Japanese Curry: My Ultimate Comfort Food

This month five years ago, Marc and I pulled into my brother's driveway here in Bellingham, our truck packed tightly with everything we thought necessary plus the poor dog who was allotted about one square foot of space for the 2,000-mile journey. All along the way, boxes kept falling down on his hairy head and not once did he complain.  

We had, after some deliberation, decided that this was the place where we were going to put down roots. Marc and I didn't know where we would exactly live in our new town, but a month later, after I'd started to settle into my private practice, we found a house next to the woods. We have been here since. 

Two or even three years in, there were moments where I would suddenly forget where I was. I would open my eyes in the morning, feeling disoriented at seeing the walls of a room other than those of our old bedroom in California. Or, I'd be driving along by the lake and take a turn, expecting to arrive somewhere in L.A. 

Somewhere in the middle of living my life, though, that unsettled feeling drifted away. It took a while. My former life in Southern California feels like a dream and now my roots reach down, firmly anchoring me to this place of clouds, rain and wetland woods. 

I don't miss the heat, the perpetual summer. What I miss most about my hometown is people -- friends I haven't seen in so long, family I no longer get to spend time with on a regular basis.

There are a few other things, like food, for instance. I know L.A. has changed so much since we left, and the food with it. Just today, I was listening to Evan Kleiman's Good Food on KCRW. She was talking about the rise of Latino coffee houses all over Southern California, including Tierra Mia a few blocks from my old high school. I hadn't heard anything about that before turning on the podcast.

When it comes to food and my hometown, I miss Little Tokyo, or J-Town most and the yummy stuff we'd regularly eat there. Like mochi and mochi ice cream from Mikawaya and warm red bean cakes from Mitsuru Cafe called imagawayaki (see video below) that are cooked in rows of copper pans.

Most of all, I miss our weekly, sometimes twice-weekly visits to the Curry House.

Have you ever had Japanese curry? It seems not that many people up here in our town, at least the ones I've talked to, know about it. In many American minds, Japanese food equals sushi and not curry. But in Japan, it's a comfort food cooked at home, one of those well-loved dishes where each family makes it their own way. Everyone loves it, kids included.

It's my ultimate comfort food.

Kare raisu, as it is known, falls into the category of yoshoku. This style of cooking takes Western ingredients and transforms them into something to suit Japanese tastes. Though most of us think of curry as an Indian spice, rather than something from the West, it's thought to have been introduced to Japan by the British. Hence, kare raisu's yoshoku status. At its most basic, kare raisu is a curry-flavored gravy with onions and may also contain beef, pork, chicken or veggies. As the raisu part of the name points out, it's typically served over rice. 

At Curry House, you can order your dish in many different ways. You can get a deep-fried meat cutlet over it, or a ground beef patty. You can have it topped with tofu or boiled egg. It's completely customizable.

Here's the version we cook in our house. It's the one we like and now eat at least once a week as we hold onto memories of friends, family and visiting our favorite place in Little Tokyo. 

Japanese Curry (Kare Raisu)

Adapted from Serious Eats.

Ingredients
For the roux:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (such as sunflower), OR unsalted butter
1/4 cup rice flour (or all-purpose)
1 tablespoon hot curry
1 1/2 teaspoons mild curry
1 3/4 teaspoons garam masala
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne (use more if your prefer your curry more spicy)
1/2 teaspoon mild honey OR half a finely grated apple

For the curry
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 medium onions, halved then thinly sliced
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
4 cups vegetable broth
1 1/2 pound firm-fleshed potatoes (such as Yukon Gold), peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
2 teaspoons salt
3/4 cup peas

Instructions
In a large, heavy-bottomed pot heat oil over medium heat. Add onions and saute until they turn golden and are just beginning to caramelize, 10-12 minutes. Add carrots, then vegetable broth. Bring to a boil then add potatoes and salt. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, until potatoes are tender.

In the meantime, make the roux. In a large saucepan or a wide skillet, heat oil. Add flour, both curry powders and garam masala. Stir for a minute or two, incorporating the ingredients together. Add Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, cayenne and honey, stirring and pressing mixture together. You will have a dry paste. Turn off heat. Set aside.

Once your vegetables are done, ladle out about 2 cups of the liquid. Turn heat back to low for the roux. Add a small amount of liquid to the roux at a time, stirring after each addition, until all of the broth has been added.  You will have a very thick gravy. Add all of this back to the pot with the vegetables and stir gently, until a rich gravy develops. Add peas and allow to warm through. 

Serve over rice. I like my curry garnished with red pickled ginger (beni shoga). And here! Come watch how they make goza soroh (another name for imagawayaki). They are delicious!

