Tokyo was a whirlwind. First of all, its huge. It’s not the kind of city you can see in a few days, or even a week. Add to that the cultural barrier and Tokyo seemed almost impenetrable to me, much more so than the other places we visited in Japan. So during the three days we spent there, I felt like I just barely dipped my toe in to the water.

We did experience some if it. We saw the bright neon lights of Akihabara Electric Town, which was complete sensory overload – the electric, futuristic Tokyo of the movies. At the Tsukiji Fish Market, we watched the vendors portion the enormous tuna into slabs and peered into tanks of squid and scallops. Outside the market, Trevor ate the biggest oyster I’ve ever seen. We ate sushi of the highest quality, the only non-Japanese people sitting at the counter, pointing and arigato our only forms of communication. We spent hours in the train station, eating porky tonkotsu ramen and shopping in anime stores, a whole store for each character. In Ginza, we explored department stores with whole floors dedicated to high-end foods, sampling what we could afford. A friend living in Tokyo took us out for fresh bonito and sake. We went to a park where the rapeseed was blooming, rendering the whole field a gentle, glowing yellow.

And we went to an izakaya for dinner, one of our most memorable nights. If you ever go to Tokyo, find your way to an izakaya. Located under elevated train tracks and down alleyways, these smoke-filled, hole-in-the-wall taverns are an experience. Filled with rowdy Japanese businessmen still in their suits, sometimes they are little more than a collection of plastic crates and an open grill protected by heavy plastic sheeting. But the food they turn out – skewers of grilled yakitori, platters of light and airy tempura, bowls of udon noodles – is sublime.

Recently, hoping to warm up a cold wintry night, we partnered with La Crema to attempt to replicate our izakaya experience at home. On our menu: tsukune with egg yolk, miso-marinated pork skewers, and seasonal vegetable tempura with mushrooms, brussels sprouts, and sweet potato. We broke out the indoor grill pan, cracked a few bottles of La Crema Monterey Pinot Gris and Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, and settled in for a night of cooking, drinking, and noshing.

Tsukune, my favorite yakitori dish, is a lightly seasoned, grilled chicken meatball served with a salty sweet tare sauce and a raw egg yolk. The Miso Pork Skewers are an easy dish – a simple marinade, some pork tenderloin, and a few minutes on the grill are all you need. Tempura is a bit trickier to master, but well worth it for the crispy, golden brown vegetables that are a staple of Japanese-American restaurants. All together, they make a fine meal: a bite of tsukune, a few pieces of tempura sweet potato, a sip of crisp Pinot Gris. It’s a great way to warm up a January night at home while reminiscing about past travels.

All of the recipes can be found on the La Crema blog (Tsukune, Miso Pork Skewers, and Winter Vegetable Tempura). And if you’re looking for dessert, might I suggest these Matcha Cream Puffs? I’ve got more matcha desserts in the works, but these are a good starting point.

More from Japan:
Japan Travelogue Part One: Kyoto; Matcha Cream Puffs
Japan Travelogue Part Two: Ise; Ginger Chicken Miso Ramen

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by La Crema. All opinions are honest and my own.

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The post Japan Part 3: Tokyo Travelogue // Izakaya Dinner with La Crema appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

I had originally meant this recipe to be for my book review of Simply Ramen, a lovely new(ish) book with a great mixture of traditional and non-traditional ramen recipes by Amy of Easy Peasy Japanesey. But then I opened a bottle of sake to steam the chicken, and poured a few glasses, and Trevor and I sat down to these steaming bowls of ramen, and I couldn’t stop thinking about our time in Ise. So instead of a book review this post is the much overdo second part to our Japan travelogue, dedicated to our time in Ise, and a true review of Amy’s book will come later. (Warning: this is a long post, so if you’re just here for a delicious ramen recipe, skip to the end!)

After our magical introduction to Japan in Kyoto, we wandered a bit off the beaten track, to the Ise peninsula, a coastal area about 2 hours southeast of Kyoto. Ise is the home of the Grand Shrine complex Jingū, one of Shinto’s holiest and most visited sites. Trevor had learned about the shrine and its architecture in college and it was at the top of his list for things to see in Japan. There were plenty of other visitors in Ise, but I would guess that 99% of them were Japanese, pilgrims coming to visit the shrines. English speakers became harder to find and we became more of a curiosity.

