This is an event that the ministry is vigorously promoting – Oishii Japan. I was given a few delightful minutes to chat with, via interpreter, the Deputy Director of the International Trade and Tariff Team in the International Affairs department of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Mr. Masashi Itoh.

He was very kind to give us the time he did and he was very patient with our many questions about their efforts, Japanese food, and cultural things like the proper way of handing one another their business card.

The take home message that I really appreciated was that Japanese food is about more than just sushi (it really is!) and that the Japanese government is interested in promoting the exquisite quality and breadth of variety that typifies their food and cuisine.

I would give hen’s teeth to be a food blogger in Japan, exploring the ancient as well as new cuisines that Japan has evolved.

There was a great variety of samples provided that included salmon, hamachi yellowfin tuna from Dainishi company, wasabi avocado by Kinjirushi, delicate crab, unagi, salmon roe by the Nomura Trading Company, and a resplendent wakame salad from The Marine Foods Corporation.

Here are a couple shots of the crab dish. A fellow photographer who was competing with me all night to shoot things decided she needed a shot of me eating this crab morsel. Somewhere out there in the Japanese web-o-sphere is a cheesy image of me scarfing this down. Hope I never run across it!

Here are a couple of shots of the wakame salad that I could NOT get enough of. It has this plump crispiness when you bit into it, the flavors (sesame, wakame, other more mysterious aspects) explode in your mouth. It was fantastically refreshing.

They shared delightful unagi.

We had this composite fish ball sort of food that is really quite delicious. This is something that is common in asian cuisine but we do not tend to find it here as part of the Japanese restaurant food cuisine.

Hamachi teriaki (yellowfin tuna)

Sashimi yellowfin

Salmon roe

It was a delicious (did I say that before?) and entertaining evening. I look forward to possibly attending again next year!

As with any event relating to Japanese customs, they provided us with gifts, including this cute shrimp sushi pen!

(“Wild Boar” by Kaji Aso 1995, Courtesy of the Kaji Aso Studio)

(Learn more about Mr. Kaji Aso!)

You long time readers might remember that my oldest daughter and I have been learning about the Japanese Tea Ceremony. We have attended a couple of 2 hour long tea ceremonies at the Kaji Aso Studio “House of Flower Wind” Tea House in the Symphony area of Boston, MA.

I have taken various photos there and can share them here with a very strong recommendation that you find a chance some time to book a Sunday afternoon tea ceremony appointment. Be sure to learn some about it before you go. This page at the Kaji Aso Studio has information on their Japanese Tea Ceremony.

The Kaji Aso Studio also puts on a yearly Japan Festival (details below) that is absolutely worth your time if you enjoy anything about Japanese culture and wish to meet very talented and infinitely welcoming people. You will get a chance to mingle with other Japan-o-philes, visiting Japanese, view ikebana classes, tour the Flower Wind tea house, eat sushi, learn some haiku, hear some delicate and extraordinary music, and enjoy a delightful play written by the late Kaji Aso.

When we last went, Mr. Aso was still alive and we got to hear him sing opera, do sumi-e painting (I have some on my wall), and enjoy his gentle, quiet but joyful self. We still are sad at his passing.

Please take some time to attend the Japan Festival! We might see you there, let us know if you plan on attending. Let Kate know that I sent you.

JAPAN FESTIVAL 2007
Sunday, May 6, 2-7 pm
Admission- $10, Students & Seniors $5

Kaji Aso Studio
40 St. Stephen Street
Boston, MA

PROGRAM:
2:00-2:40 – Origami Workshop
2:50-3:30 – Ikebana Demonstration (Flower Arranging), Tomoko Tanaka
3:40-4:20 – Demonstration of Calligraphy – Kate Finnegan
4:30-5:15 – Traditional Music – Sumie Kaneko
5:25-5:45 – Haiku and Renga reading by Boston Haiku Society
5:45-6:00 – Kaji Aso Studio International Haiku Contest Award Ceremony Supported in part by the Consulate General of Japan in Boston
6:00-7:00 – Theater Performance “Thunder God” – Written by Kaji Aso

Also from 2-6 pm

• Tours of Tea House and Taste of Tea $5
• Exhibition of Calligraphy and Sumi Painting
• Ceramics and Gift Items- Priced Individually
• Maki Sushi and Inari Sushi á la carte -$5 to $8

Information: 617- 247-1719
administrator@kajiasostudio.com

At Kaji Aso’s 2006 funeral at the Massachusetts State House Rotunda, we were all humbled and silenced by a haiku he wrote on the occasion of his passing and for us to remember him by.

“young boy

dreaming of catching rainbow

he became rainbow”

- Kaji Aso 2006

Related Posts:

• Wagashi – Traditional Japanese Confections – Stylistic Dreams of the World
• A Look to Tomorrow – Edible Beauty
• Channeling my inner chef – where HAS she been to?!

