Herms, Heims, and Fierce Brosnan

2009-09-12T09:38:00.003-04:00

Summer Meals:

Well, now that fall semester has started, it seems the appropriate time to update a few dinners we had toward the end of the summer. I'll start with some garlic and rosemary crusted lamb chops and cold avocado soup.

The soup was "souper" easy (sorry). I sauteed up some onions and garlic and then added some low sodium vegetable broth, a chopped ripe avocado, a chopped up stalk of lemongrass, and a pinch of paprika. I let that simmer away for a little while, hit it with the immersion blender, and chilled it down in the fridge. To serve, I topped it off with a couple slices of roasted red pepper. It was a nice, crisp way to start off the meal.

Next, I did a roasted half rack of lamb that I crusted with a paste of rosemary, garli

c, and sea salt. Again, this was super easy. I just coated the lamb with the garlic and rosemary mix, seared it for a couple minutes over high heat and then put it in the oven for 13 minutes to get the internal temp up to 135. Slice and serve.

The story I need to tell here, though, is about the serving dish. While we were in Japan this summer, I bought a number of pieces of ceramics and glassware that will be seen here in coming weeks. This wasn't one of them. This piece is actually a sashimi serving plate that Mina's sister's husband's mother (my mother-in-law-in-law?) made. We were visiting their house for a local festival when my interest in Japanese ceramics came up and she opened up a cabinet in the kitchen and said, "Take whatever you want!". There must have been 200 pieces that were all handmade and all gorgeous. While I am sure she'd be shocked to see lamb served on a dish meant for fish, I think it looks great.

Anyway, I served this lamb with a Lyeth Cabernet Sauvignon that was simply fantastic for just under $10.

2009-08-22T10:51:00.003-04:00

Duck!

On our return from Japan I jetted off to a conference in Chicago, but had a few days to spend with the 'rents before coming back up to Syracuse for the fall semester. While in Cleveland we went down to the West Side market to pick up some pork bellies and also to get some duck breasts so that I could cook a dinner. I poked around the internets and came across a recipe that looked like it would work well, so gave it a try. The meal was a nice team effort.

First course: Cold Summer Squash Soup (the Lovely Mina). This soup was incred

ibly easy to make. We sauteed up some onion and garlic, added some peeled, seeded, and chopped zucchini and yellow squash, and some chicken broth. This boiled down until the squash were tender, then we hit it with the immersion blender and chilled it. We served it with some chives as a garnish.

Side: Barley Couscous with Olives and Cilantro (Mom). A pretty straight fo

rward dish except that we used barley couscous as opposed to regular. I thought this had a deeper, "woodier" flavor than plain couscous.

Side: Roasted Peaches with Balsamic Glaze (Me). Another super easy dish that sounds tougher than it is. The glaze was 2 parts soy sauce to 1 part lime juice (the original recipe was for 1 cup of soy sauce, which seemed excessive to me. I started with 1/4 cup), some grated ginger, a clove of grated garlic, and a few drops of sesame oil. This gets reduced, strained, and chilled. I quartered a couple of fresh peaches and sauteed them in some of the duck fat that rendered from the breasts (next) until they were tender and caramelized. I then spo

oned the glaze over the top of them.

Main Course: Seared Duck Breasts. Incredibly simply preparation, though the first step of leaving the breasts uncovered, skin side up in the refrigerator for several hours is key. I am not sure where I learned this trick (probably Alton Brown), but since the refrigerator is so dry, this helps in leaching some moisture out of the duck skin and aids in the crisping. Just before cooking, I scored the skin of the duck breasts, seasoned them up, and then seared them over medium heat with just a little olive oil. Enough fat renders from the duck that you wouldn't need any oil at all if you were using a non-stick skillet (though, as we know, you can't make a pan sauce in a non-stick skillet!). Anyway, just let the breasts cook away skin side down for 8 minutes or so, checking them periodically to be sure the skin isn't burning. Give them a flip and continue cooking until the internal temp. reached 130-135 degrees. Slice on the bias and serve.

The nice thing about this meal is that you could go red or white on the wine without issue. The peaches would go nicely with a crisp white, while the duck itself would be beautiful with a pinot noir or a zinfandel. A fruity belgian beer would also be an inspired choice, I think.

2009-08-22T10:43:00.004-04:00

More Ramen:

We're back from Japan and I've got another photo of ramen to upload (yes, I did eat things other then ramen, but I am just not as excited about those as I am about the soup).

Ok, so this time is a Pork Bone/Soy Sauce ramen that I had in the Lovely Mina's hometown of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. I'd had a couple of beverages prior to arriving at the shop, so you'll have to forgive me for not remembering the name...In any event, the chances of any of my loyal reader(s) ever getting to Iwaki for a bowl of soup are pretty small, I imagine.

In any event, this was a heck of a bowl of soup. The marriage of pork bone soup and soy sauce base was lovely, as was the addition of cabbage, which I had never seen before. The crispness was appreciated. We found that adding a dollop of "toubanjan", a Chinese hot bean paste, was key for this soup. It added a complexity that the base soup was missing. Plus, it was spicy!

With an order of gyoza, this was a fabulous way to end an evening out.

2009-07-25T09:48:00.002-04:00

Ichiran Ramen in Shibuya:

Here in Japan on a research trip, I need to get my ramen jones on. I figure to eat ramen at least 5 times in 4 weeks, which will mean I'll easily surpass my yearly required salt intake in those 5 meals, but it will be worth it.

First stop was a place called Ichiran (there's now a Manhattan branch) that is an outpost of traditional Kyushu Pork Bone Soup Ramen in Tokyo. I'd been to the original Ichiran in Fukuoka with my brother years ago, so this was a nice start to the tour. They let you choose your noodle doneness, the amount of garlic, spiciness, and really importantly the relative "thickness" of the soup. I went all out and got the strongest soup possible. No messing around here.

One of the really interesting things about the shop is that they put you in individual stalls to eat, rather than seating you at a counter or tables. You never see any of the workers. It's a bit like visiting a Ramen Love Hotel, actually. I suppose the rationale is that you'll slurp your noodles to your heart's content if there's no chance of being observed in your revelry. Works for me.

Anyway, I had my soup and a soft boiled egg and it was wonderful. The noodles had just the right amount of spring to them and the soup was nicely balanced. The Chashu pork was tender and sweet. No complaints at all. Next stop on this will be some Pork Bone/Soy Sauce Ramen, which I think is the king of Ramens. I'm hoping to find the best of the best on our return to Tokyo on Friday. Good times!

2009-06-01T12:30:00.004-04:00

Dinners Out the Yin-Yang:

As a recent comment points out, it's been a while since I posted and I have backlog of dinners to report about. So, here goes. We'll start with the most recent and go from there.

Hickory and Applewood Smoked Pork Shoulder - This was my project for this past weekend. A

week of watching grilling specials on FoodTV had me wanting to get outside to spend some quality time with my Weber. Anyway, I picked up a 3 pound hunk of pork shoulder at

Wegmans the other day. Saturday night I rubbed it down with a mix of salt, pepper, garlic powder,

onion powder, paprika, celery seed, cumin, and coffee (the last three items I ground down in my mortar and pestle). Sunday I fired up the grill, generally using about 15 kingsford briqu

ettes to maintain a temperature between 225 and 260 degrees F. I also soaked some hickor

y and some applewood chips in water for about 30 minutes and put them on top of the first two sets of coals to provide some extra smokiness. You're looking at about 90 minutes per pound of pork shoulder to get it up to an internal temperature of 185 degrees F. Mine cooked from about 1:00 to about 5:00 on the grill and then I took it inside to finish it in the oven (250 degrees) while I prepared the rest of our meal. Q purists will shudder at this move, I suspect, but I figured that I'd gotten all the smoke penetration I was going to get in those first several hours and didn't want to deal with going in and out of my apartment to check on the meat and fire while I was doing other

things. Anyway, once the meat hit 185, I pulled it out of the oven, let it rest for a while, and commenced shredding wit

h a couple of forks. Look at the smoke ring in the first picture there! Bliss!

For sauce, I whipped up a combination of ketchup, cider vinegar, worcestershire sauce, molasses, grated garlic and grated onion, and chili powder. I also sliced up some poblano pepper that I had smoked for the first 90 minutes of the time the meat was on the fire and added that for a little oomph. All in all, this was a fantastic meal and one of those things that's so inexpensive (the meat was $0.99 per pound) that you can't believe it tasted that good. We had some cole slaw on the side.

Mahi-Mahi in Herbed White Wine Sauce with Grilled Lemons:

OK, this one was from a couple of weeks ago. The sauce started with some sauteed onion and garlic, to which I added fish stock and white wine in roughly equal parts (the original recipe called for bottle clam juice, which I had forgotten to buy at the store...). I added thyme and oregano to this and let it steep on very low heat while I prepared the rest of the meal. The fish was simply salted and peppered and pan seared. The lemons were sliced very thin and caramelized over low heat as well. To finish the sauce, I added some butter at the end. Over the fish I sprinkled some walnuts that I had roasted, some sliced roasted red pepper, and finally some fresh chopped flat leaf parsley. I had a Washington State Dry Riesling (Covey Run) with this.

More to come from my archives of the last couple weeks.

2009-04-12T11:08:00.003-04:00

"Bluto: Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

Otter: Germans?

Boon: Forget it, he's rolling." - Animal House

Anyway, I am rolling. A couple more good recipes to report on today as I sit with a cup of coffee listening to The Be Good Tanyas.

First up is a modification of an epicurious.com recipe for veal chops with white beans and spinach. First, rub your veal chops with a mashed up clove of garlic and then salt and pepper them and cook them in a skillet over moderately high heat for about 4 minutes per side. They should be about medium rare at that point. Nice and pink on the inside.

The next step is the beans and spinach. Add a little olive oil to the skillet and saute up some garlic. Add your white beans and spinach along with 2 teaspoons of red wine vinegar

(apple cider vinegar would also be nice in this, I think). Then, add about 1/2 cup of chicken stock that has 1/2 teaspoon of corn starch whisked into it. Stir this around in the pan with the beans and spinach as a way of deglazing and picking up the goodness that is left over from searing the veal chops. The sauce should come together pretty nicely. A minute or so before you think it's ready, add a teaspoon or so of chopped, fresh rosemary. Salt and Pepper to taste and drizzle a little of the sauce over the veal chops. The vinegar and rosemary are what really make this dish. They add a brightness that is really unexpected.

The original recipe for veal chops with radicchio is here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Veal-Chop-with-Radicchio-White-Beans-and-Rosemary-109029

The next recipe is my take on pot au feau. I was poking around the freezer a

nd noticed that we had some scraps of italian sausage and turkey breast, so I decided to experiment and this is what I came up with. I sliced up some garlic and about 1/4 pound of turkey breast and sauteed them up in a cast iron dutch oven. To this, I added about 3/4 of a chopped up sweet potato and 1/4 cup of white wine to deglaze. Then, I added chicken broth to cover, the green end of a leek, a bay leaf, and some dried thyme and parsley and put the lid on the pot to let it simmer until the potatoes were cooked through and tender.

In the meantime, I fried up the italian sausage and sliced it up and then quickly sauteed some

sliced up brussel sprouts in the fat rendered from the sausage. This, a 4 oz. salmon filet that I

had sliced up, and half of a can of red kidney beans went into the pot about 10 minutes before serving. At that point, I also pulled out the leek tops and the bay leaf. Ladel the soup into serving bowls and top with a little grated parm.

I had a nice 2006 Las Locas Granache-Syrah from Spain along with this dish. This was a surprisingly versatile dish. The flavors were bold enough to hold up, but I think a dry white or a dry rose would have worked equally well.

2009-04-05T10:34:00.003-04:00

"Spring is Here, Spring is Here / Life is Skittle, Life is Beer..."*

Well, a couple of interesting dinners to post today. Things have been pretty busy with school, Model UN, and a trip to St. Simon's Island for Spring Break, so I've not had a chance to get these posted. Anyway, these are a couple of nice Springtime dishes that should go over well with my reader(ship).

First, from Food & Wine magazine is a penne pasta dish with asparagus and fresh peas. We had a surprising warm snap in the middle

of March that prompted me to look for something light and green to make for dinner and this happened to be in the most recent issue of the F&W magazine. As the recipe suggests, I really do recommend fresh peas and they really only need to go into the dish at the very end so that the residual heat from the pasta cooks them just slightly. I was satisfied with the recommendation of a Sauvignon Blanc to go along with this. For sure, you wouldn't want an oaky Chardonna

y, but a Pinot Grigio or a Viognier might be an interesting alternative choice. Here's the recipe: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/penne-with-asparagus-sage-and-peas

The other recipe is a White Turkey Chili that I found on the Epicurious.com website.

White Chili is one of those things that, at least for me, I remember exactly where I had it for the first time. It was at the Pufferbelly Restaurant in Berea, OH and we were there for a Father's Day

or Easter brunch, if my memories serves. Anyway, white chilis are such a change of pace from the usual tomato based chili recipes and this one was fantastic. I ground up my cumin seeds fresh in a mortar and pestle and I think that added a really nice brightness to the flavor. I le

ft the jalapeno out because the Lovely Mina isn't a fan of really spicy food, but then added it in to my chili at the table. I really recommend this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/White-Turkey-Chili-4560

It was chili, so a cold, crisp beer was the obvious drink of choice. If I was going to have a wine with it, I think I would have chosen something red to deal with the cumin.

* Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, by Tom Lehrer

2009-02-15T09:56:00.004-05:00

Valentine's Dinner, 2009:

Somehow, Mina and I were both in the mood for lamb this weekend and I wanted to try something new, so I poked around on the net to find a recipe for a rack of lamb. Racks, like most roast type meats, are relatively hard to find in Japan (likely correlated with the lack of ovens as standard equipment in most kitchens...), so for most of my cooking life were not really an option.

Anyway, we picked up a frenched rack of lamb and some magic transpired (partial thanks to Epicurious.com - http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Spice-Coated-Rack-of-Lamb-for-Two-with-Arugula-Avocado-and-Blood-Orange-Salad-351234).

For those who don't want to click through, here's what you do: mix a tablespoon of ground cumin (freshly ground is best), a tablespoon of ground coffee, a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa

powder, and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Rub this all over an 8-bone rack of lamb, then sear on all sides in a couple of tablespoons of canola oil. Whack that into a 400 degree (F) oven for 7 minutes, then top the lamb with a tablespoon of unsalted butter than you chop into little pieces.

The recipe calls for a couple of sprigs of thyme, but I just sprinkled some dried thyme over the lamb at this point. Continue roasting in the oven until the internal temperature of the lamb hits 130 F (about 7-8 more minutes). Actually, mine was at 140 after 5 minutes, so I pulled it at that point and let it rest for 10 minutes. Carry over got me up to 144 degrees, which is what my meat thermometer calls medium rare for lamb. I was a little worried that it would be over done, but as the picture indicates, it turned out a lovely pink on the inside. The texture was perfect and the flavors complex. This was really one of the best lamb dishes I have made.

I served it with the avocado-arugula salad that is suggested in the recipe and some wild rice. We had a 2006 Nieto Senetiner Cab from Argentina along with it. Dry, but not too dry, and it complemented the spices on the meat nicely.

For dessert, a chocolate mousse with golden raspberries.

2009-01-03T09:19:00.003-05:00

First of 2009 - Pork Tenderloin with a Peanut Satay Sauce (adapted from a recipe by Bobby Flay - http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/pork-satay-recipe/index.html):

I had a taste for some Asian flavors yesterday, so put my thinking cap on, searched around the internet, and eventually decided on this recipe. The original is actually for skewered pork, but I decided to roast my pork tenderloin whole and then spoon the sauce over at the end. I also had neither the time nor enough peanut butter to marinate the pork for the recommended 2-4 hours, so I just skipped that step. My guess is that you'd have a much spicier, richer dish for that step.

Anyway, I started by making a half batch of the sauce, substituting a couple of squirts of Sriracha sauce for the recommended Thai bird chili pepper. This kept the heat in the background and at a level that the Lovely Mina, who is not (yet) a big fan of spicy food, can handle. With that done, I seasoned my smallish pork tenderloin and seared it over medium heat (well, medium on my stove, which is actually pretty hot) for 4 minutes per side. I then finished the meat in a 375 degree oven until the internal temperature hit 150 f. I rested the meat under an aluminum foil tent for 5+ minutes and then sliced. On went the sauce.

In an ideal world I would have served this with some jasmine rice. But, we didn't have any, so I went with some simple pan roasted potatoes and a salad. An ice cold beer on the side completed things.

2008-11-09T21:07:00.002-05:00

Two American Classics (Pot Roast & Chicken and Dumplings):

When I lived overseas, one of the most interesting questions that came up was always, "What is American food?" When you think about it, Italian, French, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, German, all of these different ethnic cuisines are pretty easy to identify. But, what's American? We eat all of the above cuisines withouth thinking about it and have "Americanized" versions of them all. The question, though, of what's truly American was always an interesting one for me to think about. The easiest answers are barbecue, for which there is clearly not a non-Americ

an alternative, and Thanksgiving dinner. A little thought, though, and a few other things come to mind: fried catfish, hushpuppies/cornbread, crabcakes, etc.

This weekend, though, I had in mind to make a good old-fashioned pot roast for Mina. She'd never had it, and with the weather turning colder it seemed like just the ticket. Unfortunately, she was feeling kind of sick on Saturday, so I didn't get to the supermarket until a little later on Saturday than I usually do. Without 4 hours to do the pot roast, I had to come up with something on the fly, and decided on another great American dish: Chicken and Dumplings. I'd actually never made it before, but it was simple, and a fantastic stick to your ribs kind of meal.