When I think about Ise, I think about sake, and blonde wood rooms, and strangely deserted beach resorts, and 500 year old sacred Cypress trees, and our ever-smiling pink-pajamaed Ryokan room attendant. I think about getting caught in a rainstorm in the middle of a frustrating and misguided walk from one shrine to the next, somehow finding ourselves in an Italian restaurant in one of those travel moments where everything feels like it’s going wrong, only to emerge to find the sun shining and realize that we were only 10 minutes from where we wanted to be. I think about sitting in the small basement-level restaurant in our hotel, using Google Translate to attempt an interpretation of the Japanese-only menu, and somehow successfully ordering two bowls of ramen. And I think about sitting alone, naked, in a steaming, outdoor Ryokan bath late at night, with icy cold winter winds whipping around the trees and the sound of the ocean pounding below.

Oishiya Ryokan

Our three days in Ise had two major components – a stay at a traditional Japanese inn called a ryokan and a visit to the grand shrines. A ryokan is more of an experience than just a place to stay – it has a whole set of traditions around it, and is widely considered a “must-do” while in Japan. We chose a mid-range ryokan called Oishiya right next to the Wedded Rocks (or Meoto Iwa). When you arrive, your room attendant greets you and takes you to your room, typically a spare, furniture-free room with a tatami mat floor and paper-screen walls. You are given a yakuta to change into, and then your room attendant returns to serve you tea. Our room attendant (I wish I could remember her name!) was such a lovely, smiling woman. She had a little note card with all of the English phrases she needed to say tied to her waist, and she giggled a lot and just made us feel so cared for, which is a big part of the ryokan experience. And then after that you… just relax. You’re not really supposed to do much other than visit the baths and wait for dinner.

Dinner is served in your room, in a series of tiny, elaborately-plated dishes – ours included raw spiny lobsters that we cooked ourselves in boiling miso, fried fugu (blowfish) that I was too nervous to try, and two bottles of sake, which left us red-faced and giggly, sitting on the floor in our matching yakutas. I really enjoyed the dinner – it was so different and strangely intimate, a cross between a romantic dinner out and dining in, with an added element of discovery as I’d never tried most of the foods we ate that night. After dinner, our attendant pushed the table to the side and pulled out our futons, fluffing the comforters and pillows and practically tucking us in… and then we slept. Soundly.

Ise Grand Shrine

The grand shrines, the reason most people visit this part of Japan, were the center of our full day in Ise. For me, the shrines themselves weren’t the most interesting part of the visit – you actually can’t even see most of the shrine, as only the imperial family and a few select priests are allowed to enter the gates. What I found most fascinating was watching all of the other visitors, who clearly felt a certain reverence being there, and feeling myself to be part of a pilgrimage. It was also a lovely, sunny day, and the shrines are surrounded by forests with ancient trees and a wide and winding river, so I enjoyed the walking as much as anything. Outside the inner shrine, Ise Naiku, there is a small, traditional town called Oharai-machi, which includes a pedestrian street filled with food vendors and shops. It is more a recreation of a traditional shrine town than a contemporary one, but walking down the main drag, sampling fried oysters and local beers and window shopping, was a highlight of the visit for me. We even managed some non-verbal conversation with a group of young Japanese men we were sitting next to who didn’t like their beer and wanted to share it with us. (Key words – “oishii?” “ie oishii” “arigato!”)

Ise Travel Tips

From a practical standpoint, visiting Ise was the most complicated (and frustrating) part of our trip. Getting there required advanced train navigation (JR passes, probably the most popular way to get around Japan for foreigners, only work on Japan Railways lines, which thinned out considerably on the Ise peninsula), we switched between two hotels (perhaps a misguided decision, but we weren’t sure two nights at a Ryokan was worth it for us), and communication became difficult. But looking back, it also provided some of the most memorable and unique experiences. If you’re also headed there, a few tips:

• Bring lots of cash with you. We had a really tough time finding a place to get cash out during our visit to the shrines (if all else fails, try the post office) and we ended up wasting  a very frustrating hour looking for it.
• Plan out your train routes and schedules beforehand (we had a JR pass and took the Shinkansen Hikari from Kyoto to Nagoya, then took the JR Rapid Mie line from Nagoya to Iseshi. You do have to pay a small supplement while riding the JR Rapid Mie line, which the conductor collects in cash when you cross into the non-JR part of the track).
• If you’re not staying close to the shrine itself, take the Kintetsu line to Isuzugawa instead of Iseshi/Ujiyamada. While Iseshi/Ujiyamada are the main access points for the outer shrine, it’s an hour long walk or a fairly expensive (500Yen) bus ride to the inner shrine, and the queues for the bus can be really long. Isuzugawa, however, is only a 20 minute walk from the inner shrine (which is the one that most people really come to see, as well as where the fun, touristy villages of Oharaimachi and Yokocho Okage are).
• Take advantage of tourist incentives if they are being offered! Our ryokan had us take a 5 minute survey in exchange for 20,000 yen in “coupons” that could be used throughout the peninsula. I was incredibly skeptical at first but we ended up being able to use the coupons to pay for all sorts of things – they covered one of our nights at the hotel and I bought myself a pair of pearl earrings. So, that was an unexpected perk.
• Here’s a helpful English guide for spending a long weekend in the area.

