Posts from ‘November, 2010’

Elizabeth Andoh

Elizabeth Andoh was born in New York, but has made Japan her home since 1967. A graduate of the Yanagihara School of Classical Japanese Cuisine, Elizabeth is the author of four books on Japanese cooking, including two International Association Culinary Professionals award winners, AN OCEAN OF FLAVOR and WASHOKU: Recipes from the Japanese home kitchen. She was Gourmet’s Japan correspondent for more than three decades and was a regular contributor to the New York Times travel section for many years. Andoh lectures internationally on Japanese food and culture and directs A Taste of Culture, a culinary program based in Tokyo and Oska.

Two years ago I heard Elizabeth on a PBS radio interview. I knew very little about her, then, except that I listened and liked her approach to cooking and ingredients. I have long been a fan of Japanese cooking. Having lived in California for twenty five years, I was quite exposed to good Japanese food, especially the kind served in sushi bars, but also the general fare of quality Japanese restaurants. After hearing Elizabeth speak, I decided to email her and ask if she had a recipe she would share for Hamachi Kama (braised yellowfin or bluefin tuna jaw,) my all time favorite Japanese dish. It is presented in a variety of culinary styles at Pacific Coast Japanese restaurants; a dish that is at once tender, tasty and succulent, as close to perfectly cooked chicken breast meat as fish can be, but with the extra-special flavor only fish enjoy. This dish enhanced by lemon juice is really spectacular. The enjoyment of picking the meat from the bones is akin to eating tender-young lobster, right off the boat.  A recipe for cooking this fish, assuming you could get a good sized, yellow or bluefin tuna head from a fish monger, is equally as hard to find. It seems to be a specialty known to only a few.

To my amazement, she telephoned from Tokyo and we enjoyed an hour-long conversation about Japanese cooking. She explained her current work on a cookbook entitled Kansha, celebrating the traditions of Japanese vegan and vegetarian cooking, and asked if I would join her Advisory Council as a tester of recipes she invented and methods she developed. I would receive monthly packets of information to be tested for: (1) availability of ingredients in my geographic area; (2) ease of comprehension; (3) ease of preparation; then report back cooking results and photographs of my efforts.

I was quite intrigued. Frankly, I threw myself into the program, going whole hog, purchasing the finest ingredients I could find and following instructions to the letter. This went on for more than a year until other obligations overtook my time to the point that I could only watch the progress of the cookbook as it might come in Elizabeth’s informative monthly newsletters  (http://www.tasteofculture.com/).

Udon Noodles and Veggie-Radish dishes cooked and photographed by yours truly in my kitchen.

The project, for me, has lain dormant for the last year as my life changed dramatically and I began my new life as a traveling blogger/writer/photographer/cooking artist. Yesterday, a package arrived at my PO Box from Ten Speed Press in Berkeley California. The contents, to my delight, revealed not only the Kansha cookbook but it was signed, with appreciation, to William Francis Ahearn …..  AND… my name is first in the list Advisory Council acknowledgements (never mind that my last name begins with ”A.”)

This journey is one of a very different kind; one that Elizabeth made, surely, but her kindness opened doors for me I never expected. To have one’s efforts appreciated by the author is so encouraging. Kansha, the Japanese word for thanks-gratitude, reminds us of all that we have in our lives for which we are grateful. I am grateful this Thanksgiving to be inspired by Elizabeth Andoh. Kansha.

I have little patience these days for bureaucrats who incessantly  insist on compulsory rules that the next level bureaucrat denies exist. After several visits this month to the Department of Motor Vehicles, I am DMV’d out.  But one trip this week did make the journey worthwhile, allowing all to be OK again.

I have infinite patience for an innocent smile, a warm flick of the eyes in my direction, a child unafraid to look me in the eye…even while I am bored to distraction at the abominable DMV.

Upon receiving my number at the DMV entry desk, I find a comfortable seat under a speaker, to be very sure to hear my number announced: F124. The building is quite long, the interior arrangment allows for the clientele to easily and quickly reach their assigned window. The seating, not in deep rows, stretches from one end of the one story brick building to the other. Waiting customers can easily see the numbered clerk’s booths while listening for the ceiling loudspeaker to announce their turn. The security guard stands behind the seating watching for people who develop DMV frustration rage.

Expecting a long siege (my DMV motto,) opening my book, I haphazardly glance to my left and see a skinny, curly-headed, young boy seated 4 or 5 seats away jittering about: seat to floor; then seat to seat, entertaining himself while his father labors over endless DMV paper work. Very athletically, the boy begins a kind of upright roll, feet on the floor—hands chair to chair—on three or four chairs, doing his hand to hand spin round and round on the chair seats. He surprises himself, ending up his roll two empty chairs away from me. He stares up at me for just a brief moment giving me time to say:
“Hey, good morning.”
He responds with a very faint, shy “Hey” in return.

Looking back again—after taking me all in—he glances back at his Dad, just checking. Then, he smiles openly with curiosity about this man who talks to children as if they are grown, and I notice his little shirt emblazoned with the characters from “Toy Story.”

“Did you see Woody at the movies?”  I ask.
“Nope, I don’t go to the movies until Sunday.”
His lanky body bends and stretches over the chair as he speaks, under his Dad’s watchful eye. It is clear the father knows we are conversing, his boy and I. Flopping his bottom off, then on the chair; he stretches out on the chairs slightly closer to me.
“How old are you?” I ask, trying not to sound like an adult.
“Three…  uh  ….four, ” he stumbles, then pausing just a moment adds, “My favorite number is Z.” As he gazes above my head.
“Hmmmm,” I say, “I guess mine is K. It’s the first letter in the name of some people I love—Why do you like Z?”
“ ‘Cause it’s my favorite—it’s up there,” he says pointing at the big “Z” on my baseball cap.
“Oh,” I reply, now understanding, “it says Z for Zion Canyon National Park, a place out west in Utah I once visited. A most beautiful desert canyon with strange rock formations.”
“How old are you?” he asks precociously.
“Seventy, but we aren’t so different, you and I. It’s just that you are small and I am big.”
“You are old,” he says.
“Yes, I guess, but I feel young.”
“Seventy is pretty old,” he reiterates. “I don’t even go to school yet.”
He steps down and does a hop scotch sort of thing on the floor tiles.
“Have you ever been out west?” I ask.
“Yes, I went to Gramma’s house in Suffolk.”

Then the lady in the sky announces:
“Now serving B14 at window 10.”
He looks up for a moment, perhaps mystified by the disembodied voice above, but then accepts its message and goes to the chair next to Dad where their numbered ticket lies waiting, studies it, sets it back down with a pat, then returns toward me smiling, “B15.”
“Nice number,” I reply.
“We’re next!” he says, shocking me with this calculated information, “What’s your number?”
“—F124.”
The lady in the sky speaks again:
“B15 at window 9.”

Dad grabs his boy’s hand and briskly walks to window 9. The boy stands next to his Dad, his arm wrapped around one big knee.

“F124 now at window 11.”

He turns, giving me a smile, a hand wave, and is gone from sight as I respond to the call with just a little more joy in my heart.