Technorati Tags: Kaji Aso, Kaji Aso Studio, Japanese Tea Ceremony, House of Flower Wind, Tea House, Symphony, Boston, Kaji, Aso, Japan Festival, Japanese, Japan, ikebana, sushi, opera, Origami, Tomoko Tanaka, Calligraphy, Sumie Kaneko, Boston Haiku Society, International Haiku Contest, Consulate General of Japan, Thunder God, Ceramics, Maki Sushi, Inari Sushi

(Bhutanese red rice onigiri with tofu and split pea puree, recipe towards the end of this post)

Today’s post is going to have multiple personalities. I am going to cover three main topics:

• Low Glycemic Cooking and why I care
• A recipe for the Bhutanese red rice onigiri you see above
• A how-to on making onigiri with my new gadget – an onigiri form

Low Glycemic cooking and why I care

As a general rule, I respect everyone’s right to their own eating styles. I care that people eat the way they need to and I am no one to nit-pick others for that. My story that follows is like many of you. I can not say I have any answers and I am not an expert. I am sharing this story so that you can understand how I got into my current predicament – I am pre-diabetic, according to my doctor.

Like most of the over-developed world, I have had to diet from an early age. Even though I swam 4 miles a day for two different swim teams, I still had to watch what I ate. When I decided that the swimming was more than I could bear anymore I decided to quit at the end of freshman year (4:30 am every day for the State National team and after school every day for the high school team, I never stopped smelling of chlorine and my hair was blond at it’s tips – I have blue black hair mind you).

Then, the weight FLEW on my body. At the tender age of 16 I was on Nutri/System. I lost 50 lbs and was down to 117 lbs (was 5’5″, have shrunk since then). I was sort of happy but my body wasn’t. When I went back to school that fall, I went back to regular food and the weight came back. Over the many years since, I have done Nutri/System many times, Weight Watchers many times, all the while, killing my metabolism. The only times when I maintained a loss after these diets was when I was working out excessively, running 3 miles a day and barely eating. In more recent times, I have tried the Atkins diet (I saw my grandma try it back in the early 80s with some success) and it worked but it was unsustainable. After a while, you can honestly get sick and tired of butter, bacon, steak, eggs, essentially any high protein food. The worst thing about the low carb high protein diet is the imbalance in something about one’s hydration (must be the ketosis) such that when one goes off of this diet, the weight (both water and fat) comes back quickly and with a depressing vengeance.

This has always seemed unfair to me because my dad and my little sister literally eat what ever they wish (or wished, my dad has passed away) and never get or got fat. So within my own family, there is the object lesson that if one’s body is genetically predisposed to accumulate fat, IT WILL.

In recent times, I have had to make peace with my body and not let the fat twist my entire self-worth. That is a very hard process and I would not say I had complete success. Doing this food blog and also, especially, doing the food photography has helped me in ways that may not be intuitive. When I do food photography (and the cooking for it), I am not eating the food and I am not craving it. (I have never been obsessive about eating food nor binged on it so I do not have that dynamic) When I am cooking, styling, and shooting, I appreciate the food as an art form, as shapes, composition, as artistic statement, as cultural statement, as a sharing of my identity or my process of discovery. Same thing with the writing. I can not help writing about food the way I do because my curiosity leads me to ask questions and learn, just for the sake of learning. This is a bit of overflow from the fact that we homeschool and life is about learning.

(Insulin hexamer: Wikipedia source – public domain)

All of this is fine and dandy but my doctor recently witnessed one of my hypoglycemic episodes (have had them all my life, thin or fat), tested my blood sugar which was fine, and so he sent out blood tests for something called the HbA1c test (hemoglobin A1c test or hemoglobin glycosylation – an assay that determines the amount of sugars that have been stuck on the hemoglobin molecules.. this is indicative of the levels of sugar in one’s blood over a few months). The following is a down to earth description of this assay.

“Sugar in the bloodstream can become attached to the hemoglobin (the part of the cell that carries oxygen) in red blood cells. This process is called glycosylation (pronounced gli-kos-a-lay’-shen). Once the sugar is attached, it stays there for the life of the red blood cell, which is about 120 days. The higher the level of blood sugar, the more sugar attaches to red blood cells. The hemoglobin A1c test measures the amount of sugar sticking to the hemoglobin in the red blood cells. Results are given in percentages.” Diabetes Tool Box

For those of you who are more scientifically oriented, try this abstract:

“Glucose reacts nonenzymatically with the NH2-terminal amino acid of the beta chain of human hemoglobin by way of a ketoamine linkage, resulting in the formation of hemoglobin AIc. Other minor components appear to be adducts of glucose 6-phosphate and fructose 1,6-diphosphate. These hemoglobin s are formed slowly and continuously throughout the 120-day life-span of the red cell. There is a two- to threefold increase in hemoglobin AIc in the red cells of patients with diabetes mellitus. By providing an integrated measurement of blood glucose, hemoglobin AIc is useful in assessing the degree of diabetic control. Furthermore, this hemoglobin is a useful model of nonenzymatic glycosylation of other proteins that may be involved in the long-term complications of the disease.” The glycosylation of hemoglobin: relevance to diabetes mellitus. HF Bunn, KH Gabbay, and PM Gallop. Science 1978: 200(4337):21 – 27.

