Oh monosodium glutamate, you wonderfully delicious additive that has been demonized so much.
So MSG has a super bad rap as being awful for you and an additive and blahblahblah - and I'm not saying it's not. Oh wait. I just looked around online. Pretty much everything I've seen so far that cites scientific studies report that there is NO correlation between MSG and the side effects that people claim to feel. These side effects have been rigorously tested; the only effects ever discovered were from a placebo on a self-identified MSG sensitive person. Is it lethal? If you stuff a whole bunch of it in your face by itself (like we're talking a ridiculous amount)(or if you're a mouse), then maybe. But eaten with food? Not at all.
Clearly, the link we should be exploring more is the mental one between our attitudes towards food and the way that we actually experience taste; how our brains and mental activity mediate and alter the signals we get from taste receptors in our mouth. That'd be a pretty interesting thing to investigate, actually, if there isn't research done on it already. I mean, that study, and the whole existence of the placebo effect, validate the fact that how we actually perceive an experience can viscerally and physically effect what we're experiencing.
This whole "holy crap I feel tingly and numb because omg too much MSG" is actually known as the Chinese Restaurant Effect, because of MSG's close association with Chinese food (though, whether it's used or not in Chinese food... I'm not sure.)
Kind of ironic though, because contrary to what it seems like, MSG was actually created initially by a Japanese scientist and distributed by a Japanese company - Ajinomoto - around the turn of the century (so MSG is like, a hundred years old about). Ikeda Kikunae was working on isolating the "savory" flavory - also known as umami in Japanese (and gaining more attention as it is touted as the sixth taste). That savory flavor is the kind of thick, meaty flavor found in... meat. Or in mushrooms, as it's often explained. It's also found in konbu, a type of kelp that's used frequently in Japanese kitchens to make things like stock. Other notable foods with glutamic acid (the stuff that MSG is an artificial reproduction of) include parmasan cheese, marmite, vegemite, and soy sauce. Ajinomoto, which means "the essence of taste" started to produce MSG around 1909. Of course, it wasn't very long before China was able to produce an imitation, since this savory flavor was something the Chinese had been searching for as well. Around 1920, a man named Wu Yunchu was able to replicate the way the Japanese company manufactured MSG and called it weijing and applied for a patent on it, despite Japanese protests.
The relationship between Japan and China during the 1920s was not a productive one for Japan. Chinese people were boycotting European and Japanese goods, prompting the demand for weijing to outstrip supply - so much so that the company actually started to buy Ajinomoto and then relabeled it, repackage it, and then sold it under its own brand as "100% Chinese" (Kushner 153).
Oh China. Never change.
The whole reason I got interested in this though, is from a couple readings I was doing for class. One of them is the manga, Oishinbo, a food "gourmet" comic about creating the Ultimate menu. I just got it in the mail! The English language versions are "bite sized" chunks of story separated by theme into different volumes (e.g. volume one is "Japanese cuisine"). The one I was reading was "Ramen and Gyoza" so naturally, there's quite a lot of talk about China, and inevitably, the use of MSG. As expected, it was one of the things that the characters used to distance Chinese food from Japanese food ("Western" foods I've found, often try to do similar things). Ironic, no?
Works Cited:
Kushner, Barak. "Imperial Cuisines in Taisho Foodways." Japanese Foodways: Past and Present. Ed. Rath, Eric C. and Stephanie Assmann. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Butter rice~
Right before my last Japanese midterm, our sensei (Japanese for teacher, and often used as a suffix kind of for addressing teachers/doctors/"masters" - I use it so often for my teachers that it's pretty much become a habit for me to think of teachers as blahblahblah-sensei rather than Mr./Mrs. Blahblahblah ) introduced this show to us called Shinya Shokudo (roughly translated as midnight canteen/eaterie).
Talk about cruel and unusual punishment man. "Hey students, your midterm is like, in a couple days BUT HERE'S THIS SUPER INTERESTING DRAMA ABOUT FOOD good luck studying lololol."
Obviously, since I haven't failed yet (or watched the entire series yet) I still have some modicum of self control... but tonight since we have a long weekend, I figured it would be perfectly alright to practice some Japanese listening and play an episode (or two...).
The episode I was watching today was episode five: Butter Rice. Oh man. Butter rice. Totally like... my thing.
Butter rice has forever held a special place in my heart. There's something that's so nostalgic about it (or, as they'd say in Japanese, natsukashii) that keeps me coming back despite the oh my god this is unhealthy kind of feeling. But I mean really, how unhealthy is it when you consider the fact that a lot of other sauces that you'd put on it anyways probably aren't that much more nutritious than butter.
I like salt on my butter rice, rather than soy sauce. :) My grandpa used to eat it that way (my dad too) and one of my special skills is picking up the really probably not healthy but rather simple dishes from my grandfathers. Butter rice was one of them (oatmeal, salt, and butter is another one I think, and mizithera pasta from the Old Spaghetti Factory I picked up from my other grandpa).
Butter rice is also ridiculously easy to make. It's a good go to food for leftover rice when you're like, "crap, I have all this leftover rice but I need to use it up somehow but I'm pressed for time so I don't want to cook anything-slash-I just plain don't want to cook anything HEEYYYY butter salt and rice.
Pretty sure I'm going to die of a heart attack. Or clogged arteries. Or high blood pressure. One of those.
