SOBA NOODLES CLASS IN TOKYO

I've been a big a soba (buckwheat noodles) fan ever since I came to Japan, and Echo comes from Shinshu (Nagano Prefecture), one of, if not the, renowned soba sources in Japan. "Shinshu soba" is a magic phrase. When we travel, we're always on the lookout for authentic local soba restaurants. Here is an excellent photographic and explanatory detailing of the soba noodle-making process, "one of the most spectacular cooking skills one can hope to learn in Japan." And with an English-speaking sensei (teacher)!

FETTUCINI BOLOGNESE a la ROBERTO

Now and then, one can use a break from even the finest Japanese cuisine, a fact even truer if one is a Westerner.

To enjoy this particular recipe to its fullest after a day of hard work the way I did, you must go out into the garden on an autumn evening when the light of a half moon or more is sufficient to see, feel among the shadowy pepper plants and find a big fresh green pepper, then on your way back to the house get some fresh basil tips.

When you get inside, chop up the pepper, tear up the basil, then from the fridge get some of the fettucini left over from the large batch you prepared a couple days ago. Also get out the leftover Sauce Bolognese a la Roberto you made on the same day. The sauce should be even better now. Don't forget the parmesan. Saute the pepper in fine olive oil, add the sauce and some hot water over high heat, add the basil and an appropriate quantity of fettucine, tossing as you cook fast to reduce the sauce and thoroughly heat the pasta, then put all on a plate, grate the parmesan on top and eat everything like you were on a hillside in Italy looking out over the Bay of Napoli. Feel free to lick the plate.

Then you look up and you're back to a mountainside Shiga, above a Lake made silver by moonight. Fast, intense and frugal world travel.

YOU CAN FORGET THAT FOURTH STAR THIS YEAR

Yesterday, after completing my gardening duties for the day I took an hour or so break from my intensive loafing regimen to go look for mukago, one of my favorite free foods of the sansai category, which are usually swelling to silvery abundance right about now on vines of yellowing heart-shaped leaves threading over and through the thick mountain bamboo groves. Last year was the best crop ever.

You can eat mukago raw, but the potato-like nodules are better when fried alone, boiled together with rice, stir-fried with various vegs or cooked elsewise with your choice of otherness-- but their look and general uniqueness make them perfect for some fourth-star-seeking chef to make a cuisinary miracle out of, were he-she to trek up here and ask me where the secret places are.

But said chefs can put their careers on hold for now, mukago-wise, because I went to all my favorite secret mukago harvesting spots and found only a few forlorn pea-sized nodules hanging around solo, in a mood of general mukago disappointment, which can be severe. You just had to be there. Must have been the non-stop rain and mostly dreams of sun that made up this summer.

So to do my part, with thoughts of warm summer suns and generous but perfectly distributed rains next year, I picked the few meagers that were there and scattered them to several places where no mukago are growing, and changed the universe forever.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS...
YEAH, SURE.

Paris: 64 Guide Michelin stars

New York City: 42 Guide Michelin stars

Tokyo: 191 Guide Michelin stars!!

Has Le Guide lost its mind? Sacre bleu! Traitre! Doesn't being French mean what it used to? Not to put down Tokyo's food quality in the slightest; shojin ryori, for example, can hold its own with any cuisine in the world, to say nothing of my personally select ramen restaurants, but Japanese food just doesn't have any of that je ne sais quoi you get in Paris from arguing with the waiter. And three times as many stars as Paris! Scandale!

Michelin sprinkles stars on Tokyo

SUSHI SUNSET

Imagine America running out of beef, France running out of snails, or Mexico running out of tortillas-- well here in the Orient there's a cuisinal change under way that's perhaps even more disturbing: Japan is running out of maguro (bluefin tuna). Not only because of competition and overfishing, but also because sushi and sashimi are now world foods and the premium ingredients command big bucks.

When I first came to Japan, the early morning Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo was wall-to-wall fresh-frozen tuna carcasses. You could get fresh magurozushi in any streetcorner sushiya without shelling out too many yen. Then a few years ago, when I heard that a single bluefin tuna had sold for something like 260,000 dollars, I thought: that's the end of sushi as I know it. The situation hasn't gotten any better since then.

And isn't it always the way— just after Japan formed the Sushi Police to ensure round-the-world conformity with the homeland's founding standards, here in the Land Where Sushi Began the sushi chefs are scrambling for - shudder - maguro substitutes, and are turning to ingredients they once mocked, like avocado, deer and even... horse.

Yes, raw horsemeat sushi is galloping your way; can GM sushi be far behind?

BTW, don't eat cheap sushi...

Excellent recent history of sushi...

Plus a neat link from Michael...