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Interview with Eric Gower of Breakaway Matcha
A number of months ago I was reading an article online at mindbodygreen.com and it mentioned Eric Gower of Breakaway Matcha, located in Marin County and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of it considering my total obsession with Matcha (high quality finely ground powdered green tea from Japan, primarily from the area surrounding Kyoto); especially since it is literally in my backyard so to speak! So I tracked Eric down, and we sat down a few weeks later over icy frothy cups of matcha for a far reaching and jam-packed conversation on matcha, Japan, love, food, our daughters, and lots more. And then, a few days later, I broke my other ankle…ie, my 2^nd ankle of 2017 and that was that for a very long time! But, I’m getting back on my feet!, back in the kitchen, and very happily back to writing my blog. So, here is my long awaited interview with Eric Gower of Breakaway Matcha. Thankfully, I bought a matcha flight as I was leaving that helped ease me through weeks of being stuck at home in a cast! I especially liked Blend #97 that I found had that perfect blend of green vibrancy and sprightliness that only properly shaken coldbrew matcha elicits! There is a whift of grassiness when you first drink first rate matcha that makes me go weak in the knees…..

This post may include affiliate links, so without costing you anything extra, I’ll earn a small percentage of the sales if you purchase these items through these links. Thank you for your support!

Why, matcha?

Eric Gower: “It’s love really, I mean it’s all about love. I drank a lot of matcha in Japan. I wasn’t too much into their ceremony, you know, you’ve probably been to as many as I have. I’ve drunk dozens and dozens of these things and I really liked the matchas that some of them served me, but a lot of them weren’t very good, and not very interesting. I liked it, when it was hot, it was really special. It was life changing, so different from so many other beverages and I just kept the dive going and I just kept learning more and more about it.”

And why call it breakaway matcha?!

EG: “It’s based on my two cookbooks (The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen and The Breakaway Cook) that take Japanese ingredients and do some unusual things with them. You know living in Japan for 16 years and surrounded by so much good food and all these classic Japanese restaurants. I didn’t feel the need to replicate all the classics but I did fall in love with Japanese ingredients and I tried to isolate the Japanese ingredients I liked and kind of make them star in kind of a non-Japanese way, a lot of which was driven by whatever I could find in farmers markets. You could make really simple and quite lovely food that broke away from all the Japanese cuisine. We just decided to call it the breakaway Japanese kitchen then I remember being called the breakaway cook and then so when I was trying to give a name to this matcha thing, then why not stick with breakaway too?”

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Arigatou Gozaimasu / ありがとうございますいます –Lucy

What are some of the benefits of matcha?

EG: “Oh geez! A lot of them. Really I find it with men more than women, for me it keeps me hydrated all day long because I don’t drink water (I don’t know why) but I do drink coldbrew matcha all day. It also has high levels of antioxidants. Some other benefits include reducing stress, as it includes L-theanine, an amino acid known for its calming effect, supporting healthy teeth and gums by killing off bacteria that causes bad breath, and the list goes on and on!”

It doesn’t keep you up all night?

EG: “No. I sleep like a baby every night!”

Does it have caffeine?

EG: (According to their website): “Yes, but not so much: 25mg or so per cup (in contrast, a brewed cup of coffee has about 100mg. So it has about a quarter of the caffeine of coffee.”

What are you looking for in a great matcha?

The five pillars of a great matcha (according to their website) is:
- electric color
- maximum umami
- lack of bitterness and plethora of natural sweetness
- good/balanced acid structure, and
- extra-long, beautiful finish
You are doing so many different things, are you still a private chef?

EG: “Not really, the last private chef gig that I did was 2 years ago. In the last 5 years I haven’t really done more than a handful of private chef events, ever since matcha came along. I would much rather focus my energy doing this. It’s easier, it’s better, it has way more potential, and it’s enjoyable. I mean being a private chef is hard, it’s just brutal really, I mean you can’t really trust that the person or where you’re going is going to have what you need. Dismantling your entire kitchen, loading it in the car and doing it again and shopping takes up to 2 days. You couldn’t charge enough; you can’t charge enough to make a living.”

“And it’s exhausting (it’s completely exhausting) and you have a family which is why I stopped teaching because…”

Eric to Lucy: “Are you a cooking teacher?”

LS: “Yes, I was for years but it didn’t work out long-term after I became a single Mom, it was impossible to do, when my daughter was younger.”

What is your relationship with restaurants and what are you doing with them?

EG: “We create many programs for restaurants and there’s a new one called Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg, I don’t know if you have heard of this one. It’s remarkable. You can order room service there with a couple of different grades of matcha. They create quite a few pastries with matcha as well. That’s a pretty developed matcha program, and we also work with Nomad Hotel, both in NYC and the recently opened downtown Los Angeles location, where they really wanted a matcha program, which is wonderful.”

