Don't Try This at Home?

One of the coolest places in all of New Jersey is the Mitsuwa Japanese Marketplace in Edgewater. I'm trying to think of something you can't get there, and I'm coming up blank. There's an amazing produce section that offers nothing but prime specimens and includes enough imported fruits and vegetables to set my heart aflutter. There are shelves packed with all kinds of rice, condiments, tea, seaweed, and other dry good(ie)s, plus a vast sake section (which really should come with a person to help us neophytes make sense of all the choices). There are huge cases of fresh, vibrant-looking meats. There are even more cases of sashimi-grade seafood, from familiar varieties (salmon, tuna) to more esoteric choices (salted herring roe) to the just plain decadent (a big box of sea urchin that I wanted to scoop into my mouth as I shopped). And then there's the food court, which boasts a ramen house, a gyoza stand, a sushi bar, a cream puff shop, a tonkatsu counter, and a pasta station.

A pasta station? Hey, we're still in Jersey.

I had been to Mitsuwa once before, solo, but this was Margy's maiden voyage. Her eyes grew wide as we entered. It was a bustling Sunday afternoon, so rubbing elbows with everyone else was unavoidable, but we didn't mind. All the activity simply added to the impression that we had actually arrived in Tokyo.

Margy did hone in pretty quickly on the one thing Mitsuwa seems to lack: a gift shop. But I'm not sure we turned every stone -- there may be one back there someplace. Plus apparently there's an ordinance in the area about selling certain goods on Sunday, so the aisles and aisles of rice cookers and other fun-looking appliances were kept under wraps. We'll be back, and we'll find the gift shop. Anyway, there was an enormous sweets counter that held every imaginable variety of candy and cake, many of which looked too precious and ornate to eat (and some of which, I'm sure, would be too shocking to the western palate to enjoy, as has been my experience with Japanese desserts). That stuff would make great gifts, depending on the recipient.

The first thing we did was eat lunch -- gyoza and fried rice with a tiny cup of broth and a small daikon-and-seaweed salad. This good-sized meal was $6.95 (Margy and I ordered the same thing), and it was delicious and had been made to order. After lunch we took a walk by the river, and it sometimes seemed like we could toss a pebble and hit the west side of Manhattan.

When our stroll was complete, we returned to Mitsuwa to shop.

It wasn't easy to stop. I felt an electric current of adrenaline as I picked through things I'd never seen before, never even heard of. I grabbed some new stuff, some of the usual, some "eureka!" favorites, some things I had no idea what to do with. We bought two tiny yuzu fruits. We bought Japanese tofu. We longed for a knobby root of fresh wasabi, but it was $99.99 a pound and we put it back. We agreed that tonight we'd have sashimi at home, at our kitchen table, which we'd never even considered before.

Back at the ranch, the buzz of discovery continued into the evening. Among our purchases were four kinds of produce that were new to our kitchen: yuzu (citrus fruit), myoga (a mild gingerlike bulb), mitsuba (an herb that sort of falls between parsley and celery), and mizuna (a slender salad green). What the hell was I going to do with these things?

First I made some sashimi dipping sauces, including a riff on ponzu that used the zest and juice of the yuzu plus soy sauce and grated ginger. I'll tell you, those little fruits are stingy, with a yuzu about the size of a small plum yielding maybe two teaspoons of juice. But this juice was transporting -- it was a familiar flavor, but it was exotic at the same time, possessing a sharpness and a bitterness that distinguished it from other citruses. For a bit of our beloved heat, I mixed up some wasabi from a powder that my sister had given me, and I used Sriracha sauce to make a chile-ginger dip. I used the other produce in a salad and whipped up a sesame-yuzu dressing. (I was going to squeeze every last drop from those four-dollar fruits.)

