Italy: It comes down to style

This is three weeks overdue. I've been back in France for 20 full days now, and I've barely bothered to do much chronicling for myself. It's not that I'm overloaded with work. Or too busy. Or have better things to do. It's just that since being in Italy, I went from do-everything-at-a-breakneck-pace American style to a bit more of a Mediterranean tempo. Maybe it's the heat. Or maybe my head's still in the clouds a bit. Never mind that there were hardly any clouds.

Or maybe it's because I enjoyed Italy so much this time around, that the old lady and I have been chasing that high, a futile endeavor as any addict will tell you. It's never as good as that first hit... or the second, as the case may be.

Biking around Lucca: Far more rewarding than any
museum packed with tourists.

The first time we went to Italy, we didn't particularly love it. Some parts of it we just hated. The constant fleecing by vendors and restaurateurs. The hidden charges. The lines. The lines to get in line and be fleeced by hidden charges. Italy was like one big tourist trap. It was up and down for me last time around, but mostly a downer for Alannah as she stayed on for another week, playing tour guide for my mother and aunts who'd come from Japan.

The difference, this time, was major. No, it was not my mom and aunts – they're wonderful to have around. We'd want them to come visit every year if they could. Rather, it was the style of travel. Whereas in the presence of middle-aged Japanese ladies, one has to hit every attraction in the guidebook and eat what's supposedly "typical," this time we did it our way: No big museums, no cafes on main piazzas, and most certainly not any place with an English or Japanese menu. We just hung out, ate, cooked, and most important of all, spent time with our friends and family and locals instead of dashing from point to point.

Granted, we did get around quite a bit. We blazed ourselves a nice rail-trail from Pisa to Portofino to Cinque Terre to Florence to Lucca, back to Florence and Pisa again [click links for photo sets], but with no stress. No real schedule. No must-do's. Other than eat, analyze, and rate gelato at every place possible, of course.

The ginormous brioche gelato. A little bird told
me this Italian treat will be served in Paris soon.

Like last time, we stopped near Portofino on the Ligurian coast to see my cousin, the rockstar sushi chef. This time around, he's got a wife and new baby – it's amazing how much can happen in a year and a half – which made the family time that much more special. Since we'd already done the tourist thing of strolling the entire windy coastal route between Portofino and Rapallo last time, it gave us more time for family bonding over beer, wine, sushi, and more beer. I'm not sure anything can match the sushi-high we got there, so we haven't even bothered going to our favorite joint in Paris since we've been back. (Sorry Andy, we'll be back soon!)

We left Santa Margherita bummed that we only had one night to spend with our growing family, but we knew what was next: The awesome beauty of the Cinque Terre (see previous blog post).

Vernazza - one of the five towns that comprise the Cinque Terre

His royal gawkiness Rick Steves may have blown the place up, but even with gaggles of tourists hunched over their guidebooks, the rugged natural beauty and fresh ocean air trump anything the ugliest of mankind can throw at it. For centuries these five villages were the symbol of steadfast resistance to Genovese rule in Liguria. Now the vertical-gardening rabblerousers are holding their own against millions of tourists, and they're doing a damn fine job of it. The whole region was even declared a national park to keep it from being spoiled by t-shirt vendors and faux Prada bag hawkers.

Only half a day was spent there, hiking the stone steps and paved seaside trails and smelling the ocean mist and lemon trees on either side. But we took note of all the vacation rental signs – in the stunning Vernazza and Manarola in particular – vowing we'll have to spend one of our long, French-style vacations here in the future. At the very least to eat Ligurian-style seafood again...

Spaghetti all'inferno at La Scogliera, Manarola.
We've recreated this one perfectly at home,
except the octopus isn't nearly as fresh this far inland.
Chase, chase, chase the dragon...

Alas, we had places to go and people to see, so after a brief stop to change trains in sad little La Spezia – where at least there was a so-so gelato shop open – we got into Florence by evening to see my other cousin (from the US) and family.

We had a blast in Florence. (See previous post.) Reunited with one of my lifelong best friends, his lovely wife, and two adorable kids, it was at once a bit odd (I feel so old!) and at the same time refreshing (it's a whole new gig!) playing the family role as a traveler. That, and we had our own kitchen.

The best meals are the shared ones. Cin cin!

There was nothing more inspiring than to have the Mercato Centrale just steps away from the front door. It's not that we lack great markets in Paris, but to have one gigantic one that's open every day (except Sunday, of course) was fantastic. Each morning, I'd get up with the burning desire to go to the market, if only to get a couple of items. Of course, I was largely motivated by the fact that Nerbone starts serving lunch at 7:00 am.

