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The project I mentioned the other day, an e-cookbook focusing on Japanese-inspired dishes, is finally live at KeepRecipes.com. I’ve contributed a bunch of recipes, as has Mark Bittman, Morimoto, Anita Lo, Amander Hesser, and Miyoko Nishimura (Madonna’s personal chef), among others. It’s a pretty cool way to painlessly give something toward Japan’s reconstruction AND liven up your weeknight meal repertoire. Thanks for giving as generously as you can!
(my favorite artisanal pickle store in Kamakura)
Like everyone else in the world, I’ve been following the events in Japan closely. As a 16-year resident of Japan, I’m beyond sad for the people affected by this insane tragedy. It’s a resilient place though; Japan as a nation can unite, regroup, and rebuild like no other.
The behavior of Japanese during and after this calamity makes me really proud to have such long-standing association with the country. Is there any other place on earth — upon being upended by one of the most violent earthquakes on record in any country (it was Japan’s worst, at 9.0), followed by a tsunami that carried away entire towns as if they were doll sets, followed by the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl — that wouldn’t freak, wouldn’t loot, wouldn’t revert back to the nasty, survivalist selves that exist, somewhere deep in our genes, in all of us?
Part of that ability to maintain discipline and human decency in the wake of a disaster of this scale is due to the Japanese character itself, but it’s also a testament to how the society has structured itself:
* Japan has a legal system that, despite its many flaws, reinforces and rewards honesty
* the spirit of “otegai ni” (“we’re in this together”) pervades
* police are generally ubiquitous and very visible
* yakuza (organized crime) tend to step in during humanitarian crises, and are often much more effective (and quicker) than government relief agencies, AND they tend to keep close watch over neighborhoods to prevent looting and general antisocial behavior (note that these guys are as far from benevolent as it gets for 99+% of the time — I just note their behavior during crises)
Japanese seem better at “being together” than others. It’s nothing short of miraculous that a group of people could rise from a decimated/firebombed/atomic bombed rubble into the second-most powerful economy on earth in a few short decades, and we have every reason to think that the very same spirit of recovery and “can do” national purpose will rally again, so I have some faith.
People have been asking me the best ways to give/donate/help. Aside from the sane advice of giving as generously as you possibly can directly to the Red Cross, you’ll also have the chance to donate via the purchase of a special cookbook with recipes from me, Morimoto, Bittman, Hesser, and many others. It’ll be available on Wednesday at a cool new site called KeepRecipes.com — I’ll have more info and a direct link in a few days, so please check back.
In another, more lasting, sense, however, I think the most anyone can do help the people of Japan right now is to keep artisanal Japanese products alive and well by adopting them into your daily lives. Maybe make a habit of visiting Japanese markets, and regularly pick up some miso, yuzu, matcha, umeboshi, sake, etc., and make a permanent spot in your fridge for these wonderful ingredients. The artisans who produce them, many of whom come from Tohoku, the afflicted area, will certainly appreciate it.
Many people have also asked me whether matcha is safe to drink in the wake of the nuclear crisis. The answer is YES, absolutely — my suppliers have sent me detailed analyses that they are updating daily on possible contamination due to radiation. Rest assured, there is none, zero. Luckily, the tea fields are in western Honshu, very far from the afflicted area. But more detail on that in the next post.
Well we did it — the Breakaway Matcha webstore is now live! For those of you reading this in a web browser, you’ll see MATCHA on the navigation bar. For those reading this via some other method, please check it out at http://breakawaymatcha.com.
The response to the matcha has kind of blown me away. I’ve put a little of the correpsondence I’ve had with people in the testimonials section of the site; it makes me very happy to know that people are digging it as much as I am… :^) if you haven’t tried it yet, please do! It also makes a pretty cool gift.
I’m still working on the section I’m calling “master class in matcha” — it’s going to feature just about eveything you’ve ever wanted to know about matcha. I’ll be rolling that out in phases, and adding to it over time, but wanted to make the webstore section live as quickly as possible. So here we are!