Meanwhile, I had a second course in mind to follow the sashimi: the famous black cod with miso. If I'm not mistaken, Margy and I had eaten this dish only once, during our sole visit to Nobu, and it vaulted right to legendary status in our food memories. Sweet, salty, fatty, with a bit of crispy skin -- it was a perfect food, great fun to eat. A few years ago I tried making a version with salmon -- I got the recipe from Nobu's cookbook -- and we both found it a little sweet. This, after marinating, and obsessing over, it for two days. In the years since, I've noticed black cod with miso on just about every Japanese menu, but I believe it's still considered Nobu's signature dish. Today, since I'd found actual black cod at Mitsuwa, I tried a "quick version" recipe from the wonderful Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh, which calls for -- guess what? -- yuzu peel. The cod was marinating as I got the sashimi ready.

Now, I have tried my best over the years to cultivate a certain kitchen fearlessness, with "Why not?" as my motto. Can an Italian-American punk from Jersey make a real Indian curry? Why not? Can he steam a chicken the Chinese way? Why not! But suddenly, in the simple act of slicing raw fish, I was losing my nerve, feeling like I somehow had no right to do what I was doing. All because of tradition.

It's a dream of mine to be a sushi chef. And sushi chefs in training don't get to make sushi for years. For the first, say, 24 months or so, they scrub the wooden bar. Once they've gained proper respect for their surroundings, they begin learning to make rice, which takes a long time to master. Only after they've perfected the rice, way down the line, do they get to begin to use a knife. And so it goes, give or take -- and now here I am, catapulting myself light years ahead to the fish-slicing part, and I haven't even washed the table. I felt like I was intruding.

But I wasn't about to stop, so I even dared to try to arrange our sashimi platter with a little bit of clumsy flair. I laid out little piles of sweet shrimp (amaebi), with rows of tuna and yellowtail, plus thin rings of Japanese cucumber and stacks of julienned myoga. The yellowtail was particularly uncooperative and fell apart a bit, but it made it to the plate successfully.

And then, next thing we knew, we were eating sashimi in our kitchen. All of the fish were of top-notch freshness. The shrimp were creamy and melted in our mouth, the tuna was tender and clear tasting, and the yellowtail was firm and briny. The ponzu sauce definitely represented a step up in complexity as opposed to plain soy sauce. I look forward to benefiting from the skills of a real sushi chef in the near future, but this experience was aces in terms of kitchen empowerment. Plus it was downright delicious, not to mention wildly entertaining. And the black cod came out beautifully -- thanks to an amazing piece of fish, a shriveled but powerful citrus fruit, and a wise Japanese chef and teacher.

Sticking with Sardines

Tonight, only sardines would do. Call it the need for oily fish.

Sardines aren't easy. Cheap, yes. Delicious, absolutely. But those little tiny bones, they can become a concern. Even the highly skilled guys at our Asian market's fish counter throw up their hands when you ask them to clean 'em. ("Only gut," is a common refrain.) So when I buy sardines, I feel the same way I do when I buy heads-on shrimp: excited, but a little guilty that I'm about to make Margy labor for her dinner.

Thing is, the bones are so small, in fact, that I'm pretty sure you can just eat them. The thinner, brittler ones, anyway. The pattern for me is always the same: I treat sardine #1 with kid gloves, gingerly excising each translucent little bone with the focus of a surgeon. I work hard for every omega-3-packed morsel I throw in my mouth. Then, somewhere, somehow, a bone or two gets through and I realize it's not the end of the world (as long as I make sure to chew). By sardine #2 I'm throwing caution to the wind.

Luckily, you can get in a rhythm of filleting the sardines and removing the majority of the skeleton in one motion, greatly cutting back on the bone crunching. And it's worth it -- there's nothing like a nice stack of freshly cooked sardines. Their flavor is related to that of their canned counterparts (which, let's be honest, have their share of little bones as well), but the fish are meatier, tastier, more succulent.

Tonight I cooked the sardines in hot oil for a minute and then poured in teriyaki sauce, which got nice and sticky and almost burnt in spots as it cooked along with the fish. Its potent salty sweetness was a good match for the strong-flavored sardines.

