A happy 2011 to all you foodies out there!
2010 was probably the best year of my life, therefore there were very few KF articles this year, sorry!! KF does still get lots of access, encouraging comments, links and mentions. Thank you!
To ring in the new year, to hope for a year of happiness and contentment, people like to have good food and drink. Here is some inspiration, KyotoFoodie style!
Uni Ikura Donburi and Champagne
Uni Ikura Donburi – detail
Even before I was the KyotoFoodie, I dreamt up this breakfast for Japanese ’Oshogatsu’ New Year’s Day. Japanese have osechi on New Year’s Day morning, all together, at home, a family meal, all out of one box. Osechi is real Zen master food, it is great. However, I couldn’t really call it delicious, and that is fine. Traditionally, the idea was to give the womenfolk three days rest by eating preserved food for the first three days of the year. Truly delicious or not, you only eat osechi once a year and it definitely gives you a taste of life from like 1000 years ago. How Zen master!
I like osechi but this is my idea of how to celebrate the new year. This is my take on Japanese zeitaku (luxury).
How to Do It:
1. You wake up on Jan 1st, not too early, hopefully not hung over from the previous evening’s festivities.
2. You see a big box of excellent Osechi on the dining room table. But, you save that for later. Hey, this is New Year’s Day. You should go back to bed – drunk on champagne, real soon.
3. You have the most zeitaku donburi imaginable – for breakfast. This meal is:
Rice cooked in dashi, heaps and heaps of konbu and maybe sake and mirin. (I thought about cooking the rice in champagne this year, but chickened out. Maybe another day?)
On the rice you heap tons of uni (sea urchin roe) and ikura (salmon roe). This is New Year’s Day, so don’t hold back! I aim to make it about 1 inch thick, this is at least 5 times more than you would get if you ordered this dish at a decent donburi restaurant.
4. You drink a bottle of champagne, with your zeitaku breaki. (One bottle per capita. No sparkling wine, go with the overpriced French stuff today.)
5. You go back to bed and sleep for another few hours.
6. You wake up and think: Hey, this is starting out to be a really great year! (And, its only like half a day old.)
7. What to say to your lover: I hope I don’t need to explain this part on this PG13 site.
Champagne Chilling in the Snow – Japanese Garden Style!
Eating with a Spoon Makes it More Luxurious
All Gone!
What to do if you can’t get, or eat, uni and ikura: Ah, how about steak and lobster, etc? The point here is to:
1. Have one of the most luxurious dinners of the year – for breakfast!
2. Drink a bottle of champagne.
3. Go back to bed (or futon).
’Recipe’
1. Get your lover close and be sweet.
2. Cook rice.
Use really good water, preferable from a shrine with the best, or second best feng shui in the prefecture.
Cook that rice in dashi with, and I quote, an ’insane’ amount of konbu. Miwa, said that my white rice is black, because of so much konbu. Good, good. Make your white rice ’black’ with flavor on New Year’s Day!!!
3. Serve and Indulge
Heap with tons (and I mean tons) of fresh uni and ikura. Authentic KyotoFoodie style is that it should exceed 1 inch in thickness!
4. Go back to bed.
Kurogome – Black Heirloom Rice
Black Rice – Kombu Overload!
Socialize!
Tweet! Tweet! Find out what’s going on in Kyoto right now, follow me on Twitter.
Facebook Find me on Facebook.
(c) Kyoto Foodie: Where and what to eat in Kyoto – Read entire story here.