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Do you have a favorite local Japanese restaurant in Marin County?

EG: “Yes, there is a wonderful restaurant and it’s really really good and I don’t say that lightly! I don’t like most Japanese food that I’ve had but this is very good. It’s called Village in Fairfax, California.”

So what do you see happening next for you in Breakaway Matcha?

EG: “I don’t know. We continue to grow. Matcha as a category is growing like wildfire which is really nice, the timing is very good. We kind of positioned ourselves at the extreme upper end of the market. It’s a good place to be rather than battling it out at the bottom. It’ll be really cool, and great to reintroduce this style of matcha in Japan. There’s long history of things that go abroad and then kind of move that way back in Japan in some different form. It will be wonderful. I really think it will be widely accepted, I’m quite sure, it’s just that we’re still building the business here and not quite ready. I think a similar thing can happen in Europe. My wife is German. I grew up in Germany but was born here. We’d love to live in either Holland or Germany for a while, I may try to start a European branch as well as a Japanese branch. It’ll be great.”

Breakaway Matcha sells 12 Hyperpremium matcha blends (think rare fine wines, each unique in their own way), a variety of coldbrew versions (my personal fav at the moment), and culinary for well, for culinary purposes (such as baking or cooking or using it as an ingredient)!

Breakaway Matcha is offering readers 10% off + free shipping! Just use the code THANKSFORTHEMEAL. www.breakawaymatcha.com

*Photos courtesy of Breakaway Matcha.

Leave a note in the comments section (see below) of your favorite Matcha drink and or food!
Delicious Tenpura Recipe (Tempura)
With a light, crispy, oil-free coating enveloping a perfectly cooked and succulent piece of seafood or vegetable, tenpura (also written tempura) is considered a quintessentially Japanese food. Both the word and the dish, however, are almost certainly of foreign origin. The source: Spanish and Portuguese missionaries called nanbanjin (southern barbarians) who came to Japan to convert the heathen masses toward the close of the sixteenth century. Prohibited from consuming meat on Fridays, they substituted batter-fried fish.

There are several theories on where the name came from. Templo, meaning temple or church in Spanish, and tempero, which in Portuguese means cooking, are two possible roots. The Chinese characters can also be read as follows: ten meaning up, pu for flour, and ra for thin silk, the latter most likely a reference to the thin coating of batter.

By the middle of the Edo era (1603-1867), tenpura, inexpensive and considered relatively low-class, was a popular offering at open-air food stalls. Only in recent years has the dish risen in both price and public esteem to its exalted culinary status in high-class establishments. With a little preparation and practice, it is surprisingly easy to make equally good tenpura at home. Keep the oil at a constant temperature; use ice-cold water to make the batter; and, perhaps most important of all, leave the batter lumpy.
Tenpura

Lucy Seligman

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Course Main Course
Cuisine Japanese

Servings 4

Ingredients

8 medium or 4 large shrimp washed, shelled, and deveined, with tails slightly trimmed
4 small kisu Japanese whiting fillets (or other small white-fleshed fish), washed and with tails left intact
4 fresh shiitake mushrooms trimmed
4 thick rounds of sweet potato peeled
4 shiso perilla leaves, washed and patted dry
2 Japanese eggplants trimmed and halved lengthwise, with skin lightly scored for quicker frying
4 string beans trimmed and halved lengthwise
Sesame oil and vegetable oil for deep-frying half and half is best
Dipping Sauce:
1 cup dashi fish stock
¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
¼ cup mirin sweet sake
¼ cup sake
Dash of salt
1 cup daikon radish peeled, grated, and drained
4 teaspoons fresh ginger peeled & grated
Lemon wedges & coarse salt optional
Batter: Double quantity if necessary
1 large egg
1 cup ice water
1 cup all-purpose white flour sifted

Instructions

Prepare the shrimp and other items as instructed above, then place them on a large plate. Bring the dipping sauce ingredients to a boil in a pan, stirring well; remove from heat and pour into four small serving bowls. Let cool. Put the daikon radish, ginger, and lemon (if used) in separate bowls. Prepare a rack for draining the tenpura, and line your serving plates with paper napkins.
While you are heating the oil in a wok or other large large, deep-sided pot, lightly mix the egg and ice water in a bowl. Add the flour all at once, stirring only briefly with chopsticks or a fork to create a lumpy, nonsticky batter. Place the bowl of batter in a large bowl filled with ice water near the stove. When a dab of batter is dropped into the oil and rises to the surface and sizzles, the oil is ready.
Fry the fish first. Dip them briefly in the batter and then drop into the oil, use
cooking chopsticks to turn them rapidly.
(To preserve their delicate flavor, the perilla leaves should be dipped on their "back" side only.) Then proceed with the other items. If space permits, fry all similar items together. The tenpura is ready when it turns golden brown and floats. I like to drain tenpura using a cooling rack placed over a cookie sheet for easy clean up.
Remove any excess fried batter with a slotted spoon.
Tenpura should be served immediately and eaten piping hot. It could also be made at the dining room table by the guests, using fondue pots. Dip into the sauce, add grated radish and ginger as desired, or sprinkle with lemon and dip lightly in salt.

