I spent quite a bit of time traveling recently and had the opportunity to sample quite a bit of awesome food. My first major trip found me exploring Japan. Most of the food I had was new and unusual (to me), but all of it was good.

Japan was crazy. Crazy in that great, really interesting, and very fun kind of way. Every experience was amazing and taught me a lot. I did have one small problem: I didn’t speak a word of Japanese. Ordering food wasn’t always the easiest thing to do; I butchered the Japanese language each time I tried to read from my guide book. Fortunately, many Japanese restaurants have models of the food in the front windows. You can just point to a plate and rub your belly while chomping your teeth. They either bring your food or laugh at you.

Unfortunately, the models of the food didn’t always help me really know what I was eating. And when restaurants did have English menus, many were badly translated or had no descriptions. (Apparently one of my desserts was “bean”. I had no idea what to expect, but I got a warm, sweet, bean paste with a single, odd, tiny fruit in it.) I’m an adventurous eater who isn’t picky, so I took it all in stride.

Tempura snack, soda machine, sushi, Suntory time (clockwise)

The top left of the above photo is a great snack of tempura that I had one afternoon. I bought these in the food area of one of the giant department stores in Ginza, Tokyo. It helped keep the hunger at bay until I went to a sushi bar for dinner.

Next to it is one of the many soda machines that were scattered about the city. Boss and Pocari Sweat seemed to be popular drinks. Unfortunately, I can’t report on the taste as I never tried them. I suppose Tommy Lee Jones liked to advertize for Boss. It seemed odd seeing his face plastered around.

Bottom left is a great sushi breakfast I had on my first morning in Tokyo. I woke up pretty early and made my way over to the fish market. After taking in the sights there (lots and lots and lots of seafood, most of which I would have no idea how to cook) I found a little sushi place and did my best to order something tasty. I think I did just fine.

And of course, I couldn’t pass up on a photo of Suntory Whisky–”For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.” All I knew about Suntory was a whisky from Lost in Translation. Apparently Suntory is a huge company. I found their brand on everything from snacks to bottled soft drinks.

Okonomiyaki, uncooked (top left), cooked (top right) and a delicious meal in Japan (bottom)

One fun meal I had was a sort of Japanese pancake called Okonomiyaki. It was served in a kind of DIY restaurant. I was seated at a small table with a griddle in the center and given a menu. I looked through and choose one of the recommended combinations: a mixture including eggs, cabbage, green onion, and bacon, among other things. The menu was whisked away and the griddle turned on as green tea was served. Soon after, a bowl containing the ingredients was brought out and laid in front of me with some spatulas, a jar of oil, and some jars of spices and sauces. I smiled at her. She smiled at me. I smiled again and shrugged.

She quickly understood that I had no clue what I was doing. After some interesting miming, I finally understood that she wanted me to dump all the ingredients onto the skillet. Once I made a mess of dumping everything into a pile, she held up four fingers and said “Four minutes,” then held her hands together horizontally in front of her and made a big deal about turning them over and repeated, “Four minutes.”

I smiled and repeated the gestures. That much I could figure out, so I ordered a beer and patiently waited about four minutes, then flipped the food and waited four more minutes.

Unfortunately, leaving me alone such a long time without assistance may not have been in her best interest. I got confused again and almost botched the whole thing. In my defense, five minutes on your own with nothing to do when you are hungry feels like an eternity. I almost started slathering sauce all over the thing and was ready to awkwardly eat it. I was in the process of holding my chopsticks looking at the mound of food trying to figure out a plan of attack. Do I pick the whole thing up? Do I use the side of my chopstick to break it into smaller pieces?

Fortunately, the waitress must have known I was about to do something silly, as she came by and used the spatula to cut it into four, smashed the quarters down a bit and put some sauce over the top. She let it cook a bit more then cut it into bit sized chunks with the two spatulas (and the whole time I figured I was going to have to do surgery with the chopsticks!). It was pretty awesome though, a great low cost lunch.

Yudofu (boiled tofu) in Kyoto, Night shot of Tokyo, Omikuji (bad luck fortunes, tied and left at the temple) (bottom left), Awamori bar menu (bottom right)

I had a little stay in Kyoto and got to try yudofu, which is basically boiled tofu. It’s actually much better than it sounds. The tofu is boiled/simmered in a pot and presented with various dipping sauces. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most flavor packed meal I had, but it was strangely appealing.

The photo at the bottom right is from the menu of a bar called Awamori in Ginza, Tokyo. This place was actually quite hard to find. Ginza is a fairly well-to-do area and Awamori was basically a dive bar for the area. It was great. All the menus were hand drawn and peiced togeter. Their specialty drinks were awamori, of all things. My father and I were the only gaijin in the bar, but after a few rounds, we seemed right at home. Check out the rest of the photos of the menu on the flickr page. Great stuff.

This could belong to you.

