In Japan there is a kind of restaurant that is half-way between a fast food and a regular restaurant. Often rather small, these restaurants are normally specialized in just one dish, that can be tempura, udon, soba, ramen, curry rice and much more.
Let’s see what these dishes are:
tempura is made of deep fried vegetables or seafood. Forget the way we fry things in Europe: although deep fried, tempura, is rather light and will not make you feel that full. It is often accompanied by white rice and miso soup, which has a very delicate and typically Japanese taste. In order to make the taste stronger you can add the omnipresent soy sauce, the solution for all foods that don’t really meet your taste: if someone offers you something you don’t like in Japan and you cannot refuse just add soy sauce. With its strong taste it will magically cover every other taste. It appears that the name tempura came from the latin tempora, by which the Portuguese missionaries who arrived in Japan in the 16th Century defined periods of penitence during which they abstained from meat –thus only eating vegetables and seafood, which they often fried. One among the most typical of Japanese dishes would thus be the result of a Japanese reinterpretation of a Western receipt.
Udon and soba are, roughly speaking, big spaghetti made of wheat flour –the former- and of buckwheat flour –the latter. They can be served in an infinite variety of versions and the way they are cooked also varies with the regions. They are often served in a soup in which other ingredients like eggs or tofu, the light cheese derived from soy, can be added. They can also be eaten cold (the family that hosted me for some time during a very hot Summer in the Japanese Southern island of Kyushu liked to put ice cubes on them). In that case, instead of in a bowl, they are put on the zaru, a grid made of bamboo. Soba can also be stir-fried and in this case it is called yakisoba. Yakisoba can be put into a sandwich –a carbohydrate bomb- which is very much loved by highschool students as a quick lunch or can be taken to pic-nics.
Ramen, just like agriculture, Buddhism, the writing system and many other things, was born in China and then migrated to Japan, where the most famous ramen is the one made in Fukuoka (among the Japanese cities the nearest to China). Every Japanese region elaborated its own very way to cook ramen. We are talking about very thin noodles served in a pork meat based broth, accompanied by boiled meat, fish, corn, onion or many other ingredients
Curry rice is a relatively young dish in Japan, it being introduced to the country only at the end of the 19th Century following the opening of Japan to trade with Great Britain. The Japanese changed it quite a bit, creating a different kind of curry rice, very far from the Indian one. It is served on a big plate: on one side white rice, on the other a dark curry sauce with meat, potatoes and onion. People eat it with a spoon and not with chopsticks. In restaurants you will be asked to specify the spiciness level you prefer and do not exaggerate: quite a few Westerners can be seen crying on their plate of curry rice.
No comments:
Post a Comment