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Top 10 Favorite Japanese Cookbooks

I have over a hundred and thirty English language books on Japanese cuisine on my bookshelves, and yet I feel I’ve only begun to skim the surface. In the past few years, there have been scores of Japanese cookbooks, Asian fusion cookbooks, you name them, published around the world. It is hard to keep up!

Below are just a few of my favorites, essential volumes you can use to establish your ideal Japanese library. Although many were published years ago, they can be found fairly easily these days, especially in the United States and Japan, thanks to the internet! And don’t despair, I will return to this topic again and again and cover other favorites, as I am adding new ones! I would love to hear what your favorites are as well—please comment below and share.

Note: These are truly my favorite Japanese Cookbooks. However, the links may include affiliate links, so without costing you anything extra, I’ll earn a small percentage of the sales if you purchase these items through these links. Thank you for your support!

Need books?

I’m buying mine from Abe Books now in an effort to support smaller businesses. They have new and used options and harder to find books, including all of my favorite Japanese cookbooks! You can support Thanks for the Meal by clicking on this banner to buy your books.

Arigatou Gozaimasu / ありがとうございますいます –Lucy

“The Wonderful World of Osechi: Japanese New Year’s Recipes” is full of recipes that are fast to make, healthy, easy, and very delicious for your New Year celebrations along with an understanding of the Shogatsu (Japanese New Year) traditions. It’s now available in both print and Kindle editions! Why not try something different this year for your New Year’s celebrations?

Easy Japanese Recipes for the Home Cook is a compilation of Japanese recipes specifically cultivated to keep things simple and easy in the kitchen. Whether you’re new to Japanese cooking or new to cooking in general, these easy recipes are a great place to start. Not only does the author walk you through easy Japanese hors d’oeuvres, main dishes, and desserts, but she covers donburi and ramen as well!

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art

1. The first book I’d recommend is Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art By Shizuo Tsuji, which is often considered the bible of Japanese cuisine. Originally published in 1980 by Kodansha International, it has gone through several reprints. I find I constantly to this day refer to this volume. I call it my ‘go to’ Japanese cookbook. The recipes are clearly written and easy to follow, and the black-and-white drawings showing special techniques are always helpful and what you end up producing tastes very good. Tsuji introduces each recipe with a little historical nugget or comment that helps give the reader a sense of where the dish fits in culinarily-speaking. Everything is covered, from how to make dashi (the primary Japanese fish stock) to utensils to seasonal dishes, and even a few sweets (often the hardest type of recipe to find in English cookbooks).

Rice Paddy Gourmet

2. Another book I find myself often referring to, not only because of the recipes but because of the author’s observations of life as a foreign wife in Japan in the late sixties, is Joan Itoh’s Rice Paddy Gourmet. Originally published in 1976 by The Japan Times, the book is a compilation of cooking columns that Itoh wrote for that newspaper in the seventies while she lived in the rice-growing plains of Niigata Prefecture (the Far North as its called) in a gigantic traditional farm house. My copy is in disrepair, but I still love flipping through the pages and reading her quirky comments about seasonal events and her delicious blend of East-West recipes, which incorporated her background of (Milford, Pennsylvania) and her then-life in Japan. I had the pleasure of interviewing her years later in her then-new life in Brantford Ontario, Canada. Her stories and recipes continue to be relevant and tasty today. She was also sweet enough to replace my tattered copy as well!

The Book of Soba

3. We have Jame Udesky to thank for writing the definitive The Book of Soba in 1988 by Kodansha International.

It remains my go-to book on all things soba (Japanese buckwheat pasta). The book has it all: from how to make handmade soba noodles, the history of soba, where to eat soba in Japan, and lots of recipes.

The very best soba I’ve ever had has always been at traditional handmade soba restaurants. They are always worth searching for and going to. My favorite soba recipe is Toshikoshi Soba.

Good Food from a Japanese Temple

4. Shojin ryori, or vegetarian monk cuisine, is comprehensively covered in Good Food from a Japanese Temple by Soei Yoneda, the late abbess of Sanko-in Temple. The book, came out in 1982. I had the pleasure of dining at Sanko-in years ago, and be served by the abbess, and also to conduct a lively and engrossing interview with her. I have yet to meet any chef in his or her eighties (or otherwise) who rivaled Yoneda’s enthusiasm and knowledge of, this style of cooking. One of the original dishes of Sanko-in Temple is robai–fried fresh wheat gluten served with a pungent and fiery mustard-soy sauce. I’ve never forgotten it, and the recipe appears in her book as well. Yoneda was truly a character. She entered Donke-in nunnery in Kyoto at the age of four, and took her Buddhist vows at seven. She was appointed the abbess of Sanko-in Temple from the age of thirty-one until her death.