I adapted the side dish from the Crispy Vegetables that accompany Lemongrass-Crusted Skate (sounds good) in Dominique's Fresh Flavors. Margy, the mandoline expert, julienned daikon, carrot, broccoli stems, and celery root, and we tossed them in sesame oil with a little soy sauce and Sriracha hot sauce. Whenever we grew weary from the precision demanded by eating sardines, we could just tear into the rice and veggies with flagrant disregard for any consequences.

Sweet (and Slightly Salty) Relief

"I need sushi. It's been long enough."

Margy had been hearing some variation on those words for a couple weeks now, and it was time to do something about it. So we made a reservation at Shumi, our favorite Japanese restaurant in Jersey.

I was ready to go all out. We took a seat at the bar, and, with Margy's permission, I asked the chef/owner, Ike, to just start feeding us. "We like everything," I said, and I meant it. After a soft-shell crab salad took the edge off ever so slightly, Ike presented us with a magnificent plate of sashimi as a prelude to the sushi that would follow.

Each fish made us swoon. Clockwise from top left: white tuna; toro; Japanese horse mackerel, or aji, dressed with a wonderful mince of ginger and scallion; tai, a sea bream that's somewhat similar to red snapper; sweet shrimp from Maine, the first of the season and tonight's special; and squid that Ike scored with a knife and rolled around seaweed, spicy tuna, and cucumber.

What followed were greatly conflicting impulses to devour it all on the spot and slow down to a crawl in order to savor every morsel. I didn't want the moment to end. After the sashimi, as a parade of sushi began, with Ike handing Margy and me two pieces each at a time until we reluctantly asked him to stop, I was struck with one of the reasons why a meal of sushi and sashimi is among my very favorites: It's an ephemeral experience.

And in so many ways. Take, for instance, the pieces of seared salmon with spicy cilantro dressing that Ike gave us near the end of the feast. These hit just about every note that sushi can sing, and in perfect harmony -- the char on the border of the fish gave it wonderful smoky flavor, while the uncooked interior was briny tasting and refreshing, with the perfect meaty but tender texture. The dressing tingled on the tongue. And the rice was just right, meaning it wasn't tightly packed and had a presence of its own. One piece of sushi offered all this -- but there was only one piece for each of us. Sure, we could have said, "Ike, do that again!" But what would we have missed? Seared white tuna with sriracha sauce? That would have been a crime.

So the pleasure of each incredible bite was fleeting, and the wonder of the whole meal was fleeting too, since it's just not possible for us to eat like this every day, or even every week. And though a good sushi meal is supremely satisfying, it also comes with a certain lightness when it's all over, which only contributes to the bittersweet feeling. After I eat a good steak, I feel full and don't want anything more than maybe a nip of brown liquor and a couple bites of dessert. After I eat a good sushi meal, I'm thinking, I could do that again RIGHT NOW. I know it's time to stop -- my wallet knows, at least -- but I want to continue, and the feeling lingers. I would say my number one, taken-for-granted eating rule is to keep things varied, yet for years I've noticed that when I have a memorable sushi meal, I invariably wake up the next day wanting to eat the stuff again. I think it's addictive.

Paris Journal 2006: Sapporo

On last year's trip, the hole-in-the-wall ramen house Sapporo was my safe haven, the place I could go when I needed a butter-free meal that featured the presence of vegetables. I ate lunch there three times, but always alone, and I regretted that Margy, who was working long hours with only a sandwich break during the day, was unable to join me. This time, though, she got to enjoy Sapporo's humble yet considerable charms.

We spent the day at Versailles, mostly waiting on line, and then we had plans to meet friends for a Jarvis Cocker concert in the evening. As we got back to town after strolling the gorgeous Versailles gardens and walking in the footsteps of at least several people who were eventually beheaded, we were starving, and we had just enough time to grab a little something to eat.

All day I had been worried that we were in for an entire day in Paris without a proper sit-down meal, and it wasn't sitting well with me. So when I saw the chance to return to Sapporo for a quick bite, I was more than eager to take it. Margy, of course, liked the sound of my plan.