Nerbone is a Florentine institution that's been feeding market people for years. That means having lunch in the morning. Their traditional best-sellers are bollito (boiled beef) and lampredotto (tripe, from the fourth stomach of a cow). And while neither may sound appetizing to the typical palate, believe me when I say I still wake up in the morning wishing I could run downstairs for a sandwich made with these.

This dragon, by the way, has been halfway chased down. While I haven't yet found a proper triperie in Paris to make my own lampredotto, I was able to recreate Nerbone's panino bollito, albeit using baguette for the bread. In fact, I've been able to pack it and assemble it for lunch at work in times of need.

In addition to laying waste to some ginormous bistecca alla fiorentina and mountains of gelato, we also drank like kings – and for cheap. During one of our hunts for local foods, we stumbled upon a mescita (stand-up wine bar) and bottle shop that I found highly reminiscent of my favorite Parisian joint. The guys at Fratelli Zanobini, while perhaps less bearded, are a lot like the guys at Le Baron Rouge: Friendly, happy to recommend plenty of wines (many of small, local production, and most at below 2 euro a glass) and willing to humor tourists.  Needless to say, we ended up making a pitstop in here every day.

To burn off all the calories, we did some biking in under the sweltering Tuscan sun in Lucca. A remarkable change of pace, the town was almost moribund, and it seemed almost everywhere we went short of the central luxury shopping district (ugh) we had to ourselves. Our group took over a backyard patio and scarfed down lardo pizzas and huge German beers (a happy alternative to the Heineken-owned Moretti pisswater that's all over the place), cooled off in a gelato shop (of course), and freewheeled all around the ancient city walls on our baby seat-equipped cruisers that cost hardly anything to rent.

Cousins and the kidlets and cameras.
I swear, I'll get back to shooting myself bungie-jumping
and partying with half naked drunk chicks again. Maybe.

After a couple more days of Florence, we went our separate ways, with family off to Rome and beyond, and us to Pisa before catching our flight home. It was lucky that we'd decided to spend our last night there... I had thought of maybe going back up to Liguria – it's not very far – for one more night (and more sushi), but we thought better of it and stuck around Pisa. It's best not to rely on Italian regional train schedules when there are flights involved, after all.

This was the best decision, because Pisa fucking rocks. Simply doing a day-trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower – as most people do – really doesn't do the city justice. Granted, we were gifted a killer room in a luxury bed-and-breakfast due what may have been a booking mix-up (I can hold my own in Italian, but not enough to know what a front-desker is furiously discussing with a hotel owner), but all we did there was sleep anyway.

And even then, if I'd had any energy left, I'd have opted to stay out all night... on a Sunday, at that!

Once you've seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Battisteria and the Piazza dei Miracoli (which are all in the same place, hence why it's such a simple day trip), Pisa begs not to be explored for its sights, but to be thoroughly enjoyed. It's a university town, so it leans toward being funky, alternative, and affordable. The Piazza della Vettovaglie, which serves as the central market during the day, becomes a hub of affordable but hoppin' bars and restaurants, bustling during aperitivi (early evening drinks and happy hour buffets) and beyond.

Aperitivi in Pisa. Excellent wine at reasonable prices,
all the happy hour food you can handle, sunshine in the evening.

We drank there. We nibbled there. We had late night drunken street food dinner there. And in the morning we had breakfast there.  And all that on top of a marathon of going out elsewhere... The finest Italian microbrew (as in, brewed on premises, hoppy, and not Moretti or Nastro Azzurri) at Orzo Bruno. The reputedly best cecina (chickpea galettes, not unlike socca from the south of France) in all of Italy at Il Montino. (Their pizza was only so-so.) And – naturally – the most amazing gelato at De' Coltelli, an ice creamery run by descendants of the man who first sold ice cream to the public in Paris.

Again, we avoided the tourist traps (save for the leaning tower and trying the Bottega del Gelato) so we could simply hang out instead, and we were rewarded mightily. We skipped going in the Duomo – one of a gazillion cathedrals in Europe, whoopie – and dispensed with getting pastries at the well-known but overrated Salza. Instead, we followed our nose – and admittedly some pointers from Lonely Planet – and wound up having a brilliant night.

