Category: Other Sushi Randomness

Note: I wrote this post shortly after New Year’s. And then couldn’t decide when to post it, or if I should post it, and… now it’s two months late and I’m posting it anyways. Yeah… I’m an awesome blogger like that. Enjoy!

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Happy New Year!

I hope 2014 started out with a little less excitement for you than it did for me!

Ever since starting Sushi Day back in 2006, I’ve gotten the responsibility for making sushi for my family’s New Year’s celebration every year.

On top of that, for the last three years since we mentioned it in my Miso Hungry Podcast, I’ve also started making the kuromame every year (we used to just have canned kuromame).

Making all that has never been a problem. Until now. (DUN DUN DUN!)

I started the kuromame on time – started soaking it two nights before New Year’s Day, then simmered it all day on New Year’s Eve. Buuuut… it seems I had the heat turned too low, because the beans were crunchy (crunchy!!!) after eight hours of simmering. GAH.

“Okay,” I thought, “I’ll just leave it on low overnight, and if it’s still not ready, I’ll cook it on high all morning while I’m making the sushi.” It was a totally solid plan.

… that is, until I noticed the power light on my laptop charger dimming, then brightening, then dimming again around 2:30am.

“Uh… am I using too much power?” Not that that makes any sense at all, but it was 2:30am. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

I ran out to the kitchen, and turned off our electric stove. Everything seemed fine (although for some reason our apartment seemed a tad bit dimmer than usual), so I tiptoed back to bed, trying not to wake Son.

A few minutes later, the power cut out entirely.

This time I did wake up Son, and made him go check outside. All the neighborhood lights were out. Great.

As we were falling back asleep, the sound of sirens cut through the air. “I wonder what that could be…?”

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7am. The alarm on my phone is blaring. Sushi time!

Except… not. We have power, but only just barely. Not enough for the rice cooker to work, and no rice means no sushi! (And remember the part where we have an electric stove? Yeah, no way to cook rice the old-fashioned way, either.)

Crap. Crappity crap crap.

I stepped outside to run to Starbucks (which… um… was closed due to power outage. *facepalm*) and ran into one of my neighbors. “Do you have power?” “Just a little.” “Any idea what happened?”

Turns out a drunk driver was playing chicken with a power pole at 2:30am, and they both lost. -_-

Okay. Don’t freak out.

At a loss for what to do, I called my dad to see if I could try to bring everything over and make all the sushi at his house. (Which, by the way, is very difficult to do when the local cell towers are ALSO without power. Oy vey.) And then I realized that the car was in the garage… and I can’t get into the garage…

Called my mom. She suggested having Grandma cook some rice, and heading out there a few hours earlier than we had all planned to go. Okay. That should work. I woke Son, to tell him the plan and get him ready to go…

AND THEN THE POWER CAME BACK ON.

*happy dance*

Once I was sure the power was going to stay on, I started the rice, over-caffinated myself, and got the kuromame cooking again.

Two hours and 27 rolls of sushi, a successfully-cooked pot of kuromame, and a bowl of New Year’s ozoni later, we were ready to go. Right on time!

Moral of the story? Don’t drink and drive! (And maybe buy a backup generator for important cooking days… 😉 )

Have you heard of the Ramen Burger™?

They say it’s the next Cronut.

Started in New York just two months ago by Chef Keizo Shimamoto, the Ramen Burger™ has taken the ramen world by storm.

If his name sounds familiar to you, there’s a good reason for it – Keizo and I have been friends for several years now, and I’ve mentioned him when we went to the Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum and his ramen shop Bassanova the first time Son and I went to Japan, and then again when we went back to Bassanova and then got monjayaki and ramen with him in the middle of a typhoon during our second trip to Japan with Rachael and her family.

A few weeks ago, Keizo sent out a message to a bunch of his LA friends. The ramen burger was coming to LA!

Even better (at least, as far as I was concerned), he was bringing the ramen burger to the Torrance Mitsuwa!

Since it was so convenient for us (we go to the Torrance Mitsuwa all the time), and we REALLY wanted to try a ramen burger, Son and I volunteered to help.

When we got there at 9:30am, they said there were already more than 300 people in line. (They weren’t going to start serving Ramen Burgers™ until 11am.) Some of the people near the front of the line had been there since 6am!

At one point, there were over 1000 people in line. The line wrapped around the entire Mitsuwa building, until the tail met the front of the line… and Mitsuwa’s a pretty large building.

Never have I been so glad to be able to volunteer for something – especially since it was a pretty hot day in Torrance.

Since there were so many of Keizo’s friends volunteering, I just hung out for the first couple of hours (and explained to all the random people passing by what a ramen burger is) while Son and Cam and Tracy (the other photographers) took photos of the prep and the enormous line.

Keizo was busy prepping, and showing all of the volunteers how to prepare the Ramen Burgers™.

It wasn’t long before the news stations and other journalists started crowding in.

So… what is a ramen burger?

It comes wrapped in this neat wrapper that acts like a bowl, to catch the sauce and loose noodles.