Senegalese Peanut Soup and A Soup Swap!

Well, that was a busy weekend. On Friday, we attended our first Michaelmas celebration. Since Kingston just started preschool three weeks ago, it was our first school festival.

As the grade schoolers gathered in a large circle, we sat at the edge of the wooded playground with other parents, friends and acquaintances eating our picnic dinner while we watched a dragon get slayed.

Because that wasn't enough excitement, Kingston helped use a two-man saw to cut a log into chunks. He then promptly went over to the hammering table and began putting 1-inch nails into a piece of wood he'd just cut. 

We watched the fifth grade parents work the apple press to make cider using fruit collected from all the families. We shared an abundance of home baked bread slathered with butter.

Then all the way home, Kingston chanted, "Michaelmas, apple sauce!" Just because.

But Saturday was a new day as we put our Friday adventures behind us. It was our Fall Soup Swap and it was a good one. 

If you have never been to or hosted a soup swap, maybe it's time to join in and make one happen. It is the best reason to gather a bunch of friends and neighbors together and a chance to fortify everybody when the weather starts to take on a chill.

All of the soups we had were delicious. Butternut squash and curry, carrot yogurt, Tuscan white bean, pumpkin and Jerry Traunfeld's herbed black bean concoction. I made Senegalese peanut soup. Everyone brought containers and filled them up before they went home.

Lately, I've been on a soup kick and I can't help it. Soup in all its incarnations is one the greatest things a person can cook or eat. It's not usually complicated, it's nutritious and you can generally feed a lot of people with a single pot. 

Our soup swap underscored all this plus more. People love sharing. People love trying out new flavors. They love taking home quarts of soup that they didn't have to cook. They are happy to know there will be a meal or two they won't have to make, other than heating something up. There's also the bonus of getting to visit with one another. 

Senegalese peanut soup is one of my favorites. The best version I've had is the one that Jim makes at The Rhody Cafe and the Farm to Market Bakery (next door to the cafe) down in Bow-Edison. If you ever find yourself driving south from Bellingham down Chuckanut Drive, you will see it on the left side just before you get to Bow Hill Road.

Jim's version is full of shredded chicken and is warming and complex. It's offered every day both at the Cafe and the Bakery, served with pieces of the Breadfarm's most perfect baguette.

But circling back to Michaelmas, it is a festival that has been celebrated since at least Roman times, if not earlier. There are different stories related to it including that of St. George slaying a dragon to save an entire village. 

It's a reminder of the personal dragons we each have and the need to find the courage to tame them. Gathering together, finding strength through community by sharing something as simple as soup is one small way to shore ourselves (in these northerly parts especially) against the darker months ahead.

As our school newsletter states, "Let's use the energy and focus of the Michaelmas season to resolve to be courageous -- which means 'take heart,' subdue our inner dragons and serve the good. Celebrate our inner strength and courage and let Hope and Love prevail."

Or, as Kingston says, "Michaelmas, applesauce!"

And as I say, "Soup Swap!"

Senegalese Peanut Soup
This soup happens to be dairy and gluten free, vegan and vegetarian. It does, however (and unavoidably) contain plenty of peanuts, as the name suggests.

Slightly adapted from Soup Club, a book that celebrates friendship, food and sharing through a soup club in New York City.

Makes 4 quarts.

Ingredients
2 cups roasted, salted peanuts
2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 small red onions, cut in half and sliced thinly
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
4 oz. fresh ginger, peeled and finely minced
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons mild curry powder
pinch of red pepper flakes or cayenne
1 28-oz. can of diced tomatoes, with their juice
2 lbs. sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 13.5 oz. can of unsweetened coconut milk
1 bunch cilantro, divided
1 cup unsweetened natural peanut butter, well-stirred
8 ounces swiss chard leaves, sliced into wide ribbons

To finish the soup
additional salt
black pepper, freshly ground
chopped cilantro
crushed or whole roasted, salted peanuts

Instructions
Use the side of a large knife to crush the peanuts.

In a large pot, heat the coconut oil. Add the onions, ginger and garlic. Saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the salt, curry and red pepper flakes. Cook for 2-3 minutes longer until the spices are fragrant.

Stir in the tomatoes then the sweet potatoes. Cook for another 2-3 minutes, stirring. Roughly chop half of the cilantro and add to the pot. Add 4 1/4 cups water and the coconut milk then give the soup a good stir. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes, until the sweet potatoes are tender.

Remove from heat. Into another container ladle out 5 cups of the soup, including chunks of sweet potato and pieces of tomato and onion. Set aside.

