Sunday, May 31, 2009

Catching up on brewing:
I went to Tokyu hands yesterday to see what brewing equipment and supplies they have there. Tokyu Hands for those not living in Japan is a department store that carries a lot of home and kitchen stuff, here go see for yourself. I've read in other blogs that Tokyu does carry a limited set of supplies but I had never seen it there before, and I've been there many times. But when you are looking for something and it is there, you are bound to find it and I did. At first glance it was a very limited selection but upon closer inspection, it was remarkably complete for a first time brewer. It has a starter brewer kit, several canned brew ingredient kits and some supplies such as yeast and bottling caps and cappers. Well its good to know that I can get bottle caps here. I bought some dry ale yeast as well since I had mistakenly order lager yeast for my first ale brewing effort. Get back to brewing in a minute.

I love Tokyu hands, it is heaven for a kitchen gadget freak like me. The last time I came here, I ended up spending ¥13,000 for 2 knives simply because they were so nice and sharp. I really don't need any more kitchen knives although a chef can never have enough knives but these were so sharp and in the style I had been looking for, I just could not resist.


They also had a good supply of coffee brewing gadgets including a gold mesh filter that I was able to resist but which I most certainly will come back later for.

Ok, back to brewing. Well the brewing starter set I ordered last week got here, pretty fast I think. It has just about everything I need to brew my first 5 gal batch from extract including the extract kit. An extract kit has everything needed to brew a specified style of beer. I don't have to worry about what type of beer and how much of each ingredient I need to use. I think I need to get this step out of the way before I go and design my own recipe or even brewing a clone recipe as I intend to do for my 2nd batch.

Here is the bottling bucket and fermentation carboy that came with my equipment kit:


The first thing I thought about as I opened up my new brewing set is where the hell am I going to put this stuff. My house is pretty small compared to a typical US house but very big for a single person living in Japan. Ideally I should put this away somewhere out of sight where the temperature can be kept fairly steady. I think I have the place but right now it is serving as my mini-pantry. I guess I have some rearranging to do.

Before I go any further, I have to locate a 25-30 liter brew pot, damn. Until then...

I love the taste of Thai food and one of the things I found while shopping at Tokyu Hands was instant tom yum goon soup, sort of like instant ramen but tom yum goon flavor instead. After buying half a dozen of these, I decided I needed a taste of the real thing, or as near as I can make it in Yokohama.

After finding a suitable recipe on the Foodnetwork web page, thanks to Tyler Florence, I went to work on the soup. Fortunately I had just about most of the ingredients I needed for my soup in the house. I had some leftover frozen lemongrass I had used to make vietnamese pho noodle soup in my freezer. I didn't have kaffir lime leaves but I improvised and used some citrus yuzu leaves from my backyard, how far off could they be right? And I picked the cilantro from my newly planted herb garden.

One thing I remember about eating tom yum goon in Thailand was that all of the herbs as well as the ginger was in the soup when it was served. I hated having to pick them out while I ate. So I used a dashi-bukuro, or stock bag, same as a bag used for bouquet garni to steep in my chicken stock and that worked well. The flavors of the herbs and the chilies were infused into the soup without the woody stems. Here is the result, very good indeed.


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I love making my own chicken stock. The canned stuff in the stores I found is very watery and without much body or flavor. And unless you can find the lower sodium stuff, contains too much salt. The powder chicken bouillon has way too much salt. And besides, making your own stock is so easy, it only takes time to do it right and time is something I have a lot of these days.

I start out by buying a whole rotisserie chicken, sometimes 2 depending on how much stock I want to make, from Costco. In fact the chicken bones and the stock I get from them are worth the ¥798 (I think US Costco sells it for $4.99, even better!) that I pay for the whole chicken alone and I have a lot of very tasty cooked chicken meat to do with as I wish later. See below for my recipe for chicken salad. Anyway, separate most of the meat from the bones and put the bones in a suitably sized stock pot. Its ok to leave some of the meat on the bones as that it will result in a better tasting stock, or to be correct, a broth. In fact I throw all of the wing into the pot, meat skin and all. I fill the pot with water so that it covers about 1 cm over the bones. Then I squeeze half of a lemon's worth of juice into the pot, and with the pot uncovered. turn the heat on to very low and then leave it for the next few hours. Check periodically to add water to keep the same level but basically that is all there is to it. Just make sure the stock never goes to a full boil, in fact it should not boil at all, just some movement of the liquid in the pot is enough. After about 4 hours or more, you can strain the stock through a fine mesh strainer into another pot or metal bowl and you have fresh delicious chicken stock for whatever you need to use it for. If you are not going to use it right away, you should cool the stock rapidly before putting it in the fridge. One easy technique I found was to fill sealable plastic bag, like a 1 qt Glad freezer bag, with ice cubes and then throw that into the hot stock and stir. You may have to repeat this once more but as soon as the stock has cooled, you can put it in your fridge and it should keep for up to about 1 week.