Mine came back 6.2, which seems to indicate pre-diabetes and a cause of concern for my doc. I can tell you that I have figured I was pre-diabetic for a long time but every time I asked for tests, they came back negative (they never gave me the glycosylation test before). My doc has told me that I have three months to control the blood sugars and if I do not, I will have to go on meds. I have a natural dislike for meds so it was not good news!

I know that diabetes is absolutely nothing to mess around with and I want to reverse this pre-diabetic thing with whole foods and moderate exercise. Let me tell you though, when you start looking at what is recommended for the diabetic diet you find one commonality: there is NO consensus. I also found that diet recommendations for diabetes and pre-diabetes seems to be a dumping ground for ALL of the vague advice, all that stuff you have heard over the years and found didn’t work for you. Things like: Eat food X because so and so study says to! Yikes. Things like: eat only low fat foods, eat only fish, eat TONS of omega-3s, eat no fish, eat no carbs, eat only a few carbs, eat .. yadda yadda yadda.

Excuse me, but I am getting flash backs and they are not fun ones. I despair at the mediocrity and vagueness of the diet recommendations one finds for this condition. Its all a recipe for unsustainablity. Food is inherently associated with the desire to become satiated, even if it is through food porn.

If my life is on the line, I want something more than the flavor-of-the day diet recommendations.

I want some metrics.

This is where the low glycemic cooking comes in. I am going to explain this quickly because I have already yammered on WAY too long.

(Glucose: Wikipedia source – public domain)

The word “glycemic” in “glycemic index” comes from the word glucose, which you may know is sugar. A glycemic index is a measure of sugar. In this case, its the measure of sugars released into the bloodstream after the ingestion of a certain food. To determine a glycemic index, they have people drink a solution of 50 gm of glucose in water and then, after a certain period of time, they pull blood and test the sugar content of the blood. They set this value to an arbitrary 100. It is the index against which other foods are compared. To determine the GI of a food, like white bread, they gather a group of test subjects (people) who eat a slice of bread and then get the blood tested. They average the results (each person has their own unique food processing profile but we tend to have similar ones, within some sort of predictable range of variability) and then set the GI for white bread according to the results (its 70 for white bread produced in the US). They have tested 500 foods so far (its very expensive), tho you may come across foods in the store that claims to have a GI, it is likely not tested in humans but calculated predicated on the types of ingredients it has. Thats the rub, foods may be predicted to have a certain GI but the body may do something completely different with it.

Case in point would be white rice, sticky jasmine especially, which has a GI higher than glucose. This is because this rice is almost pure starch and starch, when it hits our bodies, is almost instantly broken down and dumped into our blood as sugars (there are enzymes in your saliva, namely amyloses, which start the process the moment you put the rice in your mouth). The sugars in the glucose solution are somewhat slower to pass into the bloodstream.

When you eat something with a high GI, like that rice in sushi or similar starchy foods, almost the entirety of that mass of starch goes into your blood like a race car, as a bolus in medical speak. You might as well inject several milliliters of sugar straight into your veins. Why is this a problem? Your body as not evolved to handle huge boluses of sugar. It “scrambles” to pull the sugar out (insulin is the messenger to the cells to let the sugar inside) because high sugar in the blood is “toxic” to the vessel walls, causing damage over time. When this happens and the body has put out insulin enough to deal with this sugar overload, it overshoots and then blood sugars drop. Low blood sugar is bad news too because the one organ in your body that is a sugar-freak is your brain. Low blood sugar equals stress to the brain and even coma and death.

The key to a healthy body and a healthy life lies in one huge word – BALANCE.

Eating high GI foods pushes your system out of balance. Over time, with a diet consistent in sugar boluses, your insulin response becomes impaired and you develop pre-diabetes and then diabetes and then your systems begin to fail.

I am going to begin to integrate low GI cooking into my family’s diet. We all need to lose weight too so the diet will also tend towards less fat but I do not want to be a fat nazi. I also do not want to be the food nazi either. I want the family to enjoy the food while also, hopefully, appreciate trying new foods and in the end, lose some weight.