At Home with Japanese Cooking

5. At Home with Japanese Cooking by Elizabeth Andoh, is one of her earlier works. Any of her cookbooks are a joy to read, cook from and are beautifully presented.

I have had the pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth for my original newsletter, Gochiso-sama! and we have stayed in touch intermittently ever since. I will no doubt talk with her again about her recent activities. She has been a treasure in the Japanese cuisine world for over 40 years. She has written many books; another favorite of mine written by her is An Ocean of Flavor: the Japanese Way with Fish and Seafood.

Japanese Country Cookbook

6. Japanese Country Cookbook by Russ Rudzinski are a collection of recipes from a San Francisco restaurant, now sadly closed, called Mingei-ya. A sentimental favorite, as I have many happy memories of visiting this country-style Japanese restaurant as a child and tasting my first chicken mizutaki. Many of my favorite homestyle Japanese recipes are in this beautifully printed paperback by Nitty Gritty Books. A real gem!

One-pot Cookery

7. I finally replaced my tattered copy of Masaru Doi’s One-pot Cookery. I use this book all the time, especially since last year I also finally bought a portable tabletop stove burner to cook nabemonos (one-pot dishes) tableside.

I continue to get inspiration from his book and one of my favorite recipes remains Falling Leaf Chicken Nabe, which uses ground chicken.

Sake Confidential

8. My niece, Corina Seligman, who used to sell sake for a living at Empire Merchants introduced me to Sake Confidential and to John Gauntner, who is the only non-Japanese certified Master of Sake Tasting, who is based in Japan.

Highly recommend for beginners and experienced sake lovers alike! It’s a fun and very informative read! I even learned some new sake information and enjoyed his witty writing style. It’s refreshing to find an expert who doesn’t take himself too seriously.

If you like Sake, I encourage you to also check out Corina’s guest posts: Sake Paired with Whaaat? and Japanese Inspired Cocktails

Tsukemono: Japanese Pickled Vegetables

9. Tsukemono: Japanese Pickled Vegetables by Kay Shimizu is a good addition to your library. I love pickles—I blame it on my Dad. He taught me how to make kosher dill pickles as a girl, and I’ve been making and eating them ever since. I just can’t finish a bowl of Japanese white rice without them.

This book with guide you through the process of pickling a wide variety of Japanese vegetables easily and happily.

Be sure to check out her recipes for Cabbage Shoyu-zuke and Pickled Plums (Umeboshi), my go-to-food to eat for an upset stomach.

Kaiseki: Zen Tastes in Japanese Cooking

10. Kaiseki: Zen Tastes in Japanese Cooking by Kaichi Tsuji. Kaiseki is the haute cuisine of Japanese cooking and this is not for the beginning cook by any means.

The photographs are exquisite, and the text is a serious look at kaiseki’s hidden meanings and preciseness of its preparation.

Please note that a knowledge of Japanese cooking is necessary to follow Tsuji’s recipes–most of which don’t have any measurements.

Leave a note in the comments section (see below) about your favorite Japanese cookbook!

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Festive Fare: Traditional Treats for New Year’s
NEW YEAR’S IS ONE OF THE BEST TIMES IN JAPAN – at least for eating. Shogatsu, the New Year’s holiday, is celebrated from midnight on December 31 until January 3 or 4, or even longer by diehards.

No New Year’s banquet would be complete without a bowl of zoni, soup with toasted mochi (pounded rice cakes). While most Japanese dishes differ from region to region, zoni varies virtually from house to house. This zoni, a variation of the Kyoto-style, uses sweet white miso paste, and is one of my favorites..

Although I live in the States, I continue to celebrate Japanese New Year’s to this day with my daughter, albeit in a less traditional and fancy way. We look forward to it every year. It is a welcome ritual to closing out the year. And yes, a lot, okay, way too much mochi is consumed!

The Wonderful World of Osechi: Japanese New Year’s Recipes

New Year’s is one of the best times in Japan, at least for eating and relaxing. Get Lucy’s Osechi cookbook, full of recipes that are fast to make, easy, and quite delicious for your New Year celebrations (along with the history and traditions and little tidbits Lucy always includes). Get the book!

Makes a great gift too! Did you know on the Amazon page there’s an option to give it as a gift?

