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Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

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Matt Goulding

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“I made the coffee myself in Armande's curious small kitchen with its cast-iron range and low ceiling. Everything is clean there, but the one tiny window looks onto the river, giving the light a greenish underwater look. Hanging from the dark, unpainted beams are bunches of dry herbs in their muslin sachets. On the whitewashed walls, copper pans hang from hooks. The door- like all the doors in the house- has a hole cut into the base to allow free passage to her cats.”

“RJ is standing there, and in his arms is a wriggling French bulldog puppy of the most inexplicable color, almost pale honeyed yellow tinged with a sort of peachy pink. "Oh my goodness! Who are you?" RJ hands me the pup, who immediately starts licking all over my face and biting my ponytail. Dumpling tries to stand on his one leg to see what is going on, and falls over at my feet. RJ scoops him up and puts him face-to-face with the puppy. "Dumpling, there is someone we want you to meet. We thought you might want a little sister." Dumpling looks at the puppy, who leans forward and licks his face. Dumpling licks back. The puppy sniffs his ear and then with one move, snatches the eye patch right off his head and starts to chew it. Dumpling looks at me with his one good eye, head cocked as if to say, "We're going to have our hands full with this one," and then turns and licks RJ under his chin. "I can't believe you did this! You are so sneaky." "Well, we did talk about wanting to do it, and a guy at work breeds them for showing, but this one is off the allowable color charts." "She does have a certain, um... Well, she's kind of, um..." "Pink? Yeah. Some weird anomaly, and apparently, not good for the show circuit." "But good for us." "That's what I thought." "What should we call her?" RJ smiles. "I was thinking Pamplemousse." "Of course. What else could she be?”

“Does time really exist, time the destroyer? When will it break down the castle into mere fragments? When will this heart which has always been in the service of the gods Be governed by the Creator, the Demiurge? Are we really so desperately fragile As Fate would wish to make us? Is childhood, which is so deep, so full of promise, Later stilled at its root? Oh, the spectre of perishability, How it infiltrates and passes through the innocently receptive, As if it were smoke! And we, we who are drifting, We still rank as a divine rite Amongst those lasting Powers.”

“If you draw the full length of the blade through the fish in one gentle sweep, the resulting cross section is smooth and the cells are cleanly cut. But if you force the blade down on the fish to cut it, the cross section becomes ragged and the cells are squashed. If the surface of the slice is rough, more of the fish is exposed to air, and so it oxidizes faster and its flavor deteriorates. This becomes even more apparent with water-chilled sashimi. The ragged surface of the slices allows the water to penetrate the fish and leech out its flavor." "That's why the sashimi becomes watery and tasteless.”

“His eyes light up. “Wait, this is a sakura mochi. How did you remember—" I glance down and curse internally at the faintly pink, round dessert, pale as a cherry blossom petal. How did I remember his favorite? His mom used to take us, Cam, and Remy down to San Jose to go around Japantown, picking up bentos from a homey restaurant to eat at the park, and then we’d stop at Shuei-Do Manju Shop. Every time, without fail, Jack would choose sakura mochi. The times that there was only one left in stock, the rest of us purposefully ordered other sweets, just so Jack could get his favorite. And his eyes would shine with delight as he munched on the pink rice cake, the way he’s smiling now.”