Feast in March

[mitsuhide]

This coming March I am hosting Baroness' Champion and I am looking at a Japanese themed feast. I am looking for ideas, the feast stewardess is down for trying something new. PS no Sushi as there maybe some that don't like that kind of thing.

[solveig]

Noble Cousin!

Greetings from Solveig! Modern sushi is not particularly period, but fish very much is period. I recommend that you shock people by serving at least a bit of fish. Anyway. The really necessary items are plenty of rice and plenty of soup. There should also be Japanese pickles. Japanese pickles are yummy. Lots of people really like takuan for example. Make up to them by serving chicken on skewers. Also quite Japanese and somewhat likely to go over.

Please understand that no matter what you serve that you will be running the possibility of running afoul of somebody. People always assume that all children will like peanut butter and jelly despite the fact that peanut butter will make some of them violently ill. The point being that you can not satisfy all the people all of the time.

[nana]

I think you might like the layout of this meal from Ii Katsumori-dono. www.flickr.com/photos/tatsushu/sets/72157600770705582


Look at this post:

tousando.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=research&action=display&thread=1911

and this one too: tousando.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=food&thread=2510&page=1

Oooh look another linky! fibers.destinyslobster.com/Japanese/Food/japfeast.htm

[Saionji Shonagon]

I just got my hands on a copy of Eric Rath's Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan and will make a report on it once I've had a chance to read and digest (pun intended) its contents.
www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520262270

Second the vote on pickles. I'm thoroughly addicted to them.

[Sō Haruko]

One thing to be aware of is that dessert is mildly tricky. Sugar (not terribly refined sugar; it was black) came to Japan in the Nara period, according to Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, but it wasn't used other than as medicine until the Muromachi period, and wasn't used by commoners until the Meiji period. The Japanese did adopt Chinese-style sweets in the Nara period, which the book says were usually ground grains or soybeans salted, kneaded, and fried -- this is what paved the way for wagashi (traditional Japanese tea sweets). Otherwise, dessert was typically fruit. European-style sweets didn't show up until the Europeans did, in the Momoyama period, and the only ones that caught on were the ones that went well with tea. (Chocolate didn't put in an appearance until after 1868.)

Something to think about, anyway. I could see serving tea sweets and hot tea as dessert, or mochi dusted in sweetened soybean powder. If the weather's warm where you are, mitsumame (agar gelatin topped with fresh fruit, monkey peas (optional) and syrup) might be a possibility too.

JC:ASA notes that the typical Japanese meal structure is a minimum of soup, rice, and pickles. A meal served to guests at home would be "soup and three" -- soup to begin the meal, a sashimi dish, a grilled dish, and a simmered dish in the middle, and rice, pickles, and tea to end the meal. A more formal banquet would include (along with the aforementioned soup and three) appetizers at the beginning, steamed, deep-fried, and vinegared foods in the middle, and fresh fruit at the end. I do not know how long this meal structure has been in place.

You're not limited to miso for your soup, though if you want a heartier soup that's a way to go. Simple clear soups made with a dashi base and small perfect garnishes are considered very elegant.

The most important part -- really truly the most important part -- is that everything you serve should be immaculately fresh and of the best quality. Japanese haute cuisine is subtle and simple; poor ingredients are a disaster because each ingredient is so strongly highlighted. Ditto if one dish is overwhelmingly strongly flavored; it destroys the taste of the remaining subtle dishes.

I think your menu will really depend on how refined or rustic you want to take it. Balancing that is important.

[solveig]

Nov 8, 2011 20:37:17 GMT -5 Sō Haruko said:

Otherwise, dessert was typically fruit.

Desert in a Western sense is not really a regular part of a Japanese meal. There are a couple of things that tend to be eaten at the end of a meal. One is pickles which are eaten at the end of a meal for the tea ceremony. A whole class of food exists for eating after meals in general. This is called "godan", but largely consists of pasta dishes and stuff like that. While fruit was eaten, it appears to have been eaten between meals. Incidentally, sweets tend to be associated with tea and there is a whole category of food called "sakana" which is associated with sake drinking.

As for chocolate. Chocolate as we know it today is pretty much post period. The stuff that the Aztecs were drinking included hot peppers and stuff like that. You can find a recipe for the Aztec drink if you search hard enough.

Something to think about, anyway. I could see serving tea sweets and hot tea as dessert, or mochi dusted in sweetened soybean powder.

Actually, the mochi can be sweetened you can cook with mochi flour. Mochi flour is called mochiko. You do not need to sweeten soybean powder it goes quite well unsweetened.

JC:ASA notes that the typical Japanese meal structure is a minimum of soup, rice, and pickles. A meal served to guests at home would be "soup and three" -- soup to begin the meal, a sashimi dish, a grilled dish, and a simmered dish in the middle, and rice, pickles, and tea to end the meal.

The honzen meal structure and indeed the general structure of the modern Japanese meal and the meal of the tea ceremony all involves rice being served along with soup at the beginning of the meal. Further, the soup and rice are partaken of before any of the okazu dishes.

A more formal banquet would include (along with the aforementioned soup and three) appetizers at the beginning, steamed, deep-fried, and vinegared foods in the middle, and fresh fruit at the end. I do not know how long this meal structure has been in place.

This is not what Yamanouchi Ryorisho informs us about honzen dining. The closest that you might come to having appetizers might be if there were a round of drinks preceding the meal. In that case, "sakana" would be served with the drinks. I really should check my sources about where exactly the sake ceremony takes place in a chaji.

You're not limited to miso for your soup, though if you want a heartier soup that's a way to go. Simple clear soups made with a dashi base and small perfect garnishes are considered very elegant.

