Nasu Dengaku must be one of Japan’s all time greatest dishes!

We are starting a new series called Depachika to give another perspective into contemporary culinary culture in Japan. ‘Depa’ means department store and ‘chika’ means underground. So, food court in the basement floor of a department store. ‘Depachika’ is synonymous with excellent food in Japan and in addition to being delicious is big, big business.

We absolutely love nasu dengaku and I (Peko) was at Takashimaya Department Store food court and discovered this luxurious and extravagant dengaku from a very famous kaiseki restaurant that has a deli counter at Takashimaya.

This is a nice summer veggie dish that you might be able to make without too much trouble even if you don’t have access to a lot of authentic Japanese ingredients. If you can get miso paste and mirin, you’ve got dengaku mirin, the rest is easy. Some people now use a microwave oven instead of deep-frying. (We are purists and never would…but have.)

Kamonasu Dengaku

About Nasu Dengaku
Nasu dengaku is a dish with a long history and is often made with tofu, fu (wheat gluten) and sometimes other vegetables. Dengaku miso is the same miso paste that is used to make miso soup, however a good deal of mirin (sweet rice cooking wine), sake, sugar and sometimes egg yolk. Centuries ago farmers added flavor to their meager meals with dollop of sweetened miso paste on vegetable and tofu that they grilled over their hearth.

To make nasu dengaku an eggplant is split in half then deep-fried in oil for a short time. This does not completely cook the eggplant, the rest will be done under a direct flame. In an oven or Japanese style fish broiler, the eggplant half is cooked. When it is done through and through, dengaku miso is added on top and it is returned to the oven.

This nasu dengaku uses two types of miso; sweet (white, light) and salty (red, dark). Here the white miso is richly flavored with sesame and the ‘red’ miso is garnished with poppy seeds, for a contemporary touch. The eggplant used is Kyoto’s famed Kamo Nasu.

To add further luxury to the dish, vegetables and a shrimp are added for garnish. The vegetables include carrot, kabocha squash, satoimo (Japanese taro potato) and okra.

Price: 780 yen (makes about half a nice dinner for two)

Kamonasu Dengaku

Kamonasu Dengaku – detail

Quick and simple, a 10 minute wonder, fresh sanma is delectable.

One of the best preparations of fish in Japanese cuisine is ‘shio yaki.’ shio means salt and yaki means grilled. Fish in Japan is something that is often eaten raw, so you can be sure that generally all fish in Japan is very fresh.

So, just a shake of salt and then grilled creates a delicacy that accentuates the fundamental quality of the fish itself. This is usually the approach in Japanese cuisine; accentuate the main event, not create a new flavor with spices, and etc.

This is another in our quick and simple posts on home cooking in Kyoto. Also, in the recent post on aozakana, we mention sanma, but didn’t have a good photo of this beautiful and distinctive fish.

Here, sanma is grilled, whole with the head and guts intact.

Sanma-no-shioyaki is served with grated daikon radish and often a wedge or two of sudachi, a distinctive Japanese citrus that really brings out and accentuates many flavors in Japanese cuisine.

After being served, a dash of shoyu is usually splashed on the grated daikon and sudachi is squeezed over the fish.

The meat of the sanma is separated from the bones and innards a bite-sized portion at a time. A bit grated daikon is then picked up with the chopsticks, placed atop the fish, then picked up and placed in the mouth. Of course, this can all be done with a fork and knife too.

Some Japanese actually eat the guts, but they should definitely be fully cooked. The guts are surely full of nutrition, but they are very bitter and would probably not be to the liking of most Westerners.

That’s it! Back home, on the West Coast of the US, we often were able to get fresh sanma. Try this dish out! If you can’t get sudachi, fresh lime and lemon juice, half and half, will do quite nicely too.

A note about grilling at home in Japan. Gas ranges in Japan always have a grill the cooks with an open flame from the top. Restaurants such as izakaya often cook many of their grilled dishes over charcoal. So, cooking on a western style barbecue will produce an authentic rendition of this dish. A broiler oven will also do just fine.

Sanma (秋刀魚) 秋 autumn, 刀 sword, 魚 fish

sudachi adds such an elegant twist to so many Japanese dishes

all the fixins

sanma cooking in the ubiquitous household fish grill

sanma served

sanma-no-shioyaki – how to eat

sanma-no-shioyaki – how to eat

aozakana (青魚) literally, ‘blue fish’ are in season from mid-autumn throughout the winter. These are such species as mackerel (青魚, saba), pacific saury (秋刀魚, sanma), sardine (鰯, iwashi), and jack mackerel (鯵, aji). Their blue colored backs give these well loved fish their Japanese name.