I had 4 chicken thighs that I salted and peppered and then roasted in the oven at 375 F for about 45 minutes. In the meantime, I sauteed some onion in butter and then added flour to make a roux. In went some carrot and celery along with some herbs (sage and rosemary) and some chicken stock and white wine. Once the stew had formed, the chicken went back in. The dumplings were just bisquik and milk (the basic recipe for biscuits). I just dropped balls of the dough into the stew and let them steam to finish.

Sunday, I had time to do the pot roast, so just braised it in my crock pot. When the meat was falling apart tender, I strained the cooking liquid and reduced it by 2/3. Right at the end I mixed in a little heavy cream to make a fantasic pan sauce/gravy.

These two dishes were examples of classic, simple, American food. Not too heavy, but hearty. Hopefully Mina liked them, and hopefully the pictures do them justice.

2008-09-24T22:07:00.002-04:00

SSO and the Eroica Trio:

Mina and I had tickets to the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra's season opening concert this evening, which featured the Eroica Trio doing Beethoven's Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Cello in C Major (Op. 56), or the "Triple" Concerto. I had only ever heard this concerto on a live CD as performed by Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, and Yo-Yo Ma with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, but had heard that it is one of the least performed of Beethoven's catalog because it is so difficult to find either three top virtuoso soloists who are willing to work together as a team or a trio that is technically proficient enough to really handle the piece. I was curious to see

what a world class trio like the Eroica group could do with it.

My impression was that this group was good, but not great on this very difficult pie

ce. They have become famous for performing it with various orchestras, but I was left with the feeling that this fame may come more from the novelty of there being a group that focuses on this concerto rather than their actual proficiency with it. The violin part (Susie Park) was played very, very well, and was the clear winning part of the piece. The piano (Erika Nickrenz) was quite good, if a little timid at times. The cello (Sara Sant'Ambrogio) part, however, was likely a little out of range. The liner notes to the piece indicate that it is written to stay in the cello's high register so that the instrument doesn't get lost between the violin and piano, and this may account for the tone problems that were (at least to my unprofessional ear) apparent. When the trio played a tango for their encores, all of the issues I had with their sound on the Beethoven disappeared. Perhaps that piece is just too much?

The concert was iminently enjoyable, however. I like to hear groups that challenge themselves and that seem to be having a good time doing so. The Eroica Trio shared smiles with each other, with the conductor of the SSO, and with the audience throughout (especially when the audience erupted in applause after the 1st movement...something that happens way too often at SSO concerts...)

The SSO part of the concert prior to the intermission was well performed. The Star Spangled Banner was a nice touch to the beginning of the season and their renditions of Shostakovich's Festive Overture, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain (which reminded me of the movie score to Midway), and Borodin's Polovtian Dances were all spirited, well rehearsed, and full sounding.

All in all, this was a nice opening to the season. Hopefully there will be other high points to report as we go through the year.

2008-09-14T12:06:00.005-04:00

Post Comprehensive Exams - A Return to the Kitchen:

With my comprehensive exams in the rear view mirror (actually, I won't know whether I passed for another week or so, but the tests are over, anyway), I have had some time to spend in the kitchen and have had a couple of good dinners. I recently got the October issue of Food & Wine magazine and put together the Baked Orecchiette with Pork Sugo that was featured. Think baked ziti, but rather than that mass produced buffet lunch staple, this was just a fantastic dish, full of rustic flavors.

To start, brown off about 1 pound of meaty western style pork ribs, and then sweat a mix of diced onion, carrot, celery, and garlic in a cast iron dutch oven. Deglaze with about 1 cup of dry red wine and add a 14 oz. can of diced tomatos and a sachet of thyme sprigs and a bay leaf. Return the meat to the pot and reduce the liquid by about half. At this point, add enough chicken stock to just cover the meat. Cover up the pot and simmer for 1.5 - 2 hours. Once the meat is tender, remove it from the bone and shred it in a food processor. Use an immersion blender to chop up the vegetables in the liquid.

The final step is to boil about 1/2 poind of orecchiette pasta (medium shells or farfalle would also work) for about 5 minutes (the package I used suggested 11 minutes to al dente, so you are cooking the pasta only part way). Mix the pasta with the soup and the shredded por

k and pour it all into a casserole and top with shredded parmesan cheese. This goes into a 375 degree oven for 15 minutes or so, or until the cheese is golden brown and delicious. I drank part of a bottle of a South African Cabernet Sauvignon with this dish.

For dessert, we had found some fresh raspberries on sale and so I decided to make a ch

ocolate lava cake that had berries inside rather than chocolate. A super-rich dessert, but the raspberries added a brightness that most lava cakes sacrifice for decadence. Not only was this a

delicious dessert, it looked nice too!

2008-07-24T08:33:00.002-04:00

Scallops and Chinese Egg Noodles:

Here's an interesting dish. We had some scallops in the freezer and some dried Chinese egg noodles in the pantry, so I whipped together a sort of Asian fusion pasta. The scallops were pretty simply seared with sea salt and black pepper. For the noodles, I chopped up some parsley, green onions, and garlic and made a sauce of lemon juice, olive oil, fish sauce, and cilantro. I topped it off with some lemon zest for color and brightness of flavor, and we had ourselves a really nice, easy dinner. I went with a California Sauvignon Blanc with this that set off the brightness of the sauce nicely.

2008-07-24T08:26:00.003-04:00

Tempura:

Mina is a pretty amazing cook. She usually writes about the recipes she really likes on her own blog, but the other night she made tempura and it was so good I decided to put a picture and description here.

The selection included mushrooms, pumpkin (actually, buttercup squash, but it is the closest thing we can find to Japanese kabocha pumpkins at a reasonable price), kaki-age (a mish-mash of sliced onion and carrot), and shiso leaves. Along side she had some marinated and fried beef strips. Bowls of white rice and tempura dipping sauce completed the meal. We had ice cold beers with this dinner, but I really wanted a nice, cold sake. One of these days I will do something about that jones.

In any event, this was the first time Mina had ever made tempura for me. Hopefully it won't be the last!

2008-07-21T22:16:00.003-04:00

An Amazing Dinner - Chicken with Spicy Plum Sauce and Focaccia with Tonnato and Anchovies:

My reader knows by now that I take a chance now and then when I cook. While I am usually pretty excited about the things that I cook, there is once in a while a meal that I am really surprised by, a combination of flavors that is new, unexpected, and just a real treat. This weekend's chicken dish was one of those. This was another Food & Wine magazine recipe, slightly modified to fit my pantry and Mina's tastes for spiciness.

The chicken is remarkably simple. I sauteed about 1/8 cup of diced red onion in butter, then added a black plum that I had chopped into 1/2 inch chunks. The plum breaks down, and at that point, I mixed in 1/8 cup of Thai Sweet and Spicy Chili relish and a tablespoon of dijon mustard. All of this went into a food processor, and that was the sauce. I grilled up some chicken thighs and slathered on the sauce.

The tonnato sauce for the focaccia is made with anchovy filets, capers, roasted red peppers, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and mayonaisse all whacked together in a food processor. A little olive oil on the bread and a slice of red pepper and another anchovy filet on top, you have a little side dish. Just a lovely, fresh flavor.

Together with this I had a Camelot Pinot Noir. Normally, I find this wine a little weak, but I trusted the guy at the wine store who said this was a good wine to go with plums. Pretty decent, if not spectacular.

The food, though. Wow. If only I can do this well again next week.

2008-07-20T10:47:00.002-04:00

2nd Anniversary Dinner:

We stopped into the Wegman's supermarket on Tuesday night to look for a suitably special meat selection for our anniversary dinner and saw a couple of strip steaks that were just about the perfect size and at a decent price.

In thinking about what to do with these, I wanted something that was simple enough so as not to overpower the perfection that is a nice steak, but also something that would be a good mixing of our American and Japanese cultures. What I found was a recipe for Chimichurri sauce, a light, flavorful steak sauce that is popular in Argentina, that I modified to take advantage of some Japanese ingredients that we had in the pantry.

Chimichurri is usually made with white wine vinegar, parsley, cilantro, garlic, onion, and lime juice. I substituted rice wine vinegar, shiso for the cilantro, and kabosu juice (kabosu is somewhat similar to yuzu for those familiar with these asian citrus fruits), and what resulted was a nice, sparkley sauce that helped cut through the richness of the beef (and the egg, as pictured).

To go with the steaks, I sauteed some mushrooms in garlic and olive oil, Mina made some dinner rolls, and we had a nice salad. A nice California zinfandel topped the meal off.

2008-07-16T22:04:00.002-04:00

2 Years:

Today was Mina's and my 2nd Anniversary. Time certainly flies, there's no way to put it otherwise. I knocked off the studying early and came home to cook a steak dinner for the two of us that turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself (photos and recipes over the weekend; please be patient, dear reader).

The past year has been one of all the ups and downs that I guess you expect in married life, and probably on or two that you don't. Mina had a couple of surgeries on her hands and minor as they were, it still had to be scary for her to go through that in a foreign country. Still, the carpal tunnel syndrome she seems to have picked up from her days as a computer engineer seems to have been relived.

I look at her talking on skype to her mom and sister and recall my doing so almost weekly in Japan and realize that it's really all about family, and I am glad I have mine.

2008-07-13T10:32:00.003-04:00

Pizzas (Again):

I was watching a recent Wine Spectator Podcast about matching wine with pizza and realized we hadn't had a homemade pizza in a while. In fact, the last really great pizza we had was on our recent trip to Japan, where we had two really incredible pizza experiences. Most people might not think of Japan as a pizza mecca, but from my point of view they do an incredible job on pizzas with these incredibly thin crusts, pay careful attention to using only the best toppings, and never overload the pizzas. Add to that what seems to be an incredibly loose legal code where open flames are concerned, and you get a wood fired pizza oven in even the smallest local pizza joint. I don't have one of those, but it doesn't stop me from trying to make that crispy, thin crust pizza that I love so much. Anyway, we had a pizza lunch at a little place on a side street in Shibuya, and then my brother- and sister-in-law took us to a fantastic place called La Piccola Tavola in Eifukucho, which apparently has quite a reputation. Here is a Japanese blog posting about it with some pictures: http://blog.goo.ne.jp/fujisawamix/e/7c8c72916cb60f6c8edf9e6228a28217

Anyway, I am always trying to replicate that thin, crispy crust, and this time, I got closer than I ever have. One of the pizzas is something I would call a sausage carbonara pizza (it resembles a recipe for sausage carbonara pasta that I found in a Jamie Oliver cookbook, I think). Brush a liberal coating of olive oil onto your pizza crust and top with shredded asiago cheese. Next comes your sausage; I used hot Italian chicken sausage. If you have a pizza stone, heat it in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes or so, then slip the pizza in. About halfway through your cooking time (6 minutes for me), pour one scrambled egg over the pizza. When the crust is done to your liking, remove the pizza from the oven and top with some freshly cracked black pepper.

The second pizza I made was a pretty traditional Margherita. I brushed some olive oil onto the crust and topped with a thin layer of tomato sauce. I followed this with a little asiago cheese and some fresh, shredded mozzarella. When the pizza comes out of the oven, top with torn basil leaves and, if you like (I do), a torn up slice of prosciutto. Don't let the pizzas sit around too long, though, or all your hard work in rolling out a sublimely thin crust will be lost!

It was hot today, so I went with a chilled rose from Italy with these pizzas. The one I picked up was a Centine 2005 Rose, which is a blend of sangiovese, cabernet, and merlot (http://www.banfistore.com/product.php/catID/4/prodID/11). I found it a nice option for the price. It was crisp, stayed out of the way of the flavors on the pizzas, and has a relatively low 12.5% alcohol content, which makes it nice for hot summer nights when you might want to have more than...2 or 3...glasses...

2008-07-01T08:49:00.003-04:00

Turkey Leg Osso Bucco (Adapted from Emiril Lagase and Epicurious.com):

I usually go to the supermarket without a clear plan of what I want to cook for the weekend meals. Mina and I maintain a reasonably well stocked pantry and have 15 varieties of herbs growing on the balcony, and this allows me to arrive at the store and create menus in my head based on what looks good in terms of meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit.

This week I saw some turkey drumsticks and a turkey back that were pretty reasonably priced and I remembered seeing this take on Osso Bucco on Emeril Live a few months or more back. The forecast was for thunderstorms all afternoon, so this seemed like it might make for a good Sunday dinner.

The recipe is relatively simple. Chop some onion, carrot, celery, and garlic. Dredge the turkey legs in seasoned flour and brown on all sides. Sweat the vegetables and deglaze the pan with some white wine. Add a can of tomatoes, some thyme and a bay leaf, and return the turkey legs to the pan. Add some chicken or turkey stock to the pan and cover, placing the whole thing in a 350 degree oven. Braising takes about an hour, but be sure to check the level of the liquid every 15-20 minutes, adding more stock as necessary.

In the meantime, prepare a gremolata of chopped parsley, lemon zest, and orange zest to top the dish with when serving. 20 minutes prior to serving, add a cup or so of Orzo pasta to the pan (it looks like rice, but is pasta). When the orzo is al dente, the meat should be falling off the bone and ready to serve. I macerated some strawberries in balsamic vinegar and honey and served those as the dressing for a simple salad.

2008-06-29T10:31:00.005-04:00

Right back at you with Cornish Hens (or, as my uncle would remind us all, Baby Chickens):

So, a couple of weeks ago at the supermarket cornish hens were on sale. Whenever I can get a pair for less than $6 I usually jump at the chance because they are pretty versatile and usually make for dinners that look as good as they taste. Anyway, I found an interesting recipe for Cornish Hens with a Maple-Mustard Glaze on epicurious.com and gave it a shot. This is an incredibly easy preparation and would be equally good on oven roasted chicken thighs/breasts/legs, turkey, etc.

For the glaze, mix 2 tablespoons of maple syrup, 1.5 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of dijon mustard, and 1 teaspoon of dried thyme in a small saucepan, simmer, and whisk until the butter has melted and the glaze has come together. Preheat your oven to 350 (f). Dry off the bird(s) and season inside and out with salt and pepper. I chopped up some mushrooms, onions, and mixed these with a little more dried thyme and stuffed the birds for a little added flavor, but that is optional. Set your timer for 50 minutes, and put the birds in the oven on the middle rack. Baste them with the maple-mustard glaze every ten minutes. At 50 minutes, insert a thermometer into the deepest part of the thigh muscle and continue to roast until the internal temperature hits 175 (f). At this point, remove the birds from the oven and let them rest. The carry over heat should push the temperature of the meat to about 180.

I split the birds into quarters and served them with mashed potatoes and corn bread (half a recipe from the side of the Quaker corn meal container, plus a teaspoon and a half of dried thyme) with mushroom gravy (from a simple roux and some homemade mushroom stock) and a side salad. The skin of the birds was incredibly flavorful, with a nice balance of sweetness from the maple syrup and spiciness from the mustard. The thyme in the background really tied the dish together, however. My wine for the evening was a 2004 Altos las Hormigas Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina. I thought it did nicely in terms of playing off the thyme flavor that I had used as a central component of the birds and the mushroom gravy.

2008-06-28T08:55:00.004-04:00

Gnocchi:

I was in the mood for some simple, classic flavors the other night and had recently picked up a package of gnocchi at the supermarket, so I decided just to serve it with a simple marinara with some herbs. This time I made the sauce from scratch, sauteeing some garlic and red pepper in olive oil, adding a can of tomatoes (crushed by hand), some oregano and thyme, and a little sugar. Once those flavors had come together a bit, I added some white wine and a few basil leaves and let it simmer away while I put together a salad. When the gnocchi was just short of cooked, I added it to the sauce and then finished with some shredded basil leaves, a little asiago cheese, and a slice of prosciutto. Very nice, clean, simple flavors.

I had a glass of a Spanish granache along with it that was excellent for the $7 that I got it for. Mina already threw the bottle away, though, so I will have to get the name of it when we visit the wine shop on our next shopping excursion.

2008-06-17T08:16:00.006-04:00

Salt:

When I was younger, I never gave much thought to salt. It was just one of those things that you had in the kitchen. Though it's an ingredient in most recipes you see, I often cooked without it, preferring to experiment with other flavors instead. A few years ago, though, Mina came home with a little box of Guerande Sea Salt from France (http://www.eco-natural.com/greysalt/fleurdesel.html) and we tried scattering a few crystals on some charcoal grilled beef. The flavor was one of those true revelations and started us down a path of collecting "finishing salts" from around the world. Now, we have 7 or 8 types of salt in our kitchen, the vast majority of which are used sparingly right at the table as a way of giving a piece of meat that extra little pop. Currently our list of finishing salts looks like this:

1) Le Paludier Fleur de Sel de Guerande (link above)

2) Noto Peninsula Natural Sea Salt (from Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan - http://www.atthemeadow.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_88&products_id=360&zenid=d9ee5261119b03c10ce36425fc0ebf05)

3) Kumejima Natural Sea Salt (from Okinawa Prefecture, Japan　-
http://www.sekaino-osio.com/shop/searchdetail.jsp?mode=itemid&val=000111&x=43&y=9)

4) Maine Sea Salt (http://www.maineseasalt.com/)

5) Himalayan Pink Salt

Anyway, this past weekend we found some flanken style short ribs (cut across the bone rather than perpendicualr to it) of the sort you might find grilled in a Korean BBQ and decided to grill them up and serve with some different salts. I also put out some grated daikon radish and Yuzu Ponzu to use as a dipping sauce for a change of pace. The meat was pre-seasoned with "sansho", a Japanese version of szechuan pepper (http://www.asiafood.org/glossary_1.cfm?alpha=S&startno=27&endno=51), mashed garlic, and olive oil and was then grilled (unfortunately, it was pouring rain, so I did this on the grill pan indoors rather than on the charcoal grill). I served a salad of mixed greens with some nectarine and slivered almonds and some roasted potatoes along side. The French sea salt was as good as you expect it to be, but we were surprised with how nice the Noto salt was with this flavor combination.