The dynamic little woman who runs the dining room wasn't around, but the cooks were, and we had a delicious meal. After ordering a couple of beers -- Asahi, not Sapporo... oops -- we both got the essential ramen with roast pork, and Margy had fried rice and gyoza on the side while I had a plate of curry rice plus a salad and oshitashi (tightly rolled spinach in a soy and vinegar dressing).

It was one of those meals where we only realized the extent of our appetite once we'd lifted our chopsticks a few times, and it was one of those very few times when I eat quickly. We sat there at the Sapporo counter devouring our dinner, looking up now and then to watch the cooks perform some deft maneuver in a small vertical-handled pan or a giant flaming wok.

Though I watched them serve it last year, I had never eaten Japanese fried rice before. Well, it rocks. As you can see, it's not tossed with soy sauce or any other dressing -- oil is swirled around a wok, the ingredients (egg, peas, baby shrimp, bits of the finest roast pork available anywhere) are added, in goes the rice, and that's it. Simple, perfect.

Similarly, this was my first time eating Japanese curry, and it was also fantastic. (With a very short menu, Sapporo is pretty sure to nail every dish.) The sauce was a deep brown and bore the yellow tint of turmeric at the edges. The curry contained pork, carrot and onion, and it had a nice burgeoning hint of chili heat.

And the ramen is always excellent. It's fun to eat noodles that have a little bit of confidence, a spot of identity. Sapporo's are cooked just right and hold their own in their sea of broth, pork, scallions, mushrooms, and spinach.

I felt a moment of reflection coming on: I was able to read the entire menu, I had rice and vegetables and pork... I was in my element. We'll get back to proper Parisian eating tomorrow, but this meal was just what we needed tonight.

And If You Go Chasing Radish...

It's come to the point where there are no more surprises at the ShopRite fish counter (not good ones, anyway). Going in, I know that the only reliable -- or, forgive me, semireliable -- things on hand will be shrimp, squid, steelhead trout, the odd cockle or littleneck, and salmon. That's a shame, because I love nothing more than poking around without preconceptions and having a meal be inspired by my spying a nice piece of fish. And I'm not in the market for a new market -- I'm sticking with ShopRite, the best choice in town for everything else.

Today as I approached the seafood stand I knew I'd be making salmon teriyaki. But, really, there's nothing wrong with that. The sweet-salty-boozy sauce is always welcome around here.

I served the salmon with cucumbers and miso-sesame paste, plus some grated daikon that I dressed with lime juice and togarashi pepper. It was my first time bringing daikon into the house -- I found it at the farmers' market -- but it won't be the last. I was surprised, and pleased, by how spicy it was on its own, which make me realize that in restaurants I've always eaten it in combination with other things. I look forward to exploring more ways to deal with this intriguing white radish.

A Fun Way to Get Hungry for Sushi

Happy birthday to me. Margy and I came up with a grand, blissfully elemental plan to celebrate my special day: We would look at sea creatures, and then we would eat sea creatures.

So we drove down to Camden on this gorgeous afternoon and spent a few hours at the aquarium, gazing at the seahorses, the seals, the sharks, the hippos. Yes, the hippos, Camden's aces in the hole. I'm not sure I'd ever hung out with hippos before, but I think I would remember if I had. Two enormous specimens live at the aquarium, and they're something to behold. You can watch them underwater through what must be very thick glass. The water is beyond murky and you think you'll never be able to see a thing, but then this massive gray blob begins to float by and come into focus, and what do you know -- it's a hippopotamus! Their skin looks like elephant hide, all wrinkled folds, and they seem positively prehistoric. And of course they're very charismatic. One of them played with a huge blue ball -- slowly -- for a few minutes right in front of us. I recommend paying them a visit if you're even in the Camden/Philly area. Tell them Margy and I say hi.

After hanging out with all these fish and the like, we figured it was time to eat some. I had found two good sushi joints in that area months ago, so tonight we made a reservation at Sagami, a great little place that's set, like most Jersey sushi restaurants, on a fast-moving stretch of commercial highway. Once you're inside, though, the setting is very serene and charming, and the kimono-dressed servers make you feel comfortable.

