Washoku 4 - A Japanese Street Food Festival

All it took was one banner hung from Dadar Catering College (lesser known by its correct name i.e. Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition) to set my pulses racing. A Japanese street food festival - at a stone's throw from my place! How much more awesome could it get?

In a rare display of initiative (normally I am inertia personified), I put a call through to the number on the banner - and voila - by evening, the passes for Washoku 4 had been delivered at home. Priceless!

I spread the word, and by the time the festival rolled around, had 2 foodie friends along for company. Or rather, one foodie friend (T) and one world culture junkie and obsessive Teriyaki lover M. :)

Armed with our INR 500 passes (worth 5 200-Yen coupons +1 free drink coupon redeemable at the food stalls) we marched in promptly at 7:00 PM. To be greeted by thermocol cut-outs of reproductions of Japanese paintings and a smiling kimono-clad pair at the door. (It was quite funny - being almost the first guests at the festival meant we surprised the Welcome Wagon as they strolled outside to check out the arrangements - and catching sight of us, hurried aroun the corner to their post by the door - in funny mincing steps, since the kimonos were wrapped so tight!)

The festival was held on the terrace of the Institute and efforts were made to bring a flavour of Japan in the ambience, from strings of paper lanterns and a giant screen showing glimpses of Japanese landscapes to Japanese music piped through the speakers.


There was even a corner photo-op scene (get a kimono draped arund you and get a free snap taken) with paper pink cherry blossom trees in bloom beside a wooden fake-bridge over an invisible stream.

There were also stalls with free demonstrations (and do-it yourself sessions) of Ikebana (Japanese art of flower arrangement) and Origami (Japanese art of folding paper into fantastic shapes).


There were also live demonstrations of Sado, the traditional Japanese tea ceremony (once every hour).
A stall selling imported-from-Japan foodstuffs - not stuff you normally see in supermarkets - including sauces (soy, spiced soy, teriyaki, some dipping sauce i forget, Japanese mayo), ready to eat and dry noodles (udon and soba), silken tofu, green tea powder (matcha), bottled ready-to-drink green tea, golden curry sauce, miso soup sachets (made specially for Indian vegetarians, the packet proudly proclaimed), sushi powder, wasabi paste....you name it, and it was there. Expensive, but expansive as well. :)



And the food! Goodness me. 8 stalls covering:

1. Appetisers
Veg - Platter of: Vegetables Yakitori-style, Tofu with wasabi mayo, potato-and-mushroom krokke, Non Veg - Platter of: Chicken Yakitori (kebab-like grilled chicken chunks on skewers), Chawanmushi (savoury custard) and shrimp cake with spicy mayo. Droool.....





2. Tempura (Japanese fritters, wonderfully pale-golden and crunchy)
Veg - Selection of okra(ladyfinger), casava and onion-and-corn tempura
Non Veg - Selection of prawn, rockfish and monkfish tempura

This was one of the HIGHlights of the evening - the tempura was amazingly crunchy and delicious - especially when dipped in the tangy dipping sauce served on the side. I loved it, but T and M preferred the voluptuous swathe of spicy mayo to the the water-like consistency of the dipping sauce to dunk their tempura in. :)


3. Noodles

Choice of udon (fat, slippery-yet-chewy strands of wheat noodle) and soba (pale grey noodles made of wheat and buckwheat, with a slightly nutty taste) noodles with soup of your choice, topped with finely shaved veggies, chicken/fish, pickled ginger, pickled mushrooms, 7-spice powder, grated lemon zest, spicy soy sauce....)

We had the udon with chicken mince and the soba with veggies, and while both were yummy, I love the veggie option (surprise!), for its spicy, clean miso broth. Steaming hot, and highlighted with lemon zest it was potently herb-laden, almost to the point of being medicinal, and you KNEW it was good for you!




4. Soups and salads
Choice of 1 Vegetarian soup, 1 Non-Vegetarian soup (we had this - clear soup with clams and seaweed).....

....and salad (amazingly crunchy lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, onion, (the non-veg variant had cooked calamari (squid) pieces as well) all drizzled with a tangy sweet-sour dressing. If there was ever a salad which would make me go on a salad-only diet, this was it - the superb crunch of the veggies is still vivid in my mind...


5. Sushi

One CANNOT go to a Japanese food festival and not sample Sushi! At this stall, there was the Real McCoy - a tiny conveyor belt, holding black plastic trays of sushi, just like proper Japanese sushi bars! There were 2 mini tasting platters - one vegetarian, and the other non vegetarian. While they looked the real thing, (I loved the way the peeled tomato slice was held on top of the rice with a ribbon of seaweed, to mimic the look of salmon!) neither I nor T and M liked the taste so much. Except for the tamago (omelet) and cheese one, which was soaked with a sweet vinegar. Maybe its an acquired taste....




6. Curry Rice

This tasted exactly like airplane food - stodgy, dodgy, yet tasty! After the challenge to our tastebuds and cerebral cells with the sushi, this was like homecoming - with a sense of culinary relief, we hit the familiar shores of spicy curry and rice. :) There were 2 options each in the veggie and non-veg sections.


We chose to go with the simple rice-with-chicken-curry, though in my heart I was pining for the chicken katsudon curry and rice (deep fried crunchy chicken with curry and rice, instead of the relatively virtuous simple chicken curry that we had)


7. Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is a delicious way to ensure we eat our vegetables - a pancake bursting with julienned veggies (and meat, if you prefer), all barely swaddled together by some batter, pan fried to golden-brown deliciousness.

