Читать книгу Japan from Anime to Zen - David Watts Barton - Страница 15

Japan offers more extraordinary food experiences than nearly any other country in the world. Even if you want French crepes, or Italian osso bucco, or Sichuan stir-fry—even just a great cheeseburger—the Japanese can cook it and cook it well.

While one can explore almost infinite variations on Japanese noodles, Wagyu beef, or seaweed dishes, things can get even more interesting. The Japanese palate is inexhaustibly curious, even daring, and the country is home to dishes that may challenge even the most sophisticated, well-traveled gourmand’s tastes.

There are foods available in Japan that some might object to on various grounds—among them horse, whale, and various sea creatures that are cooked while still alive—but for adventurous eaters who think they’ve eaten it all, here are eight exotic dishes served around Japan that you may want to consider:

• Fish liver is popular in Japanese cuisine, which may be news to many, especially since—fish have livers? Well, of course they do. One of the most popular is the liver of the monkfish, an exceedingly unattractive fish that is known in Japan for its delicious liver, known as ankimo. Salted and served with a ponzu sauce and considered by some to be comparable to foie gras, ankimo is one of Japan’s greatest delicacies.

• The Japanese make everything—from tofu to soy sauce—from soybeans. But perhaps the most elegant, simple and simply delicious product of the humble bean is yuba. Known in English as “tofu skin,” yuba is a side product of the heating of soymilk and, as with many Japanese foods, it can be processed in a number of different ways, even into a pastry called yuba manju. Perhaps the best is a simple little bowl of creamy yuba, which is almost like a pudding—one of the most delicate flavors in Japanese cuisine.

• Once you get past the occasional sense that your food is staring back at you, taking a mouthful of chirimen jako is less unnerving than might be expected. Whether dried and chewy or fresh and moist, these tiny sardines have a nice flavor and nothing at all in the way of bones. A popular bar food, they go well with either beer or sake.

• Fugu is the Japanese name for pufferfish, a poisonous fish that is toxic to the point of total paralysis. But in the hands of the proper chef—and you do want to make sure he’s a chef who knows what he’s doing—it is apparently quite an interesting dish—and psychological challenge. Like many Japanese foods, fugu actually has quite a light taste. It’s the potential for something going wrong—which of course hardly ever happens—that gives the experience its “flavor.”

• Fish roe are a popular component of many different Japanese dishes, from the ubiquitous tobiko sprinkled on sushi, to ikura (salmon roe), which explodes with fatty, fishy goodness with every bite. But one of the most popular forms of roe in Japan is less well known to outsiders: Mentaiko, or marinated cod or pollack roe, is so popular that in addition to being eaten raw on its own, it may show up in rice balls or even as a flavor of potato chips.

Fugu, or pufferfish, requires a licensed chef to prepare safely.

• While fish roe is widely eaten, a less common dish is fish sperm, or what the Japanese call shirako. Not actually the sperm itself, shirako is the sac that holds the cod’s sperm, so it’s larger, chewier, and less gooey than one might expect. Served fried or steamed, it is at its creamiest when served uncooked. Another dish that is better eaten than contemplated.

• There are all manner of shellfish available from the seas that surround Japan, but one of the finest is torigai, the Japanese version of what the English know as cockle and what translates as “heart clam.” Fishermen have to get a special license to harvest them, and they are mostly found in the waters of Shizuoka Prefecture. Only harvested in the spring, torigai are rare, expensive, and delicious.

• Saving the greatest challenge for last, natto is, as they say, an acquired taste. Most Japanese seem to have acquired it, as it is often referred to as “Japanese comfort food.” Comparable to a very pungent cheese, this concoction of fermented soybeans—with a very sticky, crunchy, and mucus-like texture that is an acquired feel—did not strike this eater as particularly cheese-like. Or tasty. But if you’re looking for distinctive flavors, and something that’s said to be very good for you—natto may be a taste worth acquiring.