Miso Ramen

This is the third ramen recipe I’m posting here, and this one, far and away, is the closest to the real deal. The miso base is made by blending together aromatic vegetables, ground pork, a healthy amount of bacon fat, and two kinds of miso paste (the real stuff, not the minute miso that comes in a bottle). The base is simple to make, and once you have it, you have the key to practically instant ramen bliss. A few spoonfuls of the intensely flavored miso base stirred into good chicken broth makes a cloudy, salty, deeply savory ramen soup. Beyond the noodles (essential), you can top it with pretty much whatever you want. For this version, I’ve topped it with Amy’s ginger-and-sake steamed chicken (delicious on its own, as well), a few sauteed shiitake mushrooms, and a soft-boiled egg. It’s one of the most satisfying things I’ve eaten in the past few months. Luckily, having a tupperware full of the miso base stashed away in the freezer means I can experiment with toppings to my heart’s content for the rest of the fall.

More from Japan:
Japan Travelogue Part One: Kyoto; Matcha Cream Puffs

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Ginger Chicken Miso Ramen

Recipe adapted from Simply Ramen. Serves 2.

• 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, thinly sliced on the diagonal
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 TBS freshly grated ginger
• 1/4 cup sake
• 1 TBS olive oil
• 8 shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and caps thinly sliced
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 4 TBS miso ramen base, or more to taste
• 2 soft-boiled eggs, peeled and cut in half
• 2 servings ramen noodles, fresh or frozen, cooked according to package directions and then rinsed in cold water

1. To make the chicken, season the sliced breast all over with salt and pepper. Add the sake, grated ginger, and chicken to a small non-stick skillet. Cover with a lid and bring sake to a simmer over medium-low heat. Simmer until chicken is fully cooked and you can no longer see any pink, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat, let chicken cool, and shred into bite-sized pieces.
2. To prepare the mushrooms, heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the sliced mushroom caps and cook undisturbed for 3 minutes, then flip to the other side and cook another 2-3 minutes. Mushrooms should be golden brown and crispy. Set aside.
3. Place the chicken broth and miso base in a pot and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Stir to fully incorporate the miso into the broth. Simmer for 5 minutes. Divide the cooked and rinsed ramen noodles between two bowls, then pour the hot broth over the noodles. Top each bowl with chicken, mushrooms, and a soft-boiled egg. Serve immediately.

Miso Ramen Base

Recipe adapted slightly from Simply Ramen. Makes enough for 12 servings.

• 1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1/2 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 apple, cored, peeled, and roughly chopped
• 1 celery stalk, cut into large pieces
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1/2 cup bacon fat
• 1 TBS sesame oil
• 1 1/2 cups ground pork
• 1 tsp fresh ground ginger
• 1 tsp sriracha
• 2 TBS soy sauce
• 1 TBS apple cider vinegar
• 1 TBS tahini
• 3/4 cup white miso (such as Shiro miso)
• 3/4 cup red miso (such as Akamiso miso)

1. Add the carrot, onion, apple, celery, and garlic to a food processor and process until evenly and very finely chopped. Add the bacon fat and the sesame oil to a large skillet and melt over medium heat, then add the finely chopped vegetables. Saute until veggies are tender, about 6-8 minutes.
2. Add the ground pork the the skillet with the veggies and use the back of a wooden spoon to break it into small pieces. Saute until pork is fully cooked, about 8-10 minutes. Add the ginger, sriracha, soy sauce and vinegar to the pork and veggies and stir to incorporate fully.
3. Transfer the cooked veggie and pork mixture back to the food processor and process until it is finely ground, almost a paste. You want the miso base to be as paste-like as possible so that it incorporates evenly into the soup. Scrape the paste into a bowl. Add the miso pastes and the tahini and stir until fully incorporated.
4. Refrigerate the miso base for up to a week or freeze for up to a month.

