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Hika Harada Biography

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“There was something green between slices of soft bread. Otoha took a bite and sure enough the blend of cucumbers and butter leaped out into her mouth, with a simple, yet deep taste. "Mr. Kinoshita, this is really delicious! It's hard to believe the ingredients are that simple." "Thanks. I just sliced the cucumbers very thin and rubbed them with salt." Otoha tried the roast chicken sandwich next. "This is wonderful too. The chicken is so moist." "I simply added salt and pepper to the chicken breasts as I roasted them, and then a little French dressing before I put it in the sandwich." "They're all very simple flavors. You can really savor all the ingredients." "I think that's how things were back in those times. Plus, I don't think Montgomery, a pastor's wife, would like writing long descriptions of how food tasted." "That makes sense." On top of the flat plate of sandwiches was a small dish with green peas. Otoha tried them and found them softly boiled, with a taste of butter. "Those are green peas sautéed in butter. I finished them by adding a spoonful of sugar. Do you remember how, when they invited Mrs. Morgan to Green Gables, Anne added too much sugar and spoiled the peas?”

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“The owner comes back, makes tea for them and says, 'I'm sorry I only have bread, butter, and cucumbers,' but Anne and Diana are so starving that the bread, butter, and cucumbers taste delicious. And it really does sound delicious. I don't know that much about Anne of Green Gables, or about novels in general, but that scene really stands out for me, the way it describes how wonderful the food tasted... Especially the way it describes the joy of eating." "You may well be right." "I thought about this a lot and I believe that the cucumbers mentioned may have been pickled. Though other translations of the book only say it's bread, butter, and cucumbers. But I can't picture them crunching on fresh cucumbers... So anyway, that's how I came up with my own version, which is this. Bread, butter, and cucumber sandwiches. That seemed a bit inadequate, though, so I also made roast chicken sandwiches. I think they must have eaten those as well.”

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“On the tray were two plates of a yellowish curry. "Today's menu is shirobanba. Monday is shirobanba day." "Curry always perks me up." Minami nodded. "What do you mean by shirobanba?" Otoha asked. "You don't know?" Kinoshita asked. "You haven't read it? It's from Yasushi Inoue's novel Shirobanba. It's a re-creation of the curry an old woman in the story cooks. Shirobanba, by the way, are the so-called snow bugs, teeny tiny insects that have a white puff on their wings that looks like cotton. They look like little flakes of snow.”

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“Otoha picked up her spoon and took a bite. It was typical curry and tasted good. At first it seemed mild, but then it got spicier, with a unique aroma. I could really get to like this, she thought. "It's good, isn't it?" Miami whispered. "Sure is." The carrots and onions cut in small cubes she recognized, but there was another vegetable, likewise stewed to translucency, she didn't. When she tasted it, it felt like it would easily fall apart. "What is this?" Otoha asked. "This vegetable is so soft and fresh..." She'd never seen this sort of vegetable in curry before. "That's daikon radish." "Seriously? Daikon?" Daikon in curry--- now that was a first. It worked, surprisingly. "When Mr. Kinoshita was scouted for this job, the owner made it a condition that he re-create and serve several recipes from novels and essays the owner chose. Since Mr. Kinoshita's an excellent cook as well as barista." "What else is in this?" Otoha asked. "It's savory, as if there's meat, but I don't see any." The small cubes of vegetables were front and center, with torn-off scraps of some kind of meat hidden beneath. But this, too, must lend the curry its unique flavor. She raised her spoon and stared at it intently. "Ah---!" "You get it?" "It's corned beef!" Otoha exclaimed.”

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“Kinoshita brought over several trays, placing one in front of each of them. Each had soup, a main dish, and--- orange-colored rice? "What is this?" "It's carrot rice! With unlimited second helpings!" Sure enough, the rice was packed full of so many carrots, that's all you could see. Otoha started with the soup, which was a potage with roughly mashed potatoes. Not very showy, yet the wonderful flavor spread throughout her. She let out a deep sigh. Not the type of sigh she'd let out in front of Mr. Tamura, but one of deep satisfaction nonetheless. She next turned to the carrot rice. "Wow... this is delicious," she said as she took a big bite. The sweetness of carrots, the aroma of soy sauce--- what a gentle, delicious flavor the rice had.”

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“Today's main dish is cooked sardines," Kinoshita explained, "and the side dish is okara, soybean pulp, cooked using the broth from cooking these sardines. This combination appeared several times in her books. It was probably something she herself enjoyed. Plus there's a side dish of kenchinjiru, root vegetable soup. This also appears a few times in her essays and novels. The rice is yukari rice, rice mixed with dried pickled plums and red shiso flakes." "I've been meaning to ask you, Mr. Kinoshita, but were you a fan of Seiko Tanabe's works before you came here? She's the only author where you serve so many different dishes." "No, truthfully I'd never heard of her before. The owner gave me the book The Many Flavors of Seiko Tanabe, which came out while the author was still alive, and I planned to make a few of the dishes listed there. In that book they gave the sources for the recipes, and I went ahead and read those too. She wrote a lot about cooking and I really got into it.”

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“In a donburi bowl, on top of the rice, were four or five little fish, and a scattering of sliced scallions. Accompanying this was soup in lacquered bowls. "And this would be...?" "Try it first." Otoha picked up the donburi bowl and put one of the small fish and rice into her mouth. "It's delicious, Mr. Kinoshita. It looks so very simple, but it's amazing." "I just warmed up canned oil sardines in a frying pan, added some soy sauce, and put it and the sardine oil over rice. That's it. The scallions I bought at a convenience store on the way her 'cause it was the only place open. But it works, doesn't it?" "It does. I could eat a ton of this rice." "It's a recipe in an essay by the novelist Yoko Mori. The soup is an egg soup with dried wakame seaweed and eggs.”

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“It's so tasty it's hard to believe that rice tastes like this with just carrots and fried tofu." "It's healthy too," Tokuda added. "Good for when you're tired," said Tokai. The main dishes were lotus root cooked in soy and chili pepper, and the head and bony parts of yellowtail cooked in soy sauce and sweet sake. Both were mildly seasoned and went well with the rice.”

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“The sardine dish was cooked sweet and salty and went well with the rice. And when you took a bite of the yukari rice when the somewhat fishy taste still remained in your mouth it was totally refreshing. Otoha felt like she could eat white rice and yukari, switching back and forth between them, forever. The okara had completely absorbed the umami from the cooked sardine broth and was flavorful and tasty. The carrots and dried shiitake provided a pleasant accent.”

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“I asked her once what criteria she used when she hired people. "I choose those who are hurt, and exhausted," she answered right away. I couldn't help but smile. Since I thought wanting to help people who suffered in some way when dealing with books was a wonderful reason. When I heard what she said next, though, my smile retreated. "And people who have secrets. Put those to good use, use their weaknesses to make them at my beck and call." "Why would you do that?" "People change. You don't know what's going to happen next. If something does happen, I want to be able to deal with it. To protect you, and this place." My aunt was certainly not just some kind, charitable person. I knew this from a long time ago, but her words now only reinforced it.”

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“What my aunt wanted to try was to create the Night Library. Through all of her studies of art, she'd discovered the importance of preserving this thing known as the past. "You know, it's presumptuous to think that the present is more advanced than the past," she said. "Putting aside industry, science, and chemistry, there hasn't been any progress in the arts, or literature." She told me this while she stood in front of the statue David in the Accademia Gallery. "Probably we can't produce magnificent things like this nowadays. Apart from reproductions and such." "Hmm." "Which is why I'd like to take the past and seal it in.”

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