Putting Down The Camera, Picking Up The Fork: Eating Without Instagramming

Putting Down The Camera, Picking Up The Fork: Eating Without Instagramming

uyguguygu   03.48   Comment  

(All photos taken at the Omi-cho Market in Kanazawa. This market has been running for over 280 years!)

The precedent to not photograph my food was set early on my vacation to Japan, though I didn’t realize it was happening at the time. My first meal in Tokyo was simple Japanese home cooking prepared by the host of the apartment I had rented. I had just flown over from Seoul and had been trying to navigate the confusing Tokyo subway system for nearly two hours in the summer swelter. I was exhausted, dehydrated, and ready for a nap. 

My thoughtful hosts had air conditioned my room before my arrival and as I was unpacking, they called me downstairs to see if I wanted dinner. When I entered the tidy dining room I saw the food spread out on tiny dishes across the wide glass tabletop like little boats carrying precious cargo - my first meal in Japan. Chopsticks sat on their small porcelain holder in front of the food. On the right was a blue napkin with a traditional pattern that had been a Furoshiki cloth used to wrap a gift to my hostess before becoming part of the set of household linens.

That night we sat around the table and ate cold Shabu Shabu, sweet and slightly pink, layered on top of a salad of crisp lettuce and topped with home made Goma-Dare, a pleasantly bitter sesame dressing. In addition there was a bowl of miso soup, Japanese pickles called Kyurizuke, savory with a strong soy sauce flavor, and a tiny bowl of traditional Japanese curry served piping hot. It was not until we had finished our conversation and our meal that I had realized that I had left my phone and my camera in my room and had not stopped to do the requisite meal time photo shoot required of any adventurous, internet savvy eater. 

As I lay in bed that night fiddling with Instagram on my phone and lamenting that I had not been able to capture that meal to share with the world I thought about how my relationship with food was now interconnected with social media, particularly Instagram and blogging.

Growing up, food had always been unspectacular until I got my first kitchen, a tiny galley with basic renters equipment in a studio apartment. I was eighteen and I wanted to cook like a pro, to really enjoy and savor my meals but I found myself spending more time documenting than eating. I realized that my memories of food were more about colors, light, and angles than flavors. The purpose of food, to me, was to photograph it.  The communal experience of a meal and accompanying conversation had always been punctuated by shutter clicks. It was as if my pre-meal prayers consisted of staging and a round of photographs.

As I continued to think about it throughout the trip I came to the conclusion that the practice of food photoshoots at everyday meals isn’t always a bad thing, even if it can be a huge distraction. Food, at its heart, has always been about communication. We speak important things with each dish we place in front of ourselves and others. When I serve the meals I make for myself at home they come out somewhat untidy, a bit rushed, just like the state of a weeknight kitchen at home. A restaurant’s gorgeous plating signals us to look, taste, smell, to enjoy slowly and carefully. And now we share those silent modern day smoke signals with the world over social media: Here is what I’m eating. This is who I am and how I live now.

In Japan, though, I was caught off guard. After nearly six days of eating without photographing my food something clicked, and it happened at the best meal that I had on my entire trip to Japan.  

One evening, I followed the winding streets to a dot marked on a piece torn from my tourist map. One of the baristas at a cafe had marked a few places for me and this one was closest to my hotel. I found myself at a very traditional Japanese restaurant. I went in and removed my sandals and they seated me on the floor at a large table in a room crowded with Japanese businessmen talking in low tones. Then, informed me there was no English menu and asked if I still wanted to stay.

Fortunately, the businessmen next to me spoke English, inquired about my taste, and then took the liberty of ordering several dishes for me. When the food arrived, with austere and delicate presentation, it did not disrupt our conversation. I did not even think to punctuate it with shutter snaps.

Moreover, I could not remember the names of the dishes though they had been told to me. Because of this the food was something completely unto itself, identified only by flavor. After dinner I wrote in my travel journal that I had eaten small bites of tender grilled fish, sweet and smooth with an underlying flavor reminiscent of honey and gracefully plated slivers of pink translucent sashimi. The sashimi was immaculate it seemed to resist just the slightest when I bit into it. They had paired it with an alcohol made from sweet potatoes that was served very cold.

It was, perhaps, the most beautiful meal I had ever eaten in my life and not a single photo exists of it. The only physical recollection of the meal is a few hastily written lines in my journal describing the notes and flavors of it and the fragment of the map I put next to it. But unlike countless other meals that I have photographed and eaten and have managed to Instagram or blog I remember every detail.

I set the camera down. I tasted everything.