Stir peanut butter into the remaining soup in pot. Use an immersion blender to puree until peanut butter is incorporated and soup is fairly smooth. Return the unblended portion to the pot. Add the chard and stir. Allow chard to wilt. Adjust soup for salt and add pepper as desired.

Serve in bowls garnished with cilantro and peanuts.

Heirloom Tomato and Charred Red Pepper Soup

It came upon us as quick as a blink, didn't it? I can't say I was completely ready. Of course I'm talking about our old friend, Fall.  

What a summer we had here! Glorious it was and longer than our typical (and measly) eight weeks. This year the sun and warmth stretched impossibly across late spring well into the third week of September. The long days of light! We were living the dream.

I do love the Fall, though. Cool mornings with spider webs damp and glistening in the light, fog hanging low across tree tops. Sitting by the fire at night.

Then, of course there's soup. 

Late last summer, I became obsessed with April Bloomfield's Summer Tomato Soup. I couldn't stop making or eating it. The minute I stopped eating it, I would start thinking about it again, the memory of its umami flavors causing the most primitive parts of my brain to clang, "Make soup. Again! Must eat!"

I'm not exaggerating. 

Some of you might think it's a bit late to be talking about tomatoes, but I know that a good tomato or two can still be found (I've seen them with my own eyes at the Ballard Farmer's Market most recently). Stragglers though they may be, they must be used, so this is what you should do with them without question: Make soup.

This soup takes those end-of-summer tomatoes sitting on your counter and combines them with the straggler red bell peppers that you also still have on hand.

Roast the peppers to the point of blackened char. Skin them. Add them to the tomatoes with salt, olive oil, a smidge of water. Toss in a few basil leaves and you're done. So easy. Low effort for a spoonful of glory.

Fall and winter can be hard on those of us who live around here. It gets so dark and stays damp for such a long time that light and warmth can become an abstract idea, a mere daydream. To gird against such occasions, it's best to make some extra of this soup and freeze it. Now.

When darkness and rain envelopes us soon enough, late summer will live on, if only in a bowl.

Heirloom Tomato and Charred Red Pepper Soup

Adapted from April Bloomfield.

Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients
2 lbs. heirloom tomatoes
1 lb. red peppers (or a mix of red and orange)
5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons plus 1/4 cup olive oil
3 teaspoons flaky sea salt such as Maldon
1/4 cup water
One handful of fresh basil leaves
1 scant teaspoon of basil pesto (optional)

Instructions
Preheat oven to 475°. Place peppers on side on baking sheet. Once the oven reaches temperature, place sheet in oven. Roast peppers for 20-25 minutes, until blackened and blistered. Immediately place peppers in a large bowl and cover with plastic to allow peppers to steam. Once they have cooled, peel skin and remove stems and seeds. Set aside. 

Place a fine-meshed sieve over a large bowl. Cut tomatoes in half, removing stems and any hard parts. Gently squeeze tomatoes over strainer, allowing juices to run through. Using fingertips, push any remaining seeds out of the tomato flesh. Place pieces of tomato flesh in bowl with juice.

Place 3 tablespoons olive oil with garlic in a medium pot. Cook over medium-high heat for a minute or two until garlic is just becoming golden. Add tomatoes and their juices and peppers. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and a few of the basil leaves. Give everything a stir and cover. 

After about 5 minutes, when tomatoes and peppers are swimming in juices, uncover and add the water. Stir. Adjust heat so that the mixture simmers gently. Allow to cook for 20 minutes. 

Once the mixture has cooked, turn off heat, add the other 2 teaspoons of salt. Add remaining basil leaves. Add pesto if using. Add the 1/4 cup of olive oil. Using an immersion blender, blend soup until it has emulsified and become smooth and creamy. Adjust salt if you like. Serve warm in bowls.

Carrot Jalapeno Soup with Two Garnishes

I was a vegetarian, then a vegan for over ten years. That is, until the day I walked by Zabar's in New York City when I was five months pregnant, realized that I would die if I didn't eat any salami, then turned around and went inside. Guess what I bought?

Yep, a salami and cheese sandwich on a kaiser roll. What I didn't know until after Marc and I returned from our trip was that pregnant women aren't supposed to be eating cold, cured meats such as salami since their immune systems are more vulnerable.

Well, it was another five days before we got on a plane to come home. In the meantime, I had to eat that same Zabar's sandwich every day (at least once), usually before I would walk across Central Park. That sandwich. It became a fixation, an overwhelming craving that seemed to come from some extremely desperate person I didn't know who was housed inside my body.