The other dish I feature here today was last night's dinner. We had some chicken sausage in the freezer and I decided to try a frittata with it. I fried some thinly sliced potatoes until they were crisp to form the base and then sauteed the sausage with some red onion and a little sliced jalapeno pepper (one of my missions is to secretly teach Mina to like spicy foods). I laid the potatoes on the bottom of a cast iron pan, covered these with the sausage mixture, and then poured over 6 beaten eggs. This went into a 325 degree oven until the eggs had set, and then was topped with grated cheddar cheese and cilantro. The basic idea for this came from a Guy Fieri recipe that I found on foodnetwork.com, but the potato base was my addition to the party. A quick and hearty dinner that would obviously be a good breakfast as well.

2008-06-06T21:46:00.004-04:00

Ramen:

Mina and I are back from a quick trip to Japan for my sister-in-law's wedding, some meetings at Ritsumeikan University, and visits with friends. This was our first trip back since moving to the U.S. for graduate school, so it was good to see most of my friends (my sincerest apologies to those I didn't have time to get together with...I hope to be back over Christmas/New Year or next May at the latest), drink my fill of ice cold Japanese draft beer, and eat, eat, eat.

My regular reader will know that Mina and I drove 9 hours round trip this past Japanese to visit a Japanese supermarket in New Jersey and eat Ramen, so it will come as no surprise that I had a few bowls while I was in Japan. If you have never had a true bowl of ramen, you should realize that your experience with those packets of instant noodles that you get at the supermarket pale in comparison. I would be hard pressed to come up with another instant/convenience food that is so far away from the real thing. Maybe Totinos Pizza Rolls?

Anyway, this time around I had 2 really memorable bowls of Ramen. The first was on Day 2 of the trip, in the Akebonobashi section of Tokyo near Tokyo Women's University Hospital. This was a place called "Tengu" that claimed to have some of the more renowned "Tan-Tan Mein" in the city. Tan-Tan Mein is a ramen in a spicy soup that is heavy on the ground sesame. I have had it with both white and black sesame, and have to say that I prefer the white sesame version, which is what this shop specialized in. Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I ordered the shop's suggested heat level, though I could probably have gone a level or two higher for lunch without any problem. The noodles were perfectly al dente, the pork was lovely, and the soup was flavorful, with its sesame base very potent. We also shared an order of fried Gyoza, which were good, if not fantastic.

The next great bowl I had was closer to the end of the trip, on Day 15. We were back in Tokyo after 8 days of R&R in Mina's hometown of Iwaki and were staying with my sister- and brother-in-law in Eifuku-cho, which is just out west of Shinjuku. During my travels, I had noticed an outpost of an Eifuku-cho ramen joint among the ramen shops at Nagoya Station, and we got directions to it from my brother-in-law. The first thing that struck my about this bowl was its sheer size. This was one place that was not skimping on noodles, shar-sui pork, or soup. One taste, and I knew we had found something special.

The soup had a depth and complexity to it that I guessed (correctly, I later learned) came from smoked bonito flakes. It's hard to explain exactly how this tasted, but the combination of this flavor with the soy sauce "tare" that formed the backbone of this bowl was stunning. We ordered ours with raw eggs, and allowed those to cook in the hot broth while we slurped down the noodles. The char-sui was expertly cooked, and also carried the unmistakable taste of having been cooked over charcoal. This was a really great bowl of ramen.

Now, if only I could figure out how to make a soup that good, I could open a ramen shop here in the U.S. and be an ambassador for this amazing noodle experience. Anyone else out there have any great ramen stories or shops to recommend?

2008-04-30T22:52:00.002-04:00

The CDs that Changed Things (2):

When I was about 16, my uncle gave me a CD of Paul Simon's "Graceland" (so, you now know about when I was 16...). Of course, this was in the days before portable CD players or iPods, so my first task was to copy it onto a cassette tape so that I could actually listen to it in my car or walkman. What happened next?

Well, there are probably only 3 or 4 rock/blues albums from my pre-college years that define who I am in terms of my musical tastes and Graceland is one of them. If there was one album that changed me, this was it. Had there ever been an album that combined rock, blues, and folk with these strange, seductive African rhythms and melodies before? Probably. Had a kid from Cleveland, Ohio ever heard it before? Aaaah....No. This was way off in left field.

I went off to Turkey as an exchange student and Graceland went with me. "You can Call me Al" is one of the 5 greatest videos every made, but before I ever saw it, before I was ever "soft in the middle", I was "Al".

How? Well, imagine yourself at 16 years old and in Turkey. This was 1988 and the U.S. was not too far removed from bombing Libya, having Marines barracks blown up in Lebanon, or from the Iran hostage situation. Names were being called out to match kids with host families and they were calling for someone named, "Alan Gregory". This not being me and there being 100 other kids waiting to find out who their host families were, I paid no attention to this call for someone clearly not me.

99 kids had their names called and I was left waiting. I walked up to a coordinator and asked about the situation and was roundly chastised for not raising my hand when my name was called. "You never called my name", I said. "Of course we did. You are Allen Gregory, " came the reply.

You can Call me Al.

"A man walks down the street

it's a street in a strange world

Maybe it's the third world

maybe it's his first time around.

He doesn't speak the language

he hold no currency; he is a foreign man..."

You can Call me Al.

I spent, now, 2/3 of my life in this situation, learning it as I went along.

This, by the way, cracks me up:

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=BJwsLFDhoqM&feature=related

As compared to the original:

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=HOiVaE-pKqM

2008-03-30T20:44:00.002-04:00

The CD's that Change Things (1):

I was walking home from the office today (it's about 2 miles, which makes a nice bit of exercise after a long day of reading) and a song came on the iPod that got me thinking. There are certain songs, and for those of us born before, say, 1990, albums that are so clearly attached to a time and a place. Like the smell of chocolate chip cookies or the ocean, they can bring back memories that are so vivid - sometimes painful, sometimes happy, but always worth having. I thought I might write a few entries about some of those albums from my life and see what memories you, my reader(s), have. Anyway, I'll start with the song I heard today and the album it came from.

(What's the Story) Morning Glory - Oasis (1995).

The song I heard today that prompted this post was "Some Might Say", and it had me thinking back to my first year in Japan. I had first heard of Oasis through a review of the album Definitely Maybe that was on "All Things Considered" on NPR. There was something about Liam and Noel and their tendency to get into fisticuffs on stage that just said, "You have to get into this group" to me. That first CD was fantastic, Morning Glory was truly a CD of its time and place.

I bought this CD in the fall of my first year in Japan for the first time, and while the first set of memories that came back as I listened to "Some Might Say" were of my then girlfriend's apartment and the "Oh god, you're listening to that CD again...?" looks she used to give me whenever I put Morning Glory on, what I really associate that CD with is Karaoke in Gifu.

My gaijin friends and I used to go to this tiny little karaoke bar on the weekends that had probably 8 seats along the counter and room for 4 or 5 more people at one table. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the place, but I am sure I averaged one night per week there over the course of 3 and a half years. They charged 500 yen ($5, or so) cover and 500 yen per drink, and you could sing all you wanted. For some reason this little joint ended up attracting this eclectic crowd of English teachers, office workers, college kids, and borderline yakuza types. I practiced my (very poor at that point) Japanese on virtually any young lady who was unlucky enough to sit next to me, and probably watched Titanic (without sound because people were singing) 50 times.

Somehow, though, a night out there was never complete without somebody breaking into "Don't Look Back in Anger" (Track 4 on the CD). Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was Charlie (our stereotypically depressed Brit), sometimes someone else. I can't really describe it in a way that does it justice, but that was simply the perfect song for 1996/1997 in Gifu, Japan.

Anyway, listening to it again today it's remarkable how well that CD stands up over time. "Wonderwall" is still a pretty perfect pop song, even if I have no idea what it's about; "Champagne Supernova" is just as over the top and self-righteous as it sounded 12 years ago; and "She's Electric" still brings a sly smile to my face (especially the "she's got one in the oven/but it's nothin' to do with me" line).

I'll leave you with a shot of the normal goings on from that karaoke bar in Gifu. This would have been Halloween, 1997. Brad, Me, Keiko, Shannon, and Naoko (L to R), with me and Shannon doing our best Puffy (or, Puffy AmiYumi for you Americans). Good times.

2008-03-10T19:09:00.005-04:00

A Couple of Winners:

Well, dear readers, it's been a couple of hectic weeks at school, but here we are on Spring Break. For the undergrads (and those who remember that experience), that seems to mean trips to Jamaica, Mexico, and other destinations far more exotic than anywhere I ever went for S.B. For PhD students, though, Spring Break means studying 9-6 instead of 8-7 plus 9-11. We've got to recharge the batteries too, you know!

Anyway, that all means more time in the kitchen, so today I have two recipes to introduce. First, is a lovely bay scallop risotto. Now, I much prefer the big meaty sea scallops that brown up nicely, but in a pinch bay scallops are quite yummy. They also cost MUCH less. This week I picked up about 300 grams for $3.00, where the same weight of sea scallops was going for $10. Bay Scallops are small, though, so the sear doesn't work as well as you might like. This is why I tend to use them for pasta sauces, mousses, and this risotto.

Here, I started with a bunch of shrimp skins that we had been saving in the freezer. Those, a clove of garlic, some onion, celery, carrot, bay leaves, and peppercorns went into a pot to simmer for a couple of hours to make a lovely shrimp stock. Following that I went with basic risotto technique. In the last 5 minutes of cooking I added some thinly sliced mushrooms and the bay scallops. When ready to serve, I hit it was some paremsan and some chiffonade of red and green shiso leaves. Shiso leaves, for those who don't know, are sometimes called Japanese basil, though I find them to taste nothing like basil. Still, they are a pungent herb with an incredibly fresh taste. Lovely for this dish. A nice, dry Spanish rose was the perfect wine for this.

In the meantime, I also had the urge for some Mexican food. I love enchiladas and so decided to go with some meatless, black bean enchiladas for something a little lighter. I sauteed up some onion and garlic, and then mixed in a can of black beans that had been drained and rinsed. Add some cumin and paprika to taste, along with a diced jalapeno. You could go with more jalapeno or even a habanero here if you live with someone who likes spicy food (which I do not, so I do what I can to sneak some spice into our food...one of these days she'll get used to it, I figure).

I poured some enchilada sauce on the bottom of the caserole and then warmed each tortilla one by one in a little oil. Fill each, roll them up, cover with sauce, and top with cheese. These go into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes or so until the cheese is nice and bubbly. I served these with some fresh cilantro, sour cream, and lime juice.

Hopefully I will have another chance to cook this week, but it all depends on how the research papers go...

2008-03-02T16:31:00.002-05:00

Tai Murray and the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra:

This past Friday was the 5th of our 6 subscription concerts at the SSO, and actually the last that we will be able to attend. Our 6th concert is on May 9th, and we are leaving for Japan from Cleveland on the 10th, so I'll be giving those tickets to some lucky person here in Syracuse.

Anyway, several weeks ago we heard Jennifer Frautschi play Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole and this time was Tai Murray playing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E. Ms. Murray is one of the most accomplished violinists, for her age (she was born in 1982), that I have heard. She had an incredibly clean tone, and showed good command of the very technical sections of the Mendelssohn. Surprisingly, Amazon.com does not have any CDs by her available, though I suspect that we will begin to see some in the near future.

With that, it's time to look forward to next year's SSO season.

2008-02-17T17:44:00.002-05:00

One of Mina's Favorite Dinners:

I was talking with Mina the other day and asked her which of the meals I had cooked for her over the last 5 years or so she had the best memories of. Pretty quickly she came up with this one, a steak or london broil with cranberry-bourbon sauce and feta cheese. My recollection was that the recipe originally came from foodnetwork.com, but when I looked I couldn't find it. Anyway, it's a pretty simple dish that combines some simple flavors but, as Mina put it, in a completely unexpected way.

For the sauce, take a handful of dried cranberries and cover them with bourbon. Let these sit for 30 minutes or so. In the meantime, thinly slice a couple of cloves of garlic, and put a fine dice on half of a small onion. You'll also need some demi-glace sauce, though I didn't have any, so I mixed together a little ketchup, worcestershire sauce, and beef stock and let this reduce until thick.

Cook your steak or london broil to the desired doneness. While the steak is on, saute your garlic and onions and, off the heat, add the cranberries and bourbon. Light this on fire to burn off the alcohol and when the flames have died down add your demi-glace. Let the sauce reduce then until it's nice and thick and bubbly.

To serve, just spoon the sauce over the steak, cruble some feta cheese on top, and garnish with a few torn basil leaves (thyme works as well). We had some pan roasted potatoes that were finished with some sea salt from the Noto Peninsula, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, and a salad. A fruity zinfandel or pinot noir would be my red wine of choice with this dish.

2008-01-21T21:11:00.001-05:00

A Couple of Recent Dinners:

First, recently, Mina and I have been growing a kit of portobello mushrooms that my mom and dad gave her for Christmas. We finally were able to harvest the first batch, so I've been concentrating on mushroom-centric recipes the last few days.

The pizza pictured here is a portobello mushroom pizza with mozzerella and parmesan cheeses. It came out with a nicely crisped crust and just the right amount of tomato sauce. I finished it with some nice, fruity olive oil just before serving.

Below, is one of the dinners that came out of our trip to the Mitsuwa supermarket. There's saikyo miso marinated steelhead trout, red and white mixed miso soup, steamed white rice, Japanese pickles, a salad. Actually, there's also a sauteed, soft boiled egg, which was one of Mina's most interesting creations to date.

Flavor, flavor, flavor. This couple of meals certainly had it in spades.

2008-01-19T09:20:00.000-05:00

Bobby Corno at the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven's 3d Symphony:

Last night was the 3rd of our 6 concert series at the SSO. This was the one I had been waiting for as, knowing Beethoven better than any other composer, I thought this would be the real test of what our orchestra can do. Overall, I felt that they handled a challenging program well, with my notes below.

The first piece on the program was the overture from Coriolan, Op. 62 which, interestingly, I neither own nor can recall having heard performed before, but which I am going to have to add to my collection. The second piece was the 2nd Piano Concertom Op. 19 and the soloist was William Wolfram. The 2nd is probably the most "Mozartian" of Beethoven's piano concertos and I thought this was an interesting choice for this program because it is so much an earlier work than either the symphony or the overture that we heard.

So, the 3rd Symphony, Op. 55...I actually thought the orchestra worked this piece very well. The Musical Director, Daniel Hege, started off with a kind of clinic in which, working from early musical sketches of the symphony from Beethoven's notebooks, showed how the ideas in the finished version came together over time. It was interesting to hear how the complexity of the chord and rhythmic structure developed from an early idea into the piece we know today. Following this, the orchestra went straight into the symphony itself. This is where Bobby Corno came into play.

Who is Bobby Corno, you ask? Well, he is the fictional first chair horn player in P.D.Q. Bach's New York Mills Philharmonic who, on the track "New Horizons in Musical Appreciation", flubs the horn part in the first movement of Beethoven's 5th.

Anyway, there was a Bobby Corno moment in the horn section during the first movement of the 3rd last evening. The horns came together and handled the 2nd and 3rd movements without flaw, though they seemed to drag a touch in the 4th movement and that detracted a bit from the sense of urgency that you usually feel at the end of a Beethoven symphony. The first chair oboist was spectacular, however, and really held things together along with the first flute player.

So, next time it's Ravel, Saint-Saens, and Debussy.

2008-01-11T08:54:00.000-05:00

An Interesting Set of Lists:

Returning to my interest in ranking things; I was looking around the web a while back for some recommendations of classical music to acquaint myself with. I am always looking for new things to listen to, especially now that I study 10-12 hours each day and like to have something to listen to other than the bustle of the other PhD students in my suite. So, I stumbled across this page at the Australian Broadcast Company's radio station: a ranking of their listeners' Top 100 Concertos of all time. There is also a link there for other Clasic 100 surveys, where they have the top 100 pieces by Mozart, for piano, among Operas, and of classical music overall.

I found the list very interesting. Especially intriguing to me was Max Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto being in the Top 5. This is a piece that I first heard on a recording by Akiko Suwanai (my favorite living violinst, and someone I've written about here before) in 2002. I had grown up on the Beethoven Violin Concerto and always assumed it would remain my favorite. So it does, but the Bruch had really grown on me over the years as has Bruch's Scottish Fantasy for Violin, which also comes in on the list.

Anyway, for those looking for a primer on classical music, or who want something to guide them to some pieces they haven't heard or considered listening to before, I think these Classic 100 lists are a very nice tool.

Anyway, happy listening.

2008-01-06T09:40:00.001-05:00

Mitsuwa Marketplace:

Yesterday, Mina and I took a drive down to Edgewater, NJ to do check out and do some shopping at the Mitsuwa Marketplace (http://www.mitsuwanj.com/en/index.htm), a Japanese supermarket complex. You may ask, "4.5 hours each way to go to a supermarket?", but my answer would be that the bowl of Ramen at the outpost of Asahikawa, Hokkaido's Santoka Ramen (http://www.santouka.co.jp/) was worth the drive all by itself. Santoka turns out to be more of a ramen chain than I would go out of my way to try if I was in Japan - it turns out that in addition to the original shop in Asahikawa, there are 42 branches in Japan, 1 in Singapore, and 5 here in the States), where I usually try to limit myself to one-off shops or at least to the original shops of those that have expanded, but here in the U.S., having not had a professionally made bowl for 18 months, and even not having had a passable bowl of instant noodles for that long? Again, easily worth the 9 hours I spent in the car yesterday to get there and back. The soup was rich, the noodles done perfectly, and the char-sui pork tender and flavorful.

