Japan 2019 - 12 Kyoto's Nishiki Market

I love Kyoto and one of my favorite things to do there is to visit the Nishiki market, a large covered street market that is open every day. Some food snobs have told me that it does not have the best of everything, but since I am mostly just looking, the huge array of every kind of Japanese food item is perfect.

As at any great market, the vendors are very specialized. Here a bean seller, a dried-fish seller who makes gorgeous fish chips, a squid seller and, of course (!) a sparrow yakitori place.

Bean purveyor

Dried fish seller who makes fish chips

Sparrow yakitori anyone?

This year I had a nice experience returning to a sembei (Japanese rice cracker) dealer whom I had visited in 2017. When I told her that, she expressed really touching gratitude and delight, as can be seen in this photo.

My friend the sembei seller

One of my favorite stops is the dried bonito maker. They sell dried bonito cakes, which you can shave at home to make dashi, the all-purpose broth used in Japanese cooking, or they shave it themselves and sell it in packages, the way you've seen it in stores.

Dried bonito, whole and shaved

And, of course, the seller of ingredients for oden, a broth served with all kinds of (mostly rubbery) seafood based products, like fish cakes, as well as weird vegetable things, including konnyaku (kind of a superhard potato-basdd jello).

Oden ingredients

This year I saw a new display: Snoopy's tea shop, which included teas and also cookies and cakes to eat with tea. Part of Japan's kawai (cuteness) culture.

Snoopy's tea shop

I love takoyaki, grilled dumplings stuffed with bits of octopus and served with a sauce and, typically, pickled ginger. Here you can see the process: batter poured over octopus in takoyaki pan (center), dumplings coming together (left) and nearly complete takoyaki, moments away from sale (right). Once I made this with my friend Kondo Hiromi, a wonderful Kyoto art jewelry dealer who happens to be a great cook.

Takoyaki in various stages of preparation

Other favorites include freshly made mochi with matcha powder and some mysterious cream cookies, which I foolishly didn't try.

Freshly made mochi and cookies

Oops, I almost left out this seller of squid in a different form than shown above, grilled on skewers and ready to eat.

Grilled squid on skewers

I have already gone on and on, and could do more, but you get the idea. The Nishiki market is a must for any visitor to Kyoto who loves food.

Bobby Jay

Great Ingredients Make a Great Sandwich

Sunday I went to the wonderful greenmarket on Columbus Avenue and West 77th Street, and bought, among other things, a fantastic sesame wheat loaf from She-Wolf Bakery, sprouts and baby lettuces,  a shockingly good tomato and a red onion. For lunch I made open sandwiches , covering the bread  a very thin layer of tofu cream cheese, some smashed avocado, hot-smoked salmon, sprouts, red onion and tomato. Pure heaven.

Hot-smoked salmon and avocado sandwich

If you have great ingredients, let them tell the story.

Bobby Jay

Plov: Uzbekistan's National Dish

We recently went to Uzbekistan, a fascinating country full of history, great Islamic architecture and quite decent food. The national dish -- Plov -- is way better than decent, and our group was regaled with what seemed to have been a fine example.

Plov is a rice dish (think pilaf), and always consists of carrots, onions, chickpeas, garlic, meat, raisins or barberries and spices. Ours was spiced only with cumin, but sometimes paprika and hot peppers are added.

In Tashkent, at the wonderful Chorsu Bazaar, we saw women cutting carrots into batons and preparing other ingredients for Plov, including already soaked and boiled chickpeas.

Prepping yellow carrots for Plov in Tashkent's Chorsu Bazaar

In Samarkand, we saw a group of people (mostly men) making a typical Plov for a neighborhood event.

An outdoor Plov taking shape in Samarkand

However, it was not until we got to Bukhara that we got to eat our very own Plov, which we watched being prepared. The carrots, onions and lamb had been cooking for about an hour when we arrived for the final stages. Here is what it looked like as our hosts and guide explained what was to come next, starting with the four oils used in the dish: flaxseed (the dark one), sunflower seed, olive and a fourth that I can't remember.

Initial stage of Plov

Our hosts and our guide Anwar explain

The four oils used in Plov

The next step was to add the chickpeas, garlic and raisins and to season with generous amounts of cumin seeds.

With chickpeas, garlic and raisins added

And finally the rice, which must be added in a mound which is then made into a smooth covering of the meat and vegetables, brought to a boil and then simmered over a fire fed with twigs of a local bush.

Rice is added to the Plov, which is simmered until done

And voilà, delicious Plov.

Finished Plov

Note to self: for tour reunion, make Plov.

Bobby Jay

Japan 2017 - Kyoto's Nishiki Market

My wife, Joan Mirviss, is unquestionably the leading dealer in contemporary Japanese ceramics outside of Japan. Her gallery, Joan B. Mirviss, Ltd., has about five one-artist or multiple-artist shows each year, featuring works by the best Japanese ceramic artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Last month, Joan led a small group of serious collectors on a ceramics tour, where the clients were able to meet some of Japan's leading ceramists in their studios and showrooms, and had the opportunity to buy the artists' best recent works or, in some cases, noteworthy pieces from their  personal storage. I got to come along as an assistant tour leader, and to share in the adventure.

Apart from the ceramics, there were, as always in Japan, wonderful things to share. This being a food blog, that is what will be shared here.