Thankfully, I was fine. My immune system didn't let me down. 

Since that Zabar's sandwich, I have continued eating omnivorously. I haven't regretted it, though I still do believe that it's best to eat a primarily plant-based diet.

Thoughts of my vegetarian and vegan past came up for me today when I was looking through a cookbook published in 2009: Tal Ronnen's The Conscious Cook. It was given to me by a friend when I first moved up to Washington. I revisited it today while trying to pare down my book collection.

Flipping through it, I recalled how I had studied its pages carefully in my attempts to be a thoughtful and "conscious" vegan. Then, I thought about how whole foods bloggers and cookbook writers today such as Heidi Swanson, Sarah Forte and Anna Jones approach plant-based eating in such a different and well, fresher, way.

See, if you look through Ronnen's book, though there are high points such as his amazing cashew cheese (who would have thought probiotic capsules could help make such a delicious thing!), you'll also notice the judicious use of processed meat substitutes and things like pre-made vegan mayo. I remember eating a lot of that back in the day.

Now I wouldn't consider doing such a thing. I prefer to prepare food that is closer to resembling something that was actually tended to and pulled out of the soil.  Really, if you're going to be a vegetarian, why not just eat a salad, with some roasted chickpeas and a lemon vinagrette, or maybe a tasty and nourishing vegetable and grain soup instead? Farinata with asparagus, like the recipe in My New Roots' cookbook is a fabulous and satisfying plant protein option.

This soup is just a friendly reminder to all the vegetarians out there to eat your veggies! Forget about all the pre-packaged stuff and just grab a bunch of carrots to make this minimal-effort, flavorful soup. 

Carrot Leek and Jalapeno Soup
I like using water when I make a vegetable puree soup. I want to really taste the actual vegetable and give it the starring role it deserves. If you don't have a leek in hand, it is perfectly acceptable to use an onion -- just not a red one. Dried jalapenos are actually even better used here than the fresh stuff. You might have some in the cupboard, go check. Toss them in just before you add the water and all will be well. And, veganize this by replacing the butter with coconut oil. Most importantly, don't leave out the garnishes! They transform this soup from a very nice meal into a spicy little party.

Makes A Quart.

Ingredients
1 1/2 pound carrots, sliced into 1/4" coins
1 large leek, light parts only, cut in half lengthwise then into thin slices
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Small handful of dried, chopped jalapeno peppers, or use 1/2 to 3/4 of a fresh chopped     jalapeno*
4 cups of water, plus more to thin as needed.
Salt 

Instructions
Over medium-low heat, melt butter. Add leeks, turning up heat to medium. Add two large pinches of kosher salt. Saute leeks until soft. Add carrots and continue to saute for a few more minutes. If using dried jalapenos, add them now, then add water. Water should just cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil then turn down to a gentle simmer. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes, until carrots have softened. If using fresh jalapenos, add them five minutes before you turn off the heat.

In batches, process the vegetable mixture in a blender. Or, alternatively, use an immersion blender. Thin with water as desired. Adjust salt to taste. Garnish with carrot top oil and jalapeno pickle.

Carrot Top Oil
1/2 cup carrot top leaves, removed from woody stems
1 cup cold-pressed sunflower oil
scant 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Place carrot top leaves, oil, and salt in a blender, whiz together until emulsified.

Quick Jalapeno Pickle
1 fresh jalapeno pepper, cut into thin rings or diced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon freshly-squeezed orange juice

Whisk together salt, vinegar and orange juice. Add jalapeno and allow to pickle for 5 to 10 minutes. The longer you allow the jalapenos to sit in the vinegar mixture, the more the heat of the pepper will mellow.
 

Shitake and Chard Dumplings

Mushrooms, Dumplings, Asian

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Last September, our mother flew up with my brother, Warren, on a budget airline -- the only one that offers direct flights between LAX and our little town up here in Western Washington.

Our mom is the wonton lady. Whenever she shows up anywhere, she pulls out a foil-wrapped package of thawed wonton wrappers from the best dumpling place in Chinatown. Then, she'll ask if you have any pork, ginger, garlic and scallions (which of course you do, having prepared for her arrival) and gets going like a productive elf until the dining room table is covered with cornstarch-dusted trays of dumplings.

Flo is what we call our mom, mostly behind her back because even though she has an "American" name (Florence), she has always hated it. As her evil spawn, we get a (juvenile) kick out of freely throwing about the name she always complains about people using -- even though when people ask, she tells them, with a smile, that her name is Florence.

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Dumplings: edible clouds.

"How was the trip with Flo?" I asked Warren.

He rolled his eyes then explained what had happened.

