Here is another one from Chinatown. I have no idea what this could be. It somewhat resembles Japanese yuba, but I have a feeling that it’s nothing of the sort.

I found this in China Town (NYC). I have no idea what this could be. I cannot even tell if this is a vegetable, a sea creature, or a land creature. What the hell is this and what do you do with it? If anyone has anything to pitch in, please leave comments.

Soba noodles

Soba noodles are relatively popular in New York, but unfortunately the brand you find most commonly is Roland Organic Soba Noodles. My wife is American, and she’s never even been to Japan, but even she can tell the obvious difference between Roland’s Soba noodles and any Japanese soba noodles you can find in a Japanese grocery store.

Roland’s noodles are spineless. They are mushy no matter how you cook it. So, avoid it. You can buy pretty much any brand of soba noodles at a Japanese grocery store. (If the store is owned by a Japanese person, they would not carry Roland’s. If they do, the owner should commit suicide.) One pictured to the right is just one of many. To be honest, I don’t think I would be able to tell the difference from one brand to another. But some are flavored. My daughter likes the one with umeboshi (pickled plum) flavor because it’s pink. You can also get green tea soba noodle too. Some are equivalent to linguini; thickly cut. I like them too.

All you have to do is to cook it like pasta, but you drain and cool it under running cold water. During the summer time, I even serve it with ice cubes mixed in. You then prepare a small bowl with dipping sauce (here is an example of soba noodle dipping sauce). You may have to dilute it with water. I usually mix some wasabi in it. You then take a small amount of the noodle with your chopsticks and dip it in the sauce.

Fruit sauce aka okonomi sauce

I’ve wondered for a long time where Tonkatsu / Okonomi sauce in Japan came from. (By the way, Tonkatsu and Okonomi sauces are essentially the same.) This sauce is commonly used in Japan for breaded pork cutlet (tonkatsu), okonomiyaki (savory pancake), and takoyaki (octopus ball). The reason why the origin of this sauce was hidden from me for a long time is because the common usage in Japan is completely removed from the common usage of its ancestor, which I believe is Indian tamarind sauce.

Wikipedia claims that its ancestor is Worcestershire sauce, but Worcestershire sauce itself is derived from Indian tamarind sauce. So, the question is whether the Japanese got it from the British or from the Indians. It’s hard to say because the common usage in Japan is completely different from how the British use Worcestershire sauce. Nobody I know uses Tonkatsu sauce for steaks. And, who in the West use Worcestershire sauce for breaded pork cutlet?

The break-through came when I remembered the dinner I had at a friend’s house when I was a sixth grader in Japan. They served Japanese-style curry that night, and they poured Tonkatsu sauce over the curry. My family has never done that, and I haven’t seen anyone else do it either, but my friend’s family did it as if it was a perfectly normal thing. Now I think about it, perhaps it was indeed a normal thing to do. If you think of tonkatsu sauce as the Japanese version of Indian tamarind sauce, it makes perfect sense to serve it with curry.

Unfortunately I lost contact with this friend so I cannot ask him where they got the idea from, but I’m now leaning towards the idea that Tonkatsu sauce came directly from India, not from England.

Koshihikari short-grain Japanese rice made in California

Koshihikari is the Rolls-Royce of Japanese rice. It’s quite expensive. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever tasted real authentic Koshihikari. (I guess I should try at least once before I die.) This one pictured on the right is grown in California using the same strain of rice. I actually think that this might be better than the real Koshihikari. I would like to see some Kishihikari expert take a blind test with this. I grew up eating rice every day, so I certainly know good rice when I taste it, but I don’t think I could tell Koshihikari from the rest of high-quality Japanese rice.

Japanese rice is short-grain. You can’t really compare short-grain rice with long grain rice. Short grain rice is moist and sticky, and that’s what you want. Long grain rice is the opposite, and that’s exactly what you want in long grain rice. Not many cuisines use short grain rice.

For some reason, cheap rice seems to burst during cooking like what happens to hot dogs if you don’t slit the skin. Also cheap rice has dull surface; no shine. I’ve never tried this, but if you mix low and high quality rice 50/50, I would imagine that the difference would be quite obvious. I guess it’s a genetic difference.

Itoen green tea

When you go to a Japanese supermarket here in New York, you see a lot of different kinds of green tea. It’s hard to pick even for Japanese people who can read the labels. Here is my choice. This is by Itoen. The reason why I like this one is because it doesn’t have any powdered green tea in it. Many of them mix powdered green tea into the green tea leaves. They advertise it like it’s a good thing, but I find it annoying because the powdered tea could have all sorts of crap in it. It’s like cocaine or heroin; once it’s in the powdered format, the dealers could cut it with something else to increase the amount. I’m not saying that the Japanese tea manufacturers do the same, but even then, they could be using some low-quality green tea to make the powder.

This one by Itoen was the only one I could find with a decent price that did not have the powdered green tea. The really good ones cost double and beyond. This one was $10.85.

It’s very frustrating to see the US repeating the same exact mistake that Japan made. Japan didn’t have a good parallel when they were going through their great recession in the 90s, so it’s more excusable. To a large extent, they probably didn’t know what to do. But the US has no excuse, especially because the Americans criticized the Japanese recovery plan which is basically the same plan the US has now. Paul Krugman recently said on TV that the Americans owe Japan an apology for those criticisms.

This blog post on The Economist explains why the solutions that the Americans were suggesting in the 90s were not possible for the same reason that the Americans now cannot take their own medicine.