This week, the freshmen from the seminar I'm TAing asked if I could talk about Japanese food. I was shocked. They asked if I could talk, on a day that they didn't have class. A good number of students showed up too. ...I kinda got too excited by all the random random stuff you can talk about with food though, so I'm a little worried I was a bit too unorganized. Oh well. Hopefully it was interesting. Seriously though, I could talk about that stuff for hours and hours and hours and hours....
That reminds me though. I have Japanese homework due this weekend. I suppose I should go do that and stop thinking about food hahaha.
Talk about cruel and unusual punishment man. "Hey students, your midterm is like, in a couple days BUT HERE'S THIS SUPER INTERESTING DRAMA ABOUT FOOD good luck studying lololol."
Obviously, since I haven't failed yet (or watched the entire series yet) I still have some modicum of self control... but tonight since we have a long weekend, I figured it would be perfectly alright to practice some Japanese listening and play an episode (or two...).
The episode I was watching today was episode five: Butter Rice. Oh man. Butter rice. Totally like... my thing.
Butter rice has forever held a special place in my heart. There's something that's so nostalgic about it (or, as they'd say in Japanese, natsukashii) that keeps me coming back despite the oh my god this is unhealthy kind of feeling. But I mean really, how unhealthy is it when you consider the fact that a lot of other sauces that you'd put on it anyways probably aren't that much more nutritious than butter.
I like salt on my butter rice, rather than soy sauce. :) My grandpa used to eat it that way (my dad too) and one of my special skills is picking up the really probably not healthy but rather simple dishes from my grandfathers. Butter rice was one of them (oatmeal, salt, and butter is another one I think, and mizithera pasta from the Old Spaghetti Factory I picked up from my other grandpa).
Butter rice is also ridiculously easy to make. It's a good go to food for leftover rice when you're like, "crap, I have all this leftover rice but I need to use it up somehow but I'm pressed for time so I don't want to cook anything-slash-I just plain don't want to cook anything HEEYYYY butter salt and rice.
Pretty sure I'm going to die of a heart attack. Or clogged arteries. Or high blood pressure. One of those.
This week, the freshmen from the seminar I'm TAing asked if I could talk about Japanese food. I was shocked. They asked if I could talk, on a day that they didn't have class. A good number of students showed up too. ...I kinda got too excited by all the random random stuff you can talk about with food though, so I'm a little worried I was a bit too unorganized. Oh well. Hopefully it was interesting. Seriously though, I could talk about that stuff for hours and hours and hours and hours....
That reminds me though. I have Japanese homework due this weekend. I suppose I should go do that and stop thinking about food hahaha.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Shark fin soup
Taste for Shark Fin Fades Slightly in China
For something that doesn't really taste all that great, shark fin soup is a ridiculously popular and prestigious dish in Chinese culture. I had the chance to taste it at my uncle's 80th birthday at a restaurant that still had some fins from before they banned it in California. I shudder to think at the cost, but then again, that's how it should be. Expensive, so that fewer people can buy it, thus decreasing the demand for shark fin, hopefully. The shark fin in the soup is pretty tasteless; it's really just there for texture. The majority of the taste comes from the broth it's in. I think when I ate mine, I tried a little bit of it, then gave the rest to my parents (or someone) because I didn't care for it much and was already full from the ridiculous amount of food that had already come out.
Personally, I don't have anything against the dish itself, nor the fact that it involves eating shark. I do not, however, condone the practice of finning - the practice of just cutting off the shark's fin and dumping the body back in the ocean to die - and the fact that, in order to keep up with the demand, suppliers are depleting the shark population, which has huge effects on oceanic ecosystems. If there were a way to use both the fins and the body for the shark, instead of just dumping it, along with a way to contain overfishing, I don't think there would be too much of an issue with eating it; on the contrary, I think it's a part of the culture and perfectly fine to eat if caught in an ethical way.
But controversy aside, I wanted to take a look at why Shark Fin Soup carries so much cultural capital and prestige with it, and its history, and how it got to this point - and by quick look, mostly I mean looking at wikipedia and the links in the references and on google. Hooray, "research."
From what I've been reading - both on wiki and other sites like NY Times and Time Magazine - the soup itself originated during the Ming dynasty and was a delicacy only for the rich (presumably because it was pretty dangerous to catch, not to mention difficult). However, in the recent years, due to a rising affluent middle/upper middle Chinese population, more Chinese families can afford to splurge on the soup.
I'd also hazard a guess that as the number of affluent families increase, so too does the need to differentiate and to distinguish themselves from those families they consider beneath them in status. Doing so involves the consumption of not only foods, but other status symbols that carry cultural capital and prestige. Hence the increase in demand for shark fin soup. My hypothesis would be that if one were to observe the social status/class of the people who consume shark fin soup, the majority of these families would fall within that grey area of families who are trying to change classes, or whom are at the top of the middle class or bottom of the upper class. Those families are at the highest risk (or potential) of social mobility, and probably the ones that require the most conspicuous consumption of goods that will help them stay in their desired social class. Just a theory though. It could also be lots and lots of really rich people.
Also interesting, and slightly tangentially related, according to someone interviewed by the Times, is that the three treasures of the sea in China are abalone, shark fin, and sea cucumber. I never would have expected sea cucumber to make that list on account of... how easy it is to catch them. Unless sea cucumbers secretly had these mouths with rows and rows of teeth. That would be terrifying.