You’ll notice — I hope! — that we’ve completely redesigned the website. It was about time, and I want to thank the fabulous Stephanie Sawchenko for all the design work she did.
Feedback is EXTREMELY welcomed — if you find anything that’s broken, unclear, or just not to your liking, let me know. Gratitude in droves to all.
If you’re free on Sunday, March 20, please consider joining me at the San Francisco Zen Center for an afternoon of umami-driven vegetarian cooking. It’s a wonderful opportunity to check out the Julia Morgan-designed Zen Center and its alluring (and immense) kitchen. I’ll be co-teaching the class with zen maestra Dana Velden, who also writes a lovely and soulful blog at The Kitchn, which is part of Apartment Therapy. We will of course be eating all the things we create. The building is on the corner of Page and Laguna, in San Francisco. Please sign up early if you can, since we’re limiting the class size to just 20. Hope to see you there!
For those of you who don’t know this strange-looking citrus, it’s a Buddha’s Hand citron; my tiny little tree just keeps cranking them out. I like to cut the fingers off and dry them, then pulverize them and combine with sel gris for an extremely tasty finishing salt. I also make my annual Buddhacello by infusing vodka with plenty of fingers, adding syrup, and freezing. One of my all-time favorite desserts!
Can a salad full of “superfoods” boost your immunity? I have no idea, but I do know that this salad is pretty damn tasty, and that I felt pretty damn good after eating it. Steve Silberman’s magnificent article on placebos confirmed something that I’ve always suspected: believing that something you ingest — be it food or pharmaceuticals — will be beneficial to your health usually IS beneficial to your health. Not always, of course, but frequently enough to make it real and measurable.
For years we’ve all heard about the serious benefits of eating foods rich in antioxidants and omega 3 fatty acids. The biggest contenders in this group are those found in this salad: salmon (which I broiled with a pomegranate molasses glaze), wild blueberries, pomegranate arils, avocado, edamame, soft tofu, and a few chives. Dressing was just a drizzle of good fruity green olive oil (from Sicily) and a spoonful of vinegar brine from my pickled ginger, plenty of freshly ground black and green peppercorns, and matcha salt.
If you’re looking for a great first course to a special meal — or just any everyday meal for that matter — here you go. After the salmon is cooked, it can be assembled in less than five minutes.
And if you believe that this wonderful little quick salad is really good for you, it just might be.
I’m beyond thrilled to announce that the custom-designed matcha ceramics are finally here! Our humble little office has never looked happier, surrounded with boxes of these lovely little pieces . . . they’ll soon be featured on the all-new website, which I hope to launch in the second week of March, but if anyone is interested in pricing or other details, let me know.
This ceramics project started last fall, when I approached the renowned ceramicist Aletha Soule with an idea for custom-made matcha ceramics. Why did I need/want ceramics made for matcha? The internet is full of lovely matcha bowls — and some of them are really dazzling in their beauty — but those bowls are designed to accommodate traditional hand whisking of matcha; that is to say, you need a wide, shallow surface to properly whisk the matcha with a chasen, or traditional bamboo whisk. (They do make sensational oatmeal bowls, however.)
As many of you know, I vastly prefer the handheld electric whisk/milk frother to the bamboo one. The depth and extent of the crema/creaminess achieved with the Aerolatte (my preference, and the only one available at Breakaway Matcha) is leagues better than what is achievable with the traditional chasen. But if you try whisking matcha with the Aerolatte in a traditional matcha bowl, you end up with a very messy kitchen and a very green shirt, because the matcha just flies up and out of the bowl. So I needed a different shape, one that could accommodate electric whisking. You can see the shape and glaze colors we went with (which we’re calling blush, celedon, and eggshell) in the photo above. The shape allows you to whip up a perfectly frothed cup of matcha in just a few seconds. It then gets poured into these cups:
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Aletha and I designed these cups to be off-center and slightly wabisabi; the glazes resemble a satin matte. The fit in the hand is ridiculously comfortable and right. The cups are the perfect size for matcha: slightly bigger than an espresso cup, but much smaller than a coffee cup. They have an off-center, asymmetrical design that not only feels great in the hand, it serves to highlight the beauty of the matcha.
