Edited BY G P Kennedy
We are all very excited to be spending this week thinking and writing about food, as well as using it as an excuse to retry some of our favorite recipes.
During lockdown many people’s experience of food has changed dramatically. There have been shortages of some of the most basic, taken for granted foodstuffs. Most notably, flour has been hard to come by for many.
Personally, I blame the hipster explosion of interest in sourdough starters and baking generally. Those damn hipsters can ruin anything, from mayonnaise to beer to cakes. I am, of course, joking…mostly.
The global pandemic has caused people to fundamentally rethink the previously simple, for most, act of putting food on the table. You will likely know someone who has started baking – we are looking at you Gul. Perhaps a friend or neighbor is growing their own produce or has started tending to a coop of chickens (those hipsters, again. The Great Chicken Shortage of 2020 will be the real story from this year, mark my words…or not).
A once standard part of the weekly routine has fallen foul of the pandemic as a trip to the grocery store or local market is riven with the danger of contagion. Equally, eating out has gone from pleasure to danger.
As a result there has been an exponential growth in food delivery services to mirror the logarithmic decline in grocery store and restaurant traffic.
Huge changes have been made in short order, causing this writer to marvel at the adaptability of most humans; willing and able to spin on a dime to reimagine their daily routines.
Food Week celebrates human adaptability but above all else it indulges in some mighty fine meals. Tuck in, there is plenty for everyone as we start at our easternmost point,
Ian Minako – Tokyo, Japan
There's only been a slight change to our eating habits over the past few months. We are vegan and normally eat out only occasionally as choices are limited and we enjoy cooking with fresh ingredients and eating our own food. There are now more vegan-friendly places in Tokyo compared to a decade ago but they are still few and far between.
Our town in the western suburbs of Tokyo has quite a few vegan-friendly eateries, which we visit as a treat. For now we've been able to get takeaway lunches or dinners from some of them. They have really risen to the challenge and offered substantial, tasty food delivered as safely as possible. As we are writing, we’ve just finished a delicious takeaway dinner from a new vegan/darts/heavy metal/WWE bar in our neighborhood!
If we're going further afield downtown we need to plan ahead to check there's somewhere available and suitable. We haven't actually been that far since February so we are missing not only visiting our favorite places of interest (mostly galleries, museums, parks) but also some really nice fine vegan dining restaurants.
For our home cooking, a few items have been temporarily difficult to source but there's been no real hardship. We've continued with our favorites and occasional variations.
We bake our own bread and cookies, there has been a shortage of flour and yeast, but we had no problem.
Japan still mostly sticks to seasonal produce and meals, preferring not to rely on imports of out-of-season fruit and vegetables and eating a big hot pot in the cold winter but chilled noodles in the hot humid summer.
So our menu is somewhat dictated by the time of year and temperature. We've been transitioning from spring to summer just now so some cold days we've had hot comfort food like Japanese curry which is sweeter and less spicy than Indian or Udon noodles in a hot broth. Our new winter warmer addition was green lasagne using gyoza skins with homemade pesto! On warmer days we've had chilled noodles with dipping sauce or various rice dishes, stir fries, spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino.
One particular favourite for us lately is ‘Vegan Negitoro don’ which is a sort of deconstructed sushi (ignoring the ‘toro’ bit though because that's fatty tuna! Negi is the onion family). We read somewhere that the combination of avocado, wasabi, and soy sauce tastes very similar to ‘toro’, which is premium tuna. Whoever started this is a genius! It’s like Japanese-style guacamole as well.
Donburi is a Japanese rice bowl dish, often shortened to don, so anything with don on the end basically means ‘on rice’.
Sushi is very popular globally now but some people are nervous about making their own, it can take a bit of practice to make a good roll with the nori seaweed and there’s an aura surrounding it because of the expensive, classy places that serve beautifully presented sushi. But it's really a simple rice and (usually) seafood appetiser and doesn't have to be set out in a neat row of nori rolls.
At home we more often than not eat our sushi as a hand roll (temaki), placing half a sheet of nori on the palm of the hand, pile up rice and any desired fillings and roughly roll it up, maybe in a cone shape if you like – easy. Negitoro don goes a step further by simply putting everything into a bowl and eating with chopsticks or a fork. Vegan versions of sushi commonly contain strips of cucumber, avocado, bell peppers, spring onions (scallions), our favourite has always been avocado, there's something about the flavour when combined with wasabi, soy sauce, scallions and vinegared rice topped with shredded nori seaweed and Shiso perilla leaves! We're completely hooked on this simple but healthy dish at the moment.
Here is our recipe (for 2), hope you enjoy it.
‘Vegan Negitoro don’
-Ingredients-
Rice - enough for 2 portions
1 medium to large avocado
A few scallions
1-2 teaspoons wasabi
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons sushi rice vinegar
1 tablespoon Sesame seeds
Shredded nori seaweed and Shiso perilla leaves as much as you like.
-Method-
Boil the rice as you normally would. Sushi usually has the sticky, white Japanese rice, of course, but any rice is fine for this.
Let the rice cool for a while then add around 2 table spoons of sushi rice vinegar and a sprinkling of sesame seeds and combine well.
Put the flesh of the avocado into a mixing bowl and mash it with a fork (or you can cut up into small chunks if you prefer)
Chop the scallions into small pieces and add the avocado along with the wasabi and soy sauce and mix well.
Assemble into 2 bowls starting with the rice then the avocado mixture and topped with the nori, Shiso leaves, and more sesame seeds.
We always have a few tomatoes on the side to add colours and goodness, and a bowl of miso soup goes well.
Bon appetit!
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