Further reading:
Bird, Maryanne. "Man Bites Shark." Times online. February 2001. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,100660,00.html?iid=fb_share
Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_fin_soup
Qin, Amy. NYTimes.com "Taste for Shark Fin Fades Slightly in China." (see link at top)
For something that doesn't really taste all that great, shark fin soup is a ridiculously popular and prestigious dish in Chinese culture. I had the chance to taste it at my uncle's 80th birthday at a restaurant that still had some fins from before they banned it in California. I shudder to think at the cost, but then again, that's how it should be. Expensive, so that fewer people can buy it, thus decreasing the demand for shark fin, hopefully. The shark fin in the soup is pretty tasteless; it's really just there for texture. The majority of the taste comes from the broth it's in. I think when I ate mine, I tried a little bit of it, then gave the rest to my parents (or someone) because I didn't care for it much and was already full from the ridiculous amount of food that had already come out.
Personally, I don't have anything against the dish itself, nor the fact that it involves eating shark. I do not, however, condone the practice of finning - the practice of just cutting off the shark's fin and dumping the body back in the ocean to die - and the fact that, in order to keep up with the demand, suppliers are depleting the shark population, which has huge effects on oceanic ecosystems. If there were a way to use both the fins and the body for the shark, instead of just dumping it, along with a way to contain overfishing, I don't think there would be too much of an issue with eating it; on the contrary, I think it's a part of the culture and perfectly fine to eat if caught in an ethical way.
But controversy aside, I wanted to take a look at why Shark Fin Soup carries so much cultural capital and prestige with it, and its history, and how it got to this point - and by quick look, mostly I mean looking at wikipedia and the links in the references and on google. Hooray, "research."
From what I've been reading - both on wiki and other sites like NY Times and Time Magazine - the soup itself originated during the Ming dynasty and was a delicacy only for the rich (presumably because it was pretty dangerous to catch, not to mention difficult). However, in the recent years, due to a rising affluent middle/upper middle Chinese population, more Chinese families can afford to splurge on the soup.
I'd also hazard a guess that as the number of affluent families increase, so too does the need to differentiate and to distinguish themselves from those families they consider beneath them in status. Doing so involves the consumption of not only foods, but other status symbols that carry cultural capital and prestige. Hence the increase in demand for shark fin soup. My hypothesis would be that if one were to observe the social status/class of the people who consume shark fin soup, the majority of these families would fall within that grey area of families who are trying to change classes, or whom are at the top of the middle class or bottom of the upper class. Those families are at the highest risk (or potential) of social mobility, and probably the ones that require the most conspicuous consumption of goods that will help them stay in their desired social class. Just a theory though. It could also be lots and lots of really rich people.
Also interesting, and slightly tangentially related, according to someone interviewed by the Times, is that the three treasures of the sea in China are abalone, shark fin, and sea cucumber. I never would have expected sea cucumber to make that list on account of... how easy it is to catch them. Unless sea cucumbers secretly had these mouths with rows and rows of teeth. That would be terrifying.
Further reading:
Bird, Maryanne. "Man Bites Shark." Times online. February 2001. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,100660,00.html?iid=fb_share
Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_fin_soup
Qin, Amy. NYTimes.com "Taste for Shark Fin Fades Slightly in China." (see link at top)
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Real NorNorCal
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| South Lake Tahoe :) |
I'm going to be doing that for months. Sigh.
Winter break was too short. Way way way too short. Despite it being like, third week into the quarter and over halfway through January, I'm still like "what do you mean, winter break finished?" Sigh.
It probably felt like that because my family was all over the state. I went up with my dad and brother to Tahoe, picked up my grandparents and sister from Reno and went skiing. Lots of fun, but I fell so many times. So. Many. Times. We skiied the whole time at Sierra-at-Tahoe, close to South Lake Tahoe. My brother and I went three times and oh man. Skiing uses a completely different set of muscles. I hurt so much after the first day, despite only getting four runs in, because skiing is like doing a squat the entire time you have your boots on since you're generally unable to stand up straight. Also I haven't skiied in over three, four years. ...and I'm out of shape.
It
was absolutely beautiful though the first three days we were there.
Blue skies, sunny, fresh snow. Got a bit cold, but with enough layers
that wasn't much of a problem. The weird thing is that when I was in
Japan - with equally cold weather - I wore waaaaay more clothes and had
layers upon layers upon layers, even when I was riding my bike and
walking to work. So "but you're constantly moving and will be warm that
way" wasn't really like, a thing, especially since whenever you ride on
the ski lift, you're sitting still for a good while anyways.My brother probably wasn't the right person to get back into skiing with. He's the kind of person that's like "so what, you fall down, you get back up. You're going to fall down, so whatever, take risks" kind of dude. Which is cool. I wish I was like that sometimes. But I'm not. Not when it comes to things that are painful like falling down mountains (or falling in general). That's kind of why I never really wanted to learn how to snowboard, and why I walk so freaking slow on ice and snow. I don't want to fall. It's not afraid so much as overly cautious.
Maybe a little bit afraid too.