For the lovely Mina, I think the trip was all about sea urchin. If you ask her, uni-meishi (sea urchin roe on rice) is the thing she has most been wanting to eat in recent months, so it was nice to go to a place where the yellow stuff was available. We also picked up some grilled eel and some fish marinated in saikyo miso that we will eat this week. We also picked up a bottle of kabosu (a Japanese citrus fruit) juice that will be nice for making marinades and dressings, top end ingredients for dashi soup, and other items. I also bought a very cool serving dish to add to my growing collection of plates and bowls.

The weather on the way back to Syracuse last night was much less than ideal, but with my belly full of pork bone soup, I really didn't mind.

2008-01-01T11:15:00.000-05:00

New Year's Eve Dinner:

Ok, so there is a bit of a story behind this one. Over the summer I spent a good deal of time driving around the U.S. Mina and I went to Maine for our Anniversary, to Athens, OH for my brother's master's program graduation, and to Indianapolis for the formula one U.S. Grand Prix. While on these trips, I listened to some books on CD that I had borrowed from our local public library. One of these was the unabridged version of "Undaunted Courage", by Stephen Ambrose, which is the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition of the American west. In any event, the descriptions of the delights of buffalo meat that Ambrose, Lewis, and Clark give got me to wondering about what it tastes like. I had seen buffalo steaks at the Wegman's supermarket, and thought New Year's was a special enough occasion to splurge (actually, two 6-ounce steaks were $9.99, which is about $13.33/pound - not outrageous, really).

So, the menu: Buffalo Sirloin Steaks, Caramelized Onion Confit, Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Mashed Sweet Potato, Red Wine Braised Mushrooms, a salad, and homemade rolls (courtesy of the Lovely Mina). The steaks I did on our grill pan, 3 minutes on one side and 1:30 on the other, and they came out just perfectly medium-rare. I slathered them with olive oil along with sea salt and black pepper before grilling. Buffalo steaks are incredibly lean, with no noticable fat either marbled or on the outside of the meat, but ours came out juicy and tender. The verdict: In short, I am sold on buffalo. The meat had a very nice mouth feel, and the only way I can describe it is to say that is was somewhat sweet.

The onion confit I had prepared before, and was quite easy. The onions were browned and then simmered, covered, in 1/3 cup of stock, a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, and a star anise. After 20-30 minutes, the pan lid was removed and the sauce thickened. The mushrooms I sauteed in olive oil for about 1-2 minutes with garlic, and then simmered in red wine until the wine had reduced by 2/3, finally adding a small pat of butter to bring a little shine to the sauce. The sweet potato was simply boiled in satled water and then mashed with a little butter, some rosemary leaves, sea salt, pepper, and a head of roasted garlic. For the salad, we used some mixed greens, cherry tomatos, kalamata olives, feta cheese, a little sliced bosc pear, and a few slivers of toasted almond.

We toasted with Domaine Ste. Michelle Blancs de Blanc, my favorite bubbly, and had some Ravenswood 2005 Lodi Zinfandel to match the buffalo steaks. All around, a very nice dinner to see out 2007.

2007-12-22T08:41:00.000-05:00

Syracuse Symphony Orchestra:

Last night was the 2nd concert of the 6 concert series we bought for this season of the SSO. Because I am a student, we got a pretty extraordinary deal on these tickets (12 total tickets for $60) and going downtown for a concert once a month or so is a nice change of pace.

Anyway, last night featured Yefim Bronfman as guest soloist on piano and was the best of the several SSO concerts I have seen to date. The orchestra opened with Duke Ellington's jazz interpretation of the Nutcracker Suite, which was a very nice piece that I had not heard previously. I thought the orchestra handled the "jazziness" of it well, though they didn't swing as tightly as a "Pops Orchestra" that is more accustomed to playing jazz might. I do recommend the piece, though, as a great change of pace. It's available on a CD called "Three Suites", which I have linked to at the bottom of this post, that also includes a jazz version of Grieg's Pier Gynt Suite that must be very cool.

The 2nd piece of the night was Mozart's 22nd Piano Concerto (in E-flat, K. 482) and was the first to feature Bronfman. While this concerto does not, for me anyway, have the depth and intricacy of the 21st, 23rd, or 24th that bracket it, it is a very nice, lush piece and the 3rd movement is familiar to even casual classical listeners. I was struck by two things while listening to Bronfman's interpretation of the piece. First was how, for a larger, gruff looking man, he had such a supple style at the piano. He really only tickled the keyboard. 2nd, and this goes to my not being a piano player myself I suppose, I was struck at the number of passages that I had imagined in my mind's eye were 2-handed runs which were actually done only with the right hand. Quite amazing to watch, really.

The last piece of the night was Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto (in C, Op. 26). It is on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's list of the top 100 concertos of all time (http://www.abc.net.au/classic/classic100/concerto_list.pdf), which I am working my way down, but last night was the first time I had heard it. As you would expect, it was darker and more harmonically challenging than the Mozart, and Bronfman was somewhat more animated in his playing. He has recorded all of Prokofiev's piano concertos, though, so is perhaps more "married" to this piece. As challenging as this piece clearly was, I was impressed with how our SSO handled it.

So, next month we are scheduled to see Ingrid Fliter play Beethoven's 2nd Piano Concerto and the full orchestra to the "Eroica" Symphony, which should be as true a test of their overall sound as we will get in this series.

Link to Duke Ellington's "Three Suites" at Amazon.com

Link to Robert Casadesus' Mozart 22nd Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra at Amazon.com

Link to Yefim Bronfman's Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concerto at Amazon.com

2007-11-03T14:03:00.000-04:00

Better Late than Never, I guess...

A comment from my reader and the end of the semester have combined to get my off my duff to write something this evening. A year ago, I thought the full course load and research assistant duties in my PhD program had pushed me about as far as I could go in 15 weeks, but this year adding a teaching load to that has been even more demanding.

Anyway, with that out of the way, I am on the downhill slope in this adventure. One more required class and a dissertation. How hard can that be...?

So, a dinner. My parents came to Syracuse a while back so my Dad could be a guest speaker in my HR class (he talked about occupational safety) and while they were here he and I made Osso Bucco, or braised veal shanks. This was the kind of meal I really missed preparing in Japan because these bone in cuts of meat are difficult if not impossible to find. Anyway, this was a pretty standard recipe for the dish, and the most interesting thing I did was to modify the gremolata (which usually is made with parsley, pine nuts, lemon zest, and olive oil) by nixing the pine nuts in favor of some chopped up garbanzo beans since my mom can't eat nuts.

We made some garlic mashed potatoes to go along with the veal and downed more zinfandel than maybe we should have...But, a fun night with a spectacular meal.

2007-10-21T09:26:00.000-04:00

Asparagus Soup, Pork Roast, and Balsamic Roasted Potatoes:

My parents returned recently from a 40th Anniversary trip to England and Scotland and brought a new Jamie Oliver cookbook (Jamie at Home: Cook your way to the Good Life), which is as yet unavailable in the U.S., for me for my birthday. I like the simple way he cooks and the way he uses classic ingredients and classic techniques to come up with interesting twists. This weekend I thought I would try out a couple of recipes from the book, and we had them for dinner last night.

First was an asparagus soup. This was super easy. Just chop up a rib of celery, some leek, and some onion, and sweat these in olive oil. When translucent, add a pound of chopped up asparagus (saving the tips for later). Into this goes about half a liter of chicken stock and it simmers for 20 minutes or so. The next step is to use an immersion blender to break up the now soft pieces of asparagus and other vegetables. The soup takes on a lovely, vibrant, green color. Season with salt and pepper to taste and add the asparagus tips 5 minutes or so before serving so that they can soften up. Following Jamie's recipe, I served this with a soft-boiled egg (as Mina and I are fans of the runny yolk) and a piece of toast.

Next up was roast pork. I used a 1 lb. roast and rolled it in chopped rosemary, ground fennel seeds, salt and pepper, before searing this into a crust. After searing on all sides, it went into a 375 degree oven until the internal temp hit 155 degrees, then rested 5 minutes (carry over cooking got the temp to 160). Slice and serve.

Finally, the potatoes. I cut a couple of white potatoes into wedges and did the same with a red onion. I also smashed up some garlic. These went into the roasting pan, were seasoned, and hit with a good amount of olive oil. I poured balsamic vinegar over the top and this went into the 375 degree oven for 30 minutes.

In the end, I served this with a 2004 Cabernet from Columbia Crest Grand Estates in Washington, which I found to be well worth the $9 I paid for it. Pinot would have been nice as well. Mina had her usual ice cold beer.

2007-10-02T23:24:00.000-04:00

Ken Burns' "The War"

I am supposed to be studying; I have class to teach tomorrow, readings for seminar on Friday and then a short turnaround to seminar on Tuesday next week. However, I finished watching "The War", Ken Burns' documentary on WWII on PBS this evening and wanted to get some thoughts down about it.

First, I have to ask, what was the deal with the Norah Jones song? I am a fan of hers', but can't quite figure out what the point of her tune was. It was completely off the documentary track, far too jingoistic, and seemed to me to be a sappy attempt at pulling at the heartstrings of a viewership who is likely liberal and against the war in Iraq. Uncalled for, I thought.

As to the documentary itself, I was reasonable impressed with the approach Burns took. Understanding off the bat that he is, first and foremost, a filmmaker of the American experience, it didn't really surprise me that he approached WWII from a purely American point of view. It did surprise me that it took him until the last episode to deal in any way with the holocaust, and that he swept under the rug any implications of America's having ignored reports coming out of Europe for 5+ years that these attrocities were going on. "The Soviets must have been exagerating..." is all the explanation we got from Burns and his writers.

Actually, it seems the Soviets were at the root of most everything bad that we Americans did during the war. The firebombings of Dresden seem to have purely been a response to a Soviet demand that we bomb railroad depots that were sending reinforcements to the Eastern Front. Any ethical consideration of the tens of thousands of civilian lives that might have died thus the Soviets' fault. Bollocks, I say.

All that said, "The War" makes a powerful complement to the classics "World at War" and "Victory at Sea". It's not a stand alone documentary of WWII, but Burns never stated that is should be considered to be such.

2007-09-30T10:45:00.000-04:00

Spinach Curry with Homemade Cheese (Palak Paneer), Saffron Rice, and Tandoori Chicken:

I had a hankering for my favorite Indian dish yesterday, and decided that rather than buying some pre-made curry, that I would try my hand at making it from scratch. The results were, I thought, pretty good for a first attempt. The recipe was from foodnetwork.com

To make the cheese, bring a half gallon of whole milk to a boil (this made enough cheese for two; double the milk for a larger crowd), stirring occasionally. When the milk reaches a boil, add 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/6 cup of lemon juice and remove from the heat. Stir along the outstide edges of the saucepan until curds start to form in the center. Drain the cheese through a double layer of cheese cloth in a colander. Once it has cooled some, gather up the edges of the cheesecloth and squeeze out as much moisture as possible. Wrap the cheese tightly, place in a bowl, and weight it down with another bowl full of water. Set aside at room temperature for an hour or so.

For the curry, steam down 1 pound of spinach and pulse in a food processor. Heat 1/3 cup of vegetable oil and add 2 teaspoons of coriander seeds, 4 whole cloves, 2 whole allspice berries, 1 teaspoon of whole cumin seeds, and a cinnamon stick. Fry these until the cinnamon stick starts to uncurl. Add a thinly sliced onion and saute 3 minutes or so, until golden. Add 4 grated or pressed cloves of garlic and a 2 inch piece of ginger that has been grated. Once these flavors have melded, add two peeled, chopped roma tomatoes and continue to cook. Salt to taste. Finally, add the spinach back into the mix and allow to cook down until most of the visible liquid has disappeared. Finally, add some cream.

For the saffron rice, cook rice as you usually do, just add a pinch of saffron to the water. The tandoori chicken I made occording to the recipe on the side of a jar of commercially available tandoori paste (maybe one of these days I will make my own version of this as well).

I served this with a crisp sauvignon blanc, but an ice cold beer would have gone nicely as well.

2007-09-24T07:19:00.001-04:00

Stuffed Tomatoes:

I ran across some beautiful organic tomatoes at the market the other day and decided to make a stuffed tomato recipe I found on foodtv.com a couple of years back. This is a super easy recipe and a delightful, no meat meal. The recipe suggests these as a side, but I've always found them to be reasonably filling on their own, so served them with a side of simple spaghetti with marinara.

Anyway, you take a slice of nice crusty bread and dice it into 1/2 inch cubes. These go into a 300 degree oven for 8-10 minutes, or until they are toasted to your liking. Cut the tops off the tomatoes and use a melon baller to scoop out the insides. Strain out the seeds and put the tomato meat and juice in a bowl with the toasted bread. To this, I add some roughly chopped basil and marjoram (though rosemary, sage, or some other herb combo would be equally delicious), a clove of crushed garlic, some chopped up kalamata olives, salt and pepper, a little olive oil, parmesan cheese, and a small ball of mozzerella cheese that has been diced.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and fill the tomatoes with the mixture just described. Place the tops back on and use a toothpick to hold them in place. Bake the tomatoes for 30 minutes or so, or until they look nice and bubbly. Let them rest for a couple of minutes before serving with a side of pasta. I have made different versions of these using either chopped up shrimp, chicken, or italian sausage in place of or in addition to the olives. Last night I had an ice cold beer with dinner, but virtually any lighter wine you prefer, red or white, would be a good match as well.

2007-09-21T21:43:00.000-04:00

Suntory Whiskey:

Like a lot of folks, I think, my tastes in terms of preferred beverage have changed over the years. Where I might have been known to drink a wine cooler or two in my youth, I vastly prefer craft beers, interesting wine, and the occasional whiskey. Also like many young drinkers, I chose to experiment with single malt whiskeys once I had a few coins to rub together. Macallan, Glenfiddich, Oban, and Cardhu were the first that I remember trying, and somewhere along the line I fell in love with the peaty, smoky tasting whiskeys from Islay (Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg, etc.).

While living in Tokyo and working for the American Chamber of Commerce, I put together a series of networking events at which member companies acted as sponsors and gave away door prizes and the like. One of our best sponsors was Suntory, which was interested in raising the profile of its Yamazaki series of single malt whiskeys among the international business community in Japan. In putting these events together and working closely with Jun Ago of Suntory, I had my first taste of really excellent malt whiskey not made in Scotland.

Yamazaki Malt Whiskey is generally available in 10, 12, 18, and 25 year old bottlings. The 12-Year Old probably represents the best "bang for the buck", at roughly $35-40 depending on the retailer. The 18-Year Old, with its incredibly complex flavors and aromas is one of my two or three favorite whiskeys in the world, but will run you more than double the cost per bottle of the 12.

In March, 2006 my parents came for a visit to Japan and Mina and I took them to tour the Yamazaki Distillery outside of Kyoto. The plant manager arranged a special tour for us, along with a tasting of the Yamazaki 12 and 18 and the Hibiki 17 and 12 year old blends. It was interesting to see how the guys preferred the malt whiskeys while the ladies preferred the more rounded blends. The highlight of the day, though, was sharing a taste of the Yamazaki 25-Year Old (2,000 yen/$18 per taste), which was simply spectacular. Never in my life do I imagine forking over the 100,000 yen ($900) or so per bottle that Suntory retails this stuff for, but it was a spectacular taste experience.

2007-09-16T08:11:00.000-04:00

Evidence of a Debacle:

I listen to Morning Edition on NPR every morning as I am getting ready for the day and like most people like it for its thoughtful, in depth coverage of the news and the way it, like many programs on NPR, mixes brevity with discussion of serious topics.

Over the course of last week, one of the features on ME was the audio diary of a young Iraqi dentist, and I thought this was one of the best features on the program in a long time. Through the week we heard our dentist's stories and got a real sense of what life must be like for an average person in Baghdad. The final installment, as he reports on his best friend's kidnapping and eventual murder and beheading is just incredibly powerful.

As I listened, I thought for a moment that this diary should be required listening for our leadership. It is awfully easy to make decisions about going to war without considering the impact of such decisions on average, local people. The circumstances that have been created by the Unites States' rather arrogant attempt at regime change in Iraq are truly incomprehensible. Unfortuantely, and this may just be the cynic in me coming out, my guess is that a listen to this audio diary would only serve to reinforce the particular politically based opinions about the situation in Iraq of the individual listener. Those who think that we cannot abandon Iraq until the political situation there is stabilized will only feel more strongly that is the case. Those who believe that stabilization should be the responsibility of the Iraqis themselves will only have that opinion reinforced.

For those interested, here is the link to the audio diary on NPR*
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14412383

2007-09-09T20:46:00.000-04:00

Photo 4: 1998 - Hikone, Japan

In 1998 I took a couple of interesting trips, one of which was to a little town called Hikone (彦根) in Japan on the shores of Lake Biwa. There is a reasonably nice castle there, though it's not one that I would recommend going to unless you're in Japan for an extended period (Himeji, Matsumoto, and Nijo are the three I most recommend for those on shorter trips). The beef in Hikone, Omi-gyu, is absolutely worth going out of your way for. It is absolutely as good as the Kobe or Matsuzaka types of wa-gyu, but goes for a lot less (though these days the regional "brands" of beef are gaining in popularity in Japan, so this may have changed). I had a fantastic sukiyaki dinner there, though, for about $40 including drinks.

In any event, while I was there, I took a couple more black and white shots that I really like. The swan was one of my luckiest shots ever, as I really had no idea that the "wake" would turn out to be so clearly defined. I remember framing the shot thinking that it would be the white of the swan against the black of the water, and when I saw the way it turned out I knew it would be one photo I would always have to judge anything I took in the future against.