In Japan, the cold months are the time to gorge on fish, and aozakana are the main event. Fish are genki, laid on heavily with fat and rich with oils. Super fresh, simply grilled, this is some of the best cuisine Japan has to offer; uncontrived, straight forward and natural.

Last week I (Peko) was invited to participate in the preparation of an aozakana feast extravaganza with some native foodies here to celebrate the beginning of the next 5 months of exquisitely rich and tasty fish.

We shopped at Nishiki Market (錦商市場店街, nishiki ichiba shotengai) for the fixins. Nishiki Market is the place to go in Kyoto for all the best ingredients for traditional Japanese cuisine. An entire blog could be devoted just to the wonders of Nishiki Market.

The main event for the dinner was of course sabazushi (lightly pickled mackerel pressed on rice and thickly sliced). The sabazushi was actually prepared the day before, so I only have photos of it being sliced. Sabazushi, and many kinds of fish in Japan are said to taste best a day or so after being caught. Saba is the king of aozakana, but there were also a number of other dishes, some cooked some some raw.

I am just going to narrate the photos for each dish and it’s preparation. Here we go, enjoy! I haven’t noted the recipes, but if you can get the fixins, the fish, all you foodies out there can just wing it.

Aji (鯵, jack mackerel) Sashimi Salad

pulling the skin (sorry, bad photo)

The bones of the aji are pulled with a heavy-duty tweezers. (again, sorry, bad photo, the tweezers is blurry)

Battered Sanma Fried with Eggs and Spinach
Sanma (秋刀魚) is a much loved fish in Japan and the characters used for the name are wonderfully suited to this long, silvery fish in season from the autumn; 秋 autumn, 刀 sword, 魚 fish. Sanma are most often grilled whole, with head and guts intact, and eaten with spicy grated daikon radish and a squeeze of sudachi (酢橘), a native Japanese citrus fruit similar to a lime, but with a very unique Japanese flavor.

This rendition of sanma was a first for me.

Cut diagonal and at an angle. Sushi and sashimi is usually cut this way, make it even more beautiful and appealing to the eye.

First, a dusting of chestnut starch, then into the egg and spinach batter. (Any kind of starch will do)

Fry until golden brown

Garnish with some greens — this was really a treat!

Iwashi (Sardine) Sashimi
Iwashi (鰯) is a sardine. Iwashi is often pickled and one of my favorite renditions is fried whole with shoyu and grated ginger.

Cleaning the iwashi was the most time consuming and laborious part of the aozakana feast preparations.

The meat of the iwashi is very soft, especially the belly area. The chinese character for iwashi is; 魚 fish, 弱 weak.

Start with some myoga (茗荷), a ginger-like Japanese yakumi (薬味) flavoring. Myoga and shiso are often served with raw fish to cover any overly fishy odors or tastes. That is the original purpose of wasabi as well.

Start with gutting.

These are going to be eaten raw, the inside is washed very well. The weak belly meat is easily damaged and frayed.

Split them in half and pull the bones out. (The bones are saved for another dish)

Finally, pull the skins off.

Grated ginger is another yakumi.

There are four dainty fillets for each person’s serving. This is served on a bed of sliced myoga and shiso, the grated ginger on the left is generously added to shoyu, for dipping. Iwashi sashimi offers one the most ‘blue’ tastes of the aozakana clan.

Honesenbei
Honesenbei, literally ‘bone’ ‘cracker’ (cracker as is Ritz cracker, rice cracker) is a popular treat that goes especially well with beer. Bones such as that of the iwashi, when deep-fried are easily chewed and are an excellent source of nutrition. Eel bones are probably the most popular honesenbei in Japan.

Here we just deep-fried them and served them with a bit of salt.

Excellent!

Sabazushi
Sabazushi was discussed in depth in the ‘Hanaore‘ post. Again, I was not present the day before when the sabazushi was prepared. Being a slightly pickled dish, sabazushi is best enjoyed a few days after it is made, giving it a chance to ‘stew’.

Notice the kombu (kelp) on top of the mackerel.

