and was every bit as amazing as it looks! But this time, I swapped the chopsticks out for my trusty spoon, hoping it would make things easier. I also combined two large packages into a Tupperware-type container, that can better withstand the abuse of a big metal spoon repeatedly ramming into the sides. The spoon ended up affording a bit more control than chopsticks, but also causing two blisters on my pinky.

I felt the progression from 0-600 turns was relatively uneventful, perhaps because I eat within this range every day. Usually when the really thick white bands start to form, it's lunchtime!

Let's begin!

At 200 turns, it looks ready to eat, but no such luck today.

400 stirs. In this range is my ideal, as each bean is engulfed in a fluffy white cloud of safety and happiness, and some of them are just starting to split open and expose more surface area for all to enjoy.

600 turns, and the bands are already thinning out, and the well-aerated sliminess is starting to fade.

At about 700 revolutions, the fizzy sound of countless tiny air bubbles popping was loud and clear. I feel that around this time the transition to a much thicker, dense mass of tough bean mush had been made.

800.

At 900, I took a water break, and had played around with a different grip for the preceding 100. My right hand was getting noticeably hot and red, and no changes in form were going to help that.

After about 1000, it became extremely difficult to move the beans as a cohesive mass. Keeping them stuck together was such a challenge, that a change in stirring style had to accommodate this. Smashing the beans with the back of the spoon on the first half of the turn, and scooping them all together for the second half, worked as well as anything I could think of at that point.

1200 stirs. Outwardly beautiful, but unforgivingly sticky.

1400.

1600 stirs, and both hands were shaking quite a bit. The difficulties in keeping the (former) beans together continued to mount.

1800. The pain!

By 1900 stirs, I was starting to doubt the accuracy of my count, as my attention was being led astray by feelings of pain, worries about the grip, and the sneaking suspicion that no further benefit could be had by continuing to stir.

2000 at last. Visually stunning!

Very thankful that the experiment had come to a close, I added my mustard and soy sauce, and gave it another 100 or so stirs. Both hands were still trembling, the temperature difference between the two was significant, and the muscles of my right arm were still clenched, but mixing in the condiments at this point felt like a victory lap.

I can agree that it didn't bear much resemblance to food at this point, but it was time to taste! 頂きます！

My first thoughts were that it was like putting a sugarless cookie dough in my mouth, though everything dissolved with only minimal chewing and contact with saliva. The taste was much more powerful than any natto I'd had before, and a strange, almost bitter feeling coated the back of my mouth. It felt like something slightly metallic, combined with an especially strong sensation of eating rotten food. I say 'rotten' to distinguish from all other fermented foods I've had, as this was seriously unpleasant! It seemed as though something in there was blocking the saltiness of the soy sauce, and it felt poisonous on the finish.

Simply put, I did not enjoy the final result. Though I don't remember now, maybe that's what it was like when I tried natto for the first time back in the US, and maybe that's what it feels like for people who don't enjoy the stuff. But perhaps that just goes to show that there are different ways to prepare and eat it, so giving up before exploring the possibilities might just be a big mistake!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: 納豆の無い世界には生きたくない！

Six days later, and with a blood almond concentration of over 200 times that of the previous week, it is with moderate admiration and a clearer understanding of the impermanence of all things that I report a significant setback in my efforts to keep the apartment well-stocked with fresh AB. Container Number One has been completely emptied.



I have no regrets on the matter, though I worry how much of my 13 days back in California will be spent beside the grinder, fueling my addiction...

At this rate, a 9 day-long crucible, devoid of this sweet nectar, will precede my arrival in the US. Perhaps I should consider 'pacing myself'.

ALMOND BUTTER,

I know it'll be alright.

To put things in perspective, Shaquille O'Neal needs two hands to write with that pen.

The next few photos will remain free of captions and explanations. In times of trouble, here is where I'll turn.

By the time I'd drunk about 80% of that, I figured it would do me well to actually put some in the cookie mix.

The dry goods: ground walnuts (I love the food processor), brown rice flour, a bit of sea salt, and ground oats (I love the food processor).

Winter arrived quickly this year, and coconut oil is no longer liquid at room temperature. After warming it with hot water and combining it with the maple sugar, the vanilla beans (crazy discount surplus from Bali), the dry ingredients, the slightly-soaked raisins, the almond milk, and more oats, it was time to mix! I've gained considerable strength with my 'stirring arm' lately, bringing natto to a consistency few have ever known, so getting the oil blended in was a cakewalk.

