A seasonal delicacy

I hate winter. Fortunately, it comes along with ONE thing that makes up for the not so great season: cod testicles sushi. It is tasty and delicious and I love it. They are usually eaten raw or slightly "torched". Texture and taste are a lot like brain (you might find it disgusting, but yes, we used to eat calf brain when I was young, hernle' for the Alsacians). After all, they both consist mainly of fat.
Doesn't it look gorgeous?

Shopping

We had a day off last Friday, a good opportunity to shop while avoiding the weekend crowd. Ameyoko is a big market in Ueno (Tokyo) where you can find groceries, fish, clothes and accessories of all kinds. I'm usually not so keen on markets but the atmosphere is kind of nice when not too crowded, and it's a change from the usual department stores. The market runs beside and beneath the rail tracks of the Ueno station. On the top left corner of the photo you can see the rails for the Yamanote train passing right above everyone's head.

And I guess you know you are in Japan when you come across this kind of claw vending machine, or rather UFO catcher (catchaaaaa) as they call them here. Naked Kupie dolls galore! Oh dear , oh dear...

Du paing, du ving,...

...du Boursing. Nan, je rigole, pas de fromage dans ce post.

Au petit dejeuner les Japonais sont plutot du genre riz-soupe de miso-eventuellement poisson. J'aime bien tout ca mais pas au petit dejeuner. Pour nous c'est cafe' au lait et pain.
Le pain n'etait pas tres populaire jusqu'a present, le riz etant le principal feculent, mange' a tous les repas. Le pain qu'on peut trouver dans les supermarches c'est plutot du pain de mie, assez blanc et (surtout) moelleux pour convenir au gout Nipon.

Mais depuis quelque temps on peut aissi trouver de bonnes boulangeries. Elles ont tres souvent un "pseudo" nom Francais, ca fait plus authentique. Certaines, les plus a la mode, sont des filliales de renom comme Robuchon ou Le Notre. On a essaye' tout ca, et c'est tres bon, mais la boulangerie ou l'on achete le plus souvent est Danoise (Andersen). On est maintenant passe' au stade de clients fideles. Il suffit que Hiroshi passe un coup de fil dans la journee et ils nous mettent le pain de cote' jusqu'au soir. Oui, c'est un peu bourgeois tout ca, mais que veux-tu...



En ce qui concerne le vin, c'est l'heure de la ruee annuelle sur le Beaujolais nouveau. Des affiches, des spots publicitaires, des encarts dans les journaux... on trouvera même des bouteilles de Beaujolais sur les prospectus des magasins d'électroménager! Entre les machines à laver et les appareils photos...
Et du au decalage horaire les Japonais sont les premiers de la planete a pouvoir le gouter.
Voici deux bouteilles qui nous ont ete gracieusement offertes. On en a essaye' une, pas mal. Le truc c'est qu'il faut finir la bouteille rapidement parce que le vin devient acide assez vite. Pas le choix, il faut tout boire....

H&M's cooking notes

Since we like to cook and try out new recipes, we thought that we could organize our notes into a blog.
So there it is, H&M's cooking notes.
Feel free to drop in, comments and suggestions are very welcome.

It's a wired country

One thing that surely strikes people when they first come to Japan are the electric wires that are all over. Everywhere you go, there's an intricate net of wires of all sizes above your head.
One reason for not burying cables could be that there a too many earthquakes in Japan, it might cause important damage.
Another explanation I have heard is that electrification of Japan occurred after World War II, when Japan was quite poor.

During the first months I found myself strangely obsessed with those cables. I was looking at them all the time and was feeling an odd urge to takes pictures. I don't know, it might be sick, but at times I found a striking beauty in this proliferation of cables. Especially at sunset. I mean, in its own messy, frightening, mysterious way.


And an unrelated bonus for today: strange clouds.

Mussels

Last week at the Seibu department store we found some nice and big mussels that were not too expensive.
We wanted to try and cook mussels ever since we had them at Hornan's Kok and Belgo Bar in Stockholm, and finally the dream came true... OK, I'm slightly exaggerating.


I have to say that they are really easy to prepare. All one needs to do is remove the "beard" and scrub them thoroughly, and then improvise a juice in which they will be cooked for five minutes. We used olive oil, garlic, white wine, fresh tomato and basil. It was delicious even without french fries, just toasted bread and butter will do.

Update on the garden

We seem to be quite unlucky when it comes to growing herbs. We have tried basil, thyme, garlic, rosemary, parsley, and the outcome is the same every time: failure. Could it be that difficult? On the photo you can also see our cherry tomato plant. I can tell you that it looks the same since last August. A snowball's chance in hell that we are ever going to eat a single tomato from it!

What you can't see is the parsley, which has also been 3cm high for several weeks, and which has now adopted a rather horizontal orientation. I don't know what it is we are doing wrong.
At least inside the house the situation looks much better. Green plants are doing fine, and we even managed to sprout two avocado seeds from scratch (on the foreground). Well, they are not exactly trees yet but it's getting there.