By the time we had to catch our 8-minute train to the airport the following afternoon, we were sad to leave. Sad to leave our family and friends. Sad to leave Italy. And surprisingly enough, sad to leave Pisa. Most people only give it a few hours, and we found that even one overnighter isn't enough.

Drinking chilled beers with the arty kids... Cooling down with a cup of gelato while sitting on the banks of the Arno... Walking under the yellow-tinted streetlights over centuries-old cobblestone... Sipping wine in the piazza... Talking with local artisans about things as simple as coffee or cured meat... Watching the local pizzaiolo blow his top and start yelling at someone in the way you only see in movies... (That last one was awwwwesome!)  We were able to take in all these stereotypically Italian things in one place, without the hassle of trinket-vendors or cover charges or multilingual menus. And yet there was plenty more I still wanted to try out.

This time around, we were able to enjoy Italy on our own terms, in our own style: Eating and drinking our way through it.

Along the way, I think I picked up some insight and expertise.

Insight: The way and the reason I travel continues to evolve. Whereas I used to hunt for adventure and new experiences by going out of my comfort zone (bungie jumping, swimming in crocodile-infested or shark-infested waters, eating bugs), I now find that it's perfectly fun and rewarding to do more "family-oriented" things. Perhaps because for such a long time, that's what was outside of my comfort zone. Playing with infants and making sure the little ones like what I prepare for dinner is a bigger test to me than launching myself off a bridge. I can throw myself down the side of a mountain for no good reason, but can I rise to the challenge of keeping a child entertained or quiet on a two-hour train ride? I can party past dawn with a bevy of hot Scandinavian backpackers, but can I actually be happier going to bed after a quiet bottle of vino rosso with my wife?  Yes, on both counts.

Expertise: The search for authenticity is often bogus. You can look for what's "real" based on your experiences or a particular paradigm, but does it matter? It really boils down to what you like. This trip I hunted down and tried what's supposed to be the best of the best food and drink from the best purveyors. Pesto from Liguria. Limoncello from Cinque Terre. Lardo di Colonnata. Prosciutto di Parma. Salsiccia di cinghiale. Brunello di Montalcino. Gelato from every freakin' reputable gelateria in Tuscany. And I gained an appreciation for new flavors (lampredotto, for one). Through it all, I learned the paradigm for what is best: Whatever is the freshest, simplest, and most true to the base ingredients. Because that's what I like.

So in coming back to Paris, despite how hard we chase the high, we're never really going to catch it.

The things you enjoy when you travel are often satisfying not only because of what, but when and where. The panino lampredotto is good not only because Nerbone makes tripe, of all things, taste like heaven,  but also because you're having it at the unusual hour of 7:30 am with a €3 carafe of red wine on the side. The Chaianti classico riserva is enjoyable not only because it's well made, but because it's the man who made it pouring it for you.

That said, we have run into some success in the dragon hunt.

After our long project of trying every gelato shop in Paris (a lot of which are barely edible garbage), we found one that fit the above paradigm of freshness, simplicity, and respecting the ingredient. (I wrote about it, Mary - the Gelato Shop, for VINGT Paris magazine as soon as Alannah had sniffed it out.)  The snowball effect of others catching on to it has apparently been really good for their business, and although we have to wait a little bit longer to get a scoop, we still get the individual treatment and passionate talks about the ingredients that made us love the spot in the first place.

Our neighborhood Italian favorite Rossi and Co. – fully subscribed to the fresh/simple paradigm and on the newly-appreciated family-friendly tip – was recently discovered by the trendoids at Le Fooding. This means that while they'll probably be inundated with the foodie version of mindless fashionistas, they'll probably also keep their 5 little tables occupied and be raking in the dough to keep them in business. Their food is dead simple, but it's – bringing in time and place again – the hours you spend yakking with the proprietor and his wife and making faces at their baby that makes it that much more like what we loved about Italy.

In all, via the latest travels I've stopped looking for what's real, but instead for what's good and provides a good experience. What traveling and sampling and tasting and talking has done is help me establish my own baseline for good.

And that's starting to be what traveling and visiting are all about for me: Not where you go, but what you bring back.

(For the record, I brought back a huge supply of cuore di prosciutto and lardo di colonnata. Come on over.)

Italy: Post Mortem

Post mortem. That's Latin for "after death," commonly used - as you probably know - as a term for a debriefing, whether after a disastrous medical procedure gone wrong or a business project. Which are, in the end, often one in the same.

The original Latin might be more appropriate for me, as I woke up sore and stiff this morning and really dreaded getting up. My body was battered and beaten, my feet barely able to stand the cold kitchen tile, my back starting to look like Quasimodo's.

