Recently in Japanese Food / Drink Category

The World of SAKE
[mongip's Essay on Japanese Rice Wine]

Only after vast, intense hours of imbibing SAKE and deeply contemplating its nature (and a whole lotta other unrelated stuff) could such an informative tome be written on the nuances of Japan's most prominent and omnipresent "spirit". As a devoted vehicle of Japanese culture to you, the wide-eyed Westerner, I felt a moral obligation to explore (to the dregs, so to speak) the wide world of SAKE -- purely, of course, with the sole intent of providing you with the following informative information:

[But first] I sincerely hope you appreciate the time and effort I have spent (drinking) in order to bring you the following information...

Tonight's beverage of choice:
a BIG bottle and a very SMALL cup.

Tonight I'm drinking "Nigori" sake (rice wine) or, more properly pronounced, "Nigori Zake". Nigori Zake is unfiltered rice wine which gives it a very opaque white appearance. That whiteness is due to (unfiltered) rice broth still in the wine causes a much fuller and sweeter flavor. Nigori Zake is better served cold as opposed to its filtered, drier cousins which can actually be served heated. The all important alcohol content remains the same as filtered sake, in this case 15%.

In Ode to my night of Nigori Zake, I have composed the following short poem. (Who now can dare say SaruDama is a site lacking "culture"???)

Please take a moment to contemplatively inhale the fragrance of this metered, soul-searching nuance. And then let's all get back to our beverages.

oh nigori, oh nigori
how you bring such quick satori

silently I watch the clouds
wondering what the daylight shrouds

voices, murmurs, heartfelt love
floating from beneath, above

who am I to say I'm here
when my mind's eye is nowhere near

cold is day and dark is night
far horizons left and right

I was not born of my free will
yet fascinated am I still

thick the air and strong the wind
a sense of awe my heart within

At the very least, that makes you want to grab a bigger sake cup, doesn't it?

I'm here all night. The name's monGip, poetist extraordinaire...

One food I thoroughly enjoy and eat rather frequently is "Sushi". As you are no doubt aware, Sushi is an umbrella term and can include anything ranging from raw cucumber wrapped in rice to raw sea urchin (uni). I initially cringed at sitting down at the sushi bar and ordering what I wanted, usually a wide assortment of this and that, without really knowing what I was ordering in terms of carbohydrates.

The real (low carb) diet killer with sushi is the rice, one little cup of which carries with it 145 g carbs. Anyone who has eaten at a Japanese restaurant, whether you had sushi or not, will attest to the likelihood of your eating at least one cup of rice. So beware.