It is sheer delight to slurp matcha from these things. I think matcha reaches its fullest potential when frothed in a creamer and then poured into small, preheated cups. I like to preheat them with boiling water as I wait for the water to cool a bit before making the matcha. They feel even better when they’re warm, and the tea stays warmer longer.
The breakaway approach to matcha has nothing to do with ceremonial procedures that are in fact a kind of proprietary intellectual property controlled by family lineages in Japan. I think of it more along the lines of how Italians feel about espresso: as a delicious, epicurean, and casual little treat/pick-me-up. We will eschew nearly all the customary rules regarding the preparation and enjoyment of matcha, and reinvent it entirely. In the same way that breakaway cooking breaks free from traditional culinary constraints, breakaway matcha aims to democratize matcha and to make it accessible to everyone who wishes to have an epicurean experience along the lines of a fine wine, except that it promotes wakefulness, not drowsiness, and happens to have — almost as an afterthought — off-the-charts health properties. But it’s important to distinguish culinary matcha — essentially everything for sale on the internet — from epicurean matcha meant only for drinking, not cooking. These ceramics are for the latter.
The culture of matcha is incredibly rich, and has a venerable history that is simply awesome in its beauty and relevance. But it can be, indeed must be, brought up to contemporary times, to be more suited to the way people live and work today. Enter these hauntingly beautiful ceramics, and “permission” to prepare the damn tea any way you like.
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I’m not a paper plate and paper cup kind of guy, and I imagine not too many reading this are, either. But one look at this elegant little cup — ideal for matcha, no less — sure spun me around on the possibilities of disposable AND biodegradable tableware.
The Wasara series of single-use tableware is pretty freaking elegant. It’s made from 100-percent renewable, “tree-free” materials: a combo of bamboo, reed pulp, and something called bagasse, a substance leftover from the sugar-refining process that’s typically thrown away as waste.
This stuff hits all the sweet spots of good design: it’s clean, crisp, utterly utilitarian, and minimalist. It feels good, and stable, in your hands. It’s got lovely texture. It’s thin, paper-light, and yet robust; it feels terrible and wrong to throw it away after only one use. And it goes right into the compost pile, not the garbage, not even the recycling bin. Designed (and made) in Japan by Shinichiro Ogata.
Do disposable plates get any better than this?
Branch Home in SF is the exclusive US distributor of this rather stunning series (disclaimer: Branch’s founder, Paul Donald, is a friend. But he didn’t ask for a feature in this space — Wasara is featured because it’s gorgeous, and useful to breakaway cooks everywhere).
The good people at Vook are offering some love: a Valentine’s Day special on the Breakaway Japanese Kitchen. For anyone who doesn’t already have this fun little app for Iphones, Ipads, and the web, it features a bunch of videos of me making dishes from The BJK, with full recipes. I don’t think it’ll ever get cheaper than 99 cents.
Happy Valentines Day to everyone — cook something nice for your sweetie, please.
Breakaway cooking isn’t about following an exact recipe; it’s about seeing what you can come up with regardless of what “type” of cooking it is. And what better place for breakaway cooking than a dorm room?
Now, hear me out. When I first discovered that I had been placed in the one dorm that didn’t have a kitchen, I was pretty freaked out. I mean, the dining hall isn’t that bad, but it’s the motions of cooking, the idea of an actual meal rather than snippets of this-and-that from the salad bar that keep me sane. I knew I had to take drastic action. So here’s a list of things college students can do to radically increase the quality of the food we eat.