Deepfried Satoimo Crab Ankake
Ankake is a wonderful dish. It is a soupy, dashi-based gravy boiled with lots of starch and then poured over something else. In this case, satoimo. Satoimo is a kind of Japanese potato (taro), that is very, very soft after cooking. Here, after being cooked and steeped in dashi soup stock it is deep-fried. This is very unusual in that the satoimo is rolled in poppy seeds before being deep-fried. Poppy seeds are unusual in Japanese cuisine. The ankake soup is heavily laden with crab meat, another winter favorite in Japan.

Satoimo after being simmered and cut.

Dip the satoimo in egg white, then roll in starch, then poppy seeds, prior to deep-frying.

Deep fry

Crab meat, getting ready with starch mixture on the right.

Pour in

Stir

Ladle over the deep-fried satoimo. Quite an imaginative series of contrasts and layers in this dish!

Seasonal fruit

Persimmon and nashi (asian pear)

Torito signature dish and Torito storefront ‘sign’

Yakitori (Japanese grilled chicken) is one of Japan’s distinctive meals, it provides a vast and imaginative variety of flavors and textures. What’s more, yakitori is cooked! So, if you are not into the raw delicacies of Japan, with yakitori you can experience something both new and exotic — and safe!

Yakitori restaurants often serve toritsukuri (chicken sashimi), which you might want to steer well clear of, and lots of namatamago (raw egg). Toritsukuri often includes both meat as well as innards such as gizzard, heart and liver. Raw chicken liver in Japan is a particular delicacy. Chicken to be eaten raw is butchered and handled in a way very different than that to be cooked. (We have never experienced any ill effects from eating toritsukuri.) But rest assured, yaki means grilled and tori means chicken, so you are in safe territory with yakitori.

Japanese do eat most every part of the bird, literally from the neck to the tail and from the skin to the innards.

Chicken is cut into bite sized pieces, placed on a bamboo skewer and grilled. It is flavored with various tare, shoyu and Japanese mustard concoctions, salt and etc. It is often served, garnished with lemon (self squeeze), or wrapped in shiso leaf with pickled plum paste on top. Between the chicken pieces are often slices of leek, onion and even hard boiled quail egg. Variations are nearly endless.

Typically, yakitori conjures images of older men, drinking and smoking, talking loud and boisterously in an old, dark, smoke filled place with the staff sweating profusely over the charcoal grill. These restaurants are fairly rare in Kyoto. They are common in nearby Osaka, especially near train stations catering to commuters on their way home from work.

Yakitori restaurants often advertise on their storefront what kind of charcoal they use, both the wood species and the region of production.

Yakitori is another popular Japanese cuisine that is not very ‘Kyoto.’ Torito, is quite unique among yakitori restaurants and offers yet another expression of the sophistication of Kyoto.

Torito, is out of a newer mold. The founder and owner is a young man, he still looks to be in his 20′s. Additionally, Torito is located very close to Kyoto University and Kyoto University Hospital, so many patrons are young and many are female (professional women, in their 20s and 30s in Japan, always know where to eat out). Torito is said to be very popular among nurses at Kyoto University Hospital. Torito opened more than 5 years ago and is still very, very popular.

Torito has an excellent drink menu as well. It has a great selection of sake, shoshu, umeshu and also an excellent wine list.

The atmosphere is casual, the interior is a funky combination of black walls hand painted with white chickens and beautiful Japanese wood tables, chairs and counter.

Torito serves a number of raw items and uses raw egg in several dishes. The Torito special tsukune (tsukune is a kind of meatball) is a signature dish and if you are OK with raw egg, a must try. The Torito salad, grilled chicken and veggies wrapped like a spring roll, is also a winner. Another original is a whole grilled Hokkaido potato with butter and mentaiko (cod eggs and a little chili pepper) and draped with cheese on top. The chicken wings, delicately spiced with I don’t know what, is amazing, another must try.

From the grill, in addition to various chicken parts, there are usually lots of veggies to choose from as well as scallops and pork.

There are a number of rice dishes, donburi (丼) and ochazuke (茶漬け) that safe and filling.

Toritsukuri (chicken sashimi)
Heart and liver is served on a bed of daikon and shiso leaf. The wasabi and sprouts are added to the soy sauce (bottom right), same as for raw fish. On the bottom left is sesame oil with salt. This mixture is especially tasty with the raw liver. Toritsukuri goes very well with beer.

