Category Archives: Japanese food and drink

Sake takes UK by storm as Japan’s national drink goes mainstream

Posted on by

No longer just drunk for courage at karaoke clubs, the ‘food-friendly’ rice spirit is becoming a first choice of connoisseurs

When sommelier Erika Haigh opened the UK’s first independent sake bar, in London’s West End in 2019, passersby would wander in and try to order milkshakes, bewildered by the unfamiliar drink advertised in the window.

“Today, that confusion has largely disappeared,” said Haigh, who has since opened Mai Sake, a shop offering tasting events and meals. “You can now go on a sake bar crawl across London, and you’ll find it featured on the beverage lists of many restaurants – including non-Japanese establishments.”

Continue reading...

Thin fish, small catches: can Japan’s sushi culture survive climate crisis?

Posted on by

Global heating is warming waters, changing salmon and tuna migration – and hurting fisheries

There is little at Shiogama seafood market to suggest that Japanese consumers could one day be deprived of their favourite seafood – from giant crab’s legs simmering in a winter nabe hotpot to spheres of salmon roe resting on a bed of rice wrapped in nori seaweed.

Stalls heave with huge sides of bluefin tuna, expertly transformed into more manageable portions by knife-wielding workers, while early-morning shoppers pause to inspect boxes of squid, flounder and sea pineapples landed only hours earlier.

Continue reading...

Gin twist: Japan reinvents the spirit with the help of green tea and oysters

Posted on by

Sales of the drink soar as distillers target a whole new market

The setting is unmistakably Japanese: a mountainous backdrop and, out of view but menacingly close, an active volcano. And nestling amid barren rice paddies seeing out the winter, a distillery producing a spirit whose roots lie far from rural Kagoshima.

The administrative district on Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu is famed for shochu, a spirit, often made with sweet potatoes or barley, that has sustained family-run businesses here for centuries.

Continue reading...

Japan’s favourite snack falls victim to global inflation with first-ever price hike

Posted on by

Umaibo, a crunchy corn snack that means ‘delicious stick’, increases in price from ¥10 to ¥12 – the first rise in the face of higher import costs

One of Japan’s best-loved snacks is to go up in price – by a whopping 20% – for the first time since its launch more than four decades ago,

But Umaibo – literally “delicious stick” – will still be a steal for schoolchildren at just ¥12 apiece (US10c, not including sales tax), up from the current ¥10, when the change goes into effect in April.

Continue reading...

Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for sweet potato mochi with black sesame sauce | The new vegan

Posted on by

Rice flour and sweet potato make chewy-crunchy cakes to coat with a salty-sour sesame dip

When I think of food that “sparks joy”, to borrow the phrase of a well-known house organiser, I don’t think of multicoloured cakes or the smoke and dance of Mexican restaurant sizzlers. It’s the fun, playful chewiness of the Japanese glutinous flour rice cakes called mochi that I want. Often they’re sweet, filled with adzuki beans or peanuts, but they can also be savoury, as in today’s recipe. Here, they are fried like pancakes to give them a toasty, crisp exterior before being coated in a deeply flavourful and dark sesame sauce.

Continue reading...

Protests at ‘inhumane’ export of live horses to Japan for food

Posted on by

Activists seek ban on flying horses to Japan with thousands sent every year from Canada and France

Tens of thousands of horses are being subjected to long-haul flights, confined in crates with no food or water, to meet demand for horsemeat in Japan.

Since 2013, about 40,000 live horses have been flown to Japan from airports in western Canada. Under Canadian regulations, the journey can stretch up to 28 hours, during which the animals are allowed to go without food, water or rest.

Continue reading...

The 20 best curry recipes

Posted on by

From Asma Khan’s saag paneer to Lopè Ariyo’s suya lamb, our exploration of the wider world of curry takes in recipes from south Asia, Nigeria and Japan

It was dal that done it, in Luton, Lucknow, London. When the raisin-studded school dinners of my childhood were replaced with sophisticated south-Asian cooking. Here we also celebrate some of the wider world of curry: recipes from Nigeria, Japan, Vietnam, the Caribbean. From Uyen Luu’s ginger duck to Shuko Oda’s keema curry, and Asma Khan’s saag paneer to Lopè Ariyo’s suya lamb. There is a pumpkin curry, a prawn curry, a black-eyed bean curry; Vivek Singh’s perfect vindaloo, Meera Sodha’s tomato curry and Madhur Jaffrey’s peerless chicken korma. In short, the 20 best curry dishes from some of the finest cookery writers around.

Continue reading...