teamEggers

Cheese, Wine, and Sunshine

Hi all!

Jon and I are finally getting a little bit more settled in to our new house. It’s fantastic to see our stuff starting to take shape into a home.

We took a break from the chaos to check out the Cheese Fest this weekend and had a really good time! Less cheese than last year, though that translated into less crowds. It was so sunny. Just a really great day to be out at the market with friends.

This pic is from last year, and the crowds weren’t as intense, but at least it gives you a little bit of an idea of what the event looked like:

Around noonish, we (heather, steven, yelena, ben, jon and I) had eaten enough cheese to give us bellyaches, and did what all reasonable people would have: decided it was time for wine.

If you’re in belltown and in need of a bottle of wine, I definitely recommend stopping into Seattle Cellars. The guy that was working (owner?) recommended three fantastic and vastly different bottles all in the 10-15$ range. They were perfect for the afternoon. The wine shop has a cooler with about 20 chilled bottles of white, rosé and sparkling, which is important to know if you’re looking for something to drink right away.

Onward and upward. Literally. Today’s adventure takes us to Steven & Yelena’s rooftop deck, with a fantastic view of the city, the sound, and the mountains.

…and our new house!

…which is incredibly close to quite a few friends. How cool is that?

We live on the west side of lower queen anne.  For any non-seattleites out there, that’s midway between the sound picture above (we’re really close to the “coast”) and the space needle.

What’s that in the backround? The seaplane! Are you listening, mom?

As we settled in to our afternoon of sunburn fruit and wine…

…we noticed that the sky was doing a weird apocalyptic sort of thing. How odd is this? Anyone ever seen the ring around the sun like that before?

Is it the end of the world? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s just time for another glass of wine. Pass the rosé please!

Who Goo? FUGU!

For two years, we’ve been talking about it. When we came home last year, people asked us… so, did you do it? And we had to quietly say “no” to each of them. It’s not the fear of eating something that will kill you in a few minutes, but rather… the reviews of those who had made it out alive.

Okay. Okay. I’m being dramatic. Hardly anyone dies from eating fugu these days. The fatalities you hear about are generally in back-ally sorts of establishments or from fishermen who think they’ll probably be fine just hacking the little fishy to pieces right there on the boat.

It’s really hard to become a certified fugu chef. And when someone dies in your establishment, you lose your license forever. (Historically, a sushi chef was supposed to commit honorable suicide by his fish-knife, should his sushi kill anyone else.)

So what did it taste like? You’re dying to know. It sounds funny, perhaps a little lame, but… it tasted a little bit like chicken. Sometimes. See, we had it a few ways.

First out came our mandatory appetizer, which was thickly cut fish skin (very gelatinous. not very much flavour) and green onions. Meh.

Next up we ordered it breaded and fried, which tasted almost exactly like chicken wings. I was searching for the bleu cheese dressing. Fugu even has a really strong bone that was left in, which made the chicken wing comparison that much more appropriate.

Time for the main event: fugu sashimi. It was incredibly light, almost too delicate to taste. A squeeze of lime was really all the sauce you wanted, because it was so easily overpowered by the ponzu or scallions that they served it with.

And it’s not like it was cheap. I want to taste it, you know?

After this, we did yaki-fugu, and they brought out a set of hot coals to grill our fish on. The fish was so fresh it was twitching. Twitching. Please watch this:

The grilled fugu was our favourite by far. It started to take on the soft, melty attributes of halibut. Really nice!

Sake was copiously poured throughout the night, and I swear… one of these times I’ll learn my lesson not to drink so much on a school night. There was sake with fish-tale on the menu, which a couple people opted for. I’m so glad I stayed away from that. It was the foulest smelling thing evar. EVAR. yuck.

The last thing we got was fugu nabe, which is a stew of the fish in fugu-broth. There’s something really spectacular about julie schooling us all on the magic-that-is-induction and how we could stick this bamboo and paper basket onto the heating element but it didn’t catch fire. Which is kind of fantastic.

The nabe was kind of fantastic too. While fugu isn’t in your future, I think we should have a “japanese stew” night at our house sometime soon. They’re really easy and really tasty.

And that’s it! This is the core of our group, people you’ve seen around teamEggers for the past few months: Jon, Emi, Brian, Me, Julie, Will.

Have a great night. Thanks for tuning in.

Gyoza Stadium

Boy, we’re winding down here. Only a few more adventures left to tell you about, and even fewer left to be had.

Somewhere or other, I heard about the Gyoza Stadium: a dumpling-theme park in Ikebukuro (northern Tokyo).

The Stadium brings together what they consider to be the 11 best gyoza shops in the country, and each has about 5 different offering at their mini-restaurant.

The sum of all things combined is: 1. a very full belly, 2. some over stimulation, 3. a really chaotic environment. The walls were dark, the lights neon, and in true Japanese fashion, there were people everywhere.