Later that afternoon I was walking through a plum orchard, and while it was September and thus abviously not plum blossom season, I caught sight of this gentleman walking alone. I never got very close to him, but if you think about it, he's probably just an average salaryman. When I look at the 1997 shot of the salaryman rushing through Nagoya Station and compare it to this shot of the same type of guy, I see so many of the Japanese men I know. After a busy day at work, nobody minds a nice, quiet walk in the park.

2007-09-09T08:10:00.000-04:00

More Food - Pasta with Sardines:

Talking with Mina this week, we both thought that having some fish over the weekend seemed like a good idea. The fish selection at our markets here in Syracuse is lacking, but at the local Price Chopper there is more of a selection than anywhere else and yesterday I was able to pick up some fresh sardines.

I am a big fan of Jamie Oliver's recipes, and made pasta last night based on his recipe for pasta with sardines (from the Jamie's Italy cookbook). I chopped up an onion and most of a fennel bulb and ground up some fennel seeds in a mortar and pestle. These I put into a frying pan over relatively low heat with some red chili flakes and let them cook for about 20 minutes, getting some good caramelization. In the meantime, we gutted and filleted the sardines, and sliced the filets into bite sized pieces.

Once the vegetables had caramelized nicely, the sardines went into the pan with some white wine, some chopped tomatoes, and some good kalamata olives (Jaime suggests the tomatoes, and I added the olives to the party), and I let the sauce cook down. In the meantime, I boiled water for pasta and got that going. Just as the pasta neared al dente, it went into the pan, and then into the pasta bowl. I topped it with the fennel fronds for color, and hit it with just a little lemon juice and some good extra virgin olive oil. Upon serving, a little finishing salt completed the dish. Pretty darn good, we thought.

2007-09-08T12:34:00.000-04:00

Photo 3: 1997, Nagoya, Japan

I took several of my favorite photos of Japan in 1997 and couldn't choose only one to post, so I thought I would tell the stories behind each of these. I was just starting to experiment with black and white photography in '96-'97 and these were some of those early efforts.

I had some good luck taking pictures of average people in average scenes with a 70-300 mm zoom lens, and these first two are a couple of those shots. I went to Nagoya Station on my day off (in those days I was teaching on a Tuesday-Saturday schedule, so this was a Monday evening), sat on the floor during rush hour, and snapped away. I caught this salaryman, headed who knows where, on a cell phone. This shot captured for me the pace of life of the average company worker in big city Japan.

The next shot is one of my absolute favorite people shots. Again, sitting on the floor at Nagoya Station, this group of high school students happened by, and I got this shot. In the late 1990's, high school girls were more and more on the leading edge of trends in fashion, technology, etc. and the coolest of the cool had begun to take on a sort of detached, disaffected attitude that I think comes across in this photo. Where the salaryman above seemed to have noticed me, and maybe wondered what I was doing and why I was taking his picture, these girls seem to be looking right through me to something far more interesting.

While the rest of Japan was dealing with the post-bubble economic malaise that has now lasted 15 years, high school students were taking advantage of a degree of economic and cultural power to cement themselves in a place of influence in Japanese society that remains today. One would like to think that this power had something to do with a sense of youthful optimism that young people in Japan maintained while their parents watched Japan's position as a world economic power erode. It would be interesting to see where these students are today and whether they have maintained their devil-may-care attitude, or whether they have softened somewhat.

2007-09-05T21:39:00.001-04:00

Drum Corps International:

The DCI Finals are on ESPN 2 this evening at 10:00 Eastern. Even though the finals were held in the middle of August and are being shown on ESPN, I didn't see any report on which Corps won, so get to watch "virtually live".

Excellent.

2007-09-05T21:21:00.000-04:00

I Ride with Pork:

We found some nice center cut pork chops on sale at the local supermarket and thought that maybe something of an Asian/Citrus-y approach would be interesting.

So, I seasoned the pork chops with some sansho (a Japanese pepper), some shichimi togarashi (again, a Japanese hot pepper mix), salt, and a little garlic powder. In the meantime, I whacked together a light sauce of Yuzu-ponzu (and, again, a Japanese citrus and soy mix), rice wine vinegar, and lime zest.

Finally, I caramelized some onion slices over low heat, sliced some orange, and did a 5:30 boil of a couple of eggs for garnish while I grilled up the pork chops for rougly 4 minutes per side. We had a nice salad and some cous cous with sage along side, and I popped the cork on a servicable if not overwhelming pinot noir.

All in all, another nice meal for a Saturday evening.

2007-09-03T00:51:00.000-04:00

Photo 2: 1996 (Gifu City, Gifu Prefecture):

Now, there is a photo. Somehow, I thought that this was such an interesting picture for the 2nd in this series. There are so many details in this photo that bring back memories.

1st, the photo is of me and Tomo Imai, the magician/bartender at Milimeter, a little bar in Gifu where you used to be able to get what I thought was the best bloody mary in rural Japan: tomato juice, vodka, lemon juice, worcestershire, horeseradish, tabasco, and celery seed. Yummy, yummy, yummy. His bar was a revelation in the back alleys of Gifu, a place where Japanese and foreigners alike could get together for a good time to wile away the hours drinking, listening to jazz, and playing cards. I've been to a very few places where I felt so comfortable. Tomo went out of business in early 1999 right before I moved from Gifu to Kochi and while the last time I was in Gifu the light over Milimeter was on, I ended up not going in. If it had been someone else running a bar of the same name in the same spot, I could only have been disappointed. Of course, if Tomo is back behind the bar there, it's simply the one place in Gifu you have to go.

Now, I was only going to put one photo in this post, but all this talk of milimeter has me remembering this one great photo of my dad and I that was taken there, so I am going to post it as well. Here we are at Milimeter on January 4, 1997 on my parents' first trip to Japan. Somehow or other, I got half cut off on this shot, but it still should give you just a taste of what this great bar was like.

Now that I am back in the U.S., I have to say that the one thing I miss most about Japan is the local bar. The place you can go and just have a quiet drink, talk to the master, and listen to some music. Perhaps they exist in the U.S. and I am just in the wrong town and too busy with my studies to find them. Or, maybe, my idea of such a place is tainted by the memories of all the 10 seat bars I spent time in over in Japan. Either way, these photos bring back great memories of Milimeter, Tomo, and my friends Brad, Kathleen, Sarah, Maki, and Jodie. Maybe one of them will read this and remember what great times we had.

2007-09-02T11:52:00.001-04:00

Mango-Chipotle BBQ Chicken:

To celebrate the beginning of football season, I decided to experiment with a new BBQ sauce and grill up some chicken. I've been experimenting with BBQ sauces using bourbon lately as I think it has a deep, smoky flavor that adds some complexity. I thought that some fruit would temper the spice of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, and so came up with this idea.

To make this sauce, I sweated about a quarter of a finely diced onion and two pressed cloves of garlic in a little olive oil. Next, I added a quarter of a large mango that I had cut into a small dice, one diced chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, 1/8 cup of bourbon, and 1/8 cup of cider vinegar and let this simmer until the mango was softened and the alcohol had time to burn off (roughly 15 minutes). Using an immersion blender, I pureed this into a thick, spicy, sweet paste. Next, I made a BBQ sauce base of catsup, worcestershire sauce, molasses, brown sugar, and cider vinegar. Once these flavors had come together, I added the mango paste in 1-2 tablespoon increments until the sauce had reached the level of sweetness/spiciness that I was after.

I had seasoned up some chicken thighs and brumsticks with garlic powder and chili powder and grilled them up, slathering on the sauce as the chicken cooked. I served this with a nice clean salad with some pistachios and feta cheese and an ice cold beer.

2007-09-01T12:15:00.000-04:00

Back to School, Back to Football:

Year 2 of the PhD adventure started this past week and this looks to be the busiest semester yet. I have a full load of classes, including an Organizational Behavior seminar that looks as though it will be a bear, and am teaching a section of Strategic Human Resource Management that is part of our undergrad management core. While that is a Wednesday/Friday course, the students are bright, engaged, and enthusiastic. My classes seem interesting, though, and so hopefully this semester will feel a lot shorter than it is.

This year I'll complete the coursework required for my PhD and enter the summer as an ABD. You've just got to take this one milestone at a time, I think.

Meanwhile, college football season got underway this past Thursday and the Syracuse football team picked up where they left off last year by getting shallacked by Washington last night. SU has won 4 games in the last two years and I'd be surprised if they win that many this year. My first love in college football, Ohio St., should be reasonably good, though they will be replacing their QB, both starting receivers, and the starting tailback from the team that lost in last year's national championship game. 9-3 seems reasonable to me.

So, today it's Va. Tech/ECU, Notre Dame/Ga. Tech, Georgia/Ok. St., and Cal/Tennessee. Not a terrible slate of games, so let's hope for some excitement to go along with the BBQ chicken I am thinking of making for dinner.

2007-08-26T00:00:00.000-04:00

...And, there you have it:

School starts on Monday, and we've got to go to a department bbq tomorrow, so tonight seemed the best time to have one last, special, summer dinner (well, at least until next week when we have the three-day labor day holiday to contend with). So, at the market today we spied some lamb chops on sale and snapped those up. I'd seen a Bobby Flay recipe online a couple of days ago that looked interesting, and so had an idea of what to do with them.

Now, I think Bobby Flay is a bit of a primadonna pretty boy, but, he does do fantastic things with fruits and different chilis. While I much prefer Jamie Oliver's or Alton Brown's overall cooking styles, I am consistently tempted by Flay's more accessible recipes.

This time around the sauce for the lamb called for dried cherries, cabernet sauvingon, and stems from mint plants. Forutnately, we have no shortage of mint, so this was easy. After reducing the wine and simultaneously rehydrating the cherries, I added some mint leaves and sugar, and a slurry of corn starch. I whacked the lamb chops on a griddle and then topped them with the sauce and a little feta cheese for color. I threw some cous cous together with roasted cherry tomatos and mushrooms and fresh parsley for a side and steamed some corn in water and tarragon vinegar. An accessible shiraz tied it all together (like a nice rug does for a living room...).

Anyway, Mina seemed to like it...

2007-08-22T08:26:00.000-04:00

Koshien (甲子園) 2007 Championship Game - An Instant Classic:

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the start of Japan's National High School Baseball Tournament, which came to an end yesterday. Last year's final game saw Komadai Tomakomai and Waseda Jitsugyo play 15 innnings of 0-0 ball, followed the next day by another 8 innings of scoreless action before Waseda won 1-0 in the 9th inning.*

In this year's tournament a number of games were tied going into the 8th or 9th innings or went to extra innings, and one contest that had to be replayed due to the 15 inning rule, so all in all it was an excellent tournament.

The final pitted Saga Kita High School, of Saga Prefecture, against Koryo High School of Hiroshima Prefecture. Neither team had ever won the tournament before and both were somewhat surprising entries in the final game. Koryo took a 2-0 and then a 4-0 lead heading into the bottom of the 8th inning before their pitcher allowed Saga Kita to load the bases on two singles and a walk. Koryo's pitcher walked in a run, making the score 4-1 but keeping the bases loaded. Saga Kita's next batter stepped to the plate and blasted only the 2nd grand slam home run in the championship game's 89 year history to put S.K. up 5-4. While the top of the 9th saw Koryo attempt a move from 1st to 3rd on a sacrifice bunt, resulting in the batter and runner both being called out, Saga Kita's pitcher was able to close it out on a strikeout. Highlights of the game, inning by inning, can be seen here: <http://koshien.asahi.co.jp/highlight/data/20070822/1/20070822_1.html>

Two years in a row now we've seen incredibly interesting, competitive tournaments at Koshien. While the end of the tournament signals the end of summer, watching this game just makes me look forward to next year.

* At the National Tournament Level in Japan a game that is tied after 15 innings is halted and replayed completely the next day.

2007-08-19T09:22:00.000-04:00

Another Recipe that Turned Out:

I got home a little early on Friday and cooked dinner. We had some leftover andouille sausage and I had been thinking all day about how to use it with some shrimp that I had seen at the store. I suppose the paella I cooked the other day (see a previous post) was still in my mind and I so made some spaghetti with a paella twist.

I steeped some saffron in white wine and sauteed some sliced garlic along with the sliced sausage. I deglazed the pan with the saffron white wine and put in some clams to steam. When the clams opened, I added 1/3 pound of shrimp and some broccoli. Finally, I added the spaghetti, which was just short of al dente, and let it finish cooking in the sautee pan, soaking up the fragrant, very colorful broth. Finally, a little pecorino romano cheese and a mix of chopped herbs (flat leaf parsley, marjoram, and green leaf shiso) went on the top and I served it up.

Simple, full flavors. I really enjoyed this dish and hope you do to.

2007-08-18T09:01:00.000-04:00

One Problem with American Politics:

It seems like we have been hearing news about who is running, who is not running, who is raising the most/least funds, this, that, and the other thing about the 2008 Presidential Election since virtually the day after the 2004 election. Members of our House of Representatives virtually never stop campaigninng and fund raising. It has made me wonder when they have time to do their jobs... Hillary Clinton has spent the last 8 years serving as junior Senator from New York, but all that time has been running for President and even had time to write an autobiography. As has been noted, if she was writing a book, was she really concentrating on the needs of New Yorkers?

Be that as it may, this post is really about how the 24 hour news cycle and developments in transportation and communications technologies have conspired to obsolete a portion of the U.S. Constitution. Term lenghts are stipulated by Article 1, Sections 2 and 3 for Representatives and Senators, and Article 2, Section 1 for the President.

The framers considered 2 years to be a reasonable length of time for representatives to hold office, but given travel times, risks, and costs in the late 18th century, one has to imagine that the framers considered that representatives would spend at least 75-80% of their term in Washington. Do we believe that our representatives spend this high a percentage of their time working in Washington now? My own feeling is that one of the reason we have no statesmen of the stature of Clay, Calhoun, Hughes, Wilson, or Roosevelt, but only politicians, is that our leaders have no time to do their jobs and lead, but spend all of their time campaigning and fundraising.

My feeling is that we need to reconsider the term lengths we have for our legislators and President. Doubling House terms to 4 years, lengthening the President's term to 6 years, and changing Senatorial terms to 8 or 9 years seems to me like it would allow our representatives time to learn their jobs, and then concentrate on those jobs for a reasonable length of time before having to stand for election again.

Maybe, just maybe, that would allow us as citizens material other than sound bites to work with in making our decisions as to who to vote for.

2007-08-08T08:07:00.000-04:00

More Baseball:

Congratulations to Barry Bonds on his 756th home run.

Question: Can he, A-Rod, or anyone else catch the world record holder for home runs, Oh Sadaharu (王貞治) at 868?

Incidentally, Cal Ripken, Jr. passed Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak at 2,131 and then went on to break the world record of 2,215 consecutive games, which had been held by Kinugasa Sachio (衣笠倖雄). In a classy move, Kinugasa was at the game where his world record was broken.

2007-08-07T21:46:00.000-04:00

Koshien (甲子園):

My favorite sporting event in the world, Japan's National High School Baseball Tournament, began this evening (Wednesday morning in Japan). I have never really been able to explain the reason I love this tournament so much. There is the combination of the single elimination format, the single, classic location, the pageantry of the bands, and the purity of the competition. Each of these reminds me of a different sporting event in the U.S. You would have to imagine March Madness, with the entire tournament played at the old Boston Garden, minus the money, marketing, and other issues surrounding college sports in the U.S., but still with the enthusiasm of the school-based crowds and marching bands, and kids playing for the pure love of the game. It is simply incredible. There is live streaming video over the internet available at <http://koshien.asahi.co.jp/live/> Just click the button in the middle of the page that says "Live". Games start around 8:30 pm eastern time.

The first time I stepped into the Koshien stadium for a game, it was simply electric. I remember it was the hottest August day you can imagine, and rice farmers from Miyagi Prefecture, who were simply amazed that I could speak Japanese and give them a decent reason for being there to watch Sendai Ikuei High School (one of my favorite teams from the days when I couldn't read Japanese because they wear an easily recognizable gray uniform), plied me and my friend full of cold beer and fried chicken. Our goal was one beer for every run Ikuei scored, but since they won 15-2, we didn't quite make it. It was good fun trying, though.

Being back in the U.S. is great, but there's almost nowhere I'd rather be on a hot August day than at Koshien with a cooler full of cold beer, some pistachios, and a fuji apple.

2007-08-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

2046

Continuing with the movie related theme I seem to have going here (if one can have a theme going after only one post, that is)...

Coming back from Japan, one of the things about America I have rediscovered is the good, old fashioned public library. Mina and I have been going there to borrow books on CD for some of our trips of late, and also to borrow movies that we are trying to catch up on. This week, I borrowed Wong Kar-Wai's "2046", which I had actually seen 4-5 times before, but always with Japanese, rather than English, subtitles.

Wong Kar-Wai's movies are always such incredible visual pieces, and "2046" is no exception. The use of color is very interesting, with backgrounds changing from green, to yellow, to red and some character's clothes never failing to match the color of the curtains. Why? I have no idea, but when the curtains in the same hotel room change color from scene to scene, there must be a point. Perhaps it is to signify the passage of time?

Anyway, I thought that Tony Leung was good in a reprise of his role in "In the Mood for Love", and both Gong Li and Faye Wong were excellent in their respective short parts. As many reviewers have said, though, Zhang Ziyi stole every scene she was in. Now, I think Zhang Ziyi can do no wrong, but her performance in this film was incredible; we feel her love and her loss and her disdain at only being considered a piece of meat for sale. Her humanity is undeniable.

Was she as good as Faye Wong was in Chungking Express (easily my favorite Wong Kar-Wai film, and a top five Asian film)? No. But, it certainly was one of Zhang's best performances, along with her young girl in love in "The Road Home" and her resistance fighter in "The Purple Butterfly".