If you are interested in doing this there are several things to do: learn about GI, learn about the GI rankings of your favorite foods, access your diet, find a way to do some exercise every day (walking lowers your blood sugar, another tool in your management of sugar-rich living).

Learning:

I went to Amazon and got these two books below, there are MANY others. You will have to decide whats right for you. In the future, I am going to try to give lists of relevant blogs, for your educational pleasure.

• The New Glucose Revolution: The Authoritative Guide to the Glycemic Index – the Dietary Solution for Lifelong Health (Glucose Revolution) $10.68 and £7.76 UK
• The Everything Glycemic Index Cookbook: 300 Appetizing Recipes to Keep Your Weight Down And Your Energy Up! (Everything: Cooking) $9.42 and £6.94 UK

There is A LOT more to learn, especially about glycemic loads and how protein rich foods have high GIs. Read and read some more.

GI ranking:

The authors of the GI book above also have a fantastic website that will help you understand GI but also to find your favorite foods (if tested) in their GI database.

• The Glycemic Index

Diet tracking:

If you are so inclined, you can track your food intake and calorie expenditure over time at various websites. The only one I have experience with is Fit Day.

• Fit Day

I wish you all the luck if you too are having to deal with this. Its a process, it can be depressing, it can be overwhelming but it can not be ignored.

Recipe: Bhutanese red rice onigiri with tofu and split pea puree

In our family, we eat potatoes (high GI) only rarely. We tend to eat rice as our starch. The problem with that is that white rice (sticky is my all time favorite) is very bad when it comes to GI. To keep rice in our diet, an easy peasy starch, I am going to introduce rices that are lower GI. This would include brown rice, red rice, and wild rice. It also means introducing rice-like alternatives like pearl barley and bulgar wheat.

(The Rice Plant: Wikipedia source – public domain)

The GI rankings for several types of rices (and alternatives) are:

• Jasmine rice, made in rice cooker 109
• White rice, boiled 45
• Brown rice, steamed 50
• Red rice 59
• Wild rice 54
• Pearl barley, boiled 35
• Bulgar wheat 47

I picked up some Bhutanese red rice (produced by Lotus Foods) recently and wanted to test it in a recipe where I would have normally used sticky jasmine rice.

Bhutanese red rice is:

“An ancient colored-bran short-grain rice grown 8,000 feet in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. Irrigated with 1,000 year old glacier water rich in trace minerals, this exotic rice has a nutty/earthy flavor, soft texture and beautiful red russet color.” SOURCE

Lotus Foods has lots of very interesting wholesome products as well.

Visit the Lotus Foods site for more information.

I decided to make onigiri, a Japanese food that is essentially a ball of rice with one’s favorite bits added to it. Often, it is wrapped with nori but I didn’t have any on hand so I used, as a substitute, the Vietnamese rice paper used to make spring rolls (spring roll wrappers).

I also served tofu (essentially zero GI) and a split pea puree (25 GI) to increase the green and protein.

Ingredients:

• 1 C Lotus Foods Bhutanese red rice
• 3 C cold water
• sea salt, pinch
• 1 spring roll wrapper
• basil leaf, sliced into ribbons
• black and white sesame seeds
• Roasted chicken slices, about an ounce
• extra firm tofu, cubed
• olive oil to saute
• minced ginger
• minced garlic
• sea salt, pinch
• 1 C green split peas
• 4 C cold chicken stock
• sea salt, pinch

Directions:

In a heavy stock pot put 1 C red rice and 3 C cold water, bring to a boil. Cover rice and put on low for about 1 hour. This will cook it longer than the package directions so that the grains pop a bit and the rice is easier to form later. When done, uncover, fluff, and allow to cool.

At the same time, put 1 C dried split peas in 4 C cold chicken stock, bring to a boil, and then simmer on low (loose cover) for about an hour. You may need to remove some of the liquid toward the end to make the puree your desired thickness. Keep warm but covered.

Once rice is cooked, spoon some into an onigiri form, leaving some room for the chicken slices in the middle. I have some pictures of the onigiri form below.

This type comes in two halves and this one makes two onigiri at the same time.

The top is pushed down over the rice, compressing it into the cake like shape desired.

The bottom half of this form has some little openings that you can use to push the onigiri out.

Using this mold transforms onigiri construction into a dream. To see how you make onigiri by hand visit this site – How to make onigiri.

Because I did not have the nori to wrap the onigiri, I improvised and added a strip of hydrated spring roll wrapper around it. This isn’t necessary but I wanted to approximate it. I trapped some basil leaf ribbons and black sesame seeds between the wrapper strips and the rice.

Wrap your tofu block in some paper towels and press with something heavy to remove some of the water it comes packed in. Cube the tofu and cook as you like. The way I like is with some oil (sesame or olive oil or both), some garlic, ginger, and some onions. I saute to get some tan color and then add some soy sauce. I simmer the tofu a bit longer and then serve warm.