If you made it as I described, you will notice that the refrigerated stock will have thickened considerably to a semi-jell. You cannot buy stock of this quality in a can.

Having gone to culinary school, I guess I should add that most stocks will have in addition to the bones, some vegetables and some herbs added to it. You can add half an onion, some celery and some carrots while the stock is cooking. But because I started out with very well seasoned bones, I have found through experience that these extra ingredients while adding to the cost does not add much to the finished product. But if you do try it, do both and see which you prefer.

If I am making stock for a specific purpose, lets say making gumbo, I will add some fresh thyme and dry bay leaves to the stock while it is cooking. I find this adds a smoother and more pleasant flavor to the gumbo rather than adding the herbs directly into the gumbo pot.

Now what to do with all that left over tasty chicken meat? I've found that this chicken is great for use in cooking a quick chicken curry. I use this for making butter chicken all the time. But in the summer time, nothing beats fresh chicken salad.

Mix together in a small bowl the following:
4 tbls of mayonnaise
1 tbls of sour cream
3 tbls sweet relish
2 tsp cajun seasoning (Costco is your friend!) OR
1 tsp cajun seasoning and 1 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground white(preferred) or black pepper
optionally, you can add several chopped green and/or black olives
btw, feel free to adjust the seasoning to your taste.

In a larger bowl,
all of the chicken meat from 1 rotisserie chicken, rough chopped in 1cm cubes (I'm not measuring)
1/2 sweet chopped onion, smaller dice please. Japan has excellent sweet onions, especially during spring and early summer.
2 stalks of (American style) celery, small dice
(I say American style only to emphasize the amount of celery, not because I necessarily prefer American celery. I really should give all of the ingredients by weight per professional standards but I'm just a hobby blogger!)

Now add the mixture from the small bowl to the chicken bowl and mix gently until everything comes together. Refrigerate for about an hour and then enjoy.

Some serving suggestions:
1. cut the bottom of a medium tomato and scoop out the insides and then fill the insides with the chicken salad.

2. cut a ripe avocado 1 half lengthwise, remove the seed and discard it. Now dice (large) and scoop out the avocado leaving 2 empty half shells of the avocado. Gently mix some of the diced avocado with the chicken salad and then filled the avocado shell with the mixture.

3. place the chicken salad in between 2 slices of bread of your preference and eat.


Now I have to go find me that brew pot.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009


Where to start???

I taste tested my 2nd batch of home brew beer I made while living in Japan. I don't know what style of beer to call it other than it is an ale. Right now I'm still using the Mr. Beer kit which doesn't give you too much control over the brewing process but I have been able to turn out some very drinkable brews so I'm happy with that. And it is very easy if you can follow instructions. A great way to learn and start home brewing beer.

I'm not a fan of the "fizzy yellow" beer that is the main stay of the American commercial beer market and I'm sad to say that most Japanese commercial beers are pretty much a copy of the American fizzy yellow beers. I like very bold hoppy flavors in my beer. Living in San Diego as I did for over 20 years, I discovered Stone Brewing and am a great fan of the very big beers, especially their Arrogant Bastard Ale (ABA), now that is a great beer, nothing "Lite" about this beer.

Since I can't get ABA here in Japan where I now live, I'm going to expand my beer brewing experience and see if I can't make something that matches it in taste.

Now ABA is not a beer that you just throw in some ingredients, add the yeast, wait 2 weeks and drink. No, it has to be made with a lot of love and skill. The love I have but the skill (with the right equipment and ingredients) is what I am now building up to.

This beer you see pictured here was made with some pale malt extract, amber dry malt and a bunch of cascade hops in my Mr. Beer rig. It is a very drinkable beer and is most certainly not the fizzy yellow stuff that is the commercially available beer here in Japan.

I don't want to give the wrong impression about the beer in Japan however, there are some very nice craft beers available and goes by the name of "jibeelu" or local brewed beer. Some of them are very good. But at ¥500+/350ml bottle(~$6/12 oz), it is very expensive to my US based sensibilities. But then most things here in Japan are expensive when compared to the US prices for comparable things.

Mr. Beer has introduced me to home brewing beer and now I'm about to graduate to the next level. I've ordered and am waiting for the next level kit for home brewing. With it I can brew 5 gal at a time instead of the 2 gal I can make with Mr. Beer. But quantity is not the main reason for going to this next level, it is the better control of the brewing process and ingredients with which I hope to make better and more interesting beers.

Stay tuned for that.

I don't want to give the impression that this blog is about beer and homebrewing alone. I just happened to be brewing beer when I decided to start this blog. As my title suggests, I will be writing about food, which I like a lot, and my friends and family. And because I am a passionate follower of the American political scene, I will most definitely have comments in this area as well. And finally, I wish to share my experiences about living in Japan after having lived the last 45 years or so in the US. I'll explain this last statement in more detail in the future.