Especially when topped with bright orangey-red confetti of chopped pickled ginger, a squiggle of Japanese mayo and Japanese Worcestershire sauce. Sticky, spicy, hot, crunchy, sweet.....all kinds of yum! :)


8. Dessert

There were 3 options to choose from here - green tea tiramisu, red bean pastry and vanilla ice cream with orange glace. We plumped for the first 2 (seemed more Japanese than ice cream!) and they brought the foodie evening to a perfect closure.

The tiramisu was very soft-set (read: barely set) and apart from a faint mustiness, did not set my olfactory sensors buzzing with any discernible green tea scent. (Maybe the green tea used in food is not the sweetly fragrant green tea used in cosmetics?)


Anyhow, it was a pretty dish, layers of green tea jelly, sponge, and green tea custard and was simple and sweet. The red bean pastry was your standard issue "pastry" (read: layered cream cake), except that the layers were sandwiched together not by cream, but with sweetened red bean paste. The top was satisfyingly cloaked with whipped cream though. :) This was easily the better dessert of the two, and my doubts about eating mushy beans for dessert were unfounded. :)


We also did some foodie shopping - I bought a pack of ready-to-eat meals (cooked udon noodles with seasoning mix) and sachets of miso soup (my tryst with miso stock in the noodles section was promising enough for me to blow up 250 Rs on soup sachets)
The icing on the cake was the pocket-book on Japanese cuisine that was thrown in for free with my purchases. Its a handy ready-reckoner with gorgeous photos, the kind thats specially printed for a packaged-foods company or a cookware manufacturer, not available in bookstores for sale.

It is so satisfying to end a memorable evening with tangible (especially edible) souvenirs of its memorable-ness! :D

Knee-bucklingly good chocolate brownies - Not!

EDIT: The recipe for the brownies has been added at the end of the post!

A few (OK, several!) months ago, the beautiful, vivacious SD had brought a treasure trove of chocolatey goodies to work - something she and her sis-in-law "had just whipped up over Sunday". There were chcolate cookies - very nice on their own - but it was the brownies which made me pause, as a chocolate-induced endorphin rush flooded me and made my knees buckle. I
kid you not. I begged for the recipe right away, as I licked every little crumb from my fingers.

Madame obliged (going so far as to ring her SIL and jot down the recipe while cradling the phone between ear and shoulder - you know!) and voila! the key to chocolate heaven was with me. In typical fashion, I promptly failed to act on it and the sheet of paper with the recipe on it remained as a bookmark in my diary for a loooooooooooooooooooong time.

Till yesterday.

In an uncharacteristic display of determination, industriousness and organisational skills, I got together all the ingredients and whipped up a pan of brownies. Or, more accurately, brownies to-be-which-weren't. :(

While the crumb was spot-on (oh so tender with a whisper of crunch) it was the inside which was my Waterloo. Sticky, gooey, squelchy, rich, oozy.....you get the picture dont you?




The taste was awesome (obviously - anything that's entirely made of chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar and nuts CANNOT taste bad)but the texture was disappointing, to say the least.

And NOW we come to the main points of this post (Yeah, yeah, there ARE some.... :) )

Point 1: Identify your mistakes so you don't repeat them.

Possible areas of error could have been:
1. Got the quantities wrong: I didn't bother using scales to measure out ingredients by weight - and Mum did say that she felt that there was too little "binder" in the ingredients I'd assembled - something to hold the brownie together

2. Got the bake time wrong: My oven has no timer nor a temperature control or indicator. I go by the eye and the old-fashioned test of inserting a skewer and see if it comes out clean. I think I pulled out the pan 5-10 minutes sooner than I should have, terrified that the crust would begin to burn and go bitter. What I should have done was cover the pan with foil and cook further, allowing the interior to firm up while the crust stayed that glorious tender brown.

Point 2: Salvage the mess you have created - or know when its un-salvageable and trash it

There was no way I was going to trash all that richness, especially when it tasted fine. (I have thriftiness ingrained in my middle-class soul). So, the way out of the chocolate morass was: Ta da! Serve the brownie with ice cream! No one demands the perfect soft-set texture of a brownie when its swamped by a scoop of vanilla ice cream - all you need is a chocolatey sweet rich base - in fact, the gooeier, the better!

As for those bits which refused to get cut in neat squares and dissolved in sticky crummage - well, I rolled up my sleeves, and rolled them up in Indian-style mini laddoos - chocolate balls! The downside was all that butter and oil from the almonds started separating and gave the surfaces of the laddoos a glossy sheen. Problem solved by simply rolling them (gently!) in some powdered sugar/cocoa, like truffles. And served as truffles, too! :P

As Julia Child says, part of being a good cook is to know how to salvage culinary disasters - AND grin and bear it, without self-chastisement or self-castigation when they turn out to be unsalvageable.

All I can say is - given my track record of grinning - I am in the reckoning for being Mere Julia's favourite student. :)

EDIT: Recipe for brownies, courtesy SD:

Ingredients:
225 gms dark cooking chocolate/chocolate compound
250 gms butter, softened (at room temperature)
2 tsps vanilla essence
250 gm castor sugar
3 eggs - beaten (my 2 cents here: dont whip air into them, just beat them lightly - we dont want airy puffy brownies)
150 gms ground almonds
100 gms - walnuts, chopped

Method:
Melt the chocolate and butter ina double boiler. Once melted, remove from heat and mix well.
Add sugar+vanilla, mix well
Ass eggs, fold them in and then fold in the ground almonds.
Add the walnut pieces and bake in a greased-and-floured baking tin/pan at 170 deg C for 25-30 mins, till a skewer inserted into the centre of the pan comes out clean
Pull the pan out of the oven and let it cool under a fan.
Cut into neat squares, you can dust the brownies with icing sugar to decorate them.

Yields 25-30 brownies (squares of 1.5 inchesx 1.5 inches)