You will need:

• 100g (3/4 of a cup) of shredded Parmesan
• Two eggplants
• A pack of cherry tomatoes
• A soup spoonful of flour
• A small spoonful of sugar
• Olive oil
• Salt
• A small clove of garlic

Now go wash your hands, and let’s begin.

1) First up, the eggplant.  You’ll be using the oven, so preheat it to 350°F (180° C ). Cut the eggplants lengthwise.  Place them fleshy-side up on a cookie sheet or pan.  Here, we are going to dress them up with some salt and oil, but wait, because there is a problem. The oil is just going run off the eggplant and onto the pan.  This is why you’ll take your knife and cut grooves into the eggplant in a grid-like pattern.  Just like in the photo. Now, you put the salt and a generous amount of oil on it.  Good.  Ok, into the oven they go for 35 minutes.  35 minutes later, you will take them out, and scrape out their insides with a spoon into a bowl.  Then you’ll finely mince a clove of garlic, and add it to the eggplant.  Do you have a blender?  If so, dump everything in there and blend slowly.  If not, just mash everything together with a fork in that bowl.

The eggplant 35 minutes from now.

2) Next, the parmesan tiles.  In a bowl, mix the flour and the Parmesan together.  Put a nonstick skillet for on your stove-top, and let it heat up under medium heat.  Take a small handful of your powdery mix and place in the skillet, sprinkling the mix to form a flat disk.  Aim for something that has the same diameter of a small apple.  Let them take some heat until they become golden brown, then take them out of the skillet (with a flat spatula if you like) and place them on a paper towel to cool.  What once was a powdery mix of flour and cheese, has cooked together to form the tiles of our mille-feuille.

Parmesan disks browning in the pan.

3) Finally, we are going to bake these tomatoes.  Cut all of them in half, right through their prime meridian.  On your favorite cookie sheet place them all on their backs, and sprinkle sugar all over them and then hit them each with a dash of oil.  They are ready for the oven (at 350° F / 180° C), but keep on an eye on them, and take them out when they look like they do in photo, let’s say for 10 minutes.

That was easy.

The rest is going to depend on your plating ingenuity.  We went with some eggplant cavier, a Parmasen tile, a layer of tomatoes and another Parmesan tile.  Then we drizzled balsamic vinegar and olive oil on top.  How you do this step is entirely up to you, you can put the tomatoes and eggplant in a bowl and use the tiles as chips if that’s the kind of thing that you’d be in to.  Or break the tiles in halves and them stick out of a layer of eggplant.  You’ll figure it out.

There’s photos of the entire process on Flickr. Bon appetit.

Cream Cheese Brownies

Who doesn’t love brownies? They are easy to throw together from scratch (yes, almost as easy as using boxed brownies) and they are delicious. The best thing about making your own brownies is that you get to control the type of chocolate that goes into them. I usually will use Ghirardelli chocolate, because it’s readily available and it’s very good. Every now and then I will splurge and use something like Callebaut (Belgian) or Valrhona (French) chocolate. You can usually find either of those at your local gourmet grocery store, or order them online if you don’t have one near you. That being said, I sometimes feel like my brownies could use a little something extra. That’s when I turn to this recipe. The addition of the cream cheese (think cheesecake not cheeseburger) enlivens the normal brownie recipe. I know this takes a little bit of extra work (since you have the cream cheese mixture as well as the batter), but it’s well worth it. So next time you want a bit more from your brownies, give this recipe a try. It’s well worth the extra calories.

Ingredients
2/3 Cup All-Purpose Flour
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
6 oz Bittersweet Chocolate
1 Stick Unsalted Butter
1 1/4 Cups Sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
3 Large Eggs
8 oz Cream Cheese, At Room Temperature
1 Egg Yolk

Directions

1. Adjust the oven shelf to a low-middle position and preheat the oven to 325F.
2. Take an 8 x 8 inch baking pan and spray the bottom with cooking spray. Add a piece of foil that will overhang on 2 sides, and spray the top of the foil with cooking spray.
3. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl.
4. Melt the chocolate and butter in either a double boiler (a bowl in a pan will work) or just in the microwave. Make sure you stir so that the chocolate doesn’t burn. Add 1 cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons of vanilla to the chocolate mixture in a bowl (if you used a double boiler just use the bowl you used). Then whisk in the eggs one at a time and then add the flour mixture and whisk until incorporated.
5. In another bowl, mix the cream cheese, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and the egg yolk.
6. Pour half of the chocolate mixture into the baking pan, then add half of the cream cheese mixture in spoonfuls over the top (spread them out). Add the rest of the chocolate mixture on top and then the rest of the cream cheese mixture in spoonfuls. Use a blade of a knife to swirl the mixture to give it a marbled look.
7. Bake for 50-60 minutes. They are done when a toothpick comes out with only a few, moist crumbs on it.
8. Cool the brownies in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then use the aluminum sling to remove them from the pan. Cool them to room temperature, and then put them in the fridge. Once they are cooled you can cut them into pieces. Keep them refrigerated, and they can keep up to 5 days (assuming they last that long).