"JapaneseFood" news and stories

• The Cake Boss has an Easter surprise for you. (Hint: It's not cake.)
• Remember Chicago's Charlie Trotter? No? He's trying to change that.
• Meet the man behind the East Village Japanese food scene.
• How to braise meat without browning? That is the question.

Nothing says Christmas like a monster bucket of KFC -- if you're in Tokyo, that is.

In what may be one of the most bizarre cases of lost in translation, it turns out that the Japanese love the Colonel's secret recipe come yuletide. They love it so much, in fact, that they line up for blocks in order to nab one of KFC's Christmas Party Barrels or reserve their finger-lickin' good favorites two months in advance.

"Japan is well known for taking foreign products and ideas and adapting them to suit domestic taste, and Christmas is no exception. A highly commercialized and non-religious affair, lots of money is spent annually on decorations, dinners and gifts," writes the Financial Times, which credits an ad campaign in the 1970s for placing KFC at the center of the Japanese holiday table.

The Christmas Party Barrel includes eight pieces of chicken (either all fried or half seasoned with garlic and soy), a Caesar salad and a chocolate-mousse cake on a decorative plate, all for the equivalent of about $46.

In a welcome respite from subpar airport fare, "Iron Chef" Masaharu Morimoto is partnering with hospitality and food service company Delaware North to provide fast-casual eateries serving Japanese bar food in airports across the country.

The bistros, appropriately titled Skewers, will serve an assortment of yakitori -- skewered grilled or deep-fried meats and vegetables -- served with rice bowls for portable consumption, as well as soups and salads. The restaurants' settings would take the form of two different models -- a take-out counter and a traditional sit-down approach -- and both would feature open kitchens.

According to Vito Buscemi, director of Concept Portfolio for Delaware North, the line has "great menu variety and great presentation -- all the meats and vegetables are grilled right in front of you. It's very quick, convenient and healthy, and we think it's going to have mass appeal."

I love Japanese food. And I love Monty Python. But the two can never blend.

So when one blogger sent a URL describing Spam onigiri, I naturally launched into Monty Python's immortal "Spam Sketch" (Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!....) while simultaneously dreaming about the taste of those glorious triangles of rice Japanese eat for lunch...until I stopped short.

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For some reason these bouncing baby bags of rice make Western style birth announcements seem a tad impersonal. Talk about bundles of joy. These dakigokochi, or baby-shaped bags of rice personalized with a picture of their respective newborns, weigh just as much as the infants whose arrival the text announces.

Dakigokochi are far from being an age-old Japanese tradition. They were, ahem, conceived by Naruo Ono and his wife, Yukiko, who own the Yoshimiya rice shop in Kita-Kyushu. The popularity of the pair's wedding favor – a packet of rice, adorned with a picture of the happy couple – inspired them to create the unusual birth announcement. Even though their own son, Sota, is now four months old, the Onos haven't had a chance to send out their own dakigokochi. Guess they've been too busy fulfilling orders for other proud parents.

[via Boing Boing]

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