I've been interested in Japanese culture and cuisine for a very long time, but my adventures in Japanese cooking have never really gone much deeper than sushi and miso soup. This week I spent a day with my friend Mathias, who cooks Japanese food almost exclusively. I consider him an expert who knows more about Japanese food than I know about aquariums. He inspired me.
So tonight I decided to bust out the ol' Japanese cookbook, head to the International District, and cook some stuff.
The coolest thing I did involved no cooking. I've always wanted to find a sea urchin on the beach, crack it open, and eat its delicious gonads. I've never been to a beach where sea urchins live, but yesterday I found live sea urchin for $3.99 / lb!! I had to buy one.
For $2.00 more they would have cleaned it for me, but I told the guy behind the counter that I wanted to clean it. He laughed at me. When I cracked open the urchin's shell with a hammer, I realized that this was probably why he laughed at me:
I had never seen the inside of a sea urchin before. My wife was worried. She asked me if there was anything poisonous I was supposed to remove.
"No, there's not," I assumed.
It actually turned out delicious, if you like uni as much as I do. I ate it with soy sauce, and some of it I wrapped in nori and ate like a temaki.
Next I cooked oden. It was not difficult, but there were a lot of ingredients involved:
Here is the finished product:
This was pretty good. I really enjoyed all of the different fish cakes that went into it, but I wasn't crazy about the broth.
I also cooked saba no miso ni, which is mackerel simmered in miso.
This was delicious! It was much, much better than I expected it to turn out. I highly recommend trying to cook it.
That's all. It was all very good, and the whole experience was a lot of fun. Even the shopping was fun, and I hate shopping. So please cook Japanese food.
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