My recipes may include affiliate links, so without costing you anything extra, I’ll earn a small percentage of the sales if you purchase these items through these links. Thank you for your support!
Kyoto-Style Zoni

Lucy Seligman

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Course Soup
Cuisine Japanese

Servings 4

Ingredients

10 ½ oz. small taro satoimo, peeled, rubbed with salt, rinsed, and kept in a bowl of water to prevent discoloration until ready to cook
3 ½ oz. carrots peeled and cut into thick rounds
4 fresh shiitake mushrooms optional, stems cut, with a criss-cross incision made on the cap
4 ½ cups dashi fish stock*
2 tablespoons white miso fermented soybean paste, or more if you like it very sweet
8 mochi cakes
Fresh trefoil or parboiled spinach optional
To garnish:
A few slivers of yuzu Japanese citron peel
A handful of dried bonito flakes

Instructions

Boil the taro, carrots, and mushrooms (if you decide to use them) in the dashi stock for roughly 10 minutes, until soft enough to be pierced with a toothpick.
Take a few tablespoons of the hot stock out of the pot and combine with the miso in a small bowl. When thoroughly blended, incorporate back into the soup.
Meanwhile toast the mochi until they begin to swell. Then add them to the soup, swirl around until warmed, and turn off the heat.
To serve, pour the soup into four deep bowls, making sure there are two mochi in the middle of each bowl. At the last moment, add any greens, and top with a sliver or two of yuzu peel and a sprinkling of bonito flakes. Serve immediately.

Notes
How to make Konbu Dashi Stock:
Take a 6-inch piece of kelp (konbu), wipe lightly with a damp cloth and put into a pot with 6 cups water. Bring to a boil and remove kelp. Add a generous 3/4 cup of dried bonito shavings (katsuobushi) and boil for one minute. Turn off heat and after 2 minutes, strain.

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Leave a note in the comments section (see below) if you make this dish!

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Soba Celebrations for a Happy New Year!
IN JAPANESE CULTURE, soba (buckwheat) noodles have always been seen as a “happiness” food, served on special occasions. It is traditional, too, when moving into a new house to greet your neighbors with hikoshi soba (moving soba). This involves a play on words, as soba also means “close” or “near” – like neighbors.

Another soba custom is toshikoshi soba (year’s-passing soba), supposed to be the last food to touch your lips on New Year’s Eve. The tradition is so established nationwide that often reservations are needed even for buying the freshly made soba to cook up at home. One year I attempted to make my own: working with fresh buckwheat flour proved extremely hard, but my toshikoshi noodles won nods of approval from the family even though, without the special chef’s knife used by soba cutters, they were a trifle thick.

According to a diary written by a samurai named Watanabe Hyotaro between 1839 and 1848, it was common in those days to go out and eat soba on the last day of the year. An even older story, from the Kamakura period (1185-1333), relates how in Hakata, Kyushu, a businessman from China named Shakokumei used to distribute buckwheat flour to poor people on the last day of the year, telling them how it was to erase the year of poverty and welcome in a good new year.

Perhaps the most persuasive explanation for the tradition, however, is that in the Edo era (1603-1867) merchants used to clean factory floors with soba dumplings to pick up any gold filaments. So it became a superstition that soba “collected gold”. Eventually factory workmen started to make toshikoshi noodles, and ordinary people copied them – all in the hope of having a prosperous new year.

The Wonderful World of Osechi: Japanese New Year’s Recipes

New Year’s is one of the best times in Japan, at least for eating and relaxing. Get Lucy’s Osechi cookbook, full of recipes that are fast to make, easy, and quite delicious for your New Year celebrations (along with the history and traditions and little tidbits Lucy always includes). Get the book!

Makes a great gift too! Did you know on the Amazon page there’s an option to give it as a gift?

My recipes may include affiliate links, so without costing you anything extra, I’ll earn a small percentage of the sales if you purchase these items through these links. Thank you for your support!
TOSHIKOSHI SOBA

Lucy Seligman

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Ingredients

6 ¼ cups water
A 3-inch by 3-inch piece of kombu kelp wiped with a damp cloth and lightly slashed to release the flavor
2 oz. katsuobushi dried bonito flakes
4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon mirin sweet sake
1 teaspoon salt or to taste
1 lb. dried or 1 ¼ lbs. fresh soba noodles
4 dried or fresh shiitake mushrooms stemmed (reconstitute dried ones by soaking in warm water with a dash of sugar for 30 minutes – reserve 2 tablespoons of liquid to add to broth)
½ lb. chicken breast cut into thin slices
2 large Japanese leeks white part only, cut diagonally into thin slices
5 ¼ oz. spinach trimmed, parboiled, and drained
Seven-spice pepper to taste for garnish

Instructions

Heat the water with the kelp in a deep saucepan. Just before it boils, remove the kelp and pour in the dried bonito flakes. Boil, stirring, for about three minutes, then strain into a clean saucepan. Add the soy sauce, mirin, salt, and mushroom liquid. Bring to a boil again; taste, adjust seasoning if necessary and cook over medium heat for a few minutes.
Five minutes before serving, heat up the chicken and leeks in the broth. In another pan, cook the noodles according to instructions on the package, then drain and rinse to get rid of the starch.
To serve, place a mound of noodles in each deep soup bowl. Top with one mushroom and separate mounds of chicken, Japanese leeks, and spinach. Gently ladle on the broth and serve immediately. Pass the seven-spice pepper separately.