The "warm up run" my brother allowed me to do wasn't the nice easy bunny slope I wanted to remember how to ski on. Oh no. We went to the second highest ski lift and took the beginner green runs the whole way down. About half way down, the trail splits from the "EZ way down" course, Sugar and Spice, to this ridiculously annoying, full of turns run appropriately called Corkscrew. I can't turn for crap. D: My approach to that run was "come to an almost complete stop and then kind of very slowly turn" that occasionally turned into "fall down so you don't fall off the mountain, then get back up and turn" turn.
 | |
| SNOW DINO |
I think I was stuck at the top of the incline for a good 15-20 minutes. We came out of this rather pleasant area with some hills, and then BAM it was like HELLO SHARP STEEP HILL. Like those kind where when you're at the top and you look out and you can't actually see the rest of the run. There was another section across the way that looked vaguely less steep (but still pretty steep) so after running into some ski patrol guys who offered the solution of waiting for 45 minutes until the slopes were closed and the run clear, I figured that perhaps this way would be an alright way to go down.
It generally involved falling every time I tried to turn on my right foot (so turn... left?). Personally, I think I would have preferred to have a snowboard at that point, since at least with a snowboard, you can turn the board horizontally and kind of feather your way down; at no point is your board pointing straight down the mountain. You can also face down the mountain and kind of slowly make your way down (I watched another woman do that. She told me that normally that run wasn't as steep, but for some reason that day it was extra steep. Hooray). Skis on the other hand, when you turn, at some point in time, your skis are pointing directly down the mountain. It's fine if you can turn them in time (though you still pick up speed I think) but I generally... can't, which leads to a few terrifying seconds of OHMYGODPICKINGUPSPEEDAHHHCAN'TSLOWDOWN in the case of my right turns, and OHMYGODPICKINGUPSPEEDAHHHHHCAN'TGETFOOTALIGNEDAHHFALLING falls on left turns. My brother claims that skis are easier, and to some extent, yes. But for steep slopes, I would have to disagree, especially since my weak point (or well, one of many) is having control in going down steep parts. Barreling down is kind of dangerous, not just for yourself but for others as well. With skis, sure, you can take up the entire run to criss cross your way down, but at some point in time (every time you turn really) your skis need to point down, and you pick up some speed. There are a bunch of other points too but yeah... for me this is a big one. I've always heard that skiing is easy to learn, hard to master, while snowboarding is the opposite; hard to learn, (relative to skiing) easy to master (as easy mastering things go anyways, which is never simply "easy").
 |
| Not-so-great skiing conditions |
Our last day of skiing was right as the winter storm was hitting Tahoe (we drove out in the middle of the winter storm. Smart...). So while the day started out alright, it quickly was reduced to a super crappy visibility with a lot of snow and wind. So much wind. But I mean seriously, how are you supposed to be able to ski and like, not hit people/trees/know which way to turn for runs/not fall off the mountain when your visibility looks like a huge patch of white?
I spent some more quality time contemplating how cold I was and how to get down the mountain during that run. I had better visibility diving in San Diego (which has really really bad visibility because of all the sand that gets kicked up). I think I contemplated taking off my skis at one point, since I did not want to miss a turn and end up tumbling down the mountain... but I don't really remember how I got down. Lots of "AHHHHHHHHHH" and probably a significant amount of swearing and praying. Also, lots of going really really snow. Good control work I guess? My brother said he almost was going to ask them to send a search crew for me, it took so long. (._.); I felt kinda bad too, since both my siblings were waiting for me at the bottom for like... a while.
Hooray, sibling bonding. After that though, I think they did one more run while I sat in the lodge, since I decided that I liked living and disliked stress. They did agree though, that we were ending the day early due to the ridiculous amount of snow and wind. I did discover at least, that Sierra actually has really good mochas (and chili cheese fries).
Actually, I'm going up again next weekend with a bunch of people from my housing area. Stanford really seems to like planning ski trips (which I guess makes sense since we're pretty close...ish...) but I swear, most of the mailing lists I'm on are like "SKI TRIP" or I keep seeing things for "DORM SKI TRIP" and I'm just like... dang. We didn't have anything like that at UCSD.
...then again, we didn't have PE classes like Polo and Equestrian (though, I think we had rec classes for surfing).
Monday, December 17, 2012
Japanese Worcestershire: WOOOOSTAAAAA sauce
So Japan has this sauce they use for tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet. Link for moe info, but oh man. This stuff is some of my favorite Japanese food) that's ridiculously tasty. It ranges in consistency from syrupy with the consistency of like, gravy, to viscous and runny like Worcestershire sauce, and is absolutely delicious. Growing up, I knew it as "the tonkatsu sauce" and later as "the bulldog sauce" since the brand we often bought was Bulldog. I thought it was a weird name, but whatever, not like companies don't have weird names sometimes... and I mean, siracha sauce has a giant rooster on the front.
For the longest time while I was in Japan there was this stuff labeled ウースターソース（uusutaa sousu - pronounced kind of like "Woostaaa sauce") that I thought was oyster sauce. Ha. So wrong on that account. I was stupidly buying import Worcestershire sauce when really, it was sitting there staring me in the face. Apparently, "Worcestershire" is too hard to katakana-ize, so it just changes into "uustaa" sauce.
To digress a little, other words have gotten similar "too hard to katakana-ize treatments. There are a couple of words in Japanese for all-you-can-eat style eateries. One of them is 「食べ放題」(tabehoudai)「ブーフェ」(buufeh) and「バイキング」(baiking/viking). So tabehoudai translates as something like "all you can eat,"
buufeh is obviously from buffet... and then there's viking. We were like wtf? when my friends and I first saw it. It turns out that originally, it comes from the Scandinavian term, "smorgasbord" (supposedly, the English use of the word, as well as buffets themselves also come from this after a World Fair event that used it to showcase Swedish food) however, this proved too difficult to say, so it was changed into the easier to say, "viking." Since, you know, vikings, Scandinavia... it totally made sense. Actually, I'd be really interested in seeing if there's anything explaining that connection, or if people back then were really just like "oh hm, what else is Scandinavian? Hmmm... VIKINGS. Vikings totally ate a lot too, so let's call our all you can eat thing a viking!" Facepalm.
