Of Starch, Lily Corms, and Potatoes Are Memories Made

This post is dedicated to the day I spent with my then high-school classmate on Ponpon-yama, where the katakuri lilies were in full bloom, looking for eggs of the Japanese Luehdorfia on wild ginger plants.

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One of the most charming poems in the first imperially-commissioned anthology—the 8th-Century Manyoshu— a tanka penned by Ōtomo no Yakamochi, one of the greatest and most innovative poets in Japanese history:

Mono no fu no/ yaso-otome-ra ga/ kumimagou/ terai no ue no/ katakago no hana.
A bustling throng of young women drawing water from the temple well, where bloom the katakuri lilies. (my translation)

I regret that I do not have the literary skills to give you any sense of how Yakamochi deftly uses grammatical features of the Japanese language and the 5-7-5, 7-7 syllabic structure of the tanka (as well as its literary conventions) to create an visual and aural tableau of fleeting, timeless, beauty. It’s been so many years since I first came across the poem, but I can never remember it without seeing the dappled sunlight falling on the girls and the flowers and the well, hearing the chatter and splashing—all of it implied, in the best tradition of Japanese poetry. The sensations that come back to me are as vivid and real as any of my best (and worst) memories from my real life.

So what caused me to relive my memories of the katakuri lily? The fact that the katakuri-ko, a starch so convenient in making Chinese dishes (it soaks up the liquid escaping from the meat and vegetable and wraps it around the latter as a savory sauce of your preferred texture) and tatsuta-age, the Japanese-style fried chicken—it works for fish too—that retains its deliciousness long after it has cooled, is no longer produced for general consumption from the katakuri lily corm. Instead, the katakuri-ko sold in stores today consists solely of potato starch.

Of which I was reminded of when I read the news report to which I refer to in this post.

Fast Food Nation Japan and other Michelin Thoughts

Ikuhiro Fukuda, a professor at Waseda University, also had some interesting things to say with regard to Michelin in the Yomiuri a couple of weeks ago. He notes that the Michelin restaurant guides for France also list (relatively) inexpensive unrated restaurants but the Tokyo version is limited to rated restaurants. Further on, he points out that in choosing Japanese restaurants, Michelin has essentially turned a blind eye to decor and service, something unthinkable in France. Specifically, he points out that the three-star sushi place is basically a twelve-seat bar that shares a toilet with the other establishments in the building. More important, in his own words:

This owes its origins to the distinct history that does not see the like in Europe, namely that sushi and other Japanese cuisine featured in Michelin such as soba and eel had their origins in the food stalls of the Edo Era, that is, fast food in contemporary terms. “Fast and tasty”, something that is quite normal for us Japanese, are concepts that hard to reconcile in Europe.

Note that I had merely noticed the fast-food origins of Japanese cuisine, where Fukuda traces them to the Edo Era. More broadly, hasn’t much of Japanese culture has historically been driven by the urban middle class, culinary culture being no exception?

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Speaking of Michelin, I mentioned the other day that there were no Chinese restaurants in New York Times top ten list of new restaurants in New York. I also noted previously that Michelin Tokyo 2008 had one two-star Chinese restaurant and four one-star Chinese restaurants. Yesterday, NYT profiled the first Chinese restaurant to earn three stars. It’s in the first Michelin Hong Kong edition, launched on 2008 December 2 (my birthday; and for those of you who didn’t know, it’s never too late…).

Straw Hat Recipe

Here's your straw hat recipe, MTC.

I wonder how you would ever get by if I didn't keep rolling your logs for you like this?