Serve as desired and enjoy!

Products of Interest:

• Lotus Foods Bhutanese red rice
• Spring roll wrappers (rice paper)- 12 oz

Books of Interest:

• The New Glucose Revolution: The Authoritative Guide to the Glycemic Index – the Dietary Solution for Lifelong Health (Glucose Revolution) $10.68 and £7.76 UK
• The Everything Glycemic Index Cookbook: 300 Appetizing Recipes to Keep Your Weight Down And Your Energy Up! (Everything: Cooking) $9.42 and £6.94 UK

Sites of Interest:

• The Glycemic Index
• eGullet discussion on onigiri
• How to guestimate the GI of whole grains
• Onigiri Wiki entry
• Hand-forming onigiri

Technorati Tags: Bhutanese, red rice, onigiri, tofu, split pea, recipe, Low Glycemic Cooking, gadget, pre-diabetic, doctor, diet, Nutri/System, weight, Weight Watchers, metabolism, Atkins, unsustainable, low carb, genetically predisposed, food photography, Insulin, hypoglycemic, blood sugar, HbA1c test, hemoglobin, A1c, test, glycosylation, assay, sugar, blood, red blood cell, pre-diabetic, diabetes, consensus, omega-3, diet recommendation, glycemic, glycemic index, white bread, sushi, coma, death, high GI, bolus, exercise

I found these really cute sushi soaps at The Paper Source and thought I would share.

One day, I spent a couple of hours driving around looking for some guest soaps for the bathroom and find NONE! I was so darn frustrated.

With these soaps you can satisfy the need to spiffy up the bathroom for yourself or guests and have a bit of fun while your at it.

This is a link to the sushi soap page at The Paper Source sit, where it says:

Yum, we love this keen sushi soap. They even come with kamaboko and wasabi soap. Scent free, these glycerine soaps are naturally moisturizing so they won’t dry your skin out and, no animal testing is involved. They make such a wonderful thank you for a hostess and a clever welcome gift for any visitors who drop by. So realistic you could just eat them up, but don’t do it!

Includes one of each soap:
Tamago
Ikura
Kamaboko
Wasabi

I also really like their tag line, “Do something creative every day.” I think it would be nice to be able to do that but, like many ideals, it is not a trivial task!

[Note: I get nothing if you click these links, this is all just for fun!]

What is a Mantis Shrimp?

Well, you are looking at three of them in the photo above. I was walking through the IBSS and came across some Southeast Asian seafood purveyors who had some interesting displays, this one included. These animals are much larger than most shrimp, you would likely need two hands to hold one of them. They tend to be about 30 cm (11.8 inches) in length but have been known to grow to 38 cm (15 inches).

While they are referred to as shrimp and are in the crustacea subphylum, they are not actually shrimp at all. Their name comes from the fact that they look like a cross between a praying mantis (terrestrial) and a shrimp. They are also much more intelligent and fierce than your average shrimp. Their odd looking appendages in the front are not just funky eye candy. No, the mantis shrimp can use these claws to attack prey and predator (including fishermen’s fingers), with great force.

Pet mantis shrimp are so tough they can even break through the double glass walls of an aquarium.

“A truly pugnacious stomatopod (ed: mantis shrimp) can threaten not only aquarium fish but also the aquarium itself. In 1998, a 4-inch mantis shrimp at the Sea Life Centre in Norfolk, England, shattered the quarter-inch-thick glass of its aquarium. The power puncher was promptly christened “Tyson.” ” Source = NWF

Yikes, this guy is not going to be added to any aquarium I have!

One other interesting fact about these curious sea creatures is that their eyes are the most complex eye structures known in nature. They are the only animals to have something called “hyperspectral color vision.”

“ “Mantis shrimp have the world’s most complex color vision system,” according to Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland. “These lowly crustaceans possess four times as many color receptors as humans, four of which sample the ultraviolet, a region of the spectrum to which we are blind.” Stomatopods also can see polarized light. Marshall believes that for a mantis shrimp, polarized vision may be as rich a sensory experience as color vision.” Source = NWF

Ok, one more neat fact and then I will get on the the meat of the matter. These mantis shrimp are not only wily and throw their back into their battles, they are able to create balls of fire in their claws. Remember I said they can break an aquarium wall? Well, with those fierce claws, they can flick them out to attack their prey or tormentor. When the claw is flicked out, a “cavitation bubble” forms (a void that is left behind by the rapid displacement of the claw). Things on this micro-scale (and nano-scale) are non-intuitive for us. We would not expect that this cavitation bubble would flash with light, heat as hot as the surface of the sun, and pop to produce sonic wavefronts that travel away from the mantis shrimp at high speeds (called sonoluminescence).