(For the curious, my meal at the second Isakaya was eventually figured out later at a bar in Kyoto. I was able to recount the meal to a few people and based on the description of it they wrote down the names of the dishes with almost absolute certainty. The businessmen had first ordered me a grilled Ayu, a freshwater fish who’s flavor has been noted for their sweetness and was currently in season. The sashimi was Kinmedai, a deep sea fish with bright red skin, known for its delicate flavor. As a drink, they had paired it all with glasses of Honkaku Shochu, a single distillation Sochu that still retained hints of the sweet potato flavor.)

Tokyo: A Visual Diary

Tokyo: A Visual Diary

uyguguygu   02.32   Comment  

***

Pictured Below: Fog Linen Work

***

***

Pictured Below: Kappabashi Coffee

***

Air putih bisa memberikan kenetralan pada gigi dan menghilangkan bakteri yang singgah pada gigi anda

Air putih bisa memberikan kenetralan pada gigi dan menghilangkan bakteri yang singgah pada gigi anda

uyguguygu   18.33   Comment  

Air putih bisa memberikan kenetralan pada gigi dan menghilangkan bakteri yang singgah pada gigi anda

Steady as she goes...

Steady as she goes...

uyguguygu   21.25   Comment  

Seoul is home to thousands of cafés and every street has several. Coffee culture here is booming and one recent study showed that Koreans now consume more coffee than Kimchi! For a café to be remembered in the sea of places to get a cup of coffee you have to have outstanding coffee, great decor, or both. Café Vive L'amour is one place that's worth a visit for its excellent menu and relaxed atmosphere that centers around music. It doesn't hurt that it's tucked away amongst the Hanok in Samcheong-dong one of the best neighborhoods for Saturday morning wandering. 
Visit it at Samcheong-dong, 4-gil, 10 and try their Green Tea Latte, my favorite thing on the menu.   

Onggi

Onggi

uyguguygu   02.38   Comment  

Onggi, the traditional clay fermentation pots used in Korea, are everyday works of art. It's kitchenware with a 7,000 year old legacy that quite literally breaths because it has a microporous surface that facilitates fermentation.

Like the food stored inside of it, a high quality Onggi gets better with age. Many families here in Korea have handed their Onggi down from generation to generation and these human size clay pots sit like sentinels on rooftops, balconies, and in back yards all over the country, even in a ultra-modern city like Seoul. As you walk through neighborhoods of all kinds you see Onggi of different sizes everywhere. If food is the heart of a culture, Onggi is the shell that protects Korea's traditional cuisines.

Several weeks ago I decided it was high time to learn how to make some of the traditional Korean fermented dishes so I purchased two food safe Onggi for myself. Instead of the enormous ones that sell for several hundred thousand won (or around $200 - $300 dollars)  I bought two small ones that fit in a modern fridge. They arrived a few days later shipped from a workshop in rural Korea, packed carefully with newspaper and Styrofoam. They came, surprisingly, with two types of lids - the traditional type as well as a modern mesh and glass lid courtesy of the pottery shops that I ordered them from.

While I was searching for Onggi, which are surprisingly hard to find in stores, I did a little bit of research and learned that the craft of Onggi seems to be a dying art. In most kitchens, they have been replaced by plastic fermenting containers that can be purchased quite cheaply at just about every store here in Korea, even Daiso, the equivalent of the dollar store here.

Of course, using Onggi has it's disadvantages - it's breakable, heavy, they don't transport well, and I found that it was difficult to find Onggi that's food safe around Seoul. When I was looking around in markets for an Onggi a woman at an antique store cautioned me that many that are sold in the markets are designed to go to tourists and sit on shelves. The origins of the glaze are uncertain and may contain things like lead. She advised me to go online and purchase one there which was surprisingly easy.

Several weeks after my Onggi arrived at my house I took a trip to a small village about three and a half hours away from my house. A friend and I visited the Han Hyang Lim Onggi museum in the golden evening light of one of our very first crisp autumn days. We didn't stop to read any of the signs but we enjoyed the outdoor Onggi garden very much. It was terraced into the mountain behind the museum that afforded us a picturesque view of the entire valley.

Buying Kitchen Knives in Kyoto - Part II

Buying Kitchen Knives in Kyoto - Part II

uyguguygu   07.27   Comment  

This is the second part of a two part series on buying kitchen knives in Kyoto. You can find the first part here. 

職人はまず経験を身につけます。ここで「伝統」という言葉を使うのは抵抗があるのですが、職人に経験を身につけさせるには、伝統が必要です。

First, the craftsman gains experience. We hesitate to use the word "tradition" here but for the craftsman to gain experience tradition is necessary. 

Kayakawa Hamonoten, a small knife shop owned by a nearly 80-year-old Kyoto born man named Hayakawa Masaya, is tucked away on the south side of town in a classic Kyoto residential neighborhoods where traditional style homes and shops mingled in maintained but worn buildings. 