I hadn’t ever considered “pot stickers” as more than the ubiquitous appetizer in asian restaurants, and I was surprised by their variety! Here’s one covered in leek and raw tuna:

At the same stand we found one of my favourites of the day: a very simple black pepper filling, topped only with fresh lemon juice.

Most Gyoza-ya have the standard 3 bottles on the counter, and you mix your sauce as you like it. For me: mostly soy, a whallop of rice vinegar, and about three drops of chili oil. Okay, so I’ve lived here for 8 months and can’t speak a lick of the language, but at least we learned how we like our food.

We asked Julie to come along for a couple of reasons. First, Julie’s always up for anything and she’s quite possibly the best lunch companion a girl could ask for. Second, a food theme park? right up her ally. Third (and most selfishly), we could try WAY more gyoza with a third person helping us!

While most gyoza are filled with pork, we found one that was filled with Japanese beef. They shop suggested that we skip the sauce as it was so flavourful inside – boy, were they right! It’s a good thing jon’s used to me spilling all over myself. Those things were juicy!

As an aside, it’s got to be next to impossible to live in Japan as either a vegetarian or someone who doesn’t eat pork. The little piggy juice is *everywhere*. Which leads me to our next stop…. ramen-ya! Come on, we couldn’t not get ramen. Even if we were so full I wanted to explode.

So this place is called Ganko and it’s a famous line of restaurants around the city. I’ve come to really love a good soft-boiled egg. It makes life… smoother.

What looks like an elaborate March Madness bracket, is really the Ganko family tree. Each family member has their own location!

I had heard from the blogosphere that this place was really spectacular – though I can’t remember exactly what it was that was worth mentioning. It was good, don’t get me wrong, just perhaps not worth an hour-long train ride on its own. But, if you’re in ikebukuro and are hungry, look for the awning with the bones.

See you next time!

Bassanova (Ramen)

Have I told you about Bassanova yet? I must have. Maybe a few times. If it’s not my favourite spot in this city, it’s certainly in the top five. I have a week and a half left in this fair city, and I’m devoted to getting back there once more.

You hear me jon? Green.Curry.Ramen.

What makes it so good? Why do I bring everyone that will make the trek out there with me? It’s almost an hour from my house – nothing in seattle would make me take a bus that far. There’s something about the roasty pork-broth base + the perfect softness of their eggs + the creaminess you get from coconut + the kick of spicy (but not too spicy, because then you couldn’t slurp!) of the green curry…

This trip has brought us to some of the finest ramen joints in this ramen-tastic-city, and I just think Bassanova’s hands down the best. Rant and rave worthy. Slurp your noodles and finish your bowl, worthy.

You know what’s also great? Sprinkles. Goma.

Alex asked me what kind of fantastic japanese gems I learned about while I was here, and it’s got to be this guy. They’re the asian equivalent of pine nuts – sprinkle a little on the end of any dish… pasta, rice, salad… and you get this beautiful roasted finish. Slightly salty. The tiniest crunch. I’m going to have to pick up one of these goma grinders (above) before I leave.

Don’t take pictures into the sun, eh? But you know… I thought our mothers might be getting sick of looking at my food.

Strawberry Farm

The naval base has all kinds of activities planned for the families that come out here. It’s incredibly nice because I imagine there are quite a few people “stuck” in Japan that aren’t as adventurous as j and I. I married so well. Remember when we were growing up and I was the spontaneous one and jon was the methodical one? What happened to those versions of ourselves?

Where’s this going. We usually check out the list of things that MWR is doing and say “yeah, that sounds good! let’s plan our own trip for that!” – which is awesome because we learn about festivals and castles and sights and stuff that we might not otherwise hear of, but we don’t have to spend hours on a bus and herd around like american cattle.

This trip, however, was really far away. It was a 4 hour bus ride into a prefecture that just wasn’t very easy to get to, and they went a few places that we were excited about. So that’s a long way of qualifying why I’m in this bus, writing postcards to grandma, on our way to eat stuff our faces with strawberries.

Unlike U-pick places in the States, you don’t take the fruit with you here. You have 30 minutes to shove your face with as many berries as you can. Careful not to give yourself a stomachache! Those suckers are sweet!

Though how can you resist the elusive 6-legged, white strawberry?!

Just kidding.

You have thirty minutes. Go.

So most people left after about 15. Jon… jon couldn’t understand it. He stayed longer than anyone else, peeking and picking through the
bushes that our group was allotted. There’s so many berries left!

Personally, I had to tap out because I have no self-control. I literally mashed every decent looking berry in my face as fast as I could. After about 15 minutes I recognized the turning point – if I kept going, I was going to be complaining for the rest of the bus ride.

As with everything in life, jon’s style’s more refined than mine. He perused. He selected. He did not come out with a sticky face and red-stained hands.