So that’s my bit on cooking in college. When I finally went home for winter break, I cooked a million things that would be impossible to make on an induction burner (hummus, whole wheat pita, grilled mackerel, etc.). And while I’d like to say it was 100% bliss — and, in many respects, it was — I did miss the challenge of cranking out great food in my room.
It’s good to be back.
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Lida Wu is a freshman at Wesleyan, and blogs at the fabulously entertaining www.octopusgourmet.com.
(Editor’s note: guest posts are always welcome — send your breakaway-related ideas to Eric)
And the matcha story continues.
We’ve received so many requests for allotments of Breakaway Matcha that it’s been a bit overwhelming, though this is exactly the sort of problem I was hoping to have! New clients are in agreement: this matcha really IS like a world-class wine.
I’ve talked about its similarities to wine in this space before, and thus won’t repeat myself, but I did promise to follow up that post with a short description of the health properties of matcha.
It’s a unique challenge for me to present something as both 1) an epicurean experience unlike any other, and 2) a superfood that is quite possibly the healthiest substance one can put into one’s body, bar none. To my knowledge, no food or beverage can make both claims.
Great wines are some of life’s finest pleasures, but anything more than small quantities can have adverse effects on health (not to mention make you drunk or bankrupt you).
Superfoods, including pomegranate, gojiberries, wild blueberries, acai berries, mackerel, sardines, fresh turmeric, ginger, cacao, avocado, dark winter greens, walnuts, pumpkin, and regular green tea — among others that make up the bulk of the bulk of the breakaway diet — are both healthful and delicious, but, even in the hands of very skilled cooks, they don’t really qualify as “transcendental” epicurean experiences in the way that, say, a glass of Romanée Conti does.
Drinking highest-quality artisanal matcha is like drinking Romanée Conti AND getting at least 10x the health benefits of the superfoods listed above. This has been a true epiphany for me: it’s as if my doctor told me that the greatest gift I could give my body and brain is have a few glasses of DRC with every meal, AND that it would result in better focus/concentration, weight loss, fresher breath, bolstered immunity, and an elevated mood that sure feels like what the Buddhists call satori, a kind of calm euphoria. Where do I sign?!
Some basic health facts about matcha:
* It’s got boatloads of antioxidants, which act as anti-inflammatory and antiviral agents in the body. You can actually measure the antioxidant contents of foods, with something called ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) units. Here are some ORAC numbers for common superfoods: gojiberries 253, dark chocolate 227, pomegranate 105, wild blueberries 93, acai berries 60, broccoli 31.
* You can break down the term “antioxidants” into lots of components, but one key antioxidant is actually a flavanoid/catechin called EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), and matcha is crazy full of EGCGs. It has roughly 140x the EGCGs of regular green tea, for the simple reason that matcha is consumed whole. It is not steeped or, worse, extracted (beware of health claims for extracted green tea — much of it is bogus). The soluble and insoluble fiber in matcha work in synergy, something that can’t happen in tea that is steeped. It’s this synergistic effect that is responsible for its off-the-charts EGCG count. Wikipedia lists a bunch of studies that have shown that EGCG in quantity can be beneficial in treating brain, prostate, cervical, and bladder cancers. Other studies have posited that matcha helps stave off dementia, promotes fat burning, aids digestion, improves oral hygiene, and helps bolster immunity.
* Matcha drinkers have reported (to me, and to others) clearer and quicker thinking, improved memory for things like names and numbers, increased alertness and awareness, elevated moods, “calm euphoria,” and improved concentrative abilities for studying, working, or driving. These claims have definitely rung true in my own case.
Lots more to say about it but this post is already getting lengthy. In short, matcha is a bajillion (to use scientific language) times better for you than other teas because all the action is in the leaves, which are savored and swallowed.
Other exciting Breakaway Matcha news: the ceramics have, at long last, arrived! I can’t tell you how these cups and creamers elevate the experience of drinking matcha. I’ll post some photos and descriptions of them in the next entry, but if you don’t want to wait, email me and I’ll pass along some photos.
(photo by Wakeford Gong)
