I asked the Korean sushi master at Sachi about the new ramen noodle joint which had moved into an old renovated movie theater, and he told me that he liked it. I went there thinking I'd get Japanese style ramen, but although the restaurant seemed to be passing itself off as Japanese, I believe that they're serving Korean style noodles, which is somewhat different. That's why the Korean sushi master liked it. The ramen I ordered, Spicy Miso Ramen, was advertised as coming with a rich broth and pork belly. I ordered my dish with the addition of miso butter corn. The broth was not as rich as I was expecting, nor as spicy, and there wasn't enough of it for my taste, and they replaced the pork belly with a skewer of grilled beef (which was actually very good). The sweet corn had a pronounced butter taste and it was also somewhat sour (maybe a squeeze of lime?), but I didn't get any miso (which was fine because there was miso in the broth). The dish was also served with a halved egg with somewhat runny yolk, bean sprouts, a few sheets of seasoned seaweed, and chopped scallion. While this was not exactly what I'd been used to in Japan, it's noteworthy that there is ramen in Redlands, and what made it even more noteworthy is what the chef said to me as he passed my outdoor table: “Enjoying it Sir? I made that with love.”
Location: Ramen Song, 22 East Vine, Redlands, California. Date: October 19, 2019.
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Although I won first place at a large festival for a baked salmon dish, my favorite way to eat salmon is to have it raw. Like most fish, when you cook salmon it gets dry and smells fishy. When you eat salmon raw, you smell just a faint clean sea breeze and the texture is soft and moist. My favorite way to have salmon sushi is with a very thin slice of lemon, rind and all. Tonight, the lemon slices made the dish look particularly attractive so I couldn't resist photographing it.
Location: Best Sushi, 13525 Palm Drive, Desert Hot Springs, California. Date: February 5, 2018. These grilled skewers were noteworthy in that I enjoyed them in Palm Springs, California, rather than in Japan. I chose a tasty trio of shishito peppers with salt, shiitake mushrooms with sauce, and beef wrapped enoki mushrooms with sauce. I ate outside at night, and I enjoyed my skewers with Japanese plum wine. The green shishito peppers were mildly spicy, the beef that wrapped the enoki was thin and tender and imparted flavor to the otherwise mild mushrooms, and what can one say about grilled meaty shiitake mushrooms brushed with a soy based sauce other than delicious!
Location: Gyoro-Gyoro Izakaya Japonaisse, 105 S Palm Canyon Dr., Palm Springs, California. Date: November 13, 2017. My mineralogist brother went on a prospecting trip to a tiny and remote Japanese island, Aogashima. It turns out that some families on the island produce shochu, a Japanese liquor. Knowing how little is produced on the island and how rare an experience it would be, my brother brought me a bottle of the best quality, Aochu. Shochu can be distilled from various ingredients, commonly rice or barley, but this one is distilled from sweet potato. Tonight I opened the bottle. This shochu, dated 2015 and coming in at 30% alcohol (slightly higher than average), is the best shochu I've ever had. The aroma and taste of sweet potato is superb. When I lived in Japan, my favorite shochu drink was shochu mixed with hot water with a soft pickled plum in it, but this is not cocktail shochu; Aochu, in my opinion, is to be savored neat. My brother had an interesting culinary experience while on Aogashima. There are no restaurants on the island so the hotels serve three meals a day. When asked when they wanted lunch, my brother said that he and his clients would be hiking and prospecting at lunch time. The hotel owner then gave them all a sack lunch that consisted of all raw ingredients: a potato, a sweet potato, an egg, a sausage, and a fish. When my brother wondered what on earth they were going to do with this, the hotel owner told them to drop the bags into a steam hole in the island's volcanic crater and to leave them there for exactly 45 minutes. They followed the directions, and they had a perfectly cooked lunch. In the photo you see the steep cliffs and the volcanic crater of Aogashima on the left, on my brother's computer screen, with the bottle of Aochu next to it on the right. Location: At home in Desert Hot Springs, California. Date: July 2, 2017. This is an ordinary sushi roll filled with pickled plum and shiso (beefsteak leaf, a member of the mint family). Most sushi bars in my area don't make this roll, or when they do they'll undoubtedly use plum paste from a tube; however, my favorite sushi bar in the Coachella Valley uses real kishu ume, the famous pickled plums from Wakayama prefecture in Japan. These plums, together with the beefsteak leaves, give this sushi the sour, salty, and herbal taste that I love. This might be an acquired taste, but once you've acquired it, there's nothing like it.
Location: Matsuri Japanese Restaurant, 73759 Hwy 111, Palm Desert, California. Date: March 7, 2017. |
AuthorChef Roland has been a legal resident of seven countries and has travelled in over thirty, documenting food along the way. He currently resides in the desert in Southern California. Categories
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