The sushi is simple and fresh, and Sagami makes the greatest fried oysters I've ever had. You can practically see how crunchy they are. They're dressed with tangy tonkatsu sauce, and after the initial crunch they explode with the juicy, creamy, briny essence of oyster. I could have eaten four orders myself, and I wouldn't have even needed a birthday cake. Just stick a candle in an oyster, and let's party.

Tofu Teriyaki

Peanut oil's the secret.

Frying food in corn or canola oil is fine, but peanut oil has a higher smoke point, so it can fry more quickly and with less oil absorption. When I'm cooking things like chicken cutlets, fried shrimp, and, more recently, tofu, the difference is impressively clear -- everything is crispier and less greasy.

This really comes in handy with tofu, because teriyaki sauce would sog up soft slices of soy -- you need a nice firm texture on the outside before applying any liquids. So tonight I sliced the tofu and drained some of its moisture using paper towels, then I pressed the slices into a plate of black sesame seeds and dropped them into a red-hot peanut-oil-coated pan. There were splatters, sure, but eventually I had myself truly crispy tofu sitting on a rack in a warm oven. I painted on some teriyaki sauce, and dinner was served.

Despite the frying, this is a good light meal and a refreshing change of pace when we're sick of the same old stuff. I always worry that Margy won't find it substantial enough, but fortunately my fears remain unfounded.

A First at Our Place

Well, I still can't say I've cooked eel, but now at least I can say I've served it.

Last month, when we were trying in vain to find the nonexistent Asian food market called Capital and instead found only the one called Asian Food Market, we spied prepared Japanese eel in the freezer case, and we brought some home.

The eel was precooked, and the package contained various heating instructions. All of the methods involved first placing the sealed package in hot water to "soften" the eel. Tonight I chose the method where you heat it further on foil in the oven, like many sushi chefs do (too few of them have those nifty eel grills that I've only seen once or twice at the best restaurants).

While the package soaked, I cooked teriyaki sauce, with a bit of shrimp stock added, to brush on the eel. But after all that careful sauce brewing, I pulled the softened eel out of its package to find it had already been dressed with sauce and was practically ready to eat. It was exactly like the stuff I used to get for lunch in the eel bowl at Saga Sushi, nee Daikichi Sushi, in NYC -- sweet and meaty and tasty, if not close to homemade. (I also get the impression that, with all the sugar and salt in the sauce, it's not exactly health food, despite eel being high in protein and vitamins A and B12. I'll have to look more closely at the package next time.) I slipped it into the toaster oven, and later I brushed a little of my sauce on it anyway.

The eel was quite the conversation piece when Margy got home, and we made quick work of it. I do intend to learn how to cook my own eel someday, but in the meantime this will do rather nicely.

Feed Us Well and All Is Forgiven

Margy and I love Katsuhama in NYC. What's not to love in a restaurant that specializes in deep-fried pork?

Tonight the service was terrible, and you know what? I didn't mind. We were one of maybe five tables, but we couldn't get our waiter's attention to order another beer. No problem; I just sipped at Margy's remainder until relief finally came. When the food arrived and we noted the absence of the little Japanese pickles that accompany the entrees -- even though the next table had them -- we had to ask for some. That's cool; seconds later we were nibbling away. And my ego can handle having a waiter assume I'm unfamiliar with basic food vocabulary.

Me: How's the prawn katsu?

Him: Prawns are shrimp.

It's not like we were kept waiting for hours or were served cold pork. In fact, I'm not even officially complaining that the first words we heard upon entering the restaurant were, "You're looking for sushi?" See, Katsuhama doesn't serve sushi, but I can't really blame the host for presuming that every non-Japanese person who walks through the door expects to see sushi on the menu. I'm sure it becomes exhausting to deal with that on a daily basis.

Anyway, part of the charm of the place is that it doesn't try to mimic most Japanese restaurants in the States by offering an enormous blanket menu. Katsuhama specializes in the fine art of greaseless frying, and to achieve such a high standard, focus is essential. It's hard to be all things to all people.