The post Japan Part 2: Ise Travelogue // Ginger Chicken Miso Ramen appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

Our trip to Japan this February was one of the best trips I’ve ever been on. I wasn’t expecting it – it was more Trevor’s pick than mine, and despite my best intentions, I really hadn’t planned much other than our accommodations and transportation before we got on the plane from Hong Kong. I think my limited expectations contributed to how much I enjoyed the trip, but even without that, Japan is just a magical place. Despite the language barrier, which is very real, it’s an easy place to travel – safe, friendly, and orderly. If you know and follow the rules and schedules, travel is easy and pleasant. On top of that, Trevor and I were in a very happy place. After a year of hectic travel schedules and stressful jobs, spending 4 weeks together in Hong Kong felt like the exact reminder I needed about how much I love simply spending time with him. Taking that feeling into vacation made the trip that much better.

We flew into Tokyo on a red-eye from Hong Kong. Rather than drag our suitcases through a crowded city, waiting for our hotel room to be available while struggling to keep our eyes open, we chose simply to hop on the Shinkansen from Narita and head straight for Kyoto. It was the right choice – I can’t imagine a better introduction to Japan than beautiful Kyoto. Kyoto is both provincial and timeless, sprawling yet accessible, and filled with so much history and beauty and culture.

We took our time exploring Kyoto, only doing as much as we felt like each day. The morning that we visited Fushimi Inari to see the famous orange torii gates turned into late afternoon when we decided to follow a wooded path through the forest rather than return down the mountain with the crowds. That path led to a moss-covered stone garden, a secret bamboo grove, a farm with grapefruit-laden trees, a blossoming plum tree, and a neighborhood of high-end but very traditional homes, tucked away on a quiet side street. Nishiki market was another treasure – we could have spent the better part of a day trying everything it had to offer. As it was, we tasted our way through tako tamago (baby octopus stuffed with a quail egg), freshly made matcha mochi, okonomiyaki, a variety of battered and fried vegetables, and an incredible glass of unpasteurized sake, called namasake. The brilliant gold facade of Kinkakuji Temple was worth the 45 minute walk to get there, despite the swarms of other people who were walking by with us. And in the late afternoon one day, we snuck into Nijo Castle just minutes before closing time, and by walking just a little bit slower than the group in front of us, we found ourselves walking down the airy wooden halls alone, listening to the chirping of the nightingale floors under our feet and imagining what it would have been like to sit in the center of the painted rooms.

One morning, perhaps my favorite morning of the trip, we spent wandering through Arashiyama. The bamboo forest was the initial draw, but ultimately I found it underwhelming. Yes, the bamboo groves are as lovely as the photos look, but they don’t have the immensity or the depth I was expecting – after a few short minutes, we had walked through all of them. But the rest of the Arashiyama area was so worth the visit. There’s a beautiful, wide, pale-green river, dozens of restaurants in traditional wooden buildings with views of the river, a few bustling streets lined with shops, and a perfectly hipster coffee place that fully satisfied my desire to do the “Japanese coffeeshop thing” that Instagram so dearly loves. The weather was fickle and frosty, with brief and furious snow flurries followed by gentle sunshine all morning. We climbed to the top of one of the hills to see the monkeys, and loved it so much we spent an hour watching them play, looking out over the city, and feeding them bananas. When we were thoroughly chilled, we ducked inside a casual restaurant for steaming bowls of katsu donburi, just as the snow picked up outside. It was the sort of day that leaves a lasting impression, where you know just how lovely the memory will be before the day is even over.

Choosing restaurants in Kyoto was one of the more daunting things we experienced. We were staying in a quiet neighborhood a little outside of the main tourist areas (in a little boutique hotel called Villa Aneyakoji, which I recommend without any reservation whatsoever – it was perfect), and we walked by tons of lovely, intimate-looking restaurants, emanating a warm yellow glow from inside traditional wooden buildings. But all the signs and menus were only in Japanese, and with very limited ability to communicate, or even read the prices, we weren’t comfortable enough to go in, although we desperately wanted to. So we primarily ended up at the places with loud English menus – the sort of restaurant I typically try to avoid when traveling (with the notable exception of the meal we had at Tiger Gyoza Hall, which was excellent and felt like a lucky find). One night, after an acceptable but not extraordinary dinner at a conveyor-belt sushi place (worth going once just for the experience), we were wandering home rather late, hoping that the matcha cream puff place we had wandered by in the mall would still be open. Everything in the mall was decidedly closed, but we kept wandering and found ourselves outside of the Lipton Tea House, with pristine pastries beckoning from the window. After a little gesturing to the proprietress, we walked out with a box containing one enormous cream puff and one thick slice of matcha and chocolate cake, to be enjoyed 20 minutes later in our yakutas from the comfort of our room. (An illustration of Japanese hospitality: we asked for a fork at reception when we walked into our hotel, and 3 minutes later someone knocked on our door carrying a tray with plates, hot towels, and tiny gold forks for our dessert. This is now what I expect when I ask for a fork anywhere in the world).

