In case you were also wondering, I confirm: whip cream does not make an adequate substitute for milk in your breakfast cereals. No matter how desperate and in a hurry you are.

This year, I purchased and brought back a couple Muji 「 クリスマスへクセンハウス」 (no idea what “へクセン” might be, but I’m sure it’s delicious*) for everybody to enjoy… As it turns out, my dear little brothers out there in Canada had a hard time reading cooking instructions (sure: they’re written in Japanese. so what). Here is therefore the detailed recount of my own attempt at building a biscuit house, for their sake and yours.

Should you attempt to follow, it will help if you have the same awesome Muji kit handy, but an inventive and resourceful person could do without (none of the ingredients are that hard to find, and the schematics can probably be figured out from scratch with limited engineering skills). Also, this is not a completely faithful translation of the original instructions: I have added a couple personal touches as well as skipped the more obvious advices (be careful with the knife, do not stick your tongue in the oven etc.).

Anyway, off we go:

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Yesterday, I had convincingly authentic Japanese food for the first time in Paris and felt it deserved a mention here.

Issé restaurant (“tempuras & tapas”) has a soberly stylish decoration and seemingly caters to a large japanese-speaking clientele, both reassuring points when compared to the flurry of Chinese-speaking sushi chefs and horrifyingly cheesy pseudo-oriental kanji signs, customary of most other places that claim to offer Japanese cuisine in this city.

The menu there is classic, yet not stereotypical, which means a lot of small dishes, no ramen, and only a few makis on offer. Somewhere between a typical Tokyo restaurant and a high-end izakaya (lots of the same food, but less greasy): we had loads of tempuras (shiso, seafood, a bunch of other veggies… even mozzarella…), seaweed salad, agedashi tofu, and a couple other dishes. All great and tasty (ok: I reckon my agedashi tofu is better, but I may be biased) and infinitely more reminiscent of the whole Tokyo experience than many a j-food joints on rue Saint Anne.

Prices were about average to high, but very reasonable for the quality of food (around 20-30 euros/person for dinner and a drink).

And for those who ever lived in Japan: sit there, sipping an iced ohlong-cha with schochu and nibbling on edamame, and I swear you won’t be able to shake the natsukashiness away.

Team, we need differential diagnostic, NOW:

Patients #1, #2, #3 and #4 – a family – let’s call them the Lamiaceaes, were admitted in mid-April: sharing a rather small room, but healthy and showing no sign of infection. They were kept indoors and put on a steady diet of H₂O, administered twice daily.

Within days following their admission, they showed signs of discomfort: all limbs progressively went numb, patients could no longer stand upright without assistance. Their health deteriorated exponentially over the course of a week. Finally, patients #1, #2 and #3 all underwent cardiac arrest, followed by acute dehydration, to be declared clinically dead on the seventh day after several failed attempts at resuscitation. Patient #4, youngest member of the family, entered a vegetative state but, in the end, miraculously survived: he emerged from his coma a few weeks later and has been making such an encouraging recovery ever since that doctors have allowed his relocation to the outdoor patio.

It was diagnosed at the time that overcrowding of their room, conjugated with possible lack of fresh air may have caused the sudden and unexpected death of all but one of the Lamiaceaes. Endemic condition or residual infection caught at their previous place of residence was not completely excluded, albeit impossible to prove and somewhat invalidated by the survival of the weakest family member.

Patient #5, whom we shall call Basil, a large-sized fully-grown adult, was admitted two days ago.

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A while back, I posted about finding some specific ingredients in Paris (mainly Japanese but also Thai and generally all sorts of non-French food) without having to pay for overseas shipping each time.

Following some kind readers’ suggestions and with a bit additional exploration, I have since resolved all my culinary woes. I figured I’d post a quick recap and a few extra advice for the sake of past and future seekers of exotic food in Paris:

First off: the bestest, cheaperest, fresh tofu, along with countless other goodies (can you believe they even had konnyaku!?!) was found at Supermarket Paris Store on Avenue d’Ivry (about 10 minutes from Place d’Italie, on the left side), thanks to Chrys, whom we shall dearly miss now that she has relocated…

Unlike most other Asian stores in the area (Tang Frères etc.), this one stocks up a fairly consequent aisle of typically Japanese products.
Of course they also carry the usual south-east asian fare, though their curry paste didn’t turn out all that convincing to my humble curry-loving tastebuds (their coconut paste: not at all). But these are much easier to find anywhere else in the neighbourhood… I still want to find some of this mucho combiniente cononut powder (same taste, much lighter to carry around), but the canned stuff is available everywhere… On my next trip, I might even try some of their kimchee (kimchee ramen… yay!).

