Friday, February 09, 2007

Guess What I Ate Today

I had some friends come into town today. They're doctors' wives and like to eat fancy foods. I'm game. Sure, I'll pay $35 for lunch. I mean I don't do it everyday, right? It was mighty good. Even the fish sperm.

I just showed my husband the pictures and he said, "Oh, so you eat fish balls." I replied with something like, "Fish have balls?" Then I looked it up.

Funny thing is I had heard the word before, lots. It's kind of like fish. A fish is a fish is a fish to me. I like fish. And I can identify quite a bit here. But I couldn't tell you what they were in English.

Shirako. Remember that. It means White Child/Children. I suppose it wouldn't have been that much of a stretch of my imagination to figure out what it was.

So here are the pics. See if you can find the fish sperm. Yum! As an aside, it was soft and creamy.


















※ Sorry, some of the pictures are enormous.

7 comments:

jean said...

Um, next time you come over for lunch, can you bring some of that shirako -- NOT!! Good Lord, couldn't you have gone out for Italian or something?!

Bk30 said...

is it the jelly like substance on the citrus slice? I say citrus because I can't tell if it's an orange or grapefruit.
And you know my rule about trying everything at least once?...If no body tells me till after I've tried it maybe..but you don't see me rushing out to order Denver Oysters either LOL. So would you eat it again?

Anonymous said...

Back when I was living in the dorm at Iowa State, one of the farm boys volunteered about a dozen of us to go castrate pigs on his father's farm. He needed help because his dad had broken his arm, and he needed a dozen of us because he needed the extra time to study for mid-terms. We grabbed the piglets by their hind legs and held them belly out for the skilled guys to slice, powder with antibiotics, and sew. Those farmboys were surprisingly skilled with both surgical blades and sewing needles. As a reward, he threw a big party that weekend with "fried oysters" as the main course. A little metallic-tasting, but, hey, they were free and so was the beer, and it was a big party.
Momo brought back about 50 pictures of food from her last trip. We have a photo of one of those 10,000 yen dinners on the fridge. I think food binds a person to culture nearly as much as language. We're fortunate that we have some very good Japanese restaurants around here, and even a couple of small markets. Except for Makoto, which is just like being in a very expensive Japanese restaurant in Japan except even pricier, all of the others have to cater to non-Japanese in order to survive and so are all off to different degrees. It's sort of like going to Meiji-mura to see 17th-century Dutch architecture. What she misses the most, I think, is just being able to hop down to the local nomiya for some grilled fish and a beer, or stopping in for a nice tempura soba lunch. I miss some of those places, too, especially the little hole-in-the-wall places with great specialties, such as the tendon place in Hamamatsu that has the finest tendon in Japan. It has seating for 18, is open only a few hours a day, and always has long lines to get in.
I almost got started on a long passage about my food history in Japan. You know, best sushi (Numazu Port after the early morning fish market is finished), best kaiseki fish dinners in Tokai on the cheap (Shimonoseki, small, but famous place), Nagasaki for best food while doing the pub crawl, etc, etc, but I've got to quit, call my mom to see if she got the car battery changed (0 degrees - normal winter), and then go to the skeet range to blast a couple of boxes of shells away. The last is to relieve the envy caused by a buddy of mine sending me a photo of the eight snow geese he knocked down on Wednesday.
imomomo

Kappa no He said...

Jean: Oh, damn. I just ordered a whopping bowl full of the stuff for your birthday!

BK: Nope! That was grapefruit with caramel jelly and paper thin slices of dried (and sugared) fruit. They acutally pre cut out each wedge for you so it is easier to scoop eat with you get it.

Imo: I had a friend who did that with goats but he used those giant rubber bands (where you put them on and just wait...). That is fascinating that pigs are done differently.

And yes, I thoroughly agree with you about food binding a person to a culture. You know you really gotta make the next trip with her so we can get together and eat, drink beer, and catch up!

Craig said...

It all looks like fish balls to me, but then I see fish balls every where.

Kappa no He said...

Me too...me too.

Bk30 said...

So...which one was it?