But the sun was shining, the Parisian streets seemed cheery and welcoming, and my office surprisingly warm. One normally doesn't relish coming home to Paris in months ending with "-ember," but trust me, it felt like summer after putting up with this:


Granted, that's Milan which – I found out after consulting the Lonely Planet we picked up three days into the trip – is considered "the London of Italy" when it comes to weather.

I wouldn't rank this trip at the top of my travel experience. Not because of the weather, but because the extent of study I did before the trip was limited to booking trains and hotels. That and trying to learn basic Italian in 10 days. I normally study the hell out of a place and its language before I go, but I've been a little preoccupied with adjusting to a new job, new wife, new country - hell, a new life altogether - for months. If anything, I hoped not planning anything would make for a great escape, a willy-nilly adventure into the unknown.

It turned out to be part family gathering. Part necessary escape from Paris. Part honeymoon. (Alannah and I never had a proper honeymoon, so we now consider every trip a mini-honeymoon in perpetuity.) As such, this trip was appropriately manic, with highs and lows. The lows all came from the rigors of travel: Delayed trains, lost bags, inclement weather, getting lost... The highs all came from people, whether spending time with loved ones or laughing it up with strangers. Sightseeing just happens to be a little bonus on the side.

The ladies are still in Italy, currently soaking up the proverbial Tuscan sun, which I'm assuming is hiding out... I mean, beyond the fact that it's night time at this moment. So this rundown covers my five days.

In five days, I had four journeys by train spanning a total of 19 hours. All four were delayed. Three journeys by bus. Six journeys by metro. Countless hours walking. Many of those in pouring rain. Three of those rain-soaked hours while hopelessly lost. While in transit, I lost a Bialetti espresso maker, a wheel of peccorino alla zafferona cheese, a box of Baci, a package of Kinder happy hippos, and half a bag of rosmarina crackers. I have in my jacket pocket the soggy remains of: one two-day metro pass for Milan, two Portofino area bus tickets, what used to be my US passport (currently an unidentified hunk of blue with ink-smeared pages), and a stack of crumpled receipts. One of those receipts proves that I bought myself some cock in Milan, at 10€ a go...



When not cursing the weather or the lateness of trains, I enjoyed a full ball of mozarella di buffala (and then some), at least a kilo of cured meats, five varieties of pasta, four kinds of pizza, the most fantastic cheese ever (said peccorino from Peck), the most godawful cheese ever (a slice of white Kraft singles from one of my aunts' oddball supermarket runs), McDonald's espresso, kopi luwak, prawns straight of the Ligurian sea, McDonald's fried prawns, some strange riff on taco salad, a tako salad (that'd be Japanese for "octopus"), and enough hazelnut and chocolate in bar/pastry/gelato form to choke a horse or two. All with a side of mostly crappy, spongey, bread, with a notable exception at establishments that baked their own. On top of all that, add enough zucchini flowers to turn my tummy into its own garden, a steak big enough to ensure that I'll never be regular again, and enough cuts of veal to make PETA freaks get naked to protest me. (Which is my goal in life...) And the best street food? Roasted chestnuts.

I took exactly 888 photos with my camera. Alannah took 312. 310 of which are from her newfound favorite "from-the-ground" perspective, which I love.



Yes, we even disgust ourselves sometimes.


Along the way, we saw tens of thousands of hideously dressed Milanese. (Two of 'em shown here!) Upon returning to Paris last night, I was reminded of the Parisian flair for dressing subtly, yet so well that even the homely can look dead sexy. The four-stop metro ride home reminded me of that over and over. Inversely, in Milan, metro rides remind you that even the hottest Italian bombshell stacked like a brick house will look like a Jersey girl when dressed like one. Unfortunately, there's no escaping the eye-searingly bad mode of dress. Flipping on the hotel TV puts more of it on display, in the form of variety shows...


I never cared much for Italian wine because - like French wine - only a limited selection is imported to the US, and other than high-priced luxury choices, most of it is crap. Having access to a wide variety of the stuff gave me a far better appreciation for Italian wines, and now I won't be so quick to judge.

In fact, after just a short time there, I found that to be the case with much of Italy for me. As a land of passionate people that pour said passion into everything they do, just about everything falls into the love-it-or-hate-it category. There's no middle ground. So while it seems there were a lot of things I complained about while in Italy, there was plenty to really love.