I'm just saying that every other time we've been to Katsuhama we've noticed a very friendly, capable staff, and this was a notch below. Whatever. I'm one of those diners that can easily ignore shoddy service as long as the food is good (and as long as we're not paying ridiculous prices to eat it).

And again, at Katsuhama the food is great. I tried the pork-and-prawn combo, which was the first time I'd deviated from the straight-up pork cutlet. I was elated. See those shrimp-looking things? Those are prawns.

Salty-Sweet Relief

I'd gone like four or five days without eating any Asian or Asian-inspired food, and that's long enough.

Trout teriyaki would fix all that. As I marinated the fish and got the grill ready, I gathered every kind of allium I could find, all from the farmers' market -- red and white onions, garlic, shallots -- and simmered them slowly in teriyaki sauce until everything had melted together into the ultimate condiment. I also tried a recipe from The Japanese Kitchen for eggplant with miso, which turned out great.

The trout skin, my favorite part of the fish, stuck to the grill as usual -- the reason why I usually opt to use the broiler -- but I was able to spin the grill rack around to get the skin away from the flames, and then I just carefully peeled the skin off. This was a happy little accident, as rather than scorching or even destroying the precious outer layer, I got to enjoy perfectly crisp, just-this-side-of-too-burnt skin. I don't think Margy minded that I kept most of it to myself. She had plenty of other things to keep her busy.

Where's the Capital of New Jersey?

For weeks we'd been hearing, through my mom, that there's an even better Asian market in the area than the one we usually patronize.

This information came from two of Mom's Chinese students. We heard about better products, superior produce, a finer seafood counter. We had to find the place. We set out on one of New Jersey's most "Jersey" roads, a tricky-to-negotiate east-west extravaganza peppered heavily on both sides with Pier Ones and Home Depots and White Castles. We were looking for a place called Capital, and our eyes were peeled.

We found nothing of the sort.

We drove through town after town, and I was pretty sure we had somehow missed the place. And then we saw a big sign: Asian Food Market. As I pulled in, I noted to Margy the absence of the word Capital, but then again there were a few Chinese characters on the sign, and maybe they said Capital.

So we bought some stuff like ginger candy, Chinese eggplant, Japanese cucumbers, and, of course, shrimp with the heads on, one of my favorite staples of the Asian seafood counter. The squid looked nice, so I got two of those as well. Margy saw some heat-and-eat udon in the refrigerator case and suggested we grab a package. A meal was beginning to take shape.

Inspired by last weekend's Japanese feasts, I thought I'd whip up a bowl of dashi, the broth made with kombu seaweed and bonito flakes that is the foundation of so many different Japanese dishes. It might be blasphemous, but I threw some shrimp heads in with the seaweed just to let some of that nutty flavor seep into the stock. I left the heads on about twelve shrimp and peeled the rest. I cleaned the squid -- something I hadn't done before -- and I have to say I enjoyed the process. It was much more pleasant than cleaning, say, a chicken. The little quill just popped right out, and the guts were quite innocuous. I opened up the bodies and cut them into large pieces, which I scored with a knife on both sides so the pieces would stay more or less flat on the grill.

I marinated the squid and the heads-on shrimp in soy sauce, sake, and sugar, adding a blast of chili sauce to the squid for a change of pace. Then I grilled it all. Meanwhile, I had the stock strained and simmering, and a few minutes before serving I added the peeled raw shrimp, the squid tentacles (all two of them), and the udon noodles. Once the shrimp were cooked through, I ladled broth, noodles, shrimp, and squid tentacles into bowls and arranged the grilled shrimp and squid on top.

I'll admit I felt proud of myself. The precooked noodles left something to be desired, but the rest was pretty magical. The smokiness of the bonito flakes in the broth was bolstered by the char on the grilled shrimp, and the tinge of heat from the squid was a fun little surprise now and then. We might not have found Capital, but the Asian Food Market proved a worthy substitute.

Postscript: But where is Capital? It doesn't exist. I did some serious detective work, starting with Google results that suggested there's no market by that name in the area. Then, after calling my mom ("You went to the wrong place, but I've never been to Capital, so I can't tell you exactly where it is") and getting even more frustrated, I found out that the place I was looking for is actually called Captain something-or-other, and I'm almost certain Margy and I passed that one on our quest. Next time, we'll be stopping in.