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Get Breakaway Matcha Delivered With A Special Offer for Thanks For the Meal Readers

I admit it, that I am very obsessed with Matcha! And you may be wondering, what is matcha? It is finely ground powdered ultra-premium Japanese green tea. It can be drunk hot or cold.

Look for my interview with Eric Gower, the owner of Breakaway Matcha from Marin County in the coming weeks for more on the wonders of Matcha!

In the meantime….

Breakaway Matcha is offering our readers 10% off + free shipping! Just use the code THANKSFORTHEMEAL. Go to https://www.breakawaymatcha.com. Your life will never be the same!

All photos courtesy of and copyright ©Breakaway Matcha.

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Chanko Nabe: A One-Pot Dish for a Pot Belly
A little unknown fact about me is that I love sumo! It is one of the few sports I’ll watch. When I lived in Japan, you couldn’t tear me away from the television whenever sumo was on. I even went to a live Sumo tournament in Tokyo with my then father-in-law and it was sublime! We dined on elegant and yummy bento boxes, drank a lot of beer! and watched sumo for hours. I’ve never had so much fun at a sports event in my life. To this day whenever I think of Sumo wrestlers I still giggle over their appearance and antics, but don’t be deceived, they are true athletes.

YOU’VE PROBABLY SEEN SUMO WRESTLERS in action – remarkably fat, semi-naked, they spend a lot of time hitting themselves on the posterior and prancing around doing what appears to be a rain dance in a dirt ring, trying to knock each other down. At first it looks pretty ludicrous, but after a while you begin to find them rather endearing.

The secret of sumo wrestlers’ rotund figures lies in enormous helpings of chanko nabe, a one-pot dish that is their staple fare. It can, in fact, be just about any form of nabe (one-pot) cooking, but traditionally it is chicken-based.

Need books?

I’m buying mine from Abe Books now in an effort to support smaller businesses. They have new and used options and harder to find books, including all of my favorite Japanese cookbooks! You can support Thanks for the Meal by clicking on this banner to buy your books.

Arigatou Gozaimasu / ありがとうございますいます –Lucy

One story has it that during the Edo era (1603-1867) a group of wrestlers visiting Nagasaki learned to cook meals in a Chinese wok, or chanko – and brought the habit back to Edo (now Tokyo). Another theory holds that Hidekatsu Watanabe, a former wrestler who owned a restaurant in Tokyo, named the stew in honor of sumo stable masters, or “fathers” (chan), and their “sons” (ko), the wrestlers. But the most likely origin of the dish, although not the name, is that it was invented in the Meiji period (1868-1912) by former yokozuna (grand champion) Hitachiyama. On retiring he opened his own stable where, to save time, he introduced a simple one-dish meal.

The reason behind the preference for chicken is that chickens have two legs, like sumo wrestlers standing in a dohyo (sumo ring). For a wrestler to be on all fours means losing a bout, so it is considered unlucky to eat anything with four legs.

Chanko nabe stock can be flavored with salt, soy sauce, kelp, dried bonito shavings, or a combination of these. Each stable has its own special flavor: some add mirin (sweet sake), others butter. Since the stock is so flavored – good enough to enjoy on its own as a soup – a dipping sauce isn’t necessary. Many sumo wrestlers are diabetic, so chefs are careful about sugar, but otherwise almost anything can be added. The current fad is to add spicy Korean kimchi (pickled cabbage).

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Chanko Nabe: A One-Pot Dish for a Pot Belly

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Ingredients

1 ¾ lbs. chicken parts with bones
3 quarts water
A 6-inch piece of kombu kelp, wiped with a damp cloth and lightly slashed to release flavor
1 teaspoon salt or to taste
8 fresh shiitake mushrooms trimmed
12 oz. shirataki fine white konnyaku [devil’s tongue] noodles
7 oz. spring onion white part only, cut into 2-inch pieces
4 oz. mitsuba trefoil, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
1 block of grilled tofu drained and cut into 1-inch squares

Instructions

Pour boiling water over the chicken parts to get rid of the odor. Place the chicken, kelp, water, and salt in a Donabe pot or deep soup pot over high heat. When nearly boiling, discard the kelp, turn heat down to a simmer, and cook, covered, for about 20 minutes. Skim off any scum. Remove the chicken to a bowl with a little stock to keep it moist; strain the rest of the stock and, if you prefer, let cool to room temperature and skim off excess fat.
Arrange all the ingredients on a large platter. Half-fill a deep casserole with stock and heat to boiling. Prepare a heat source at the dining table, transfer the casserole to it, and add some chicken, vegetables, and tofu. When just cooked through, allow guests to help themselves to a selection from the pot. Continue adding more ingredients as needed.