They are indeed very elegant. However, miso soup can also be quite elegant. A honzen style meal appears to have a bowl of soup on each of the trays.

The principal tray was placed immediately in front of the diner. This tray had a bowl of rice to the diners left and a bowl of soup to the diners right with either 7, 5, or 3 additional dishes (called "okazu") placed behind these two principal elements of the tray. Other trays would typically have a soup. In one example in Yama no uchi Ryori sho there is an additional portion of rice on one of the latter trays. This is not necessary in the tea ceremony meal served as part of a chaji as seconds are available on rice which are served into the only rice bowl upon request. (Note. This is different from the "denshin" which is commonly served at chakai tea gatherings.)

[Sō Haruko]

I bow to your knowledge, Solveig-dono. I haven't done extensive searching; this is merely what I was reading in one of my cookbooks the other night.

I'll be the first to admit I've had exactly one elegant miso soup, though. Most of the time, it's just thrown together. I don't typically associate it with fine dining.

I'm aware that desserts are not typically part of Japanese cuisine, but my experience has been that people expect some sort of dessert finish to a feast. Given that it sounds like a Japanese feast is already pushing some boundaries, it might make sense to bend somewhat and include a sweet at the end.

I was only noting about the chocolate because *I* didn't realize it came to Japan so late, and thought it was a bit of trivia others might be interested in knowing. (:

[Noriko]

How big is your feast and where are you located? This is really going to impact what you serve since, especially if you're not on the coast, seafood wise. I do recall being a kitchen assistant during a feast that had mussels but it was a pretty small feast (maybe 40 people), there were lots of other heartier dishes so people could be happy only getting two or three mussels. The feast was also held near the Connecticut coast, from which I am a native.
Of course, the other option is to make sure there's a lot of rice. I mean, tons of it and put it out early with pickles and soup. If it's anything like bread, people would gobble it down and be happy with smaller portions of everything else. Then again, I'm thinking about the time I helped plan a feast for about 120 people- we were kind of betting on people filling up on bread.
Speaking of rice, while I know the "fancy people" probably ate white rice, I assume due to technology, it wasn't as polished as it is today. Would brown rice/a rice not so highly polished be more appropriate?

[solveig]

Noble Cousin!

Greetings from Solveig!

Nov 9, 2011 22:47:58 GMT -5 Noriko said:

Speaking of rice, while I know the "fancy people" probably ate white rice, I assume due to technology, it wasn't as polished as it is today. Would brown rice/a rice not so highly polished be more appropriate?

My impression is that rice has been polished for some time now.

[Saionji Shonagon]

"Polished" rice means that the bran was milled off the seeds. Just because it was milled by hand doesn't mean that it wasn't milled with care or thoroughness - or that the bran didn't have other uses, such as pickling.

"Technology" is a relative term. Just because our forebears solved problems differently than we did doesn't mean their solutions weren't effective.

[Noriko]

Ok. I thought I might have read something[1] somewhere that said the only reason we have searingly white rice today is because of modern machinery. Guess I was wrong. Ah well.


[1]Said something might have also been from a manga, IIRC, so there's that to.

[Saionji Shonagon]

Nov 10, 2011 21:25:17 GMT -5 Noriko said:

I'm not saying that they did a haphazard or careless job, I thought that perhaps over time what counted as "so" changed as technology changed/what technology available- that is, would a swatch of green fabric from the Kamakura look different from a Meiji swatch? I was just sort of curious if there was a visual difference between rice milled and polished by hand or rice done so by modern machine.

Ah, what shade of green? What kind of fabric? What kind of dye? Early Meiji or late enough that they were using imported chemical dyes from the West? (Yeh, I think this way. Every answer results in new questions.)

I honestly don't know, but I have no reason to believe that rice described as white wasn't. The people consuming milled white rice were the upper classes. I'm only about a third into Food and Fantasy, but it describes a practice called shikibocho in which fish or birds were ceremonially and artistically cut up by "men of the knife" (I can't recall the Japanese term at the moment) and the pieces arranged in aesthetic and symbolic displays in front of banquet guests. F& F indicates that the practitioners never touched the carcass except with their knives or chopsticks, and used prescribed movements (kata) to create their food art. The resulting "subtlety" (to use a Western analogy, flawed as it is) would then be taken away instead of being eaten (unless perhaps the pieces ended up in soup stock behind the scenes). Pretty sophisticated stuff.

Ooh, just found some links with images.
kyotofoodie.com/kyoto-kichisen-master-chef-yoshimi-tanigawa/#

presse.phoenix.de/dokumentationen/2010/12/20101221_Gesunde_Kost_Fernost/20101221_Gesunde_Kost_Fernost.phtml

[solveig]

Noble Cousins!

Greetings from Solveig!

Nov 10, 2011 23:35:13 GMT -5 Noriko said:

For a feast, one would just get the biggest (and probably cheapest/best bang for your buck) bag of rice, cook that up and serve it forth.

Rice is not created equally. For a Japanese feast one should buy short grain rice. There are a number of major brands which are produced in the United States which work rather well. These brands sometimes have Japanese names for marketing purposes. For example: Nishiki short grain rice. Ideally you get the freshest "new crop" rice.

Hopefully you have an asian grocery in your area. They will sell rice in large quantities and generally have a selection of both brands and bag sizes. Some rice bags can be enormous.

[Noriko]

Well, yes, they'd get short grain rice. I figured I could just write "rice" and people would know I meant Japanese rice.

[mitsuhide]

Thanks All for your replies now in reverse NO Asian food stores small sections in and around town though. The feast is for around 50ish, in a rather large church kitchen for prep and cooking. I have had a rather terrible experience with miso and so any other soup recommendations would be great.