So, all in all I still think that "2046" was an incredible visual piece, but that it didn't quite work as a continuation of "In the Mood for Love". I never quite understood what the point of Kimura Takuya's Japanese character was, especially why he was the narrator, nor did I have anything invested in his character's relationship with Faye Wong's hotel owner's daughter. Boiling the movie down, it was the nuanced relationships between Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li that were intriguing, making the relationship between Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in "Mood" seem all the more tragic.

2007-08-05T11:53:00.000-04:00

The Bourne Ultimatum:

Spoiler Alert: I'll try not to spoil it, but if you've not yet seen the movie, you may want to skip this post.

Mina and I went to see the Bourne Ultimatum on Friday night. I've been a fan of Robert Ludlum's books since my dad leant me "The Chancellor Manuscript", probably some time between 8th and 10th grades. The Bourne novels are the first of his books to be adapted to films in quite a number of years ("The Rhinemann Exchange", "The Osterman Weekend", and "The Holcroft Covenant" were made into feature films in the late 1970s and early 1980s, while "The Bourne Identity was a TV mini-series starring none other than Richard Chamberlain, the King of the Mini-Series).

In any event, The Bourne Ultimatum. First, I really enjoyed the way that the movie opened, with the first stanza explaining the time, at the end of The Bourne Supremay, between Bourne's meeting with Neski's daughter and his phone conversation with Pamela Landy in New York. This, I thought, was a clever use of time and aided in the pacing of the movie. Bourne's continuing search for himself takes him from France, to England, to Spain, to Morocco, and finally to the United States as an unstoppable force.

I also liked the development of Julia Stiles' charachter, Nicky Parsons. Rather than introducing a new foil for Bourne, she hints to us that there is some history between them prior to his amnesia, but it is a history that remains buried; Nicky doesn't fill in the gaps and we never know whether Bourne remembers. The characters' final two scenes together are poignant. First, as Nicky cuts and colors her hair in preparation for a life hiding from the CIA's hunters, Bourne sees her and is obviously reminded of Marie having done the same thing 3 years before. Their good-bye and Nicky boards a bus in Tangiers was, I thought, painful for both of them, if for different reasons.

So, Bourne finds himself and another group of unprincipled CIA agents is brought down. The story of a man who has lost and refound his identity and parts, if not all, of his memory has been told. Will there be a 4th installment? While further novels exist, they are Eric van Lustbader stories that continue where Ludlum left off. For me, the story ends here.

As a final aside, IMDB states that a movie version of The Chancellor Manuscript, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has been announced for release in 2008. Fantastic. The best Ludlum book, in my opinion, I will absolutely be in line to see it on opening night.

UPDATE: Last night, I caught the 2nd half of The Bourne Identity on TV and noticed a couple of interesting points. First point: In the closing stanza as Ward Abbott goes before a Congressional oversight committee and blows off Treadstone as a training program that didn't pan out, his next talking point is on Blackbriar. This turns out to be Treadstone 2.0 that is at the focus of The Bourne Ultimatum. Point 2: What are Clive Owen's assissin's last words to Jason Bourne? "Look at this. Look at what they make you give." What are Jason Bourne's last words in The Bourne Ultimatum? "Look at us. Look at what they make you give."

Excellent continuity across the gulf of 3 movies. I have to wonder what else is in there that I have missed.

2007-08-04T21:42:00.000-04:00

Paella:

Mina and I were in the mood for seafood this weekend, and so I decided to make some paella. In Japan, I made it from time to time, always taking full advantage of the fresh shellfish and free range chicken that was available there. Over there, I was always disappointed with the chorizo sausage available, but thankfully Syracuse has a decent selection of andoullie and chorizo available.

Anyway, paella, plenty of saffron, some chicken, some shrimp, some mohogany clams from Maine and some andoullie. Yummy. This time I used a Jaime Oliver recipe that eschewed baking for stovetop treatment along the lines of a risotto. Fantastic.

Alongside, I threw together a basil sangria from a recipe in Food & Wine's August issue and for desert we had an apple juice granita from the same magazine. Another fabulous meal. Tomorrow, Gyros a la Alton Brown!

2007-07-26T10:13:00.000-04:00

James C. Laurence (9/17/1909-7/25/2007)

My dad called last night around 9:45 to let me know that his father, my grandfather, had passed away. While I think we'd all expected that his journey would come to an end sooner rather than later, and while I think each member of my family had tried to prepare for this in his or her own way, the finality is still stark.

Mina and I are heading back to Cleveland today to help out with whatever we can. While there isn't a great deal to actually "do", It feels to me like going home is the right thing to do. More than anything, I suppose, in these times it is best to be around family.

2007-07-24T08:15:00.001-04:00

Photo 1: 1995 (Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, Japan)

I arrived in Nagoya, Japan for teacher training at AEON (one of the "Big 4" English Conversation School companies in Japan) on January 7, 1995, 10 days before the Great Hanshin Earthquake (阪神大震災). It seems so long ago, but I remember that week of training pretty vividly, especially a couple of nights eating out at a little Yakitori (grilled chicken bits on sticks) dive that was under the railroad tracks at Tsurumai Station. That was really my first "wow" experience in Japan.

I moved from Nagoya up to Takaoka, along the sea of Japan coast, a week later and it turned out that the big Kobe earthquake happened the morning of my first day of work. We shook in Toyama, but as it was my first earthquake I had nothing to judge against in terms of deciding whether it was a nearby quake, a small or big one, or an aftershock of something that had happened before I arrived. It was pretty shocking to wake up the next morning and see scenes of Kobe on fire (of course, I couldn't read or understand Japanese, so watching TV the fires could have been right outside my window for all I knew...!)

In any event, this photo was taken months later at a party we had at my colleague and friend Susan's (2nd from right) apartment. My students Hiroki (1st on L), Fumi (3rd on L), and Kaoru (1st on R), and Fumi's younger sister Junko (2nd from L in Kimono) were there, as was my friend Dan, who took the picture. Junko had been to have a formal picture taken prior to her "coming of age ceremony" (成人式), which was to be held the following January, hence the Kimono.

Hiroki got married in 1997, or so, and now has two children. Fumi got married in 2005 and she and her husband have recently moved into a new house in Toyama. Susan got married in 2004, I think I heard from Dan (who got married in 2004 as well, if memory serves, and now has a son). While I have no idea what happened to Kaoru, I do know that Junko got married and moved to Tokyo and recently nearly died due to an illness.

Looking at that photo, you'd never know it about any of us, of course.

Next time, a memory of 1996, the year I turned 25.

2007-07-24T07:47:00.001-04:00

An Interesting Summer Project

This summer I have been going through old photographs and negatives and scanning them into digital files. Anyone who has looked at old photos from their parents and grandparents eras has seen how colors fade and I figured that now that digital memory is priced so reasonably, it would be a good time to preserve as many of my pictures as I could.

Part of this that has been interesting has been putting the pictures into some semblance of order. Part of the metadata that is attached to each photo when it gets digitized is the date and time it was scanned (when you import photos from a digital camera, this data comes from the camera's internal clock, so you know when a picture was taken). Software like Photoshop reads this data as the date and time the photo was shot, and since this is obviously not true, I have been changing this date for each and every photo in my collection. Since I have scanned in something over 1,500 photos, this seems like something of a small mountain to overcome.

Anyway, what I find interesting about this is looking at a picture and trying to remember when it was taken. Most of my pictures start in 1995 when I moved to Japan, so things are broken down into '95-'96 in Toyama, '96-'99 in Gifu, '99-'01 in Kochi, '01-'03 in Syracuse, '03-'06 in Tokyo, and '06-Present in Syracuse again. Mixed in there are trips and vacations that I took to firtually every corner of Japan, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, California, Cleveland, and various other locales and trying to place month and year has been an interesting exercise. Obviously, it has also brought back a ton of memories.

Let's see if I can post a year by year account of my photos here.

2007-07-22T21:34:00.000-04:00

The Lovely Mina and her Lovely Herbs

Mina and I spent some time on the balcony today repotting a couple of our herb plants. Actually, she repotted, I watched, and thought about which herbs to use for dinner (I ended up using tarragon and sage).

Coming from Japan, and from a reasonably traditional Japanese family, Mina hadn't had much, if any, experience with herbs before we moved in together. Actually, I think she was pretty shocked at the number of spices, herbs, sauces, and other condiments that I collected for our kitchen. In Japan a kitchen with soy sauce, sugar, mirin, miso, and the makings for a good fish stock will do for most people, so having 4 kinds of mustard in the refrigerator is pretty much unheard of (yes, I have at least 4 kinds of mustard on hand at all times - smooth dijon, chunky dijon, Cleveland Stadium, and plain old yellow).

In any event, we're up to 10+ pots of herbs, with basil, marjoram, thyme, tarragon, sage, pineapple sage, chocolate mint, peppermint, lemongrass, cilantro, shiso, red shiso, and others in the collection. It makes me a happy cook to be able to step out on the balcony and grab some fresh herbs for almost anything I am making for dinner. Yum.

Thanks, Mina, for taking such good care of the herbs (and of me, ね)!

2007-07-19T07:09:00.000-04:00

Maine - The Rest of the Trip

Back now from MDI, Southwest Harbor, and the rest of our trip to Maine. All in all, we had a lovely time, ate some incredible seafood, and saw a really impressive part of the U.S.A.

As I posted earlier, we arrived there on Friday afternoon and enjoyed a snack of wine, cheese, fruit, and some nuts on the veranda at the B&B we stayed at (http://www.cranberryhillinn.com/) in Southwest Harbor. We had dinner at Beal's Lobster Pier (http://www.bealslobster.com/), which was a nice, down home lobster pound with picnic tables and lobster on plastic cafeteria trays. Saturday, we did some hiking in Acadia National Park and had lunch in Northeast Harbor, a picturesque, more swanky little town than Southwest. Dinner was at Thurston's Lobster Pound (www.acadiainfo.com/thurstons.htm), a place with a nicer view than Beal's (though you pay a little for it), where I had a pound of steamed clams and a crabcake sandwich to go along with Mina's lobster.

Sunday, we spent the morning doing a little hiking and then wandering through Bar Harbor looking for lunch. We chose a local bar and had some clam chowder and a crab salad sandwich. Following that, we went over to the Atlantic Brewing Co. (http://www.atlanticbrewing.com/) for a tour and tasting. Mina especially liked their Auld Ale, while I thought the Island Ginger, which is made with an amount of pulverized ginger, was particularly interesting. After the tasting, we had a sample of the beers and a little snack. For dinner we went to a third lobster pound, which was a BYOB place, so we had to make a run to IGA to get some beers after putting our order in.

After dinner we dropped by a wine bar in Southwest called Sips that my parents had recommended. A had a taster of three reds, one of which in particular stuck with me. Easton's (http://www.terrerougewines.com/eastonwines.html) 2002 Amador County Zinfandel was one of those wines that you have once in a while that changes your perspective. I long ago became a fan of zinfandel, and would guess that 1 of 3 bottles of red wine that I drink is a zin, so it is always exciting for me to find one that is really impressive. The Easton struck me immediately with a nose that I can only describe as smelling of the ocean, that first whiff of it that you get when you come in sight and roll down the windows. I don't know if my impression was based on actually being near the ocean, so I bought a bottle on Monday morning and will pop it open with my parents the next time we are in Cleveland.

Finally, on Monday, we drove down U.S. 1 along the coast, stopping in Brunswick, Bath, Freeport, Camden, and some other points along the way to do some browsing. The big enchilada, as it were, was a stop at the Kittery outlet mall for a look at the Le Creuset store. Mina grabbed up a butter dish and another little ramekin type pot, and we also picked up a burgundy colored griddle pan that looks like it could be pretty useful. We stopped in Lowell, MA on Monday night and arrived back home in Syracuse on Tuesday afternoon. It was just a nice vacation and I look forward to our next one, whenever that might be.

2007-07-15T09:00:00.001-04:00

The First Anniversary - Maine, Day 2

Some spectacular weather, more lobster, and a nice sunburn on the back of the neck. We spent our first full day in MDI checking out some hiking spots and thinking about what to eat for lunch and dinner. The view from the top of Cadillac Mtn. was spectacular as the sky was clear and there was little humidity.

For lunch, we stopped at a little pub in Northeast Harbor for a lobster roll and some steamed mussels. Both were excellent. For dinner, it was Thurston's Lobster Pound in Bernard, where we shared a lobster, a pound of steamed clams, and a crabcake sandwich. A couple of Bar Harbor Blueberry Ales washed that down and we headed home.

On the route home the fog had rolled in and really socked in one of the little harbors along the side of the road, so we stopped to take some photos. There's a pretty good chance one of these will end up on my wall at home...

2007-07-13T21:37:00.000-04:00

The 1st Anniversary - Maine, Day 1

Up at 4:00, 10 hours in the car, and here we are 550 miles from Syracuse in Southwest Harbor, Maine. I used to come up here to Mount Desert Island on summer vacations as a kid, but it's been 20 years since I was here last. It's nice to be in another place with strong family ties and good memories with Mina.

Anyway, we arrived and checked into the B&B and popped the cork on a bottle of Riesling we brought with us and had a snack of some nuts, fruit, and cheese on the deck outside our room. Looks nice, don't you think?

With the preliminaries out of the way, we were off for lobster at Beal's Lobster Pier. Fantastic. Better than I remembered. Lobster wrapped in parchment paper with some cole slaw. Beer.

Sated, I think we can last 18 hours till the first lobster roll for lunch...

2007-07-07T09:11:00.000-04:00

Not the Most Traditional 4th of July Dinner, but...

The weather in Syracuse on the 4th was something less than perfect. It struggled to get to 70 degrees and was cloudy and raining pretty much all day. Somehow it felt more like a perfect late September afternoon for college football than a day for fireworks and barbecues.

I spent part of the morning looking at cookbooks for something that inspired and I decided to go with something from one of my most interesting books. It's called Murakami Recipe and is a Japanese cookbook that contains recipes based on the food prepared in Haruki Murakami's novels and short stories. If you've never read any of his books, I recommend them highly (especially The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase, and Dance, Dance, Dance) and food and jazz are often woven into the narratives. In A Wild Sheep Chase our main character is stuck in a house in Hokkaido with nothing to do but cook and prepares a roast beef. I decided to make a dinner based on that recipe.

We had a boneless roast in the freezer, so I thawed it and prepared a paste of roasted garlic. I got some rosemary and lemon thyme from our herb garden and chopped those up and mixed them with sea salt and black pepper. I rubbed the garlic paste over the top of the roast and coated as much of the outside as I could with the herb mixture. Uncovered areas I seasoned with salt and pepper. The beef went into a 375 degree oven for 40-45 minutes (until the internal temperature of the roast hit 125 degrees). In the meantine I chopped up some zucchini and yellow squash and roasted it with sage, salt and pepper, and prepared some mashed potatoes with cheddar cheese.

The roast came out of the oven and we popped the cork on a nice, if reasonably priced, bottle of Carmenere, a Chilean red. The meat was tender with a nice garlic and herb crust on the top side. An easy recipe with satisfying results.

2007-07-04T15:56:00.000-04:00

A Seafood Dinner:

The other night, Mina and I had a nice, relaxing mid-summer seafood dinner at home. We'd done our usual shopping and decided to stop by the best supermarket for fish here in Syracuse (surprisingly, it is Price Chopper, rather than either Wegmans or P&C) where they had Cherrystone Clams and Softshell Crabs on sale.

The Softshell Crabs we coated in seasoned cornmeal and flour and fried, then served with a yuzu scented mayonnaise. These were lovely. The Cherrystones were the star of the show, though, and we steamed them in white wine, some old bay seasoning, and lemon juice. Served with some homemade bread to sop up the broth, there couldn't have been a more satisfying mid-summer seafood dinner. I think it warmed us up for our upcoming anniversary trip to Maine, now only 10 days away.

One thing about living in New York, I guess, is that seafood is just a little bit more reasonably priced here than in Ohio. Coming back from Japan, though, one of the toughest things to adjust to has been the relative difficulty in finding good, reasonably priced fish of various types (of course, when I was in Japan I always had a hard time finding an interesting, reasonable supply of meats). I guess everything is relative. In any event, it was nice to have this lovely seafood dinner at home with Mina.

2007-06-30T21:12:00.000-04:00

Did you ever just look at your Wedding Ring? Part 2

I wear this wedding ring now and approaching our 1 year anniversary I thought it would be interesting to write some memories of the Lovely Mina's and my time together.

I remember going to look at rings and seeing various rings that were all nice enough. When we got to the Niessing counter at Isetan, though, they put this ring in my hand and somehow my mind was made up. Mina says it was the only ring that I reacted to with a "whoa". I had never seen anything like it. Yellow Gold and White Gold melded together so that the top of the ring is pure yellow and the bottom is pure white, but you can never see exactly where the transition occurs. Just a gorgeous piece of jewelry. Here's a photo of them:

I look at these rings as a symbol of our marriage as the melding of two cultures. Cheesy, perhaps, but in my mind here we are standing at the intersection of Japan and the U.S., teaching each other how we think as we go along. We are fusion and our children will be even more so.

So, I look at my ring from time to time and remember where we came from, and think about where we're going. I am so thankful that Mina believes in me enough to support me through this PhD at this stage of our lives. It would have been a lot easier for us to stay in Japan, for me to parlay my ACCJ job into a $100K position at some member company, and just to coast. I would always have wondered, though, what could have been and whether I wasn't really meant to teach at a university and research what I wanted to, when I wanted to. Here, now, we have the chance to make that happen.

Thank you Mina!

2007-06-29T23:11:00.000-04:00

Did you ever just look at your wedding ring?

I met my wife while waiting for a train.