It'd been many years since I'd taken part in actual cookie-making, so I totally whiffed on the appropriate thickness. I'm used to making raw food cookies, which are great when they're not too thin, but when ensuring that the innermost portions are properly heated, some serious flattening is required. Duly noted!

It's like cereal, in a conveniently portable form! Not that these made it anywhere past the kitchen, though.

Into the oven, my little dumplings!

I set the temperature to 170º, and the timer for 'however long Iplease'. The outsides were delightfully crisp, their undersidespleasantly chewy, and the cores... not bad.

I kept the amount of maple sugar quite low, but I still felt it was a bit strong for my taste. I like my cookies ever so slightly sweet, and for the oil to bring in a wave of spice. I cut the maple to 'very low' on the next batch, and it was amazing. To be honest, though, I think the raisins alone have enough sugar in them, so that's next on the agenda!

Actually, there was something else on the agenda. A few days later I made some bagels, and they were gross.

I've been judicious with my use of coconut oil this year, stretching one large jar over countless stir-fries since the spring. I've still not found anything that, to my taste, disagrees with the flavor imparted by the oil, but I thought these sweet potatoes ought to be particularly suitable, as their sugars would complement that coconutty goodness. I had no idea...

A light oil fry until the brilliant gold color came through, a touch of the butterscotch-like palm syrup I picked up roadside outside Siem Reap, and some black sesame seeds were all they needed.

Not pictured here is the first batch that was completely devoured before the camera showed up or the decision was made to cook the remaining tubers.

They were so incredibly sweet and wholesome, one really wonders why people here insist on adding these awful packets of pre-made sweeteners to make their daigaku-imo. There is simply no comparison,

Yes, there was no mistaking it. The crimson beauty looked as if it would burst at the slightest touch, spilling its sweet secret for no one but me. I leapt into the air, cupped it as lightly as I could, and returned to Earth to delight in all the juicy details.

Success! 頂きま～す！

It was... pretty much just how it looks here. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I've run out of words to describe this texture. But what a treat!

My recent visit to the relatives' place in Hiroshima was well-timed. The family had recently cleared their persimmon tree on the hill above the house, and thus come into a sudden abundance of an adorable, egg-shaped, astringent variety. Having been left to sit in a crate outside, Grandma called upon an ingenious method to soften their tannins and render the raw fruit palatable in a matter of days. When pressed, she replied that she'd read it "in books" or "heard it from people," and didn't seem too concerned with recalling the exact details

.

Absolutely one of the best things about autumn.

The process is remarkably simple. First, each fruit is dipped about halfway into shochu (or presumably any other spirit), stem-end down. The still-moist fruits are then crammed into two layers of small plastic bags. That's pretty much it! In between 4 and 6 days, the persimmons are ready to be eaten, though some varieties might need a little more time.

An 'untreated' fruit, chock-full of mouth-puckering astringency. 

A 'treated' persimmon, ready for the knife. Identical to a raw fruit, save for the faint white ring around the stem.

Pristine.

Ever so Japanese, the family would prefer to eat theirs with the peels removed. But I have my principles when it comes to fruit!

The finished product had a faint, sweaty, yoghurty aroma, and a surprising juiciness with every bite. It felt a bit like I was cheating, being able to eat an astringent type as if it were not. Not as sweet as the common jiro or fuyu varieties, these were easy to snack on, and I could see getting easily carried away, so it was lucky there were only a few on hand.

In the name of science, I decided to compare the finished product with the tastes of two 'raw' fruits. One young and firm, the other untreated but ripened with time to a gorgeous deep orange. The former was, as expected, like a deal with the devil: autumn's prized sweetness caged with every bite in horrible astringency. I stuck to my guns, though, and ate the whole thing with a smile (and the suspicion that I would never salivate again).

The latter was a gelatinous sludge, though the delightful warm aromas really came through the mush. It also had a slight funkiness of fermentation, but I'm pretty sure that had just rubbed off another fruit in the crate. The soft, dry peel gave just enough support to survive the journey from hand to mouth, and a nice counterpoint to the very dessert-y sweetness.
 

 

Personally, I prefer the firm texture of the unripe and treated fruits to that of the jelly-like ripe ones, so the shochu-treatment has won me over as a painless way to bring out the best of both worlds: a sweet, non-astringent, firm fall fruit. And just today I found one of a similar variety hanging over a public walkway, so the experimentation has begun!

This

is

what

happens

when

I

go

to

Nataraj.

The next piece of the puzzle was a late October nabe dinner, for which I got a little carried away making kombu-shiitake dashi. Considering the nabe to be mostly a success, my next move was to soak more kombu and shiitake, and start sprouting some genmai, for what would be my first ever risotto the following evening. And having so thoroughly enjoyed that affair, I came upon the confluence of ideas while writing about the risotto the following night in my food journal, whence this blog has flowed into existence.