Anyways, back to woostaa sauce. I get emails and stuff from the Huffington Post and New York Times whenever they run food articles, so one came up for how they found the original recipe for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce in a skip that detailed what exactly went into the "spices" and "seasoning" on the ingredients label (spoiler: it's not vegetarian friendly). Things that include stuff like lemons, pickles, and anchovies. While the recipe didn't include how to make it, nor how much sauce it yielded, it was still a more complete picture of what went into the sauce since even the manufacturers often spoke in code, or didn't know the entirety of the recipe.
One of the code words they happened to use was "bulldog" or "bulldog clip" - and while I have no idea what that actually means, I have a huge hunch that those code words are the source of the childhood tonkatsu sauce I grew up with. I saw that article and went "OH MY GOD IT ALL MAKES SENSE." Apparently though, the Japanese worcestershire sauce uses pureed apples as a base though? But yeah, that's where that logo comes from (I think).
A little bit more on this Japanese Woostaa sauce: it was originally thought of as the Western equivalent of soy sauce, which is why it appears EVERYWHERE in Japan (not just at tonkatsu restaurants, but especially there too). I think it's also used in hambagu (hamburger steaks/patties) and other things... I guess kind of in the way Worcestershire sauce is actually used lol (I use it in meatballs. Nom.) Japanese cooking uses soy sauce as a flavoring, so during the later Meiji and Taisho periods (~1868 to 1926) when Japan was rapidly Westernizing in the name of modernization, Japanese chefs, when making Western foods, would use Worcestershire sauce as flavoring for like, everything (essentially, the same way they would use soy sauce for Japanese foods). That's the period when there was a huge influx of Western influence on everything in Japanese culture, from food to fashion to ways of thinking and the emergence of new "moga" modern girls who fashioned themselves off of western women (think the 20s) and read Western thinkers. The popularization of Western food is generally traced to this period, though other foods (mostly either Dutch based or Iberian) were around in the Japan from the 16th and 17th centuries. Also, lots of the Westerners in Japan at that time didn't actually come from their native countries, but were transplants from China - hence the huge British presence.
Seriously though, if you've never tried tonkatsu, it's a pretty awesome dish. Pork cutlets are breaded and then fried until crispy golden brown, and then served with tonkatsu sauce. The sauce, if you go to nicer tonkatsu specialty restaurants, is all house made, and you can grind a little bit of sesame seed into it. Delicious stuff. I'm getting ridiculously hungry thinking about it. I miss tonkatsu so much...
Tonkatsu restaurants also usually serve meals with cabbage salads and a bowl of rice, both of which you can usually refill for free - hooray, all you can eat cabbage (actually, the dressing is pretty tasty... so I usually eat a bunch of this haha). Good tonkatsu is moist inside, but has a crispy outside. Some places put cheese inside, or roll thin slices of pork around other things such as asparagus. So delicious.
...and now I really crave tonkatsu. Man, this is the problem with studying food sometimes. You get bad cravings for things when you have a bunch of food still in the refrigerator, or for food that is literally thousands of miles away...
Hint hint, parents, whom I know totally read this. Can we have tonkatsu for dinner sometime? Please? lol. Maybe I can convince my brother to make it sometime...
Sources:
Schlesinger, Fay. "Original Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Recipe Found in Skip" Mail Online. November 2009. Accessed 16 December 2012. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1224736/Original-Lea-Perrins-Worcestershire-Sauce-recipe-skip.html
Ishige, Naomichi. The History and Culture of Japanese Food. London: Kegan Paul, 2001.
For the longest time while I was in Japan there was this stuff labeled ウースターソース（uusutaa sousu - pronounced kind of like "Woostaaa sauce") that I thought was oyster sauce. Ha. So wrong on that account. I was stupidly buying import Worcestershire sauce when really, it was sitting there staring me in the face. Apparently, "Worcestershire" is too hard to katakana-ize, so it just changes into "uustaa" sauce.
To digress a little, other words have gotten similar "too hard to katakana-ize treatments. There are a couple of words in Japanese for all-you-can-eat style eateries. One of them is 「食べ放題」(tabehoudai)「ブーフェ」(buufeh) and「バイキング」(baiking/viking). So tabehoudai translates as something like "all you can eat,"
buufeh is obviously from buffet... and then there's viking. We were like wtf? when my friends and I first saw it. It turns out that originally, it comes from the Scandinavian term, "smorgasbord" (supposedly, the English use of the word, as well as buffets themselves also come from this after a World Fair event that used it to showcase Swedish food) however, this proved too difficult to say, so it was changed into the easier to say, "viking." Since, you know, vikings, Scandinavia... it totally made sense. Actually, I'd be really interested in seeing if there's anything explaining that connection, or if people back then were really just like "oh hm, what else is Scandinavian? Hmmm... VIKINGS. Vikings totally ate a lot too, so let's call our all you can eat thing a viking!" Facepalm.