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Guest Blog Post: Sake Paired with Whaaaat??

My niece, Corina Seligman, knows her sake! So I asked her to do a guest blog on some of its finer points. –Lucy

Corina’s fridge… filled with Sake!

I sell sake for a living. After 15 years of bartending and a few years in management I have recently transitioned to the other side of the industry: sales.

I work for Empire Merchants, the oldest and largest liquor distributor in New York. There are over 1,400 employees and 13 divisions. I work in the vintage wines division, the smallest in the company. My position was created just this year and I am their first and only sake specialist.

While I am still very new and most of my peers and many of my buyers don’t know much about sake, the world is wide open for me. One of my biggest goals is to demystify sake for Western drinkers. Sake is not meant to only be drunk with sushi. I can never say that enough!

For those who find the idea of drinking sake with anything other than a spicy tuna roll or a hot bowl of ramen, here’s what I have to say to them:

Think of sake the way you would think of wine or beer- the food pairings have little to do with the country of origin and everything to do with flavor profile and balance. Does your mouth salivate at the thought of pizza (Italian) and beer (very likely German, American, Belgian, etc.)? How about pairing Thai or Indian food with an off-dry Riesling (probably German, American or French)? How delicious does a dry French rose paired with some sweet and savory all American BBQ sound? You get the point.

So why do people think sake is any different when it comes to food pairing? Sake is arguably one of the most versatile beverages on the planet. Many can be served at various temperatures, some are undiluted, sparkling, unfiltered, infused and even aged! Sake is perfect for food pairing. If there’s a dish, there’s a sake for it.

Without diving too far down the rabbit hole, I’d like to suggest a few not-so-obvious food and sake pairings. Feel free to use any sake of a similar style and experiment on your own! You can thank me later 😉

Recommended sake pairing #1: Fuku Chitose Yamahai Junmai “Happy Owl” with Oaxacan-style mole

This sake is from the Tajima Brewery and is traditional in every sense of the word. The small brewery only makes Yamahai sakes where they allow the rice to sit in the open air so it can absorb all the air-born micro-organisms as it ferments. This particular Yamahai has a more mellow attack than most, but you can still taste the umami flavors in its fragrant and rich mouthful. I’ve heard rumors that they sell dark chocolate at the brewery which is what gave me the idea to pair it with a dense, complex, chocolatey mole sauce layered over chicken, beef or chunky vegetables. A delicious pairing and perfect for the coming winter months!

Recommended sake pairing #2: Taiheikai Tokubetsu Junmai “Pacific Ocean” with a Charcuterie and Cheese plate

I’m currently obsessed with this sake. It is very well balanced with just the right amount of nutty earthiness with a bright juicy effervescence on the tongue. Pretty much everything I love in a sake all poured into one beautiful bottle. The complexity in this sake lends itself to being paired with many flavors and textures. My ideal afternoon spread would be for the sake to play off of the delicate creaminess of cheese, tart and sweetness of fruit, and the salty richness of meat. Let’s break it down a little more by finding flavors in this platter to compliment the three pronounced aspects in this sake-nuttiness, juiciness and slight umami.

Here are some more specific suggestions:

Mild creamy cheeses with a hint of nuttiness:

Fontina, Gouda, Camembert, Brie, or Jarlsberg

Sweet and zesty Fruit. Key word is fresh fresh fresh!

Crisp apples and pears, white peaches, nectarines, honeydew melon and lighter fleshed melons (I wouldn’t do cantaloupe or watermelon as their flavors may be more pronounced for this but feel free to experiment!)

High quality sliced meats to enhance texture, salinity and umami:

Prosciutto and dry cured salami. Plump green olives can also be a nice vegetarian option in this category!

Recommended sake pairing #3: Hanahato Kijoshu Sake “Gorgeous Bird” with Chocolate Fondue and other Desserts

I first discovered this sake when I was working as the bar manager at a high end Japanese restaurant in California. Hanahato was pretty polarizing for the staff when we first tried it due to its pronounced nose being very heavy on the umami notes. Some even said it smelled like fish sauce or soy sauce! But if you can get past the unexpected smell, this sake, served at room temperature, has a similar taste profile to a sherry or port with a dense honey/nutty aroma.

Kijoshu is a rich and luxurious sake that is created by replacing some of the water used during the fermentation period with finished sake. In other words it’s a sake fortified with sake! Hanahato has been aged for eight years and has notes of dried fruit and earthy mushrooms. Anything that can be classically paired with either a ruby or tawny port would be a delightful pairing with this sake.

My restaurant had a decadent dark chocolate fondue dessert and I loved blowing people’s minds by pouring them a small taste of the Hanahato to accompany it. Other great pairing options would be a dark chocolate mousse, a nutty pecan pie, gooey bread pudding or even a classic hot fudge sundae. Yummmmm!

