HOME FOODS - GOMADOFU

Time to try new things! After some searching for the magic ingredient, I managed to make "gomadofu". It took a few minutes and an hour resting time in the fridge. I followed a very simple recipe by Clea, published in her book on agar agar. Agar agar is a Japanese seaweed, available as a white powder and used to turn liquids into a nice textured jelly that will stand pretty warm temperatures (something that does not happen to other types of gelatine). Clea's version takes less time than the traditional one I saw the chef of a shinto monastery perform in front of my eyes. I was spending some time on Mount Haguro, one of the holy shinto places of Japan. One of the traditional foods of the monks is a tofu-like block made with sesame seeds. The Japanese chef had to give the mix a vigorous beating in order to get the required silky consistency. 

By using agar agar, the whole process is faster and easier and the result quite fine! I served it with a sauce of tamari, vinegar, oil and yuzu spicy sauce. But next time I want to experiment with a yuzu flavored version and a different nut (why not cashew or almond) in the place of sesame.

CHICKEN

First meal of 2008: boiled cock! 

Outrageous? Boring? No, no, no, it's delicious. Definitely a forgotten pleasure.

Of course, when the only place where one can buy chicken is a supermarket where supply only includes mass produced and badly fed birds, there is no point trying the recipe out. But if you can buy a cock from a farm or find a good quality specimen in a store somewhere, then boiling over a low fire with vegetables can yield a divine meal.

An adult male chicken requires a bit of work, a series of operations that my mum used to carry out when I was a child and which served as a first, domestic introduction into basic animal anatomy. Yesterday, after many years, she went through the motions again, showing me how to clean the stomach, remove the bile, the eyes, the tongue and so on. The deconstruction of the bird turned into a baroque ceremony as the tv played the famous arias from the Opera of La Fenice in Venice.

The chicken made a last plunge into a tall pot of boiling water. After 45 minutes, carrots, celery, red onion, garlic, fennel, catalogna spigata, bay leaves and potatoes followed. 

Little compares with young chicken stock, well actually hen's stock is even better (they say it's the food reserved for a woman who has just given birth, my mum's tale from a century and a half ago). 

I also like the Chinese version, where the chicken is served cold with a wine and garlic broth.

But in China you can still buy your chicken alive and people (some old people) know what a tasty chicken looks like. But that's another story...