Anyways, back to woostaa sauce. I get emails and stuff from the Huffington Post and New York Times whenever they run food articles, so one came up for how they found the original recipe for Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce in a skip that detailed what exactly went into the "spices" and "seasoning" on the ingredients label (spoiler: it's not vegetarian friendly). Things that include stuff like lemons, pickles, and anchovies. While the recipe didn't include how to make it, nor how much sauce it yielded, it was still a more complete picture of what went into the sauce since even the manufacturers often spoke in code, or didn't know the entirety of the recipe.
One of the code words they happened to use was "bulldog" or "bulldog clip" - and while I have no idea what that actually means, I have a huge hunch that those code words are the source of the childhood tonkatsu sauce I grew up with. I saw that article and went "OH MY GOD IT ALL MAKES SENSE." Apparently though, the Japanese worcestershire sauce uses pureed apples as a base though? But yeah, that's where that logo comes from (I think).
A little bit more on this Japanese Woostaa sauce: it was originally thought of as the Western equivalent of soy sauce, which is why it appears EVERYWHERE in Japan (not just at tonkatsu restaurants, but especially there too). I think it's also used in hambagu (hamburger steaks/patties) and other things... I guess kind of in the way Worcestershire sauce is actually used lol (I use it in meatballs. Nom.) Japanese cooking uses soy sauce as a flavoring, so during the later Meiji and Taisho periods (~1868 to 1926) when Japan was rapidly Westernizing in the name of modernization, Japanese chefs, when making Western foods, would use Worcestershire sauce as flavoring for like, everything (essentially, the same way they would use soy sauce for Japanese foods). That's the period when there was a huge influx of Western influence on everything in Japanese culture, from food to fashion to ways of thinking and the emergence of new "moga" modern girls who fashioned themselves off of western women (think the 20s) and read Western thinkers. The popularization of Western food is generally traced to this period, though other foods (mostly either Dutch based or Iberian) were around in the Japan from the 16th and 17th centuries. Also, lots of the Westerners in Japan at that time didn't actually come from their native countries, but were transplants from China - hence the huge British presence.
Seriously though, if you've never tried tonkatsu, it's a pretty awesome dish. Pork cutlets are breaded and then fried until crispy golden brown, and then served with tonkatsu sauce. The sauce, if you go to nicer tonkatsu specialty restaurants, is all house made, and you can grind a little bit of sesame seed into it. Delicious stuff. I'm getting ridiculously hungry thinking about it. I miss tonkatsu so much...
Tonkatsu restaurants also usually serve meals with cabbage salads and a bowl of rice, both of which you can usually refill for free - hooray, all you can eat cabbage (actually, the dressing is pretty tasty... so I usually eat a bunch of this haha). Good tonkatsu is moist inside, but has a crispy outside. Some places put cheese inside, or roll thin slices of pork around other things such as asparagus. So delicious.
...and now I really crave tonkatsu. Man, this is the problem with studying food sometimes. You get bad cravings for things when you have a bunch of food still in the refrigerator, or for food that is literally thousands of miles away...
Hint hint, parents, whom I know totally read this. Can we have tonkatsu for dinner sometime? Please? lol. Maybe I can convince my brother to make it sometime...
Sources:
Schlesinger, Fay. "Original Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Recipe Found in Skip" Mail Online. November 2009. Accessed 16 December 2012. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1224736/Original-Lea-Perrins-Worcestershire-Sauce-recipe-skip.html
Ishige, Naomichi. The History and Culture of Japanese Food. London: Kegan Paul, 2001.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
History Haikus
Somehow, I have managed to survive the first quarter of graduate school. Taking twenty units was super dumb, but somehow I managed to meet a lot of awesome people, have fun, and generally stay somewhat-sane, even if I did practically shut myself in my room for the last two weeks of school.
But it's all over now! Hooray! That's the good thing about quarters I guess. Before you know it, it's over.
Speaking of over, one of my neighbor boys is graduating this quarter, so he's moving out tomorrow. So sad! His program was only 4 quarters (only!), so he's departing. It's a shame though, because he was super chill; totally not what I expected from a guy in Pike haha. Maybe I judge people just a little based on those things. But D was super sweet, and part of our neighbor dinners :) Also made amazing stuffed bellpeppers. Funny, how despite only knowing the boys next door for a quarter, I feel like, actually comfortable with them. Really, we lucked out. It'll be interesting to see who moves in next door...
But yes, so, for my history class (Modern Japanese history), since we had to memorize when certain major events were (I was told we were just supposed to know generally important things, and I guess I've never really thought of dates as important), I created some haiku to help me remember lol.
Hooray for history haikus! Especially since it turned out I didn't really need to remember them after all. Sigh.
(On the effects of the cold war)
1-9-4-7
Key to economic rise
re- all the old things!
(on the Hibiya Riots)
Hibiya riot
Angry in 1905
government target
(on Mori Arinori)
champion of wives
no basic human morals
no more concubines
(on the New Constitution)
1-9-4-7
Controversial number 9
right to unionize
(on the reasons for the Japanese economic miracle)
zaibatsu leaders
Lucky Korean War boom
Dodge Line deflation
(on salariimen)
emerged in Taisho
Salary Man family
70s real life
(on the Rice Riots)
In 1918
Wartime inflation of rice
bottom-up riot
hooray for history!
But it's all over now! Hooray! That's the good thing about quarters I guess. Before you know it, it's over.