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… that I haven’t had a proper BLT sandwich.

Where do they hide the bacon in this damn country?

Do I have to start raising pigs in the courtyard of my building?

• In Paris, Tokyo Lamen (40, rue Ste Anne, near Opera) looks and tastes considerably more like the real thing than the somewhat overrated Higuma (a block up in the same street).
• Ramen and gyozas get two thumbs up, yakisoba wasn’t that convincing… but then again: who orders yakisoba in a ramen-ya? (an idiot, that’s who).
• When experimenting with a new ramen place, always order the miso ramen: less chances for anything to go wrong than shoyu or other more delicate ramens (says Saeko).

Initially, it sounded like an easier and less time-consuming alternative to ordering from the place downstairs.

Upon seeing samosas on offer at the local Chinese deli, one might be tempted to draw hasty conclusions and stick with more typical Szechuan cuisine…

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Will you help a homesick gaijin cum starving Parisian student get back with the food, drinks and music he loves?

Any assistance on where to find the items below, subject to reward in the form of a free homemade dinner (sexual favours to be considered on a case-by-case basis only).

Bonus points for stores conveniently located close to 6th arrondissement (yea, yea: anything will do, but just in case).

• Rice cooker: will soon die of starvation if I don’t get one. Was told to check out Chinese grocery stores… Haven’t seen any at Tang Frères… Specifics, anybody?
• Fresh shiitake mushrooms: Japanese grocery store rue St Anne only carries the dried kind… Also sure the Chinese have that: how the hell do you say “shiitake” in Chinese?
• Fresh kinugoshi tofu: Same as above (only have very bland vacuum-sealed stuff). Tell me somebody in France is making fresh tofu out of all these GM soybeans.
• Yellow curry paste: address of a cheap Thai grocery store anybody? (Please don’t reply “somewhere in the 13th arrondissement”: have you seen the 13th arrondissement on a map lately? it’s big).
• Cranberry juice: WhoWhat does a girl need to do, in order to get a proper Cosmo around here?
• Glock 10 mm. or S&W .44 in working order: to be used as teaching material in my upcoming class: Neighbouring Relations 101 – “How Much Noise is Too Much Noise at 3 in the Morning?”.
• Used audio amp & speakers: cheapness is of the essence here, seeing how I recently unloaded 30k yens of audio material on miscellaneous friends and not about to do the same here in six months.

Sorry for the sparse blogging as of late (I know: piccies don’t count). I’ll just leave it up to you to pull the appropriate form RFC-3563 (a.k.a. “I’m sorry I did’t blog for so long. Here are the reasons why…”) and fill it with whatever you fancy.

In order to break the silence, I am not gonna rant about spitefully incompetent French university personnel, nor am I gonna express any sort of opinion about the current bouts of suburban pyromania taking place one hour north of the city I’m moving to next month (oh no, we aren’t talking about that. keep walking. keep walking. just a bit more… yep, good).

Instead, I’m gonna give you the detailed recipe for the most amazing Japanese dish you’ve ever had. And not only is it yumtastic, but it’s also dirt-easy to make and vegetarian. If you’ve lived in Japan any, you probably know about the difficulties of following a vegetarian diet in this beautiful country. In fact, if you meet somebody here who tells you he is a die-hard vegetarian, he is most likely either a liar, an imbecile or eating the vast majority of his meals at home (I know a couple of the latter). Oddly enough for a somewhat buddhist country, the concept of vegetarianism is about as foreign to Japan as it is to your average midwest eatery (where asking for a vegetarian meal means you want a side order of fries with your 3-pound rib-eye steak). No matter how hard you try, and even after you’d eventually manage to convey the idea that neither chicken skin nor seafood could reasonably be considered “vegetables”, the ubiquitous fish-sauce that’s added to about any edible dish in Japan will get you in the end.

Luckily, I was never the religious veggie type: I did not eat meat or fish during my last few years living in SF, but it was mostly by choice of a health-conscious diet, not the deep-seated conviction that I would be snacking on the reincarnation of my grandpa. While not a deciding factor, the fact that my dearly beloved was a veggie herself helped a lot… Not that she would impose it on me or anything, but it just makes things infinitely easier when you don’t have to cook two of each meals you take together…
And overall, SF might be one of, if not the, most herbivore friendly cities in the world, where opening a restaurant without at least a few decent vegetarian dishes on the menu is akin to commercial suicide.