The tour started in Kyoto this year, and Joan and I arrived there a few days early. I took a number of long walks in this gorgeous and eminently strollable city (despite nearly constant rain this year), including a couple of excursions to my favorite food market in the world, the Nishiki Street Market. Treasures abound there, including fish, meat, spices, vegetables, pickles (a local specialty/obsession), sembei (rice crackers), tea, coffee, tofu, foods for steamed oden, tempura, yakitori, rice and more. Here are some of the more interesting things I saw this year, like these red snapper heads.

Red snapper heads at Nishiki Market

Sembei at Nishiki Market

Vegetables at Nishiki Market

Dashi, a stock made with kombu (seaweed) and katsuoboshi (shavings of bonito), is the base of much of Japanese cuisine. Usually you buy the bonito flakes in a plastic bag, but at the Nishiki Market you can buy the dried bonito to shave at home or buy it freshly shaved by this cool machine.

Dried bonito and dried bonito shavings made at Nishiki Market

Another treasure at the market is this "season boiled beef gristle" [soup], which I passed on because it was well before lunch time.

Season boiled beef gristle: Yum!

The most giant giant clam ever!

Giant giant clam at Nishiki Market

And some more pedestrian, but interesting items.

Hand cut noodles at Nishiki Market

Perfect figs at Nishiki Market

Cooked shrimp at Nishiki Market

Chicken leg yakitori at NIshiki Market

And so much more! I have been told by Kyoto residents that better quality can be found elsewhere, in small specialty shops. But not all in one place. This is a truly amazing market street.

Bobby Jay

Bobby Jay Sandwich: Summer Surf and Turf

Bobby Jay Sandwich: smoked trout, ricotta, tomato, etc. on sprouted rye

Inspired by a wonderful dense sprouted rye loaf from She-Wolf Bakery that I found at the Upper West Side Sunday farmers market, I made this sandwich for lunch today. I spread hand-packed ricotta on thin slices of the bread, added very thin slices of jalapeno pepper thin slices of red onion, thin slices of super ripe heirloom tomato, flakes of lemon pepper smoked trout and chopped dill. A big success, and a nice concept, but what made it better than good was the bread from She-Wolf, the Brooklyn bakery that makes the best bread I have found in New York.

And here it is:

She-Wolf Bakery's sprouted rye loaf

This would alos be fine with smoked salmon, of course. The key is to use the best and freshes ingredients you can find.

Bobby Jay

Paris -- Tout Seul

I am often in Paris by myself, because Joan is either in Japan or unable to get away from her always busy gallery. I don't mind spending some time by myself as it gives me an opportunity to experiment in the kitchen with some of the wonderful ingredients you can find in Paris at any time of year.

I arrived today and headed straight to the open air market near the Place de la Bastille, one of Paris' biggest and most successful markets. There I was confronted by the products of the season: white asparagus, fresh morille mushrooms, and gariguette strawberries. So I bought a bunch of morilles, some wonderful mixed salad greens, shallots, white asparagus, cheese and bread to make a meal (I also bought half a rotisserie chicken for lunch). I passed on the gariguettes, which I find too mild and boring: I prefer to wait for the sweet "real" ones in June and July.

Dinner was a simple affair:

White asparagus peeled and steamed, served simply with olive oil, fleur de sel and coarsely ground pepper.

White asparagus, oil, fleur de sel and coarsely ground pepper

The main course was a puffy omelet with morilles and tarragon, with a side salad of mixed greens and a simple vinaigrette.

Puffy morille omelet with mixed green salad

Dessert was a little slice of langres, a pungent and creamy washed-rind cheese from Burgundy, with baguette slices.

Langres

Et voilà, a simple but satisfying meal made by taking advantage of what nature (and some very able farmers) give us.

Bobby Jay

Japan 2015 - Kyoto's Nishiki Street Food Market

Although the Central Japan portion of our tour ended in Toyama, there was a two-day extension in Kyoto, my favorite tourist city in the world.

I love going to food markets wherever I can find them: Paris, New York, Tokyo and especially Kyoto. There the Nishiki Street food market is open six days a week, throughout the day, and one encounters wonderfully fresh food products as well as an abundance of exotic prepared items, from Kyoto's renowned pickles to freshly ground hot pepper spices.

In my unofficial foodie-in-chief of our group, I volunteered to lead a tour of the Nishiki market, which my companions enjoyed immensely.

Some of the highlights of our stroll through the market are below, more or less in the order of our visit (I have tried not to repeat my post of November 6, 2013 too much):

Real chestnuts, not to be confused with those at Zeniya

A weird product, octopus head stuffed with quail egg (photo by Jan Golann)

Shrimp, dried and caramelized

Fried scallop adductor muscles - things we throw away: who knew?

Sea snails

Tea roaster and freshly roasted teas

Assorted mini fish for rice - a super rich source of calcium

Seaweed products, fish and Kyoto style natto (I think)

Steaming oden (mostly various fish cakes and vegetables)

Omelet making 101 and the final result

Cucumbers pickled in miso

The eel guy has various qualities and sizes

Prepared garlic (I don't know how this is used)

One of my favorite stands: the ichimi and shichimi  hot pepper spice grinder.

Mochi tea sweets

Real wasabi root, not to be confused with the powdered stuff

Fancy rice crackers

Although one can find many of the same items, beautifully presented, in the basement floors of the major Tokyo and Kyoto department stores, you can't beat a tour of the Nishiki Market.

Bobby Jay