Which is why I vow to go back. Not because I haven't yet gotten to see amazing works like David or the Pietà or the Last Supper - stuff I studied and drew inspiration from as a student and still long to see in the flesh (or marble or plaster, as it would be...). Not because I need to pick up another wheel of that crazy opulent cheese. It's because of the manic, bipolar, crazy duality of the place. It rains, but you want to splash through the piazza. Your train is late, but that gives you time for another espresso. There are pickpockets everywhere, but you can enjoy the fact that they will have the living shit beat out of them. The fashion is jarring, but the forward-thinking design means you can find the occasional unforgettable gem that nobody back home will ever have.

Most of all, it's just a beautiful place, with gorgeous scenery and welcoming people as varied as can be for such a relatively small mass of land.

Thinking back to the last five days, I can see what it is about the country that inspires so much amore. The wife and I will definitely have to have another mini-honeymoon there, perhaps when the weather is nicer.

But in the meantime, I'm happiest knowing that being there put such a smile on these people's faces:

Curses! Foiled Again...

I know I promised to be more mindful of my spending here, especially when it comes to food. Ok, that's my only expense right now, so it should be easy, right? Wrong!

After coming back from my blissfully cheap lunch at the cantine yesterday, I ran into one of our longtime Dutch customers who just happened to be visiting the office here.

"Hi! Omid! Hey, do you have any dinner plans?"

Uh oh.

Now I like this guy. We typically see each other once a year at our annual worldwide conference. He's a nice guy, we get along, and I enjoy his company. But dammit, going to dinner with someone who's come from far away usually means one thing: $$$. Or rather, €€€.

He stopped by my office after the work day was over and we set out to find a place to eat. Mind you, this is Clichy, where the options are as limited as the sophistication. We settled on one of the many dreadful Italian places in town, largely because it was a more affordable option.

Now here's something weird about Paris. Despite France's proximity to Italy, I've never since I first visited over five years ago been able to find a remotely decent Italian meal in this city. And the prospect of having something they do so poorly in a suburb where they do almost everything more poorly made me cringe.

Bitch and moan as I may, though, my pizza "Paysanne" was surprisingly good, relatively affordable (if you don't think about it in dollars), and the company was great. When you're living in a hotel for a week, it's always worth the price of admission to have a dining companion. All told - after ice cream and a .5 litre pitcher of house red - I spent more than I'd like to, but it certainly beat sitting on my bed, watching a dubbed version of CSI and munching on an apple.

The benefit of trying to stay cheap is that the half litre of wine knocked my ass out shortly after I got home, so I slept like a baby for the first time in what seems like eons. Now I see why winos sleep so well.

Iron Chef Japan is Back!

Ok, that's a totally misleading headline.

But it's the one I thought up as soon as we figured out what's going on for dinner tonight.

See, in order to thank my aunt and my cousin for all their hospitality and time, I decided I would make dinner - hopefully something I'm actually good at if I can find the ingredients. Makoto, as the resident professional chef, could not be one-upped, so he volunteered to make a dish, too.

Instead of being competitive, however, it wound up being collaborative. But considering the limited availability of ingredients, it sort of became Iron Chef anyway, considering the amount of improvisation that needed to be done. By the time dinner was made, for instance, I wished I'd just smuggled in some crême fraiche from overseas. It was that dire. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The first task was coming up with a potential menu. Makoto wanted to show off some chops he picked up in Italy, so he volunteered to make some kind of spaghetti. Talk about going for low-hanging fruit. Well, I had to make something to complement pasta, so I decided on chicken Milanese, paired with a nice, rustic French tartiflette - something warm and rich to fight off the crazy cold evening weather.

With only a few hitches, our grocery trip was a goldmine. Besides ingredients we already had at home, we ended up with amazingly fresh quail and chicken eggs, a box of organic tomatoes, delicious Hokkaido butter, beef bouillion (in lieu of actual stock), sour cream (in lieu of crême fraiche), chicken breasts, a (small) block of bacon, clams, elephant garlic (in lieu of shallots), a lemon, two kinds of button mushrooms in crazy cute packaging and of even cuter size, baby asparagus, Parmesean Reggiano (more on that later), Camembert (one of 12 varieties on offer, none of which were convincing), a miniature bunch of parsley, spaghetti, olives, capers. Oh, and the ace up my sleeve, Kobe-style beef.

The crazy part was all this was less than $35. Granted, some of the volumes are much smaller than at home, but it was more than adequate to feed four. The sad part is when I shop like this to cook for myself and Alannah back at home, the tally is usually well over $50. Who said Japan's expensive??