You can try to view a video of this activity at this link (I could not open the mov file, but thats just me, hope it works for you) – This video was found on this page and they give these credits – “Courtesy of Sheila Patek, Wyatt Korff and Roy Caldwell/UC Berkeley.”

For far more information on this and other aspects of Mantis Shrimp visit “Shrimp spring into shattering action” by April Holladay, a science journalist for USATODAY.com. I have borrowed a few resource links from her excellent article and put them at the bottom of this post.

Good eating, if you can get a hold of it that is.

They taste less like shrimp and more like lobster. The Japanese call it “shako” and eat it raw and tempura fried. The Italians eat it as a stewed dish called “canocie in busara” (stewed mantis shrimp) (found in “Cofanetto cucina del Bel Paese“). The Chinese eat them a million different ways, to be sure. You can visit one off-the-beaten path restaurant in Hong Kong to get your Mantis Shrimp fix, fried, combined with pepper and its own roe. The Spanish call them “galera” and boil them in salt water. They probably serve them as a tapas in some seaside locations.

I hope you have learned something interesting about these odd creatures. I sure have. I am not sure I will be eating them any time soon as they are rarely found in any market I go to and I hear they are quite expensive.

Have you eaten these? Where did you find them? How were they cooked? Did you like them? Share if you can.

Resources for learning more:

• University of California: Secrets of the Stomatopod by Roy Caldwell
• Wikipedia: Pistol shrimp and shrimpoluminescence
• UC Berkeley News: Mantis shrimp may have swiftest kick in the animal kingdom by Robert Sanders.
• Edge-of-Reef.com: Peacock mantis shrimp Odontactylus scyllarus

Books of Interest:

• Cofanetto cucina del Bel Paese

Technorati Tags: Mantis Shrimp, Southeast Asian, seafood, animal, praying mantis, terrestrial, appendage, mantis, shrimp, aquarium, complex eye structure, claw, cavitation bubble, sonoluminescence, video, April Holladay, lobster, tempura, galera, expensive

[This post will appear on the Growers and Grocers blog, a member of the Well Fed Network]

This last Monday when I attended the 2007 International Boston Seafood Show, I got to sample quite a few products. Let me assure you, I had to pace myself because there were so many tempting foods.

One product that I sampled toward the end of the day was the frozen sushi by Polar Seas (a PDF of their products), a collaborative product of Brooklyn, NY, based True World foods and Kyokuyo Co. in Japan.

I tried it with some trepidation because I have had some fantastically bad chilled (frozen?) sushi at grocery stores and I am still scarred. I have never bought sushi frozen in a box for that reason.

But I had to give it a try, mostly because I felt like I would be able to tell whether it was at least edible. Most of the other samples I had that day were fried, lots of masking.

Good sushi is based on fresh fish but perhaps more importantly, in terms of where it can go horribly wrong, good sushi MUST have GOOD RICE, period.

Frozen or chilled sushi rice can be vile and nauseating: mushy, watery, and revolting on the tongue. Can you tell I feel pretty strongly about the sushi rice? Just a bit.

We taste tested three different types of Polar Seas frozen sushi (images below from product PDF):

Spicy Tuna roll:

Tuna Nigiri:

Shrimp Nigiri:

The shrimp didn’t taste like eggs like a lot of frozen shrimp does, thank goodness. It tasted like a natural non-preserved shrimp.

The samples were flying off the trays (the crowd was a couple people deep around the display) so when we asked for Tuna Nigiri they said there was none thawed but some that was frozen. They gave us a frozen piece and we walked away with it on a plate. It thawed rapidly and before we expected it, we were enjoying a delicious tuna nigiri. Additionally, the tuna tasted fresher than what we have had in sushi restaurants.

Makes you wonder about the possibility of using this frozen product in an ice-packed lunch box. Put the pieces in frozen, put in your ice packs, and then allow them to thaw right before eating. I would have to test that concept out a bit before recommending it.

The spicy tuna roll was flavorful and quite satisfying. We also tried several unagi nigiri (BBQed eel) but do not have photos to share. We could not get enough of it, so delish.

But the rice..

Oh, the rice was spot on. It wasn’t gummy, it was tasty, it was good sushi rice, and it was a pleasant surprise.

Technorati Tags: 2007 International Boston Seafood Show, Kathy Maister, startcooking.com, stephencooks.com, food, New England, food blogger, Boston, Growers and Grocers, Well Fed Network, frozen, sushi, Polar Seas, Brooklyn, True World foods, Kyokuyo Co, Japan, rice, Spicy Tuna roll, Tuna Nigiri, Shrimp Nigiri, shrimp, Tuna, Nigiri, spicy, unagi nigiri

There are only a few foods that I crave. Crave, in my case, is not a constant background desire but rather a sudden basic need. If you have ever been pregnant, you likely know what that feeling is, its very hard to articulate. I do not crave chocolate although I adore it. I do not crave krispy kremes, love those.