And when you open it up, you find two ramen “buns”, surrounding an angus beef patty, arugula, their special shoyu-based “secret sauce”, and green onions.

(Yeah, I’m a food blogger, of course I had to Instagram a photo of it!)

So how does it taste?

Pretty gosh darned good, in my opinion.

I love ramen, I love burgers, and what Keizo has made is the perfect combination of the two.

Everyone who had waited in line for hours seemed to think it was worth it, too!

Sweetest moment of the day? Keizo serving his mom the very first ramen burger of the day – and she loved it!

Hey, who’s that food blogger? Lana showed up! ^_^

Lucky woman didn’t even have to wait in line – one of the members of the media didn’t want to finish his, so he gave the rest of his ramen burger to her.

A few hours after we started, a couple of the volunteers had to leave, so I got to step in and wrap the ramen burgers for the next three hours.

By 3pm, the last of the ramen burgers were gone. We had cooked, wrapped, and sold more than 500 of them. The day was a total success!

If you didn’t get to try a ramen burger this time around, you can try them every weekend at Smorgasburg in NY, or on weekdays for the next two weeks at Dassara in Brooklyn.

If you want to know when the ramen burger will be back in LA, follow me on twitter or facebook – I’ll announce it next time Keizo brings his Ramen Burger™ back to LA!

It’s time for another Mitsuwa fair, and all of the delicious things that comes with it!

This past weekend they had their Kyushu and Okinawa Fair at the Torrance, Costa Mesa, and San Diego stores. (If you’re near San Jose, Chicago, or New Jersey, check out their event page – the fair is in those cities this upcoming Thursday through Sunday!)

As usual, they had a guest ramen shop visiting from Japan. This time, it was “Tanaka Shoten” with their “Hakata Nagahama Ramen”.

We loved the light flavor of the broth, and the chashu was flavorful and just fell apart in your mouth.

They also offered a rice bowl topped with spicy cod roe, which Son loved.

We loved everything so much, we came back two days later for two more bowls of ramen and another rice bowl!

One very cool part about these Mitsuwa fairs is getting to see all of the interesting products they import from Japan just for the fair.

Since this was an Okinawa fair, there were quite a few sweet potato products, including purple sweet potato somen (you can expect to see a recipe using that one of these days!) and sweet potato sticks.

They also had “Pie Fresh AMAO strawberry Pudding on Choux” from “Kikuya” from the Oita Prefecture.

They were interesting – custard and a flan-like strawberry pudding inside a cream puff.

The caramel sauce was a little too bitter for my tastes, but aside from that they were delicious.

They also had various types of sushi rolls, including mackerel sushi (which we didn’t try), and the Genkai Roll Sushi.

Japanese packaging is always so pretty!

The Genkai Roll was delicious. The fillings in the roll included anago, shrimp, crab, cucumber, tamago, and mushrooms.

And, of course, we can never resist Japanese crepes!

Since they had a “purple yam special” crepe, we obviously had to try it.

A little too potato-ey for our tastes (we would have expected them to sweeten the purple sweet potato puree just a bit), but it sure does look nice, doesn’t it?

Want to know when the next Mitsuwa fair is? Check out their event page (the next fair is in just a few weeks!), or follow me on Twitter or Instagram – I always post photos when I go!

If you live near Torrance, CA or New Jersey, and if you like Japanese food (which, if you don’t, I hate to tell you this might not be the right food blog for you… 😉 ), then you MUST go to the Mitsuwa Japanese Gourmet Fair this weekend (next weekend if you’re in New Jersey). (Also, if you live near Costa Mesa, San Jose, San Diego, or Chicago, they all have smaller versions of the fair, so those stores may have some, but not all, of the things I mention here.)

Mitsuwa has these food fairs every year and I always try to make a point to go, because there is always SO much good food to try that they don’t normally carry!

I visited Friday, and let’s just say that my tummy is in a very happy place right now. 😀

First things first, let’s talk about the food that they sell to be eaten there. Because oh my goodness, I think this food fair was my favorite of all the ones we’ve been to.

If you haven’t ever been to a Mitsuwa, then you should know that every one has a large food court with about five or so different Japanese restaurants there, as well as assorted other shops, and a large grocery section. For the food fairs, Mitsuwa takes over one of the restaurants and brings in a restaurant from Japan.

This time, they brought in Kamome Diner, owned by a man named Mr. Chiba, from Kesennuma, Japan. His shop served “Kesennuma Ramen Ushio Aji (Salt)” – a shio (salt broth) ramen – and a salmon bowl with sesame shoyu (soy sauce).

We LOVED the ramen. A lot of time ramen can be pretty heavy, but since this had a chicken-based broth instead of a pork base, this was really light. The chashu was incredibly flavorful. We could have happily eaten another bowl. ($11 with the egg, less if you go without.)

(Pardon the instagram photos – someone forgot to bring his camera.)