Speaking of over, one of my neighbor boys is graduating this quarter, so he's moving out tomorrow. So sad! His program was only 4 quarters (only!), so he's departing. It's a shame though, because he was super chill; totally not what I expected from a guy in Pike haha. Maybe I judge people just a little based on those things. But D was super sweet, and part of our neighbor dinners :) Also made amazing stuffed bellpeppers. Funny, how despite only knowing the boys next door for a quarter, I feel like, actually comfortable with them. Really, we lucked out. It'll be interesting to see who moves in next door...
But yes, so, for my history class (Modern Japanese history), since we had to memorize when certain major events were (I was told we were just supposed to know generally important things, and I guess I've never really thought of dates as important), I created some haiku to help me remember lol.
Hooray for history haikus! Especially since it turned out I didn't really need to remember them after all. Sigh.
(On the effects of the cold war)
1-9-4-7
Key to economic rise
re- all the old things!
(on the Hibiya Riots)
Hibiya riot
Angry in 1905
government target
(on Mori Arinori)
champion of wives
no basic human morals
no more concubines
(on the New Constitution)
1-9-4-7
Controversial number 9
right to unionize
(on the reasons for the Japanese economic miracle)
zaibatsu leaders
Lucky Korean War boom
Dodge Line deflation
(on salariimen)
emerged in Taisho
Salary Man family
70s real life
(on the Rice Riots)
In 1918
Wartime inflation of rice
bottom-up riot
hooray for history!
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Ice Ice Baby
Before today, the only ice hockey I had seen consisted of The Mighty Ducks 1 and 2. Never been to a game, since, growing up in California where it doesn't actually snow... there aren't too many professional teams (though, I do remember there were teams at the ice skating rink I used to visit as a child in Berkeley). We have one in northern california - the San Jose sharks (who apparently used to play at the Cow Palace).
I had no idea there was another league outside the NHL. Apparently there is - the ECHL. And apparently San Francisco just got a team: the Bulls. And apparently, my parents had purchased tickets to go to the game... so to avoid what happened with the football game last time, where my family went without me and I was just kind of stuck, I said yes, I'd go (despite this looming amount of work for school that keeps on staring at me, that I'm still procrastinating on as I write)
Ice hockey, it turns out, is a lot more interesting to watch than certain other sports for the whole game, especially when the players fight or take a fall. There were some pretty spectacular falls tonight too. Plus, it's only three periods long! I'm totally okay with this. I actually found it hard to sneak in a little bit of reading when I could, because there was always something going on, and the puck was always moving back and forth, so it never really got boring to watch.
It seems so... angry and violent though. Near the end of the third period, one of the players ripped off his helmet and gloves and started punching one of the other players. It took a lot longer for the refs to pull them apart than in other sports.
Speaking of refs... ice hockey is not a sport I would like to ref. I think I'd rather ref any other sport, even if I could skate really well (which I can't). The moves I saw the refs pull, and the jumps, and near misses (and some hits) the refs were subject to... yeah. Seemed kinda dangerous.
But overall, that wasn't too bad. Kinda fun, actually, despite not knowing what was going on most of the time and not being able to keep track of where the heck the stupid puck was.
*
Also, recently it was thanksgiving... my first one back in the states in two years! HOORAY, AMERICAN FOOD. I'm thankful for turkey and stuffing and thanksgiving food! Except we had thanksgiving in NorCal this year (which, for a while, we had thanksgiving in San Diego because that's where I was going to school and stuff) so we had a Chinese thanksgiving with the extended family. My siblings came back home too, so it was really nice to see them again, despite wanting to kill my brother several times (he still has this magic way of pushing my buttons just the right way. I guess that's the job of brothers...). He's so frustrating sometimes! lol. But I am really glad I got the chance to see them again, even if the butt did forget to bring the rice cooker back up for me.
Chinese thanksgiving means Chinese sticky rice stuffing with the mushroom and sausage stuff and turkey, potato salad, rolls, cranberry sauce, gravy, and deviled eggs. Oh, and party punch (which is a combination of sorbet and 7 up, no alcohol involved), and pies. But no regular stuffing, and no mashed potatoes. NO MASHED POTATOES OR STUFFING. I was actually kind of sad. Ironically, I've had those the past two years, and it was the turkey that was always lacking (though, my first year we *did* have turkey and my second year in Japan we had the best chicken I've ever eaten). Seriously. Those two things are my favorite parts of thanksgiving. ...AND WE DIDN'T HAVE THEM. SUPER SAD FACE. Chinese sticky rice stuffing is also pretty good, but it's like they combined the mashed potatoes and stuffing and made it Asian by turning it into rice.
I know what I'm making for dinner over the next few days...
This thanksgiving, also, will forever be remembered as the infamous thanksgiving where our uncle maybe tried to kill us (or at least make us sick) by putting out rancid butter. Like seriously, when we went to the adults asking if they noticed something funny about the butter, my uncle was like, "Oh yeah, that butter's kinda old..." So old, apparently, that both the taste and texture changed. It tasted like mizithera cheese to me (and Parmesan to my cousin, and blue cheese to my brother), and had the texture of crisco. It probably wasn't wise of me or my brother to actually continue to eat it once we put it on our rolls... I'm not sure how much he ate (he spread it all around the outside of his roll), but I had put it on half my roll and kept eating it to make sure it was really kind of strange tasting with a weird texture.