5 years ago this August I was in Japan. I'd lived there for 6 years, but moved back to the U.S. to get an MBA and then decided to spend the middle summer studying Japanese through a Princeton University program. I had been accepted to a 2nd Masters degree program that meant I had to spend the following summer interning, so language seemed the best way to spend my time given where I wanted to go.

I spent the summer learning 900+ Japanese characters and then went to spend a couple of nights at my friend Dan and his girlfiend's place. Somehow, someway, I got in touch with a friend of mine and had dinner with her an a couple of her friends. We separated at Jinbocho station and I went downstairs to wait for the train.

There she was. I don't know what it was and I don't know why, but there was something about her. I just had to say hello. The next thing, we were chatting on the train and had made plans to have dinner the next night. That she was more than willing to watch some sports, drink some beer, and hang out till all hours sort of confirmed my suspicions.

Years later, here we are in the U.S., me in school for a PhD and her providing support that I could not have imagined. Kids may be on the way and I would like them to know all about our story.

2007-06-27T09:13:00.000-04:00

Nintendo DS Lite Commercials

I was interested in Nicole Kidman's new Nintendo DS Lite commercial. Mostly, I was interested in the drastic change in Nintendo's marketing approach. Their original DS commercials for the U.S. market were based on science documentaries like you might see on Discover channel or PBS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1JAwIwBDNg

However, this new ad just features Nicole having fun playing the Brain Age game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA_r9FUEgAA

What is really interesting about this is that it is almost EXACTLY the same commercial that Nanako Matsushima made for the same game and was used in Japan years ago: http://touch-ds.jp/mediagallery/st25.html Nanako's and Nicole's Brain Ages are even the same (52)! I am not sure what it means that Nanako was born in 1973 and Nicole in 1967 and that their brain ages are the same.

Anyway, this represents sort of a different approach to marketing this product for Western consumers.

2007-06-26T21:13:00.000-04:00

Wine Tasting: How much fun can you have?

The 'rents were up in the 'Cuse for the weekend with my little sister, who was back from an archaeological dig in Isthmea, Greece. We had dinner here at the apartment on Saturday night, and Mina made quite a lovely feast of Japanese food. Mina had never cooked for my sister, so I think she was a little nervous, but everything turned out great.

Sunday we woke up and went to Wegmans to stock up on provisions for lunch (olives, prosciutto, a nice loaf of bread, some New York cheddar, cherries, etc.) and headed down the road to Cayuga Lake and the wineries along the Cayuga Wine Trail (http://www.cayugawinetrail.com/). We stopped at 5 or 6 places and had a nice picnic.

After lunch it was back to Syracuse for a nice dinner at the Mission, an interesting Mexican restaurant downtown. It's a cool place built in an old church that has very decent Mole sauce (those are hard to find, as you may know).

Monday, everyone came over for breakfast and then I went off to teach. School was...so-so, but the class is more or less in the books. The kids take their final exam tomorrow night, I finish up the grading, and then it's a week off before I go back to reading 4-5 journal articles per day for the next 6 weeks.

So, that's a good weekend for you. Friday, we go watch some baseball.

2007-06-19T07:33:00.000-04:00

Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix

All I can say is, what a weekend. The Lovely Mina and I headed back to Cleveland for a good friend's wedding on Friday, took in an Indians game on Saturday (a loss to the Braves) and then made an over and back trip to Indianapolis for the Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix. It was 5.5 hours each way from my parents' house to the Speedway, but absolutely worth it.

The race tickets were my present to Mina for her birthday. On our first date, 5 years ago now, we watched an F1 race, actually, and she has been known to stay up until 5 am on Sundays to catch a race from the far corners of the globe.

We got to the Speedway about 2 hours before the start of the race and watched the drivers parade around the course in vintage cars. Our seats were in the Paddock section, which is under cover, along the front straight, and with a nice view of the pits. We were probably 400 meters from the start/finish line, so had a nice view (though Indy is an old enough structure that there are all manner of obstructed view seats). It was pretty darn hot, so being under cover was a blessing, and this Oil Can of ice cold Fosters certainly made me happy.

The start of the race was as impressive as anything I have seen or heard, to tell the truth. I felt like my head was going to split open as the cars took off from their standing start. It was so disorienting, in fact, that after the first lap ended I ran off and splurged $2 on some earplugs. Maybe the single best investment I have ever made from an immediate ROI point of view! I am not sure how well the intensity of the moment comes off, but here's the short video we took of the start.

At the end of the day, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton continued his unprecedented rookie season with a 2nd win. He has yet to finish a race below his spot on the starting grid and has won from the pole in the last two races. Isn't it interesting how in sports someone always comes along to help us forget the retirement of a legend? I was set for a reasonable boring year of Fernando Alonso dominating with Michael Schumacher having hung up his racing shoes, but Hamilton's performances have given me something really impressive to cheer about this summer. Hopefully he keeps it up.

With the race in the books, we did battle with the other 100,000+ people trying to get out of Indy and all I can say is that I absolutely cannot imagine what a hellish experience traffic there would have been in the days when 400,000+ showed up for the Indy 500. My hats off to all of you who were ever in that traffic jam or who are planning on sitting in traffic after the Brickyard 400 next month.

Anyway, it was a fantastic weekend and my next goal is to go to an F1 race in some more exotic locale. Indy is full of lore, but somehow it doesn't seem to compare to, say, Monaco or even the Nurburgring. Anyway, here's one last picture of Mina with the Pagoda in the background.

2007-06-10T21:10:00.001-04:00

Ohio: THE State University

The Lovely Mina and I trekked down to Athens, OH this weekend for my brother Dave's graduation from his M.A. program. The last time we'd been to Ohio U. was almost two years ago when Dave and his wife Akiko had just moved down there to start school, so it was nice to be back. It was particularly lucky that the class I am teaching this summer meets Monday and Wednesday so that I could get down there on Thursday for a Friday A.M. ceremony.

Athens was, as my parents (1967 grads) so often put it, different, but completely the same. It's an interesting feeling to walk into buildings that were brand new and awe inspiring when you were a senior in high school, that became a second home over the years of college, and then became more meaningful over time. A drive down streets that led to your dorm, your dad's dorm, or even an ex-girlfriend's house bring back memories that can't be valued.

So, Dave is off to work at the University of Alabama and one can only hope that it's a good place for them.

Meanwhile, tomorrow, my class is having a little get together to find out what they know and what they don't know....We'll see how that goes.

2007-05-19T21:47:00.000-04:00

The Central New York Regional Market

Mina and I went to what passes for a famer's market here in Syracuse today and were pretty disappointed, actually. The selection of vegetables and fruits was poor and the selection of meat was even worse. If you are looking for flowers or for items you can find at a $1 store, this is the market for you, but for people looking for interesting, exciting ingredients and produce, it just doesn't stack up.

When we are back in Cleveland we often go to the West Side Market there and this was one trip that really brought home what a great asset that market is to the people who live in Northeast Ohio.

Tomorrow looks like a downer of a day weather-wise, so where I'd hoped we'd get a chance to go to a Syracuse Chiefs baseball game, we'll probably end up staying home and being lazy.

2007-04-29T18:03:00.000-04:00

The Browns' Draft

I spent Saturday afternoon parked in front of the TV watching the NFL draft. I think the first draft I ever watched was probably about 1987 or 1988, and I've watched all the drafts since that I have been in the country for. The Cleveland Browns usually have pretty crappy drafts, but this year I think that they may have done just enough to start to turn the franchise around. Trading next year's No. 1 in order to get a 2nd first round pick this year and take Brady Quinn at QB was the sort of bold move that the team has shied away from for most of my life, so it was nice to see them take the chance. Of course, it could be a disaster, but the thing about the draft is that you just never know. Once in a while you have to roll the dice.

We'll see what happens in the fall, but I think 6-10 or 7-9 would be reasonable

2007-04-22T21:56:00.000-04:00

Spring...finally!

What a weekend, is all I can say really. It was 70-75 degrees and sunny both Saturday and Sunday, and the Lovely Mina and I tried to take advantage. We grilled some short ribs and corn on the cob yesterday and spent the day out today. It was nice to grab an iced coffee at one of the local coffee shops and sit outside reading this afternoon. Tomorrow it's supposed to be just as nice, but I've got enough work to do that I will probably find a room with no windows to study in.

Not much else going on, really. Hit the hay early tonight to be ready for a full day of writing tomorrow.

2007-04-16T22:48:00.000-04:00

Akiko Suwanai

This past weekend the Lovely Mina and I drove back to Cleveland to see my favorite living violinist, Ms. Akiko Suwanai, play a recital. We had seen her twice before, both times in Tokyo and both times from seats very far away from the action, so we were (or at least I was) looking forward to this small venue recital.

Previously we had seen her play Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto at Tokyo Opera City, which is a simply stunning venue, and the Beethoven Violin Concerto at Tokyo's International Forum, which is honestly not the greatest place to see a concert. Both concerts were fantastic, however. The Beethoven was particularly well played, in my opinion, and she had built up so much tension in the crowd by the end of the 1st movement that there was an audible release of breath from the audience when it ended. I had never experienced anything quite like that at a concert before.

In any event, the recital we saw last weekend was at the Pilgrim Congregational Church in Cleveland, a venue that seats only 1,200. We had very nice seats on the balcony and were able to see quite well. The first and last tunes, a Bach and then a Brahms Sonata, were excellent, though the choice of Bartok in the middle was less than inspired from my point of view (worse, from my Dad's, probably).

It was a very nice concert at an interesting venue, though, and I am glad we were fortunate enough to be able to see Akiko Suwanai play again. For those interested, here are a couple of links.

Akiko Suwanai's CD of the Bruch Violin Concerto 1 and Scottish Fantasy at Amazon.com
Akiko Suwanai's Home Page (Japanese)
Akiko Suwanai at Wikipedia (English)

2007-04-11T18:47:00.000-04:00

So, you've got all these battleships...*

Those who know me well probably know about my love of battleships. It really has never been a secret and before we get to the technical part of this entry, here are a couple of entertaining photos of me at the U.S.S. North Carolina museum in Wilmington, NC, one from when I was about 20 or 21 and one fro when I was 2 or 3.

Anyway, last night on NOVA the topic was the sinking of the Japanese super-battleship Yamato (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/supership/). Of course, I watched and all in all the program was reasonably well done. It spent too much time on the general history of the war in the Pacific for my tastes, but it was a program for the casual viewer. They couldn't very well have said at the outset, "If you don't know the basics, go watch all 13 hours of "Victory at Sea" and then come back."

So, a couple of things that the program wasn't exactly accurate about, in my opinion. The program oversimplified the Washington Treaty of 1922, implying that the U.S. and Great Britain forced the 5:5:3 ratio on the Japanese when there was actually a relatively strong "Treaty Faction" in the Japanese navy that understood that the 5:5:3 ratio effectively guaranteed the Japanese naval superiority in the Pacific given the American and British two-ocean navy requirements. The program also never mentioned that there was a sister ship to the Yamato (the Musashi) that was sunk by U.S. aircraft at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in 1944 (6 months before the Yamato was sunk), nor that a 3rd ship in the class (the Shinano) was started but converted to an aircraft carrier following the Battle of Midway. Shinano was actually the largest aircraft carrier built until the U.S.S. Forrestal was completed in the 1950's.

Oh, the Lovely Mina and I went to the U.S.S. Massachusetts museum in Fall River last summer, which was nice. One of these days I will drag her to Mobile, AL to see the U.S.S. Alabama. I am sure she is very excited and looking forward to that!

* This is the opening line of my brother David's always humorous impression of me.

2007-04-08T10:34:00.000-04:00

April showers bring May flowers, but what do April snow showers bring?

Is it really Spring?

Yesterday, the Lovely Mina and I went shopping, as we usually do on Saturdays. It was cold, cold, cold and snowing here in the 'Cuse.

I suppose we are making up for having a warm December, but I think we are all ready for 65 degrees and sunny. I fear that before we know it, it's going to be 95 and humid and we'll have missed Spring.

Anyway, today we've got lake effect snow in the forecast and it's below freeaing at 10:30 in the morning. "Luckily" I get the spend most of the day looking up corporate governance variables for a paper I am working on with some colleagues on stock options backdating. After that, a little more reading about top management teams and about Japanese women in the workplace for other papers.

Time to turn on some Beethoven and get down to it.

2007-04-07T22:21:00.000-04:00

Albums that Changed my Life

Watching BBC America this evening and there's a documentary on about Britpop. I'll never forget the first time I heard Oasis (on NPR, September of 1994) or what that sound meant at the time. Granted, their shit now, but then?

In any event, this got me thinking about albums (CDs, whatever) that I have heard that just changed everything. We all have them in our lives, I think, so here are a few thoughts on important albums in my life.

Paul Simon, Graceland, 1986: My uncle Bob gave me this CD before I ever had a CD player. I think I probably saw the You can Call Me Al video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5oA9kUoVJg) on MTV and the Diamonds on the Sould of Her Shoes performance on Saturday Night Live before I ever got around to hearing the album, but once I heard it there really wasn't any going back. Likely, my journey toward relative liberalism politically started with just the little consciousness of what was going on in South Africa with Apartheid that this record gave me. The drum lines and the vocals were more intricate than anything I'd been conscious of at 15 years old. It was just an incredible moment in my life and I listened to that album more while I was on my foreign exchange in Turkey than anything else.

The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses, 1989: Still, the band I never got a chance to see in concert that I most wish I'd gotten to see (if that makes sense). I can still listen to "This is the One" or "I am the Resurection" and be amazed. There were stories of people rioting in pubs in England if that record came on and wasn't played all the way through. I don't know that there's been a better album since.

Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville, 1993: Liz has gone a little too pop for my tastes, but this CD was an absolute revelation when I was in the lost years of my life. She was just so angry and nasty. I was probably looking for someone a bit like her...and of course I found a couple of them...in those days. Again, an album that just hasn't been surpassed for me in terms of first to last track listening.

Next time: my first Jimmy Buffett, Okuda Tamio, Bedhead, and Bruch's Scottish Fantasy.

Anyone else care to comment on the albums that changed their lives?

2007-04-04T20:05:00.000-04:00

I usually allow myself about an hour of TV per night on weekdays as a way of decompressing after 11.5 hours at school. That generally lets me eat, hang out with the Lovely Mina and then spend that hour not really thinking about anything before I study again for a couple of hours before bed. Not the most exciting life, I know, but there you have it.

Today Mina showed me a ranking of the Top 20 Pre-2000 Japanese TV Dramas that people over there would like to see once again. The list, for those interested, is here http://www.rankingjapan.com/ranking.php?page=753

Now, I was interested to see that 3 of the Top 10 were dramas I'd include in my Top 10 (Tokyo Love Story, Beach Boys, and Hitotsu Yane no Shita (All Under One Roof), but I was pretty surprised to see that Long Vacation, Beautiful Life (actually from 2000, so right on the border), and a couple of others didn't make the ranking. Anyway, you knew this was coming, but here's my ranking with links where I can find them:

1. Tokyo Love Story (1990): The original "Post-Trendy" Drama and one that really still holds up over time. I was absolutely shocked to see that it is number one in that poll linked to above. Still, I guess that if you're going to watch only one J-Drama, this has to be it. Oda Yuji pretty much looks the same as he did 27 years ago, which is remarkable; he's like a latter day Dick Clark. You had to root for Suzuki Honami's character, despite the nose, even if you knew she was never going to get the guy. She was the first post-modern Japanese woman and every strong female character in J-Drama leans on her example. Don't take it from me, check out this book http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Asian-Modernities-Transnational-Consumption/dp/9622096328/ref=sr_1_1/104-4730234-0586329?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175826958&sr=1-1

2. Long Vacation (1996 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-a6EOJWoMw): The quintessential Takuya Kimura drama and what an incredible cast when you think about it. Takuya, Yamaguchi Tomoko at her absolute peak, Takenouchi Yutaka, Inamori Izumi, Matsu Takako before she was Matsu Takako, and even an episode with Hirosue Ryoko as a 15 year-old no-name. Really one of the ultimate mid-90s Japanese dramas.

3. Hitotsu Yane no Shita (1993): Again, one of the great "Post-Trendy" dramas and another outstanding cast with Eguchi Yosuke, Sakai Noriko (see my Hall of Fame J-Actresses below), Fukuyama Masaharu, Uchida Yuki, etc. The sequel was good as well, but I'd rather watch the original, personally.

4. Kamisama mousukoshi dake (神様もう少しだけ - 1998 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xd466ek-HA): This drama woke young people in Tokyo up to the HIV/AIDS problem. There was even a spike in the number of people getting tested weekly while the drama was going on. Too bad they ruined it by having the HIV+ heroine sleep with her boyfriend, get pregnant, and give birth all without either the dad or the kid being HIV+. I was so steamed I actually wrote to Fuji TV about how irresponsible that was of them...

5. Doku (1996): I can only imagine what my dear brother will say about this one, but while it was actually a silly drama about a Vietnamese immigrant to Japan, I really enjoyed it. Likely, this had something to do with the relatively simple Japanese that the characters used in communicating with our hero (Katori Shingo) and the fact that I could understand it, but, hey, there it is.

Anyway, those are the five that I would want to watch again if I could. Maybe I'll expand the list to 10 one of these days to bring in "Boku no Ikiru Michi" and a couple of others. Next time, though, I think we'll cover the American shows I always like to watch in reruns.

2007-04-03T15:37:00.000-04:00

So, what do you do when you've got writer's block and can't think of where to take your research paper on 3rd Culture Development in International Joint Ventures? Take a break and write something different, I guess... I should be reading some for another paper I am writing about females in the Japanese work place, but that can wait a few minutes while I ramble on here.

Last weekend, the Lovely Mina and I went off to Ashtablula, OH for my 4th incarnation on the staff at the LEIMUN (the artist formerly known as KSUAC MUN) high school Model UN conference. It was nice to see old friends and good to meet some new people as well. It was also nice to have my mind occupied by something other than school for a couple of days, even if I am paying for it now. In any event, to any of my delegates who read this post, congratulations, you all did a very nice job.

