The Other East

In case you guys aren’t close followers of the English Japanese blog scene we have this great thing where every month a bunch of us write features about a common theme. This will be my first entry. This upcoming month’s theme is foreign food. You can read more about it here: Link

Check out my entry after the jump. Its…long.

(The dialog included took place in a mix of Japanese and English, for simplicity’s sake I put it all in English)

It was only 10 in the morning but the mercury was already in the mid 30Cs. I was sitting in the computer room of my gracious hosts, beads of sweat beginning to form on my brow, staring at the side of a can of Old Bay seasoning which made the journey with me from the seafood loving Baltimore area where I was born and raised to Tsuru in the heart of Yamanashi. It was probably the only can of Old Bay in Japan!

Tsuru reminded me a bit of my home town of Perry Hall ten years ago, only instead of being surrounded by water, it was surrounded by mountains. While Perry Hall has exploded in the last 10 years(covering farms with cookie cutter houses and shopping centers) , it once had about the same population as Tsuru, in fact. Like Tsuru, then small family farms dotted the landscape and vegetables from our own gardens covered our tables. That was before the housing boom and collapse. Now my family owns most of what little farm land is left in Perry Hall, while we don’t farm it commercially, we still treasure the simple pleasure of food grown with our own hands, eaten just hours after harvest.

This was a strong source of connection between my friend’s father and I, throughout my visit he proudly served me the fruits of his labor from his gardens. Having never before had anything but restaurant made Japanese food, obviously made with with frozen or canned vegetables my meals here were heavenly. While my spice would provide unique flavor to the dishes I would prepare, his vegetables would be the back bone.

2 tbsp. Old Bay Seasoning
½ cup Vinegar
½ cup water
1 lb. Shrimp, shelled.

A simple recipe from the back of the Old Bay can, a Baltimore standard. Though, that would only serve about two people, I’d have to make enough for seven. The next dish was more tricky, the legendary Maryland Crab soup.

Lots of vegetables
premium backfin meat from the blue crab
a generous pile of Old Bay Seasoning
beef soup stock
red pepper powder.

Not difficult on its own, however finding good crab meat and like with the steamed shrimp, estimating how spicy my friend and her family would like sounded like challenges. I jotted down a quick grocery list, then Ryoko and I piled into the car and headed into town. You have no idea how much I appreciated the car’s air conditioning.

I’d love to tell you we pulled into a street market and shopped, but we already had vegetables and I needed seafood. Yamanashi isn’t coastal and it was 35C at a minimum, not the best conditions for seafood bought from a street vendor, we went to a supermarket.

I picked up ten ears of corn and then we went back to the seafood section. I needed crab meat, but unfortunately unless I wanted to buy a whole lot of expensive whole crabs and pick them myself, a mix of canned and fake crab meat would have to do.

Unfortunately this supermarket was out of imitation crab meat

“How can they be out of imitation crab meat?” I asked, displeased.

“I don’t know, but they have a good deal on the shrimp” suggested Ryoko, “How much do we need, 2 pounds?”

“Hmmmm, how about three?” I offered.

“What! Why so much?” She seemed shocked by such a mass of shrimp.

“You know what? Let’s do four pounds. That should do it.” I decided.

She gave me a look that suggested that I was insane.

I let her into my reasoning; “Hey, if there aren’t leftovers I didn’t make enough. That’s how we do things in Baltimore.”

“Well I think there would have been plenty left with three pounds” Ryoko said matter of factly.

“You’ve never seen me eat shrimp.” I said with a laugh.

We loaded back into the car and went to a near by supermarket where we were able to locate some imitation crab. I also grabbed a stick of butter on the way to the register. You can’t have corn without butter if you’re eating it with shrimp and crab soup! With my ingredients acquired the only thing left was to cook up the first Baltimore style feast this family had ever had. Well, no that’s not all true. The next thing to do was drop the food off at the house and go hiking, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

After we got back from climbing up a random small mountain(or you could call it a very large hill), we got cleaned up and set to work preparing a feast for seven. As I started to cook the shrimp Ryoko took to chopping up the fresh vegetables for the crab soup.

She looked over her shoulder, “I still think three pound would have been plenty.”

I laughed, “You’ll see, just wait”

Her mother had left to pick up her sister for dinner, so I took my time preparing everything. But you can only fight heat for so long before everything finishes cooking. So waiting for arrival of the family, I put the food on simmer and took to perfecting the spices.

“Taste this, should I add more spice?” I offered a spoon of soup to Ryoko

“I think its good as it is now” She said.

I added more spice anyway.

“Hope your mom gets home soon” I said “I don’t want to over cook this”
“She’s getting KFC” She mentioned casually.

“Wait, what?” I stammered

“To go with your food, its American food,” She said it like it made perfect sense.

“Well…yeah but its not really usual what we eat at a crab feast. Fried chicken is delicious don’t get me wrong but…” I stopped. I was having far too much fun to worry about trying to make everything perfect. Eventually her mother and sister arrived and I began plating the food on the table.

“That’s a lot of shrimp,” her mom said

Ryoko shot me an I-told-you-so look, I pretended I didn’t notice and continued bringing the food to the table, setting a large plate of shrimp down next to a box of surprise KFC. Everyone sat down to the table and looked at the food. I put the can of Old Bay down in the middle.

“That’s Old Bay. Its in the soup and on the shrimp. You can keep the rest of the spice, go ahead! Dig in!” I said enthusiastically.

After a few cautious bites they began to devour my feast. I was thrilled they where enjoying it, but I noticed that they where eating the corn plain.

“Put some butter on that corn, and some salt and pepper,” I suggested.

“Butter?” Her dad asked, not even having considered the possibility.

“Yeah, watch,” I slathered on the butter and chowed down. It was pretty good corn. They followed with buttering of their own and tried it. Their eyes lit up, they now knew the artery clogging decadence of buttery vegetables.

The KFC sat most untouched as the whole family dug into the shrimp. Before long refills of crab soup were needed by all. I don’t think I’d been that proud of myself since I got into Sophia University. What a day this was, enjoying the Japanese countryside, and feeding a family a meal that did true justice to American cuisine. Hopefully now when they go to KFC and Mos Burger they will think “This isn’t good American food.”

I noticed that of all of us, her grandmother was eating the most. She was working on her second bowl of soup and ear of corn and was accumulating a rather large pile of shrimp tails.

I leaned over to Ryoko, “I think she likes it”

She laughed, her grandmother occasionally taking time from determined eating to shooting me looks and comments of approval. As I slowed down my eating she kept serving me more shrimp! She was certainly a grandmother.

Eventually we all stopped eating, but no one left the table.

“What did you think? Did you like the spice? Better then McDonald’s right!” I asked, hunting for compliments.

“Very good,” Her father said, continuing to try out his English.“Good spice”

Her grandmother said a few sentences to me that I mostly missed, but I picked up the import parts. She had loved it. That was evident from her eating more then anyone else, I had said that we needed the extra shrimp for me, but in the end we had needed them for her. There were some leftovers, just enough to serve with rice, salmon and natto in the morning.

I’d cooked the perfect amount, everyone loved it, I was full, I was surrounded by a great family, and out side the house where the gorgeous mountains of Japan. It was perfect. What could I complain about?

Tags: corn, japan, Japan Blog Matsuri, jbmatsuri, soup, yamanashi