I tried to minimize the number of rogue flavors, adding only a few flat green beans for color and textural variety, instead of throwing in all the veggies I have on hand, which works well for most of what I eat. I restrict myself to coconut oil when using heat, but I figured that for this special occasion, I'd go with olive oil. It seemed more likely to do the matsutake justice, and not throw off the balance with any sweet, sweet, coconutty goodness.

For posterity's sake, the cast was comprised of two-day sprouted brown rice grown at my relatives' home in Hiroshima, Canadian matsutake mushrooms, a Hokkaido onion, kombu dashi (with no shiitake), flat green beans, olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and a bit of dessert wine from a lovely little winery called Asaya in Yamanashi. The wine happens to smell more than a bit like durian, and I could sniff it all day.

At this point the stalks and caps went their separate ways, to be reunited in the final act. The stalks dove right into the pot to cook first with the onions, and were then joined by the rice. The sliced caps fried lightly in a pan beside their former load-bearing brethren, and were sprinkled with sea salt and a freshly ground mix of Cambodian peppercorns before being set aside to cool, and then once again be given center stage atop the final product to fill the air with their incredible bouquet.

We do our best in this apartment to avoid amassing unnecessary clutter, including multiple pots and pans, so I'm pretty much running 'at capacity' here with one pot and one pan. Love it!

This marks my second time making risotto, so I know there is much to observe and learn! For one thing, I love the progressively muted 'thwack' with which the rice grains greet the spatula, as more and more dashi finds its way into their hearts.

Yes, the beans were definitely a good choice. It's next to impossible to convincingly argue to me that everything doesn't look better with green.

I think it would have been more satisfying to use my palm wood rice spatula from Cambodia, so I'll remember that for next time. It's certainly more photogenic, if nothing else. I should note that adding the broth little by little is precisely the kind of work I enjoy in the kitchen. It requires constant attention, which gives me a legitimate reason to stand around hovering over the counter for an uninterrupted length of time, instead of having to come up with decreasingly imaginative excuses involving the jug of almond butter.

The de facto taste-tester bowl, in which the goods are reunited.

The caps having completed the journey from the frying pan to the plate and back to their seat atop the stalks, the circle was now complete, and the moment to sample the goods at hand. The grains of rice were chewier than what I had stored in my memory banks as 'what risotto tastes like', but this was brown rice, after all. A little more dashi, heat, and time would have certainly softened them a bit, but after deliberation, the batch was deemed wholly appropriate for a sprouted brown rice (sprown rice?) risotto. And seriously, the kitchen smelled great for the rest of the week.

Thank you, Canada. I take back all that bad stuff I said before.

Along with the avocado and three bananas went Malaysian black cocoa powder, a pinch of salt, and the seeds of two vanilla beans, still on hand from my trip to Bali last year! Enter the Vitamix, and the result is a very creamy, chocolatey, not-quite-pudding that would overwhelm the uninitiated with its powerful banana aroma.

Yes, that's the stuff! Now into the freezer to firm up a bit!

A few hours passed, and someone came up with the bright idea of making a cat face out of the on-the-fly almond butter-lemon-date-black sesame paste frosting. And would you look who showed up? Is the resemblance not glaring?

The brown cocoa and coconut powders are really there to mask the inconsistencies.

When combined, it seemed that the once-overly sweet crust had found its place well-complemented by the less-than-typical-dessert sweetness of the filling. The avocado made for a great flavor carrier, delivering the cocoa's nice, warm, early afternoon lift, without the feeling of fullness and sugary jitters from a baked chocolate dessert. I'll concede that the banana sweetness was not quite as rounded-out as I'd like in a tart filling, so in future versions I'll explore what other possible fruit-based combinations are available. Additionally, I feel that cacao nibs dispersed throughout the chilled filling, and then given a good mix, would offer a wonderful surprise reminder that, "Yes, you are eating chocolate."

The crust was a bit wetter than I would have liked, mostly on account of the nuts having retained a good deal of moisture despite the brief solar drying, but also due to a rather haphazard straining of the date-soaking water. A drier crust is something to shoot for, but the additional moisture offers the peace of mind that this has never been in an oven, has no processed sugars, and is if nothing else, slightly less sinful than a conventional alternative. I'm not going to give up my recently developed hankerings for fine baked vegan sweets, but with a little more experience in the world of raw pastries, I feel that much more confident I can do it better next time, and that ain't bad.

I love you, spoon. I just needed you to know that.