I know how you feel. Once those dog days of summer have come and gone, leading to the changing of leaves, then the chill of winter, you sometimes get that craving to bite into a fresh vine ripened peach, or dig in to a bushel full of ripe red cherries. But alas, last season’s bounty […]
THE GOCHISO GOURMET: Tiny Bubbles …
December 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
“In the wine … Make me happy … Make me feel fine …” Since we’re well into the holiday season, what better beverage to celebrate with than Champagne? From a well-aged tête de cuvé like Cristal or Dom Perignon to the minerality of a Blanc de Blanc to the richness of a Blanc de Noir […]
THE GOCHISO GOURMET: That mysterious flavor
October 16, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Wrapping up our tour of the basic flavor sensations is that relatively new taste known as umami. Though the term umami was first proposed by Kikunae Ikeda in 1908, it has only been widely recognized for the past 30 or so years. But what is umami? We all can easily describe its four siblings, sweet, […]
THE GOCHISO GOURMET: Who’s your sweetie?
September 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Continuing on our journey over those papillae also known as taste buds, we come to the flavor sensation favored by most people, the perception of sweet. Whereas there are many individuals who dislike bitter, salty or sour flavors, almost everyone likes sweet. No, make that adores sweet. Or at the very least, we usually don’t […]
THE GOCHISO GOURMET: Are you worth your weight?
June 26, 2014 by Leave a Comment
In salt that is. Many moons ago, salt was just as valuable as gold, hence the expression. In fact, the word we equate with our income, “salary,” is derived from salt. And though, contrary to popular belief that the Romans were paid with salt (they were paid in coins), the word “salad” also is derived […]
THE GOCHISO GOURMET: Those lesser known soy ‘offal’
May 29, 2014 by Leave a Comment
We all know about the leading characters created by the humble soy bean, tofu, soymilk and edamame. But from the seeds of Glycine max, we also derive okara and yuba along with shoyu, miso and aburaage. In some cases, it almost seems like these products are the unacknowledged children of soybeans, the offal. The Offal […]
THE GOCHISO GOURMET: If at first you don’t succeed, soy again
May 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
After consuming countless blocks of tofu with shoyu or downing little cubes of tofu in your miso soup, you’ve probably lost interest in adding tofu or other soy products back into your regular diet. I don’t blame you. Tofu doesn’t look exciting. Plain tofu doesn’t really taste exciting. It’s just a non-descript wiggly mass of […]
A treasure trove of recipes
January 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment
DRAGONFLY JOURNEY COOKBOOK By Dragonfly Journey Committee (Seattle Keiro Nursing Home for Nikkei Concerns) Seattle: 2012, 198 pp., $20 (plus $5 s/h) paperback) As cookbooks go, the “Dragonfly Journey Cookbook” is in a class of its own. The book is a fundraiser for the Dragonfly Journey Project at the Seattle Keiro Nikkei Concerns nursing home. […]
A slower, healthier life on the farm
January 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment
JAPANESE FARM FOOD By Nancy Singleton Hachisu (Riverside, New Jersey: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2012, 400 pp., $35, hard cover) With “Japanese Farm Food,” Nancy Singleton Hachisu presents the reader a rare snapshot of a life that most people will never experience — living and working on a rural Japanese farm and relishing the culinary pleasures […]
The heart of Japanese cooking
July 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
MY JAPANESE TABLE: A LIFETIME OF COOKING WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY By Debra Samuels, photographs by Heath Robbins (North Clarendon, Vt.: Tuttle Publishing, 2011, 176 pp., $27.95, hardcover) When I first started leafing through Debra Samuels’ new cookbook, “My Japanese Table,” I was overstuffed from a generous brunch and distracted by the din of the […]
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