Sukiyaki
There’s a traditional dish in Japan called sukiyaki, which is a kind of one-pot stew with meat and vegetables. Jill had first cooked us Sukiyaki, telling us that (like a lot of other things in japan) this is one of those dishes that varies by the region you have it in. For instance, near the coast they probably add seafood. In Kyoto, where there are a lot of zen Buddhists, we had something similar with tofu. The other day we passed a Yokohama-style Sukiyaki restaurant. So we thought we’d check it out.
Yokohama style has less (different) things in it than the style that Jill made for us. This one had beef, mushrooms, tofu, leeks and a green leafy vegetable.
Generally sukiyaki is served on cold days. It’s one of those dishes that you can make even on a really tight budget because you can put whatever you can afford in it. Our restaurant must have missed that memo because it ended up being tremendously expensive. We were kind of afraid of that when we were ordering – I suppose it’s one of those things you just have to be okay with when the waitress can’t understand your price-clarifying questions!
It’s common to dip your cooked sukiyaki into raw, scrambled egg before eating it. Elizabeth and Nathan (below) weren’t into that part at all! Jon and I will either die early of food poisoning or live to 102 because our stomachs are made of steel.
I was reading in wikipedia about sukiyaki and found out that we may have just gone to the oldest Sukiyaki restaurant in all of Japan! The first sukiyaki restaurant, Isekuma, opened in Yokohama in 1862. Woah!