OK, back to reality. A couple of hours on "Office Ladies and Salaried Men" by Yuko Ogasawara before heading home for dinner. Hopefully, I'll be able to bang out another page or two of this paper on IJVs after dinner this evening...

2007-02-01T18:37:00.000-05:00

I recently went to see Clint Eastwood's new World War II film, Letters from Iwo Jima. As mentioned previously, I was curious to see this film for a number of reasons, not least of which was to see how a "pre-Baby Boomer" would portray the Japanese in a film ostensibly told from their side (the screenplay was written by Iris Yamashita, a Japanese-American). While not a film critic nor a film historian, I have done some research into portrayal of the "other" in Japanese and American war films and so was very much interested not only in the portrayal of the Japanese, as mentioned above, but in how an American director would portray Americans in the film as this would represent an "othering" of his own countrymen.

In any event, I found the film to be quite good, though it did not cause me to rethink the Top 5 ranking of war films presented here previously. Eastwood did coax excellent performances out of Japanese actors that I have seen in other, forgettable performances. Kazunari Ninomiya, who portrays the baker/soldier Saigo, was especially surprising if only because he is a member of the wholly forgettable Japanese boy band Arashi (one of the Johnny's Jimusho groups along with SMAP, V6, TOKIO, NEWS, etc., for those interested) and in this film turns in the first "anti-Johnny's" style performance I have ever seen from someone from that production house. On the other hand, Sidou Nakamura pretty much played his part in exactly the same way he plays every other part I have ever seen him in: brooding, doing his best to channel Sean Penn, but mostly yelling a lot.

Two scenes were particularly striking. First, a scene in which an American soldier is wounded and a Japanese commander orders his men not only to pull the man off the battlefield, but to use the last of their medicines to treat him. A letter from the American boy's mother ends up showing the Japanese solders who hear it read to them that the Americans are "just like us." In a later scene two American soldiers are ordered by their commander to guard a pair of Japanese who have surrendered. Eager to rejoin their unit in the fight, the Americans execute the Japanese soldiers in cold blood. In a sense, this could have been a terribly shocking scene for American audiences that had been brought up hearing only about the virtue and valiant behavior of our men in uniform. My Lai, Abu-Ghraib, and other attrocities committed by American soldiers, though, took some of the sting out of this scene.

The end of the movie also interested me. Eastwood had an opening for a very Hollywood ending along the lines of "Saving Private Ryan," leaving two soldiers, one we had come to like and one we had come to dislike, alive at the end of the story, he resisted the temptation to give us a happy reunion of Saigo the baker/soldier with his wife and child he had never seen. Likely, they died in bombings of the Kanto region and Saigo returned home to nothing. That Hollywood ending might just have been too far fetched for the tone of the film.

So, after all that, I certainly do recommend the film for its study of both the human and the Japanese soul. But, if you really want to see a great war movie, I still say you should go and rent the director's cut of "Das Boot."

2006-12-16T12:45:00.000-05:00

Last week the Boston Red Sox signed the Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. The first time I saw Matsuzaka pitch was the quarter-finals of the 1998 National High School Baseball Tournament (Koshien) in Japan. That was the start of the three game stretch of games at Koshien that made Matsuzaka a legend at 17 years old. For starters, Matsuzaka pitched all 17 innings of that quarter-final match-up with PL Gakuen of Osaka. The next day he pitched only a couple of innings in a come-back victory against Meitoku Gijuku (where I taught English for several years), but it was Matsuzaka coming in from left field to pitch with Yokohama losing 6-1 that broke the spirit of the Meitoku players and sparked the come-back. On the third day of that stretch all Matsuzaka did was pitch the first no-hitter in the Koshien final in 60 years. Here's a YouTube video of highlights of Matsuzaka at Koshien:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVzZUXUe3kg

And, for my Japanese readers, here is a speech I wrote for a 3rd year Japanese class at Princeton University's intensive summer Japanese program that is about Koshien and Matsuzaka:

“サッカーは美しいゲーム”と聞いたことがあります。でも、私の考えは、世界の一番純粋なゲームは日本の高校野球だと思います。学生の選手達は野球が大好きだから一生懸命頑張るし、学生の応援団は野球の英雄のために一生懸命応援します。毎年、大会が始まる時には全部のチームに同じチャンスがあります。高校野球の中で、この純粋な雰囲気が何よりも好きです。
日本では高校野球は非常に人気があります。春の大会も夏の大会も全部の試合をテレビで生放送します。高校野球についての雑誌、マンガ、アニメ、それに特別なテレビ番組もあります。ＰＬ学園や智弁和歌山や私のいた明徳義塾はアメリカン・フットボールのノートルダムやマイアミ大学のように有名です。
どうして日本で高校野球がそんなに人気がありますかと言う人がよくいます。私の意見ではそれには２つの理由があります。１つ目は高校野球は地方の代表がやるスポーツだということです。日本にとって自分の地元は本当に大切な物だと思います。もし自分の近くにある学校が甲子園へ行けば自分の出身地に対する思いが増えるかも知れません。２つ目は日本人は頑張るのが好きだという理由です。勝つか負けるか関係がありません。日本人はみんなは一生懸命頑張っているのを見たがります。
私は日本に初めて来た時日本語はまったくできませんでした。テレビを見たかったけど、何も分かりませんでした。そのような人にとってスポーツを見るのは一番分かりやすいと聞いたことがありました。でも、高校野球には１つの大きな問題があります。それは、ほとんどのチームはいつも真っ白で漢字が書いてあるユニフォームを着てやっているということです。試合を見る時、どこのチームとどこのチームがやっているのかは、いらいらするぐらい分かりにくいと思います。
この問題のせいで私の最初の好きなチームはローマ字で学校名が書いてあるグレーのユニフォームを着ている仙台育英高校でした。この選び方は中途半端だと思いますけど当時は他の方法はありませんでした。でも、２つの嬉しいことがあります。１つ目は去年の春の大会に私はその仙台育英を甲子園球場まで見に行きました。あの時仙台育英の応援団に入ってとなりのお客さんと今の話をして、すぐ友達になったことです。２つ目はその後にその仙台育英が決勝戦までいったことです。
次に私の一番好きな高校野球選手を紹介したいと思います。この人は1998年の夏の大会で見事な試合を３つやって、高校野球のレジェンドになりました。まず準々決勝で１回から延長１７回まで２５０球を投げました。やはり、次の日にこの人の腕はだめでしたからレフトで先発しました。７回まで投げて６―１で負けました。腕がだめだったけど、８回にこの人はマウンドの上に登りました。球場に入った４０、０００人が“ハッ”って首をかしげました。その８回と９回にこの人が本当に頑張ってこの人のチームが７―６で勝ちました。あの日の最後に負けた高校は私のいた明徳義塾高校でした。今までも私は最後のスコアボードのことが信じられないです。家の高校が負けたけど、最後の決勝戦にこの人はどんなプレーをするかを楽しみにしていました。まだ信じられませんがその人は６９年ぶりのノーヒット・ノーラン決勝戦を達成しました。その横浜高校の松坂大輔は私の高校野球の英雄になりました。
甲子園に入る時はいつも鳥肌が立ちます。もし誰か石川県大会に行きたかったら、いい思い出を作りに私と一緒に行きましょう。

2006-12-06T21:04:00.000-05:00

Later on this month the film "Letters from Iwo Jima" will premiere in the U.S. and in my opinion this has the potential to be a very important film on many levels. It is perhaps the first major Hollywood studio release to be in a foreign language and subtitled in 25 years (since The Boat, in 1981, probably) and is part of the rediscovery of World War II that "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Thin Red Line" started 10 years ago. Too few films have approached the war in the Pacific and, obviously, even fewer have approached the war from the point of view of the Japanese. In preparation of this, I'll offer up my own Top 5 War Movies (though, if "Letters" is as good as I think it is going to be, this list may change).

1) Tora, Tora, Tora (1970) - While this film has faults in that it takes a pseudo-revisionist point of view that places a great deal of insinuated blame on the American commanders at Pearl Harbor. Regardless, it contains no fictional story line and does a reasonable job of telling the story of the lead-up to Pearl Harbor in a dramatic way. The cinematography is good, the Japanese is authentic, and the action sequences were good enough that films like Midway (1976) just used the same footage.

2) The Boat (Das Boot, 1981) - Not only did this movie cement Jurgen Prochnow's status as the founding member of the All Purpose Eastern Europeans, it portrayed war from a different perspective than, perhaps, we had ever seen. Wolfgang Petersen directed the film in a way that makes the viewer feel the claustrophobia that must have come from serving in a German U-Boat. Through hours and hours (the movie is long at 149 minutes, longer at 216 minutes if you see the German version, and really LONG at 293 minutes if you see the director's cut) of not much happening to these soldiers, followed by intense moments of violence. Incredible.

3) Saving Private Ryan (1998) - Even putting aside from the rightfully famous opening 25 minutes, this film has an amazing amount going for it. Even if the idea that the U.S. Army would send a single squad of Rangers off on a mission to retrieve one soldier is ridiculous, the more important thing is the questions that this story line forces the characters to deal with. What is the value of one individual during a war? What are the conflicts that a group of soldiers have to deal with within their group? How do they handle groupthink type of situations? How does the chain of command suffer and survive over time? In any event, I think this film is the best of the "rediscovered" war film style.

4) Glory (1989) - A great film and an important one for any American to see in order to understand exactly what the point of the Civil War was. The film is a lot more about the development of the Massachusetts 54th and the battles that they fought with each other than it is about the battles that they fought against the Confederate Arny.

5) All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) - Perhaps the ultimate anti-war statement and far ahead of its time.

Honorable Mention: In Harm's Way (1965), Gallipoli (1981), The Enemy Below (1957), Guadalcanal Diary (1943), A Soldier's Story (1984), etc.

2006-12-03T17:35:00.000-05:00

In a couple of hours the BCS Selection show will be on TV and we will find out which college football team will be playing against Ohio State in the national championship game on January 8. The whole bowl system is a mess these days, with a bunch of meaningless games in January and a system that seems to cause more arguments than the old days because it is "supposed" to set up a game between the two best teams in the country. 20 years ago we almost never got to see a No. 1 vs. No. 2 game in a bowl because all of the conference champions were bound to go to specific games contractually. There was something mythic about the Rose Bowl back then, when you knew it would be the Big 10 champ versus the Pac-10 champ. Growing up as an Ohio St. fan, the only two markers for a season were whether we beat Michigan and whether we went to the Rose Bowl.

From my point of view the University of Florida's team deserves the shot at Ohio St. They won their conference (Michigan did not), and they have a better record against Top 25 and bowl-eligible teams than does Michigan. Let's hope the voters and the computers spit out that result. I'd like nothing more than to hear Michigan fans and apologists whine for the next 8 weeks.

2006-12-02T11:07:00.000-05:00

I was talking with my wife the other day and she pointed out that my ranking of Japanese actresses is sadly out of date. Yuko Takeuchi has been married long enough to have had a kid, which means she is obviously ineligible to keep her Number 2 spot. So, for the record, he is the Top 5 as of December 2, 2006:

1) Takako Tokiwa (常盤貴子) - Still going strong, though from what I can tell she hasn't appeared in a TV drama in years. Here, she makes canned coffee look delicious <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE5iVNHAyXk>

2) Manami Konishi (小西真奈美) - A potential future Number 1. Here she is selling "beer" made from soybeans (which is just wrong, but don't get me started) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x55reW_bv_A>

3) Ryoko Kuninaka (国仲涼子) - See my previous post. Here's a song she sings <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A380fr4PqZ0>

4) Eri Fukatsu (深津絵里) - Here's a change in the rankings. To tell you the truth, she reminds me of a friend of mine. Apparently, she sells IP Telephone service as well <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVnc4kzktGg>

5) Mao Kobayashi (小林麻央) - This one will probably drive my wife nuts. Originally, I wasn't such a big Mao fan, but she has grown on me. I suspect she isn't as dumb as she sounds. Here she is (in Blue) talking to Sanma Akashiya
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwUTZ7S3JD8>

So, there you have it.

2006-11-29T21:57:00.000-05:00

Well, much has changed since I last posted. In 9 months I've gotten married, been accepted to a PhD program, moved back to the U.S., and started school. I'll not bore you, dear reader, with the details, but I thought now might be as good a time as any to start writing again. At least it will put off writing a review of an article on Leader-Member Exchange Theory for another 15 minutes.

Today I came home from school and my wife had bought a little Christmas tree and set it up in our living room. It is sort of a Charlie Brown tree, no more than 2 feet high, but I could tell that she put a lot of effort into making it look just so. She always liked setting up our tree together in Japan, but I think she wanted to surprise me this time around. It made me pretty happy that she let me put the star on, even if it is more than 2 weeks too early to have a Christmas tree up.

最近、学校のことをちょっと心配してきました。勉強は難しいですけど、それは当たり前。心配してるのはフォーカスがちょっとなくなってきた。毎週面白いものを読んでるから自分が勉強したいことが見えなくなってきた。面白い先生と話すと、その先生の選考の道へ行きたくなるけど、次の日に違う先生と話すと違う道が面白くなってきてる。まぁ、何も面白くないより全部面白いのはいい問題だと思うけど、ちょっとストレスがたまる。12月23日からの冬休み入ったら、よく考えないといけない、と思います。

2005-02-06T00:21:00.000-05:00

With the new season of Japanese TV dramas into its 3rd or 4th week, I figured it was time to update my list of the Top 5 J-Actresses. Before doing that, though, I should explain the basic criteria for an actress to be ranked:

1) Be over 20.
2) Be single.*
3) Acting should be individual's primary occupation. (So, Talents - タレント -, Announcers, Singers, etc., are not included).

The Top 5 is in a constant state of flux, though I usually don't do a formal shuffling of rankings except at the beginning of the drama seasons in January, April, July, and October. Anyway, on to the rankings.

1) Takako Tokiwa (常盤貴子): She'd been No. 3 and 2 for a long time and has moved up as a sort of "lifetime" achievement award. She was fantastic in the '90s dramas "Just Tell Me That You Love Me" (愛してると言ってくれ), "Beautiful Life", etc., but never seemed to get over the hump. I recently watched her in the movie "Akai Tsuki" (赤い月), though, and that sealed it. She was stunning.

2) Yuko Takeuchi (竹内祐子): Deceptively beautiful. She seemed to have sort of plain, girl next door looks when I first saw her, but by the last episode of the drama "Pride" I had the feeling that if I actually ever met her, I probably wouldn't know what to do or say. Under normal conditions her ranking would be in jeopardy due to the fact that her current drama is more or less unwatchable. She's lucky, though, that the numbers 3-5 actresses are also involved in relatively forgetttable programs this season.

Having said that Yuko's position would normally be in jeopardy, though, I should point out that I consider Takako and Yuko to be relatively safe in their rankings for the time being. Until someone new comes on the block with serious potential, there just isn't enough power in the lower three to challenge for a top ranking.

3) Ryoko Kuninaka (国仲涼子): Sort of epitomizes cute, I think. She was the title character in the NHK morning serial "Chura-san", following in the footsteps of Hall of Famer Nanako Matsushima in parlaying that turn on NHK into parts in mainstream popular dramas. She has yet to overcome that "NHK-esque" image of absolute purity, though, and until she does that and gains 5 pounds, I don't see her moving up.

4) Miho Shiraishi (白石美帆): She's basically here on the strength of her role as the weather girl in the Nanako Matsushima/Masaharu Fukuyama drama "Beauty and the Beast". She was the revelation of that drama - a "whoa, who is that?" double take kind of woman - but has been pretty stagnant since.

5) Yukie Nakama (仲間由紀恵): She was stunning in "Trick" and "Game", but a real disappointment in "Tokyo Wan-kei". Granted, she was up against the Olympics in that season, but still. A real dud. Like Kuninaka, she could stand to gain 5 pounds, but does have a sort of "sporty" look that few J-actresses can carry off.

*The Hall of Fame: Like any Hall of Fame, the criteria for entrance here are stringent. Basically, if an actress reaches the No. 1 slot and gets married while holding that position, she is eligible. I figured there had to be a way to continue to honor these women, even if I no longer had a "chance". These are presented in reverse chronological order of their elevation.

Miho Nakayama (中山美穂): All you need to see is the Shunji Iwai movie "Love Letter." If that doesn't make you a fan of Nakayama Miho, then I don't know what the problem is. She was absolutely captivating. "Oishii Kankei", "Nemureru Mori", and "Home and Away" rank with some of my favorite dramas of all time. She held the No. 1 slot between 2000 and 2002.

Nanako Matsushima (松嶋奈々子): I first saw Nanako in the GTO TV series that she starred in with future husband Takashi Sorimachi. She's a classic beauty, and as this season's "Emergency Room 24 Hours" drama is proving, has not lost a step since marriage and having a child. Still a magnetic presence. Her Sakurako character in "Yamato na deshiko" has been described as one of the 3 seminal female TV Drama characters of the 1990's. She held the No. 1 position between 1998 and 2000

Noriko Sakai (酒井法子): Still gets my vote for the perfect face. If I could meet one J-Actress (she was still single), it would be Noriko. I first saw her in "All Under One Roof" (一つ屋根の下), but really "got it" when I watched "Hoshi no Kinka", in which she played a deaf and dumb hospital worker. It probably helped that I didn't understand Japanese in those days, and since she didn't speak in the drama I was never distracted by trying to figure out what she was talking about. I could just watch. She was No. 1 from 1995 until getting married in 1998.

Next time: Drama reviews for the January-March 2005 season.

2004-02-14T06:23:00.000-05:00

Herrrrrgh