In her suitcase, Flo had packed frozen homemade wontons -- not just the frozen skins, but the actual dumplings, pork filling and all. Being oblivious during the check-in process since after over forty years in this country, her grasp of the English language is barely functional at best, she had allowed Warren to do the talking while she stood off to the side.

Warren and I long ago agreed, after seeing a photo of Nelson Mandela, the South African leader and icon, that our mother bore a striking resemblance to him -- only more Chinese. We thought it was probably the similar haircut, the close-cropped, graying frizz perched on the top of her head. I pictured her now at the airline ticketing counter staring dreamily away with her Nelson Mandela hairdo, her small hands pushed into the pockets of the nubby maroon sweater she wears almost every day.

After Warren thunked Flo's black bag onto the scale, the airline agent immediately declared it overweight. He stated that there would be an additional charge of $50. My brother is the perfect example of the good Chinese son. Rather than make his mother remove some of the clumps of frozen meat and dough from her bag, he paid the fee. Filial duty reigned.

“Fifty dollars?” I was appalled for him. “Why didn’t you make her take it out?”

He let out what resembled a half groan, half laugh.

See, not to sound disrespectful, but our mother was never much of a cook. Our childhood memories of her efforts in the kitchen lean toward images of soggy food and things with burnt edges. Maybe it had something to do with her being a single mom who worked as a sweatshop seamstress twelve hours a day. It didn't leave much time for her to think about cooking.

She only turned into the wonton lady once we became grownups and moved away from home. She began traveling to us for extended visits that would inevitably turn into wonton making extravaganzas. Even though we now eat her wontons, which are certainly good, we still approach them with remnants of our childhood skepticism.

For the rest of the trip, Warren and I referred to the foil-wrapped lumps as “the fifty-dollar wontons.” As in, “Do you want to eat some fifty-dollar wontons?” Then, we would laugh.

We didn’t tell our mother about it. She would not have found any of it amusing, especially since she has a belief that if you wrap something in foil and shove it into your luggage, no one will know it is there; it won’t even show up on the airport X-ray machine. She explained this to me once with utter conviction. I didn't argue. We all need to have things to believe in. 

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Wontons are not supposed to weigh you down. With a small piece of filling surrounded generously by paper thin dumpling skin, a wonton is meant to float in a bowl of broth as weightlessly as a cloud. When you eat a wonton, you are as the name itself explains, swallowing a cloud.

Won, cloud. Ton, to swallow.

These shitake and chard dumplings float ethereally while offering flavors that are entirely of the earth. If our mother's wontons provide us children with a solid reminder of who we are and where we come from, perhaps my dumplings speak more of what we have moved toward, or even become. We may seem a little lighter, but our burdens are different: we are the next generation.

I'll make these for Flo the next time she is here.

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The next generation eating dumplings...

Shitake and Chard Dumplings

Makes about 40.

Ingredients
12 ounces shitake (or a mix of shitake and button) mushrooms, cleaned, stems removed, caps minced
1 bunch chard, stems removed and leaves thinly sliced
1-2 tablespoons of neutral oil, such as sunflower
Handful of sun-dried tomatoes
3 green onions
1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil, plus more to finish the dish
Salt and white pepper, to taste

Store-bought square wonton wrappers, the thinner the better

1 1/2 quarts of homemade or store-bought vegetable or chicken broth

Instructions
Cover tomatoes with hot water while prepping mushrooms, chard, onions, garlic. Meanwhile, heat oil over medium heat in a large pan. Add chard and saute until wilted. Remove from pan and press chard with the back of a wooden spoon, draining away the liquid. Allow chard to cool.

Remove softened tomatoes from water and squeeze lightly then dice. In a large bowl combine mushroom mince, tomatoes, onions, garlic, chard, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt and pepper.

Prepare a baking tray: dust lightly with cornstarch. Add a small amount of water to a bowl for dipping your fingers in while folding the dumplings.

Place a teaspoon or so of filling in the center of a wonton wrapper. Wet fingertip and run a long two edges and then fold skin over to form a triangle. Press to seal tightly to prevent filling from spilling out into your broth. Again, it's very important that you have a good, tight seal.

From here, dumplings may be placed on prepped sheets so that they do not touch, dusted with an additional bit of cornstarch, and placed in the freezer. Freeze for at least 2 hours, then place in freezer bags to store.

For cooking: Bring pot of water to boil. Heat broth in a separate pot. Place dumplings in boiling water for 1-2 minutes. Gently remove with a slotted spoon, placing them into heated broth for another minute. Serve in bowls with chopped green onions or cilantro. Drizzle with sesame oil.