I do crave tofu.

I will be minding my own business, going through a normal day and, bang, I will have a powerful craving for tofu out of the blue. I do the same thing with beets, carrots, rice, mochi, and homemade chicken soup.

The soup is an umami thing, no doubt.

The rice and mochi, I still have to figure that out.

The beets and carrots? That is related to the tofu and thats all about phytoestrogens, specifically isoflavones (a type of flavonoid).

What, in the name of all that is good and wholesome, are phytoestrogens and isoflavones?

Our bodies have evolved a whole host of receptors and regulatory mechanisms (some involved in regulation and dysregulation in cancer) that respond to estrogen. Phytoestrogens are found in plants (phyto is a Greek prefix that implies a plant origin) and they are active species in our bodies. Phytoestrogens can and do act like estrogen, although with likely important differences. In addition to its estrogen mimicry, isoflavone scavenges free radicals like reactive oxygen species (in other words, its a strong antioxidant).

I can not stress strongly enough how immensely complex our bodies are, especially the regulatory mechanisms that relate to growth and development. You can not do one study to determine the effect of estrogens and phytoestrogens on people and say anything meaningful. Its like a very big bowl of tightly tangled noodles. You have to tease out unconfounded data and form new hypotheses constantly.

What do I mean by that?

Estrogen, phytoestrogen, and tofu will have a different effect on you if you are:

• young
• old
• female
• male
• prepubescent
• fertile
• menopausal
• postmenopausal
• low on thyroid
• high on thyroid
• low on testosterone
• high on testosterone
• low on estrogen
• high on estrogen
• of any particular race
• naturally skinny
• naturally overweight
• immunocompromised
• alcoholic
• drug user
• and just about any combination and variation thereof

Estrogens are nothing to mess around with. It can feminize men into testicular infertility and can energize primary and secondary cancers that arise from estrogen-responsive body tissues.

Estrogens are used to pump-up that plump chicken you bought yesterday or to boost milk output in the cows that were milked for that cup of milk you gave your kids this morning. Estrogen-doped foods such as chicken can have a profound impact on the developing bodies of little girls, pushing them into very early puberty (menstruation and breast development).

You may think, hey, those hormones were used up by the animals and cant possibly pose a risk to me. The food industry dopes the animals so FAR IN EXCESS of anything physiologically relevant that even the effluent from farms (water run off) will have quite measurable levels of hormones.

The effects of estrogens and phytoestrogens can be counterintuitive as well. Science is learning that phytoestrogens and synthetic estrogens can interact with different parts of estrogen receptors in ways that are different from “human estrogen.” For this very reason, one can have one estrogen mimic promote cancer growth and another mimic inhibit it. Phytoestrogens have been described as protective against certain cancers in some patient populations. Some studies suggest that flooding the body with phytoestrogens that do not have a stimulatory effect (cancer wise) would block the estrogen receptors and thus some of the action of estrogen.

Yes, its confusing. Thats what makes Science so fascinating to us scientists. Its also what can be so frustrating to consumers who think that they can demand a one-size-fits-all answer.

You can not.

Bottom line

Be aware that soy containing foods can be a source for phytoestrogens. Try not to get all your protein from soy sources and do not raise your children on pure soy. Eat a variety of protein and vegetables. If you obsess on ingesting a narrow set of foods, you can run into trouble with unknown aspects of those foods and unknown interactions.

(pull)Our bodies have not evolved to be pure, they have evolved to interact in complex ways with a complex and diverse world.(/pull) Honor that with healthy diverse wholesome foods and you will be healthy.
Bibliography:

• Phytoestrogens activate estrogen receptor beta1 and estrogenic responses in human breast and bone cancer cell lines. Chrzan BG, Bradford PG. Mol Nutr Food Res. 2007 Feb;51(2):171-7.
• Differential activation of wild-type estrogen receptor alpha and C-terminal deletion mutants by estrogens, antiestrogens and xenoestrogens in breast cancer cells. Wu F, Safe S. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2007 Jan;103(1):1-9.
• Flaxseed and its lignans inhibit estradiol-induced growth, angiogenesis, and secretion of vascular endothelial growth factor in human breast cancer xenografts in vivo. Bergman Jungestrom M, Thompson LU, Dabrosin C. Clin Cancer Res. 2007 Feb 1;13(3):1061-7.
• Plasma phytoestrogens and subsequent breast cancer risk. Verheus M et al. J Clin Oncol. 2007 Feb 20;25(6):648-55. Epub 2007 Jan 2.