Pickled jellyfish and garlic, toritsukuri, grilled liver

Jellyfish and garlic cloves are pickled in umeboshi paste and red shiso.
This also goes great with beer. The garlic doesn’t leave you with garlic breath.

Grilled chicken cartilage
Torito also has a dish that is deep-fried chicken cartilage, both are excellent with lemon — and beer!

Torito Salad

Torito Special Tsukune
A ground chicken and scallion based meatball like yakitori grilled on a skewer.

Torito Special Tsukune
The egg yolk quality test; impale it with a toothpick, if the tooth pick stands straight up and the yolk doesn’t loose it’s shape, you know you’ve got the best!

Torito Special Tsukune
Break the egg yolk and swirl the tsukune around in it, and eat. This is a real treat!

Kamonasu and Tofu
Kyoto eggplant and tofu slightly spicy with a lot of cilantro

Torito’s grilled chicken wings

Gyunyu Shochu (milk shochu)
This one of a kind shochu is made with rice and fermented with milk lactates. It is exceptionally smooth and people that don’t like shochu like this one.

Torito ‘sign’

Torito facade
About 10 paces east of Keihan Marutamachi Station

Prices are average for a nice dinner and drinks in Kyoto, say about 3,500 – 4,000 yen per person.

English:
No English menu
Staff doesn’t seem to speak English
(don’t let this daunt you, lots of tourists visit Torito and everyone seems to enjoy themselves)

Map

View Larger Map

The company that owns Rokudenya, Kiwa Group still has some excellent restaurants in Kyoto but Rokudenya is history.The manager of Rokudenya seems to take a perverse delight in being unbelievably rude to customers. I have seen him so rude on occasion that by Japanese standards one would have to conclude that he is abnormal.

At Rokudenya I once found a shard of broken ramen bowl so large in my soup that it couldn’t have even fit in my mouth! The degree of sloppiness required to serve a customer’s dinner with about 1/5 of an entire ceramic bowl inside is more than can easily be imagined. In Japan it is simply unheard of. When I tried to call the manager over to show him the shard he tried to ignore me and tried to send over a young staff member. I persisted and asked him to come around the counter so I could show him the shard without alarming the other customers and spoiling their dinner. Now I know that I should have made a fuss. Finally he sighed and came over to see what was up. He offered a feeble apology as he already started to walk away and said to hold on while they made me another.

The staff has followed the manager’s lead. The last time I was there I noticed some of the staff sneaking cigarettes in the kitchen, one young guy was even stood on top of a counter where food is prepared to grab something off a shelf!

The food is not what it once was either, it seems that they are cutting corners on ingredients.

I have no idea what happened to this restaurant, but we have visited Rokudenya several times and the experience was equally appalling on each occasion.

Therefore, we recommend that you avoid Rokudenya.

Rokudenya – Tantanmen in Ponto-cho

Rokudenya features many Chinese style noodle dishes, called tantanmen. Tantanmen (担々麺、担担麺) which hails from Sichuan Province in China, it is heavily spiced with Sichuan pepper (the same plant the Japanese sansho comes from), sesame, chili and chili oil. Rokudenya has a number of tantanmen inspired ramen and other dishes. These dishes are often nouveau, Sichuan style spicy and very, very delicious.

A remarkable dish is the Red Tantanmen (赤担々麺). This is a spicy, tomato based soup (unheard of for ramen) garnished with whole, fresh tomato and parmesan cheese! It is a novel composition yet it seems like a classic.

The menu features many other dishes, lots of nabe dishes. The most famous is the soft-shell turtle nabe (Chinese style hot pot, rather than the Japanese nabe.) Turtle is said to be good for your skin, and for the gents, to give you plenty of extra umph for the ‘night life’ as they put it in Japan.

(We have not tried Rokudenya’s nabe dishes as we sampled the more ‘summery’ offerings. We are looking forward to Rokudenya’s nabe dishes as the weather cools off and we move into autumn and winter.)

There are many other ippin ryori dishes on the menu. They are often Sichuan-spicy and novel in composition.

Homemade chili oil is available on a covered ceramic pot at each table, this is spooned on to the tantanmen to give it some extra punch. Rokudenya’s chili oil is also available to purchase/take away. Despite the amount if chili in it, it isn’t that hot, it is pungent and even a bit sweet.

The dining experience is casual. Rokudenya is located in the heart of Ponto-cho (hanamachi), Rokudenya a fairly new restaurant, but in an old and well kept Kyoto-style townhouse (町家, machiya).