I devoured that cream puff – it was light and rich and flavorful and perfect – and somehow it became my primary food memory from Kyoto, despite not being particularly Japanese. So I’ve made cream puffs for you here – big ones, with perfectly puffed and eggy shells and a matcha-infused cream. I went light on the matcha, because it’s a strongly savory flavor (and because it costs an arm and a leg here), but if you know you love the flavor of matcha feel free to increase it. And although I didn’t end up using these component recipes, Zen Can Cook deserves a shoutout here, if only for the inspiration his beautiful photos provided.

More from Japan:
Japan Travelogue Part Two: Ise Peninsula; Ginger Chicken Miso Ramen

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Matcha Cream Puffs

Pate a choux recipe adapted from Food Network. Makes about 20 large cream puffs.

For the pastry cream:

• 1/2 c. sugar
• 4 TBS cornstarch
• 2 whole eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 c. whole milk
• pinch of salt
• 1 TBS matcha tea powder
• 3 TBS butter, cut into thin slices
• 1 c. heavy cream

For the puffs:

• 1 c. water
• 1 stick salted butter
• pinch salt
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 c. flour
• 4 whole eggs

1. To make the pastry cream, whisk together the sugar and cornstarch in a large, heatproof bowl until evenly combined. Add the eggs and egg yolk to the sugar and whisk until the mixture is thick and pale yellow. Set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine the milk and the salt and heat over medium temperature. Bring just to a simmer (milk should be steaming and starting to bubble around the edges but not boiling) then remove from the heat. Sift the matcha powder into the milk through a fine-mesh sieve, whisking to combine. Slowly pour the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking the eggs vigorously as you do so, to temper the eggs. Transfer the custard back to the saucepan and return to medium-low heat, whisking the custard the whole time to prevent lumps and scrambling the eggs. Cook the custard, still whisking, until it has thickened, about 3-4 minutes, then pour into a clean bowl. Stir in the butter piece by piece, waiting until each piece has melted before adding the next. Let custard cool slightly, then cover with plastic wrap, pressing plastic wrap against surface of the custard, and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.
3. To make the cream puffs, preheat the oven to 425°F. Combine the water, butter, salt, and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring just to a boil, then remove from the heat and add the flour all at once, stirring vigorously to incorporate. Stir until the flour is fully incorporated, then return the pot to the heat and cook for 60-90 seconds, beating hard the whole time, until the water has evaporated from the dough to the point that the dough leaves a thin film on the bottom of the pot. Remove from the heat and transfer the dough to a bowl.
4. Beat the eggs into the dough one at a time, thoroughly mixing between additions. When you have added the last egg, the dough should be smooth and shiny, and drip slowly from the spoon when lifted out of the bowl. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Use a tablespoon to scoop rounds of dough onto the parchment paper, leaving at least 2 inches between them. Use your finger to flatten any points as they will burn. Alternatively, you can spoon the dough into a pastry bag fitted with a large tip and pipe rounds onto the baking trays, but I found this more difficult than simply scooping them. Bake the cream puffs for 15 minutes at 425°F, then reduce the heat to 375°F and bake for another 20 minutes, until puffed up and lightly browned all over. Remove from the oven and let cool on a cooling rack.
5. To assemble and serve the cream puffs, beat the heavy cream until soft peaks form. Add 1/3 of the whipped cream to the pastry cream and use a spatula to gently fold into the cream until mixture is even. Repeat twice more with the remaining whipped cream – the resulting whipped pastry cream should be light and airy but still hold it’s shape. Cut the puffs apart horizontally with a serrated knife and place a large spoonful of the cream on top of the bottom half, then replace the top half of the puff on top of the pastry cream. Only fill as many cream puffs as you will be serving immediately.

The post Japan Part 1: Kyoto Travelogue // Matcha Cream Puffs appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.