But then something else came up.
As of this weekend, I just realized, I have been in Japan for a month.
My, how the time does fly!
...no, that's not the "something else," but it deserved mention nonetheless.
The "something else" is, as you may have guessed, another adventure in Japanese cuisine!
... and of course, by Japanese cuisine, I mean cuisine Edo makes while living, breathing and shopping in Japan, not cuisine that has any particular Japanese slant or flavor.
Sometimes it does.
Just not tonight.
BUT FIRST.
There really was some interesting weather, all right?
As mentioned last time, today (Wednesday) was cool and overcast. So cool and overcast, in fact, that I made a point of opening every single window within my reach (yes, even my porch windows--I found the screens!) so as to save energy and get all that outdoorsy goodness working for me.
And then, wonder of wonders, it began to rain!
How cool is that.
...ok, for a desert girl like myself, it's pretty cool.
It doesn't rain in September, unless there's some late monsoon storm that got lost on its way to the Pacific.
So, now the windows were open not only for the cool, but for the glorious, glorious scent of rain.
...my laundry has probably suffered for this. I'm not sure, but I suppose I will find out one way or the other.
Anyway. Moving on.
I have had a nice chunk of beef (what sort of beef? absolutely no idea, that's what sort of beef) sitting in my freezer for a while now; I had intended to make it this past weekend, as some of you may know, but was foiled once again (the last time was with chicken for omuraisu) by my inability to remember to take things out to thaw the night before I want to actually cook them.
Last night, ah ha! I remembered.
And thus, today was beef day.
I also had a bag of small potatoes (new potatoes? yukon potatoes? who knows) sitting around getting old, so I thought to make it an all-american experience and whip up some mashed potatoes to go with my beef.
I wanted to make caramelized shallot mashed potatoes, but unfortunately, was stuck with garlic, as the supermarket I popped into today had nothing even resembling shallots, and as we all know, onions aren't the same.
...they aren't. I'm serious here.
There was asparagus though, albeit less-than-fresh-looking asparagus, so I got some of that to round off my meal.
So, later on, I set my potatoes (peeled, of course) to boil with a few cloves of garlic along with. I halved my asparagus, foolishly discounted the whole "tough ends" theory and did not peel them, popped them into a bowl with some butter, lemon, salt and pepper, covered them up and microwaved them for a bit. Sliced my beef, and pan-seared it in butter with salt and pepper.
What I'm not telling you is that my timing was such that the asparagus was done a good few minutes before everything else, so I am guilty of snacking on it during the rest of the cooking. Oops.
I also popped a few leftover rolls in the toaster, just to make things really American.
After my beef was done, my potatoes were just about ready to mash. I then had a brain wave, and took a ladel of the boiling potato water, dumped it into the beef pan, pulled up all the beefy-buttery goodness, and dumped it back in with the potatoes. Beefy-garlic potatoes! What an idea!
... might have been better if I had actually cooked the potatoes in this beefy mixture for more than a few moments at the end, because I honestly could not taste the difference.
Did clean the pan up pretty well, though.
Finding no potato masher in the kitchen, I improvised using that same ladel, mashing up my taters with some whole milk, butter, salt and pepper. Scooped some out onto a plate with my asparagus and beef, and voila, a dinner fit for a king:
I'm telling you, even though it was a bit over-cooked for my tastes (easily remedied next time), lemon butter asparagus is truly one of the finer inventions of man.
I will be less dubious next time and peel the bottoms, though. I wound up gnawing a few bits, omnivorous teeth sans canines not really working for me. (Curse you, pediatric dentist!)
I now have something like two meals of potatoes left over, and at least one meal of beef (which tasted somewhat like steak, if a bit tougher.) Talk about the meal that just keeps giving!
The bag of potatoes was... oh, maybe 128 yen, the beef was 304 yen, and the two bunches of asparagus were probably 200 yen together.
Not bad, eh?
I really do need to find a better way to make garlic mashed potatoes, though. Perhaps mashing the garlic up with the potatoes instead of taking it out beforehand? Hm.
Admittedly, I also should have been using cream, but my hips are wide enough as it is, thank you much.
Also, I honestly think that I haven't eaten beef since leaving America-land. It just isn't the meat of choice over here. And, of course, my stomach has already adjusted to that sort of beef-free diet. Moments after swallowing my tasty, tasty protein, I could feel the danger ahead and immediately went for the tums.
Sometimes I really just think that my stomach makes things up to suit itself.
In other exciting news!
Melon is coming to visit this weekend, arriving Saturday night and going back to Kyoto (lucky girl) on Tuesday morning.
At first, I worried that my humble inaka town would bore her.
And then, after the tiniest bit of searching, I found this (I've hyperlinked the date to the venue's website):
| lynch. オープニングサポート；DEATHGAZE |
| |||||
Hello, hard rock concert (or, hard rock live, as we say around here) right in my back yard!
What are the odds.
And, after a bit of checking, I have discovered that I like both of these bands.
And even though today is one month after the on-sale date...
I managed to snag us some tickets.
Which apparently were either the last ones, or at least some of the last ones.
Good timing? Yes, I think so.
A fun weekend? Oh, indeed. You can't go wrong with a hard rock concert, I always say.
So really. Productive day off?
I think so.
This is Edo, signing off full of beef, potatoes, and hope for the future.
...goodness, that got silly all of a sudden, didn't it?
No comments:
Post a Comment