The owner was not there on the blistering Wednesday I arrived but I had the pleasure of meeting Nakashita Kenji, who ran the shop when the owner was not there. He spoke slightly more English than the proprietor at Shigeharu and we were able to easily pick out exactly what I wanted -  a small all purpose knife, with something engraved on it. He placed three or four knives of that description in front of me and I chose the one that I wanted, a simple and relatively inexpensive chef’s knife with carbon steel enclosed in stainless steel. On a whim, I also asked for a sharpening stone.

“Do you know how to use this?” he asked me as he chose one from the piles of stones he had for sale on the floor underneath the knife cabinet.

I told him I did not.

“I'll show you,” he offered, asking if I had time. He walked me across the shop to the sharpening basin behind the counters and cabinets crowded into the tiny shop space. Reaching into the water, he pulled out a double sided stone similar to the one I intended to purchase. He set it on the wooden plank that extended from the edge of basin into the water and rifled in a drawer to pull out a dull, worn kitchen knife, perfect for practicing on. . 

“First,” he said pointing to the rough side, and then flipping the stone to the finer side, “Second.”

He sat down and lined up the knife at a 90  degree angle, then tilted the knife again to cut that angle in half to 45, and then tilted it again in half to cut that angle to 23 degrees. He once more tilted it, and ended up with roughly a 10 degree angle. 

As he began to pull the knife across the stone he told me to listen to the sound. 

“Listen,” he directed. He pulled and pushed the knife across the rough side of the stone. As he did this, the sound didn’t change. It remained a satisfying merger of metal on stone, a wearing down of an old worn thing, the mistakes and inconsistencies leaving as it was ground to an edge against that stone. I could see that his fingers were spread out across the blade of the knife and at each point of contact neither the angle nor the pressure changed. It was consistent. He showed me the edge, where a small bead had formed. He flipped the knife over and repeated the same thing, pointing out the consistent 10 degree angle, the pressure, the pull and the push, and most importantly, the sound as he scraped it.

After he had demonstrated the correct method, he began to do it incorrectly to show me the difference. The sound changed, it became more metallic, as if the blade was singing alone. He was manipulating the knife with inconsistent pressure. The blade seemed to be vibrating in response, and the sound rung.

Then, he changed the angle of the blade, tilting it away from the stone and though it sounded less metallic. The sound became narrower, more like a slice and less like a scrape. Quickly, he returned the angle, and spread his fingers out over the blade to regulate the pressure once more. Again I heard the right sound, the marriage of metal and stone. After a few more pulls he showed the edge to me. There was a fine burr where the metal had started to fold away and raise up. 

He flipped the stone over to the finer grit, and repeated the process on each side of the knife and each time he turned the knife the burr became smaller and smaller. He pulled the knife away from the stone, just a fine, minuscule burr left, even along the edge, almost undetectable by the eye.

“You try.” he said. I was a little unsure but I seated myself at the stone basin and he handed me the knife. I tried to replicate the position of his fingers, the angle of the knife, and the pressure that was consistent through the push and the pull. It was more difficult than it looked and he corrected the angle a few times. Eventually, after a little practice he seemed satisfied with the technique I had picked up. I handed him the knife and he inspected the edge. He had done most of the work to sharpen the knife, I had done a quarter of what he had done, and it had taken nearly twice as long, but in that time I was able to grasp the mechanics of the process. 

As we finished up, he took the knife that I had chosen and sharpened it, swiftly and quickly, at the stone basin and took a tiny chisel and engraved the kanji for “royal family” on one side of the knife. Finally, he wrapped it up, handed me the box, and I paid him for it. I thanked him and snapped his photograph.

I walked out of the air-conditioned shop into the heat of the Kyoto summer, blinded by the low hanging afternoon sun.

Now I'm back home in my kitchen in Seoul. I don't struggle and hack into my vegetables any more. My time spent cooking is made both more enjoyable and faster. When I hold the knives in my hand I’m reminded of those sweltering Kyoto days. Best of all, I pull out my sharpening stone every week or two and pass the knives over it, fine tuning the edge. I listen to the metal ringing against the grit of the stone and I practice my still shaky and slow passes. I know with time I will get better. This life, I am beginning to understand, is so much about practice, about being taught.  And about waiting. And about finding that one perfect thing at the end of all that waiting. 

You can find Kayakawa Hamonoten Sakaimachi-dori, halfway between Bukkoji-dori and Ayanokoji-dori. The closest station is Kawarmachi. Exit the station and head west along Shijo-dori. You will pass the Kyotodai Shrine on your left. Keep walking about six blocks and head left (south) on Sakaimachi-dori. It will be a block and a  half down. Keep your eyes open for a very small shop with the unique sign pictured on the first photo of this post.