I wasn’t expecting much from this, but it was insanely good. The sauce was a little bit sweet, and perfect for the fresh salmon. Seriously, so good we went back for a second bowl (and at only $4, totally worth it!) Even as we were eating it, Son was telling me that we will have to replicate this at home – so hey, maybe you guys will get a recipe sometime soon!

That was it for the food court (although all the other restaurants are still open, so you could totally have takoyaki, okonomiyaki, ramen, or all sorts of other delicious things, at least if you’re at the Torrance store!), but there was plenty of packaged food available to purchase.

We didn’t buy/try everything (some of the stuff is CRAZY expensive, like seafood salads that cost $40/lb!!!), but here’s what we did get:

This seafood bento (which I’d call a chirashi, because there was definitely sumeshi underneath all that seafood, but what do I know? 😉 ) was so beautiful, we couldn’t pass it by. Son really wanted to try it.

It’s a little pricy at about $16, but SO WORTH IT. It consists of sushi rice topped with a mixture of uni, tamago, mushrooms, two types of tobiko, ikura, crab, and… I’m not entirely sure what that translucent white thing is, but it was delicious.

I have never tasted such a satisfying bento/chirashi before! Everything was fresh, perfectly seasoned, and all the ingredients were wonderfully complementary, not to mention the presentation is gorgeous. Son really wants to go back tomorrow and get another one. 😀

When we bought these, Son was all, “Meh, I don’t really like croquettes, just get whatever you want.”

And then he actually tried them after taking the photos, and was more like, “OMG THESE ARE THE BEST THINGS EVER! WHY AREN’T ALL CROQUETTES THIS DELICIOUS?!?!”

(Okay, maybe not so much yelling, but you could tell that’s what he meant. 😉 )

We got potato and butter, salmon cream, and uni cream croquettes. The potato was alright, not too exciting. Tasted like mashed potatoes. However the salmon and uni croquettes were MIND BLOWING. Imagine taking the best things about salmon and uni, then make them creamier, mix them with potato, roll them in panko, and fry them up. It tastes even more amazing than it sounds.

They’re $1.50 each, but fairly large, so not too pricy.

The thing Son loves most about every Mitsuwa food fair is the stalls that sell a huge variety of fish cakes. He always buys a bunch, then brings them home to put in his instant ramen or eat them over rice. They’re pretty much his favorite thing ever.

This time, they were all on sticks. There were six types (not like I have any idea what they all were – sorry!) and we got one of each.

Delicious x 6. (Obviously we had to try a little of each, so we could report back to you!)

$2 each.

I’m a total sucker for anything black sesame (Rachael is 100% to blame for that one) so I just had to get one of these black sesame makidora (rolled dorayaki – like little Japanese pancakes filled with some sort of filling).

Mmmm, yum. I always love Japanese sweets, especially if black sesame is involved. 😀

$2 each – they also had red bean, custard, and matcha fillings.

I’ve had something like these Sweet Pumpkin Obanyaki before and wasn’t super enthused about them, but this time, everything was different. We skipped the red bean one, and went for the caramel and custard ones.

HOLY COW THAT CARAMEL.

So here’s what you do.

Buy a caramel one. (I bet the custard is good too, but I haven’t actually tried that one yet.)

Heat it up just a bit, until the pastry is warm and the caramel is soft.

Take a bite. Make sure you get some of the caramel.

Do a happy dance around the kitchen because it is SO FREAKING GOOD.

Eat the rest, and then wish you had bought a few more at the fair.

Realize that hey, there are still two more days of the fair!

Rejoice.

These were quite a bit sweeter than I’d usually expect from Japanese sweets (that caramel is LEGIT caramel!), but I did not mind one bit, they were so good.

$2 each – there was also a red bean-filled one, but I seriously recommend the caramel.

Lastly, green tea cheesecake.

We almost didn’t try this one. Son wanted to buy something for his dad, so he decided on the cheesecake. Then while we were in the checkout line, he piped up, “I kind of want to get another one, because I really want to try it…” So he ran back to grab another one for us. 😉

This is true Japanese cheeesecake. Now, forget everything that comes to mind when you think of cheesecake. This is nothing like the rich, heavy, sweet American cheesecakes you’re probably familiar with. No, this is super light, not too sweet (especially with the green tea flavor), with only the slightest hint of cheese.

In other words, absolutely delicious.

About $20 each.

We also got a lemon chiffon cake which we haven’t opened yet because we’re saving it for dessert on Father’s Day (hi Dad!)

So if that hasn’t convinced you that you should go check out the Mitsuwa Japanese Gourmet Fair, you should go read Mary the Food Librarian’s post… and if you’re STILL not convinced, then there’s no hope for you at all. 😉

Personally, Son and I plan to stop by at least once more this weekend, because, um, we kind of want to get more of everything. 😀

For more information, you can visit Mitsuwa’s website.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, I was not paid to write this review. Mitsuwa probably has absolutely no idea who I am. I just adore Japanese food (obviously) and want you all to be able to share in the deliciousness as well!