Shumi Shows Me the Way

Sushi-loving New Jerseyans, take note: Shumi, in Somerville, is awesome.

Yes, it occupies a couple of modest windowless rooms at the back of a small, charmless office building, but that's where the criticism ends. The food is wonderful. On our first visit, Margy and I sat at the bar and let the chef feed us what was best that day. We cut no corners and ate a lot, and the bill was pretty big. This time, we sat at a table and ordered from the menu, and though we didn't get treated to things like a progressive tuna tasting from lean to fatty to superfatty, or a few pieces of "the best part of the salmon," we cut way back on the expense and still got to enjoy the freshest, most perfect fish we've been able to find in NJ.

In terms of the nigiri sushi, the tuna and yellowtail were tender and flavorful. At lots of middling restaurants, the fish will have only one of these characteristics, at best, though I find texture to be a little more reliable than flavor. For instance, there's a place in our town where the fish is fresh and usually pretty tender (at least the items that are supposed to be tender, as some things should be firmer or chewier). But the flavor: nonexistent. Last time I ate there I ordered a bunch of different fish, and not one of them brought my mind to the sea. Not one. I won't go back. Conversely, you'll sometimes find, say, a piece of yellowtail that actually tastes like yellowtail, but then you're still chewing it three minutes later.

Shumi finds the balance, seemingly without trying. My guess is that the chefs have a trustworthy supplier and know how to choose the best specimens on offer -- I assume it's as simple as that. Here the most fun part of our nigiri assortment was a little mackerel medley. That's straight-up, sardinelike mackerel (top left), milder Spanish mackerel (top right), and melt-in-your-mouth Japanese horse mackerel (middle right, with a dollop of green topping, which I believe was scallion and ginger). Everything was perfect, and our pieces of spicy squid tentacle sushi (top middle, just below the two mackerels) were the ideal end note, though of course we couldn't resist a little mochi ice cream for dessert.

Go to Shumi.

And on the Second Day They Ate Soba

Our little visit with our friends was rapidly turning into a parade of culinary delights.

Margy and I arose in our lovely little guest cottage, plunged briefly into the lake, and then arrived at the main house for a breakfast of omelets (the husband of the couple had picked up the wrong kind of bread, so his wife had to quickly find a substitute for her planned French toast) and fruit. Did I say idyllic? It really was.

Then we cruised around town, took another swim, and -- bammo -- it was time to eat again. Our friends made a great team as they prepared this wonderful lunch spread. Clockwise, starting with the large bowl: Soba noodles, homemade plum wine that was brought up from the basement to be sampled for the first time (light and delicious), shredded shiso leaves and sliced myoga bulb, purple-flecked seaweed strips, wasabi, shitakes, grated mountain yam (which had a slightly gluey yet delightful texture), and dashi-based broth.

We were instructed to mix the other ingredients into the broth and then slurp away at the noodles. It's funny, but we just couldn't nail the slurping part. I certainly gave it a shot, but I guess that after spending most of my life trying to make less noise while eating, it was sort of hard to go back. I did make a few sucking sounds, I'm sure, though Margy was totally silent.

Needless to say, it was a memorable weekend. My only hope is that we're invited back. First, though, I'd really like to treat our Japanese pals to a hearty bowl of risotto alla pescatore, to try, if only in vain, to return the red-carpet treatment that they gave Margy and me.

Lakeside Dining

This was a real treat: Margy and I were hosted by a couple of friends for an idyllic afternoon-evening hang by a clear, peaceful lake. Sometime before dusk, the food began to appear -- a long, leisurely Japanese feast that lasted until well past dark. Whenever we felt the urge between courses, we just jumped in the water.

It really is the perfect arrangement, grilling and eating on a dock by the lake. Our friends told us they're the only ones who do this on a regular basis -- people sunning and swimming on the other docks that dot the little lake's perimeter always head inside as dinnertime approaches.