Kurogoma Tantanmen (black sesame tantanmen)
This is a house signature dish, very spicy and rich in chili, Sichuan pepper and sesame flavors, Rokudenya offers both the standard hot and a summer cold version (reimen, literally, cold noodles).

Natsuyasai Reimen (summer vegetables and cold noodles)
This dish features cold noodles (reimen) and a selection of fresh Kyoto summer vegetables. There is no shoyu based tare but a mixture of whipped raw egg and grated nagaimo (mountain yam).

Red Tantanmen (tomato tantanmen)

Tebaage (deep-fried chicken wings)

Spiced with five-spice and deep-fried — excellent!

K. F. PekoPeko:
I thought that the Natsuyasai Reimen (Summer vegetables and cold noodles) was excellent. A very ‘Kyoto’ style dish. Simple, light and understated. While it’s not a dish that I would order often, with a splash of vinegar, this is an excellent midsummer meal when one’s appetite wanes from the sultry Kyoto summer.

Red Tantanmen is not quite as spicy as the tantanmen dishes and is wonderful. Despite it’s novelty, it seems like it must have been on the menu for centuries. Another must try!

There is a monthly and seasonal menu with many ippin and noodle dishes. These are all worth a try.

English menu (small red text is English)
well translated, understandable — thanks!

Rokudenya entrance and noren (shop curtain)

Rokudenya storefront menu

Omen is best known for it’s udon noodle dishes. Omen has three restaurants in Kyoto and even one in New York City. We review the main restaurant near Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion) and The Philosopher’s Path.

men means ‘noodle’, o is an honorific added to nouns (o-cha, o-sake, o-sushi).

Omen’s signature dish is called ‘omen’. It consists of a bowl of udon noodles (available hot or cold), a bowl of tsuyu (soup-like tare for dipping noodles) and a beautiful assortment of seasonal Kyoto vegetables that are either boiled or pickled. These include the ubiquitous daikon, gobo (burdock root), eggplant, seasonal greens (mizuna), ginger, scallions and Chinese white cabbage. Also, a heaping bowl of coarsely ground sesame is on every table.

The ground sesame is added to the tsuyu as well as the vegetables. The noodles, a mouthful portion at a time are picked up from the wooden plate dropped into the tsuyu, mixed around a bit and and scooped up with some veggies and sesame and brought to the mouth.

This is an excellent, excellent dish. The tsuyu is very sophisticated in composition with a deep and pungent smoky flavor. This taste comes mainly from the high quality of the dried bonito (katsuobushi) that is used. This dish is a must try if you like Japanese noodle dishes and is a great for folks who don’t eat meat (vegans beware, the tsuyu is fish based).

Omen has a number of ippin ryori dishes and seasonal dishes that are always excellent. Be sure to give them a try or make a whole meal of them!

We had the tori no sansho yaki, which features several bite sized pieces of perfectly grilled chicken (marinated in sweet white Kyoto miso) with sasho on the side. Sansho is a pepper-like spice common in many Asian cuisines. In China, the mature seed is Sichuan Pepper, in Japan it is often made from the leaf. Sansho has a very astringent taste and a little goes a long way. Sansho is often sprinkled on udon and soba.

Omen’s agedashi tofu, is a real treat too. The dashi itself sets it apart from the normal fair.

Omen also has several rice dishes that are made with varieties of pre-modern rice and other grains that Japanese ate hundreds of years ago. There are very healthy and tasty.

One that we ordered was the jyako meishi. Jyako is tiny fish, cooked in shoyu and mirin (sweet cooking wine) and flavored with various spices such as sansho. Jyako is simply sprinkled on rice. Served with soup and pickled vegetables, this is another treat. Even with this simple fare, Omen distinguishes itself from the pack.

[Really sorry about these horrible photos! We had digital camera memory card failure and had to use Paku's ancient cellphone to shoot the pictures. We will try to retake photos in the near future.]

Omen – boiled and pickled vegetable platter

Omen – sesame, tsuyu, udon and veggies

Agedashi Tofu (deep-fried tofu in dashi soup)

Ippin ryori — Tori no Sansho Yaki

Jyako Meishi (Sasho spiced tiny dried fish) on rice with soup and pickled vegetables

English:
English menu is excellent and updated monthly
It seems that there is always someone on staff that can speak some English

おめん銀閣寺本店
京都市左京区浄土寺石橋町74番地