Shoulda trusted my taste buds when they said "WOAAAAAAAAH SOMETHING IS OFF." I'm not sure if it's the cause, but I got a little sick the day after, and I'm blaming it on the butter because my brother felt a little not well too, though for not as long. Maybe I ate more butter? I had no idea butter could actually go bad like that though. -_-
I'm not ready for thanksgiving break to end. D: I NEED MORE TIME. I don't know what happened to all the- oh wait. Yes I do. I went to Disneyland for two days, then driving up and down took basically two days (though I did get a lot of reading done during those days), and then thanksgiving happened, and then the day after we went wine tasting which took all day, and then my uncle had a birthday party I didn't find out about until the day before thanksgiving and we went to the hockey game, and now, somehow, impossibly, we're at Sunday, with school - week 9 - starting Monday. WEEK NINE. WHERE DID THE QUARTER GO?! Seriously.
Next quarter, I'm taking less classes. D:
I had no idea there was another league outside the NHL. Apparently there is - the ECHL. And apparently San Francisco just got a team: the Bulls. And apparently, my parents had purchased tickets to go to the game... so to avoid what happened with the football game last time, where my family went without me and I was just kind of stuck, I said yes, I'd go (despite this looming amount of work for school that keeps on staring at me, that I'm still procrastinating on as I write)
Ice hockey, it turns out, is a lot more interesting to watch than certain other sports for the whole game, especially when the players fight or take a fall. There were some pretty spectacular falls tonight too. Plus, it's only three periods long! I'm totally okay with this. I actually found it hard to sneak in a little bit of reading when I could, because there was always something going on, and the puck was always moving back and forth, so it never really got boring to watch.
It seems so... angry and violent though. Near the end of the third period, one of the players ripped off his helmet and gloves and started punching one of the other players. It took a lot longer for the refs to pull them apart than in other sports.
Speaking of refs... ice hockey is not a sport I would like to ref. I think I'd rather ref any other sport, even if I could skate really well (which I can't). The moves I saw the refs pull, and the jumps, and near misses (and some hits) the refs were subject to... yeah. Seemed kinda dangerous.
But overall, that wasn't too bad. Kinda fun, actually, despite not knowing what was going on most of the time and not being able to keep track of where the heck the stupid puck was.
*
Also, recently it was thanksgiving... my first one back in the states in two years! HOORAY, AMERICAN FOOD. I'm thankful for turkey and stuffing and thanksgiving food! Except we had thanksgiving in NorCal this year (which, for a while, we had thanksgiving in San Diego because that's where I was going to school and stuff) so we had a Chinese thanksgiving with the extended family. My siblings came back home too, so it was really nice to see them again, despite wanting to kill my brother several times (he still has this magic way of pushing my buttons just the right way. I guess that's the job of brothers...). He's so frustrating sometimes! lol. But I am really glad I got the chance to see them again, even if the butt did forget to bring the rice cooker back up for me.
Chinese thanksgiving means Chinese sticky rice stuffing with the mushroom and sausage stuff and turkey, potato salad, rolls, cranberry sauce, gravy, and deviled eggs. Oh, and party punch (which is a combination of sorbet and 7 up, no alcohol involved), and pies. But no regular stuffing, and no mashed potatoes. NO MASHED POTATOES OR STUFFING. I was actually kind of sad. Ironically, I've had those the past two years, and it was the turkey that was always lacking (though, my first year we *did* have turkey and my second year in Japan we had the best chicken I've ever eaten). Seriously. Those two things are my favorite parts of thanksgiving. ...AND WE DIDN'T HAVE THEM. SUPER SAD FACE. Chinese sticky rice stuffing is also pretty good, but it's like they combined the mashed potatoes and stuffing and made it Asian by turning it into rice.
I know what I'm making for dinner over the next few days...
This thanksgiving, also, will forever be remembered as the infamous thanksgiving where our uncle maybe tried to kill us (or at least make us sick) by putting out rancid butter. Like seriously, when we went to the adults asking if they noticed something funny about the butter, my uncle was like, "Oh yeah, that butter's kinda old..." So old, apparently, that both the taste and texture changed. It tasted like mizithera cheese to me (and Parmesan to my cousin, and blue cheese to my brother), and had the texture of crisco. It probably wasn't wise of me or my brother to actually continue to eat it once we put it on our rolls... I'm not sure how much he ate (he spread it all around the outside of his roll), but I had put it on half my roll and kept eating it to make sure it was really kind of strange tasting with a weird texture.
Shoulda trusted my taste buds when they said "WOAAAAAAAAH SOMETHING IS OFF." I'm not sure if it's the cause, but I got a little sick the day after, and I'm blaming it on the butter because my brother felt a little not well too, though for not as long. Maybe I ate more butter? I had no idea butter could actually go bad like that though. -_-
I'm not ready for thanksgiving break to end. D: I NEED MORE TIME. I don't know what happened to all the- oh wait. Yes I do. I went to Disneyland for two days, then driving up and down took basically two days (though I did get a lot of reading done during those days), and then thanksgiving happened, and then the day after we went wine tasting which took all day, and then my uncle had a birthday party I didn't find out about until the day before thanksgiving and we went to the hockey game, and now, somehow, impossibly, we're at Sunday, with school - week 9 - starting Monday. WEEK NINE. WHERE DID THE QUARTER GO?! Seriously.
Next quarter, I'm taking less classes. D:
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