I started doing all my prep work as Makoto started cutting his tomatoes to make a pomodoro sauce from scratch. He got blindsided by the total lack of basil for sale (he thought because they had some at the herb garden yesterday that it should be no problem getting it at the super...) and had to steal some of my parsley. After I took the time cutting it into fine bits, of course. I sliced my potatoes and my mushrooms, cut my bacon into three different textures, made a cup of beef bouillon, minced the garlic, sliced the lemons... And then I got to the cheese.

All I have to say is: Double-you. Tee. Eff.

I opened the container of Parmesean and saw six laughing-cow like wedges inside. Ok, maybe it's cut that way for easier grating. Then I pick up a piece, unwrap it, and it looks, smells, and tastes just like... Laughing Cow. I open the package of Camembert and... same thing. I immediately got to work slicing the stuff thin, hoping to god it would at least melt.

The asparagus was easy. In fact, before Makoto started on his pasta, I had him blanch it in the hot water pot, and as soon as I started putting ice in a bowl, he knew to just shock it after he pulled the greens out. I have to say, it's fucking awesome working in the kitchen with an actual chef. (No offense at all to those I've cooked with before. You've all been perfectly wonderful in the kitchen. Just that Makoto's more wonderful.)

Pounding the chicken flat, dredging it in egg, and then in Panko (which, being Japanese, is incredibly ubiquitous here) was just as easy and routine. Cooking it was something else.

You see, the kitchen is tiny. Besides the counters being dwarf size (Makoto, his brother and I are the only people on this side of the family who break 5'7"). There are two electric induction cooktops inside, as well as a miniature range with two gas burners in the vestibule just outside the kitchen. Pots and pans suitable for each are minimal. The burners don't get industrial- nor enthusiast-quality hot.

Slowly, this was becoming less Iron Chef than another Food Network TV show, Dinner: Impossible.

My breasts weren't hot enough to fry up golden-brown without overcooking.

My demi-glace wouldn't thicken well because I had to substitute a bouillon cube for real stock, and temperature control was difficult. That and I used elephant garlic instead of shallot. It doesn't cook down, so instead of adding a bit of body to the sauce, it just added flavor - the rest I had to skim out.

I was stressing about my tartiflette, because a) it's in a little oven that looks like a kids' microwave playset, b) the cheese isn't melting, and c) the sour cream had the consistency of ricotta cheese.

I had to ditch my plans for Kobe beef tartare with quail egg because a) there's no cutting board large enough to double-fist the sharp-ass santoku knives - or even single fist one, and b) time's almost up.

Ok, there was no set time limit, but we'd all skipped lunch and were hungry, and we had to get food served fast.

In a flurry of activity at the end, it was like simultaneous climax. That is, it all, uh, came together. A few minutes of panic transformed into magical calm. We didn't have many plates, so we had to go a bit mixto. Makoto served up a pile of his spaghetti in tomato and clam sauce. I used it as a bed for my chicken breast Milanese. There wasn't any room left after that, so the tartiflette and asparagus got served up family style.

The demi-glace never thickened at all, so I just poured it over the asparagus to give it some tang. Oh, and a couple of tiny spoonfuls went on top of the panko fritters I'd improvised... Ok, I just dumped the remaining panko into the remaining eggs and dropped little spoons of it into the (semi-)hot oil.

Overall? It was actually a pretty damn brilliant meal. We'd made something heavy enough to fill us up nicely. Hearty enough to warm us up on a chilly night. And classy enough that accolades went around the table for all. Even the crazy cheap (¥800) bottle of French cabernet-syrah was pretty damn good.

Honestly, though, I think it was the toughest meal I've ever had to make. I had to cater to Aunt Izumi's typically Japanese palate and sensitive tummy. I had to impress my chef cousin. And I had to satisfy my second toughest critic: Mom. (I'm my own toughest, of course.) All that in one of the most rinky-dink, understocked kitchens I've encountered in my post-collegiate days. Hell, cooking at a campground is easier, because you prepare for it days in advance.

Cooking in other countries is always tough, unless you're going native. The ingredients aren't always what you expect. There are always things that are missing or unattainable. And the cooking facilities can be completely different simply based on the style of cooking dictated by the country's culture. But if you know what you're doing, you can make it work. And if you don't know what you're doing (which is my situation most of the time, even at home), just improvise your way through it.

Buono appetito!