These are just a few ideas I have for thinking outside the (bento!) box and having some fun with sake and cuisines from all over the world. I’m looking forward to sharing more of my sake food pairing adventures in the months to come. For now I’m going to pour myself a nightcap of Daiginjo in a big elegant Bordeaux glass because sometimes sake is also pretty damn great on its own.

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Trefoil and Shimeji Mushroom Pasta
We are having another heat wave in the Bay area, so spending as little time as possible in the kitchen is my modus operandi at the moment. I have been hankering for mushrooms a lot these past few weeks. This is a yummy and quick pasta dish that incorporates East-West elements. Although I use shimeji mushrooms, I bet other mushrooms would work just as well.
Trefoil and Shimeji Mushroom Pasta

Lucy Seligman

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Ingredients

12 ounces of spaghetti
2 to 3 large bunches of trefoil mitsuba, washed, stemmed and roughly chopped
11 ounces Shimeji mushrooms washed, slightly stemmed and separated into bite sized pieces
1 tablespoon butter + extra
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 medium cloves garlic peeled and minced
3 to 4 tablespoons dry white wine
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and black pepper to taste

Instructions

Boil water for spaghetti and prepare according to directions. Meanwhile, sauté the garlic in olive oil and one tablespoon butter. Add shimeji mushrooms, white wine and salt and pepper to taste. Just before serving, turn on heat again and add trefoil. Cook for one minute.
Place spaghetti in a large serving bowl and toss with extra butter and Parmesan cheese. When combined, add trefoil-mushroom mixture, toss well and serve immediately.

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Canada Travels: Part 2–Victoria, BC

I fell in love in Victoria–His name was Sampson, a noble horse. He took us on a horse-drawn Tally-Ho Carriage Tour through the historic James Bay neighborhood where some of the oldest houses in Victoria still stand. Amazingly, Alisa, my hostess, knew the lively and engaging female carriage driver. She turned out to be a godsend as she recommended we dine at Il Covo Trattoria, where I became quite smitten with our blue-eyed very tall Roman server, we shall call him Luigi, from Italy. As the night wore on, and I drank more vino!, I was able to converse and yes, flirt quite a bit with him in Italian. It was July 1st, and everybody in Canada was in a very happy and festive mood, waiting for the fireworks to begin to celebrate their 150th birthday. We sat out in their lovely garden, as dusk came on, eating and drinking, then wandered back to our hotel, Inn at Laurel Point, for a nightcap, before the fireworks began.

AURA Waterfront Restaurant + Patio

How lucky were we that the Executive Chef at AURA Waterfront Restaurant + Patio restaurant and patio at Inn at Laurel Point is Japanese? His name is Takashi Ito and his food is amazing! We enjoyed quite a few meals at Aura Waterfront, and I loved the Japanese and Asian inspired elements that were wrapped into dishes from breakfast to dinner and the attention to detail in the dishes, which let’s face it, is unusual in a hotel restaurant.

Watermelon Salad (and photo credit) by AURA Waterfront Restaurant + Patio

Some of the highlights included an amusing take on Eggs Benedict at breakfast called Seafood Latkes Benny with okonomiyaki pancake as its base with shrimp, smoked salmon, kimchi hollandaise, seaweed salad, etc, a beautifully presented and delicious Watermelon and Sprout Salad with yuzu caviar, and a white soy glaze, the most fabulous Asian-style Risotto with sea asparagus (used a lot in British Columbia and one of my new favs), coconut, bonito flakes, spot prawns, and some delicious desserts such as a Deconstructed Shortcake which used yuzu foam, and almond sesame crisps to a lovely Panna Cotta which included sake jelly and cherry blossoms. We floated back to our room, feeling very well fed, continuing to rave about our dinner and planning our next visit to Aura.

Panna Cotta (and photo credit) by AURA Waterfront Restaurant + Patio

Shortcake (and photo credit) by AURA Waterfront Restaurant + Patio

Seafood Latkes Benny (and photo credit) by AURA Waterfront Restaurant + Patio

Sooke Harbour House Resort Hotel

We also drove out to the legendary Sooke Harbour House Resort Hotel and ate in their restaurant. This is a gorgeous country inn set on a bluff overlooking the stunning Salish Sea (aka the Straits of Juan de Fuca). Our corner table faced a corner of their three acre pristine garden filled with edible flower blossoms and rare herbs and in the distance, the mesmerizing sea. Again, I loved the Japanese influences in so many of the dishes.

Since we were having brunch, we started with spicy Bloody Mary’s that included sea asparagus, a Chargrilled Lettuce Salad with smoked feta and pickled shallots, and a Sashimi platter that included the most tender octopus and melt in your mouth freshly caught salmon. Okay, I will admit we ate a lot more dishes!, but we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the food and the view.

I had such a great time in beautiful Victoria, that I want to go back and keep eating!

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