Chāshū Pork Bowl, a photo by Dutch Harbor Sushi on Flickr. The Chāshū Pork Bowl at Harbor Sushi. Chāshū is a traditional barbeque pork dish from China known as Char siu, but like most great things Chinese, the Japanese culture has adapted char siu and in many ways, improved on it, by including it as [...]
Aka Oi Kimchi, a photo by Dutch Harbor Sushi on Flickr. The fermented goodness of homemade Kimchi, Korea’s national dish, is great for your gut. With the popularization of all things fermented, the spicy goodness of the typical napa cabbage variety is full of lactic acid bacteria, and specifically Lactobacillus kimchii, has become renonwn for [...]
Tempura Donburi, a photo by Dutch Harbor Sushi on Flickr. The tempura donburi (shown here with an extra helping of prawn), one of most delicious additions to the menu, comes with a selection of fresh vegetables: shiitake and enoki mushrooms, asparagus, sweet peppers, prawn & a baby octopus. Served over a bowl of scallion-scented jazmine [...]
Manny Santiago explores the Foodie paradise of the Dong Hua Men Night & Sihuan Markets in Beijing as he travels overland from Kyoto to California
The Kiruna underground iron mines should be appreciated and (un)known as a place of many tours and detours. They hide many treasures. Though in fact, to be honest, they do not. They hide iron ore, a bit of copper and probably a lot of unworthy stones of assorted kinds. That is exactly what they hide. [...]
The hunt for other underground mushrooms: the infamous truffle… Umberto Eco, in his masterpiece Il Nome Della Rosa (The Name of the Rose, Harcourt 1983 for the English language version) mostly know by mere mortals from the eponymous film (1986), starring Sean Connery as Sir Guillaume of Baskerville, and a young Christian Slater as Adso [...]
Have you ever opened a cheese and wondered what small rodent just died in the immediate vicinity? Or who suddenly started cooking bacon? As I progress in my lifelong quest to make the perfect Grilled Cheese Sandwich it is only since I escaped the U.S. that I am truly beginning to glimpse the undiscovered country [...]
Visualize if you will, a spry young man in his work kimono, made of an easy to clean light fabric, walking down the dirt-paved roads of the old capital Kyōto to the clickety-clackety of hundreds of Japanese sandal-wearing passers-by as they go about their daily business, smiling and nodding while the deciduous trees rain orange [...]
Come the Japanese New Year, when some particularly enthusiastic families and co-workers across the archipelago once again dust off their bamboo rice steamers, big wooden hammers, not forgetting the Sake, and head off to the local community center, school, or as in my case, the abandoned yacht club, it raises the hairs on the neck [...]
If memorable for anything other than pure commerce, smog and the Great Wall, China has great food markets where one can find anything–seriously–anything and beyond. Both on major thoroughfares and hidden in and around the back alley hutong which populate the crowded capital, the best of Beijing is not to be had in touristy restaurants, [...]
Beer is water, barley, hops and yeast. More or less this is the recipe for the most popular alcoholic drink-and third overall-the world has ever known. There are many variations on this recipe, which, much like the variations in people, give rise to the differing characteristics that make the world such a diverse and awe-inspiring [...]
Driving through Europe this past summer, north to south, from Copenhagen, Denmark to Casteil, France (basically Spain) is a long, beautiful trip which takes around ten days. Granted, I made a few stops along the way. One of the stops was at my grandma’s, in Lorraine, France. Grandma is about eighty-nine and still lives alone [...]
Just like movies, cars and hourglass figures, they don’t make pickles like they used to. Found in just about every national cuisine, fermentation was probably discovered accidentally thousands of years ago, when something sugary was left to rot and ended up as a delightfully sour, mildly alcoholic treat. The fact that it additionally preserved both [...]
What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution. – Henri-Frédéric Amiel [...]