Learn More:

• Phytoestrogens and breast cancer–promoters or protectors? Rice S, Whitehead SA Endocr Relat Cancer. 2006 Dec;13(4):995-1015.
• Foods with phytoestrogens and their concentrations
• Role of estrogens and mimics in obesity regulation
• Cornell University fact page on Phytoestrogens and Breast Cancer

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For one, we eat a certain kind of homecooking that is very different from the one I grew up with. In the home I grew up in; imagine a mix of Midwestern farm-ish homecooking and Colombian cuisine – worked for us. One day creamy saltine-encrusted pig brains sautéed in butter and then sancocho, rice, patacones, and arepas the next.

But on top of this is something that lies dormant, my latent inner chef. When I do cook (and lately its been hard due to the morning sickness and now with my crazy big tummy not letting me get close enough to the darn counter!) what I desire to cook is not American or Colombian or even in this hemisphere.

I seem to be channeling a beginner Japanese housewife.

When I cook, I whip out the miso paste, soy sauce, tamari, gomaiso, nori shreds, tofu, green onions, ginger, sesame oil, Japanese rice, mochi, and miso vegetable stocks.

On some days a roast chicken (with Paul Prudhomme’s poultry seasoning inside and out) can be a strong contender tho. (As an off topic aside, I would also recommend, for your Cajun cooking needs, Magic Seasoning Salt, we used this on EVERYTHING back in the 80′s)

What I cook when channeling this Japanese housewife seems to be sourced from cookbooks I have and have seen, recipes that I find online, Japanese food photos I devour online (Flickr Japanese photos), and from Japanese restaurant experiences (tho these are never what I hope them to be).

I have a long way to go and there are certain things I wont be making (like spaghetti with ketchup or anything drowned in mayonnaise) but I am always drawn back to certain basic ingredients.

I also have a love affair with Japanese tea sweets, called Wagashi, and have posted about them in the past, including a Flickr Slideshow of wagashi images found on Flickr.

(You can click on any of these images to learn more about the photographer and to navigate to their Flickr page. Please do, these people have amazing photo-streams! Note about photography at bottom of post.)

The Japanese Tea Ceremony is a very special experience, usually performed inside a small room or building specifically designed for this custom. During the ceremony, in the dim light and natural materials of the interior, the world is distilled to the gentle rustle of silk kimonos, the brush of a foot across tatami, and quiet minds and bodies in seiza. Before tea is made, the host gives his guests a lacquer tray, chosen for its beauty, with carefully arranged Japanese tea confections or Wagashi. Each guest places one confection on their tea sweet napkin and, when all have received theirs, the sweet is observed, its beauty considered and appreciated, and then it is eaten with great relish. The silence is a soft companion as guests contemplate the graceful movements of the Tea Master who begins to whip matcha into a vibrant green foam.

The Japanese Tea Ceremony is designed to remove the participant from the brash, mundane world and immerse one into a quiet, natural, and harmonious experience of the only thing that really exists, this moment, right now.

Wagashi are not ONE thing, this is a term for a whole class of confections. Many are made from mochi (pounded rice paste), sweet red bean paste (as from Adzuki beans), and fruits or fruit materials. These confections are not usually terribly sweet as they are always made with the Tea in mind and sugary sweet wagashi would destroy the flavor of the matcha. Seasonality is of prime importance when a wagashi design is considered with mostly natural objects being depicted, such as fruits, flowers, tree buds, and other forms.

This is not meant to be a full discussion or description of the tea ceremony or wagashi, simply an introduction.

My favorite Japanese Tea House – Kaji Aso Studio Tea House

About the Japanese Tea Ceremony

Holy Mountain Trading Company
Omotesenke Fushin’an
Omotesenke Japan (in Japanese)
Omotesenke Florida
Urasenke San Fransisco
Urasenke Seattle
Urasenke Japan

Where to buy Wagashi

Toraya
Minamoto Kitchoan

Where to buy Matcha

Kaji Aso Special Organic Matcha
Holy Mountain Teas
O-Square Tea and tea wares

Where to buy chawan (tea bowls) and other supplies

Bowls
Shogun’s Gallery
On the art of making chawan

Yahoo Wakeiseijaku Tea Group (excellent group, very scholarly)

I wish to thank all of the generous contributor photographers who have given me permission to share their images of wagashi here on this blog.

I just wanted to tease you on what I have coming up for tomorrow. With the help of a large group of extremely talented and generous food photographers at Flickr, I will be presenting a pictorial round up on Wagashi (Japanese Tea Confections).

My objective is to share with you the stunning beauty of these edible artworks, as captured by the people who make and eat them. I also hope to inspire you to learn more about the Japanese Tea Ceremony and The Way of Tea (Chado).