Yet, I was never hardcore and had no qualms about ever so occasionally partaking in some delicious late-night cheeseburger goodness. What can I say: In-N-Out burgers are like the choir boys of vegetarian priesthood… It’s just impossible to resist.

So upon moving to Tokyo, I quickly decided to spare many an awkward encounters with flustered Japanese restaurant employees by accommodating whatever was on the menu and keeping my vegetarian tendencies for home-cooking. Though even this isn’t quite as easy here as in sunny California, considering the substantial difference in availability and pricing for fresh groceries that do not contain tentacles or miscellaneous animal parts.

A man needs his calories, especially in Japan, and there are only so many ways you can cook tofu before getting seriously tired of it. Let’s face it, tofu is quite bland, edible at best (granted there is a world of difference between what you’ll get in a supermarket and what I can buy at the Tofu-ya just down the road), hardly anywhere as exciting as, say, a crispy strip of bacon. Unless… Unless…

Unless you make:

Agedashi Tofu (揚げ出し豆腐)

This amazing recipe will single-handedly revert any misguided aversion you may have toward eating coagulated rotten soy beans, or as we like to call it around here: tofu. It draws its powers from an ancient and revered cooking technique, one that holds the magical property of turning any semi-edible piece of junk into sin-inducing candy goodness: deep frying.

Some of our readers are no doubt familiar with this staple of fair food in the UK: deep-fried Snickers chocolate bars (or its Kentucky’s US equivalent: deep-fried squirrel balls) and its much improved yummy-factor as a result. Well, tofu works the same: the technique will turn an overall unappetizing lump of healthy proteins into a much-less-healthy, but infinitely more sexy, golden tofu beignet, whose creamy inside will melt on your tongue. Add to it our patented Magical All-purpose Japanese Sauce™ (sold separately, see details on top), and you have yourself a strong contender for best Japanese food, on a tight spot with Shoyū Ramen.

Convinced now?

On to cooking then:

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Chalk it up to a simple equation involving roughly 2 weeks of time, 50 pages of yet-unwritten report and 500+ pages of reading material… Blogging just hasn’t been a priority round here lately.

What has been a priority, though, was the quest for any combination of chemical aides, likely to make the required 250 hours of studies in 10 days, a technical, if not quite reasonable health-wise, possibility.

Thus, in the spirit of killing two heart-attacks with one stone, and without further ado, the first episode of:

Dr Dave’s Guide to Chemically-Enhanced Studying in Japan

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So I was wondering:

Can the fact that tofu tastes absolutely nothing like bacon be taken as objective evidence that God hates vegetarians?

I did promise you we would resume our Recipe Monday series, didn’t I?

I know. I am one week late. Some people have written to complain that my instruction to stash in advance on the main ingredient had caused a few problems with their spouse and neighbours. some petty matter of smell or something.

In order to make up for that, it is not one, but TWO recipes, that I shall bestow on my eagerly awaiting cooking public this time.

Tonight, we will be making a complete luxury meal, starting simply with a Pork Chops in Mango Chutney & Ginger Sauce, merely there to lay the groundwork for a scrumptious Squirrel Melba in Champagne Sauce.

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No recipe here tonight. But Neuro has decided to join the, ahem, Recipe Mondays posse, and has posted a delicious recipe for a dish we could translate as Duck au pineapple, or something like that…

It’s in both French and English, go check it out if you don’t know what to cook tonight and have a few extra ducks running around your garden.
BTW, Neuro is adamant: crows do not make a suitable substitute for daffy duckies…

Another great source for your gastronomic needs is Kristen, at Mediatinker, who has been blatantly infringing on our Monday Recipes™ trademark for many years now: she calls it Thursday Recipes, but I think we all know who was first on that breakthrough concept. Ha. To add assault to the injury, she even stole the recipe I was gonna do last week: Pasta Carbonara… a Dr Dave’s School of Cooking staple, if there ever was one!

But this sneaky attempt at driving the competition out will not be tolerated!

Keep your utensils ready. For next week will be a very special edition of Recipe Mondays with Dr Dave. Expect heights in culinary refinement!

Also, if you can, try to catch and peel a couple medium-sized squirrels during the week: they need to be prepared at least 24 hours in advance, and you do not want to be caught unprepared come Monday.