We started with a bowl of dried daikon and shitakes, followed by a vegetable salad with soy dressing. Margy and I brought a few cucumbers from our garden, and those were served simply, with just a little miso paste for spreading. Then the grill was fired up for a rousing round of shrimp and scallops that had been marinated in a soy-sauce-based mixture. I'm not normally wild about scallops -- cooked ones, anyway; I love them as sushi or sashimi -- but I couldn't stop eating these. They were meaty and charred and a little sweet, and they went down like candy.

Then came rice balls with shiso leaves, which we wrapped in seaweed and tore into. Again, I got ahead of myself and ate three of them. I couldn't stop! And then came the soy-ginger marinated chicken. Wow. It was bliss. The beer and wine flowed along with lots of fun little conversations, and there were plenty of laughs. Before the final course of grilled corn, Margy and I eased ourselves into our gracious hosts' old-fashioned wooden canoe and did a nice lap around the lake, followed -- naturally -- by a quick swim.

The Antidote to Hamburgers: Octopus

We got home from Vermont totally exhausted -- and, after our carnivorous weekend, unable to eat any more meat, at least for like a day or so. It was funny, because my mom loaded us down with sausages and burgers and dogs, any one of which would have made a quick dinner, but there was just no way. So we called the Japanese restaurant and picked up some light stuff, including octopus sunomono, which was just what the doctor ordered. I mean, I wish I'd had a few of Those Things to mop up the dressing, but...

Teriyaki Sunday

After returning home from our weekend of wedded bliss -- including a great pool party that saw a three-song reunion of my college band -- I would have been content to eat a bowl of cereal and pass out. But Margy craved something a little more substantial, so we ran out for some chicken and shrimp teriyaki. Can you believe they charged like $2.65 for an extra container of rice? Like a sucker, I paid it. We'd give it a good home...

Dial-a-Salmon

I have a little reflex that I call I'm not cooking. It kicks in relatively rarely, but Margy has to deal with it when it does. Tonight, I wasn't cooking. It was hot out, I was tired, I don't know what -- I just wasn't ready to stand at the stove.

In these cases I will sometimes offer Margy a plan, or even call her while she's on her way home to tell her I'm not cooking and ask which of our few decent take-out options she'd prefer. Not this time. She got home, probably expecting something to be in the works (she's not demanding, it's just that something usually is in the works), and she found me waffling desperately over a short stack of menus. I didn't want to cook, but I needed to eat.

In the end we went with one of the local Japanese restaurants, under my condition that we'd steer clear of sushi. Sushi just isn't great to go, and it isn't great at this place, period. So we ordered shrimp shumai, a salmon salad, and a big container of chicken and tofu teriyaki.

Of course, the salmon salad, which I'd never had before, wasn't sushi -- it was sashimi. Who knew? I expected cooked salmon skin, but I got raw salmon with avocado slices in a miso dressing. No harm, no foul: It was divine. I might have to give sushi at this place another shot...

Vinoyaki

A while ago I posted a recipe for teriyaki sauce (ingredients: sake, mirin, soy sauce, sugar), and sister #1 made my day by saying she used my blueprint and whipped up a batch. She said it turned out beautifully. "But," she added, "I didn't have sake, so I used white wine."

What?

I squinted my eyes for a sec and told her to try sake sometime.

Then tonight, after I got hooked on the idea of making teriyaki pork chops, I realized I had run out of sake. So you know what I did, and it wasn't dashing out to the liquor store. I tried my sister's adjustment. I increased the mirin amount slightly and cut back a bit on the wine, and though the sauce didn't quite have that boozy sake tang, it really did work out fine. Margy and I enjoyed our caramelized chops.

Simple, Perfect

Just one question: Is the little green strip of fake grass really necessary?

Sagami, Collingswood, NJ

Cooked Fish?

I've eaten lots of raw yellowtail in my day, but this might be the first time I've had it fully cooked. Imported from Japan, grilled, and served with a ponzu sauce and cabbage slaw, it was mild, meaty, and tasty.

Kushimbo, Cape May, NJ