for longer trips -- remains one of the special treats of Japanese railway travel.

Summer

Executive summary about the themes of summer cuisine in Japan.

Savory:

• Somen

• Nagashi somen
• Zaru somen

• Hiyashi Chuka Noodles
• Hiyayakko (sometimes called hiyakko or yakko-dofu) is chilled tofu, served with various toppings; its name refers to the servants of samurai in the Edo period. Chopped green onion, dried tuna flakes, and soy sauce are one common combination of toppings, but you can also find hiyayakko topped with shiso, yuzu rind, daikon, ginger, plum paste, or even mustard.
• Rei Shabu
• Unagi

• Grilled
• Hitsumabushi

Sweet:

• Watermelon -- Kozue Kaoru
• Kakigori -- Endo Naokki
• Garigari-kun

Drinks:

• Mugicha (barley tea) is just the thing to cool a person down on a hot summer's day, or even a hot summer's night, since it's caffeine-free. Plain mugicha is a mellow brown color and has a savory, roasted taste with a touch of bitterness; sometimes it's sweetened with sugar. It can be purchased at any konbini or made at home using roasted barley teabags.
• Ramune -- Lera Camry
• Umeshu

Festival Food

Summer is the season of festivals so let's do a food stall feature!

• Ayu
• Yakitori -- literally grilled chicken, but not necessarily chicken! The important part is it's bite-sized food on skewers, grilled over charcoal. It's a regular festival and event food, and also popular to have while drinking! It's pretty ubiquitous. Generally it's going to be meat charred on sticks, often (maybe even mostly) with vegetables as well. It might go with salt, but with tend to have sauce; 'tare' sauce is one option, a mix of sake, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar, but the idea is something sweet and savory. The particular cut of meat isn't all that important--while the most traditional is chicken, as mentioned it might have beef, octopus, or sausage just as a start.
• Karaage
• Takoyaki -- Mikoto
• Ikayaki -- Pluto
• Hotate Butter Yaki
• Okonomiyaki -- Steven Universe
• Yakisoba -- Masque
• Yakitomorokoshi is just corn on the cob (on a stick), except that it isn't 'just' anything. Rather than being boiled, buttered and salted, its preparation is uniquely Japanese. After a brief boil to soften it up, chefs throw their corn on a charcoal grill and brush the corn's surface with some combination of soy sauce, mirin and sugar, which forms a glaze. The smell is amazing, somehow nutty, salty and sweet at the same time, and many a customer is led to this stall by simply following their nose.
• Tai is a spring fish but taiyaki is as valid an entry at any summer festival as it is at hanami viewing. These traditional Japanese pastries are shaped like the fish they're named after, and are somewhere between a waffle and a cake, stuffed with sweet azuki red bean paste (or, more recently, custard, chocolate, or even cheese or meat). Part of the fun of taiyaki at festivals is that you get to see them made in specially molded griddles, right there in the stall -- and the art of flipping over a half-baked 'fish' with a chopstick without getting batter and filling everywhere is fine, indeed...
• Crepes
• Dango
• Jaga bata means butter potato, and it's pretty much exactly that -- potatoes, steamed in wood ovens, and stuffed with butter, salt, and soy sauce. It's especially popular to use the smaller 'reject' potatoes for this purpose, turning them into a nearly bite-sized street food, but the paper boats they come in sometimes just have one big potato instead.
• Karumeyaki
• Bebi Kasutera
• Watame -- Fuu
• Ringo Ame

• Ichigo Ame
• Mikan Ame
• Ume Ame

• Choco bananas are frozen banana treats, covered in chocolate. While the chocolate is traditionally milk chocolate, there are also varieties made with white chocolate, strawberry chocolate, or other varieties - which can make for a dazzling rainbow of snacks. They're often topped with sprinkles, nuts, coconut flakes, or other sweets. Don't worry about getting your hands dirty, because they're served on sticks, just like toffee apples. Choco bananas are staples of Summer festivals, and they're a common sight in stalls.

Favorite Foods

Everybody has a favorite food -- and often it isn't just the food, but the story of why they like it, who they like it prepared by, and where and when they most like to eat it.

• Add your character's favorite food to this bullet list -- one long paragraph recommended.
• Please include your character's name and both a cultural summary of the food and its particular significance and specifics for the character. It's okay if your food was mentioned already elsewhere in the guide -- no two bowls of ramen are alike, after all.
• Mikoto Minagi's favourite food is Mai Tokiha's ramen noodles! Ramen is a common Japanese dish - wheat noodles, served in broth which is typically meat- or fish-based, with a variety of toppings. Many regions of Japan have their own variation of ramen: Tokyo's own spin on the recipe involves curly noodles and chicken broth with a little dashi, though perhaps Mai's own tendency to use chicken in her ramen is also because chicken is cheaper than some of the other meats in the market. Mai's ramen noodles were Mikoto's introduction to the fact that food could taste /good/ instead of just being plain sustenance, and she is forever grateful to her friend for revealing that there were wonders of taste she had never before experienced. She'll never be able to forget the wonders of that very first meal. Though Mai can make many other more complicated dishes which exhibit her skills as a cook, Mikoto's first choice for dinner is always Mai's ramen. It's never quite the same thing twice - there are always different ingredients on sale, after all!

For more information, please see: Holidays and Events, Culture