Summer shu-making

A stop in to see Ioanna and Hisashi one night times in nicely with the 1 year anniversary of Pelican Burger, as well as the 1 year anniversary of their first attempt at making ume-shu. A handful of friends are around, and we're drinking shu late into the night ... much fun! and this is all that's left:



but it inspired us the following weekend to meet at Ionna's and start on the next batch for next year's party. First we pick up some supplies, including bottles, rock sugar, white liquor and various fruits;



for the ume's, we're doing 2 different varieties. One a little sweeter, and another trying out pricking the ume's before placing them in the jar, to see if this boosts the flavor.



Once the fruit was pricked it was piled into the jar and topped with the rock sugar and then in goes the white liquor ...



We also did a pot of cherry and a pot of lemon-shu.



We all cheer's to our efforts ....



and Ioanna makes a plate of Shin Sapporo blue cheese, ricotta and dried tomato. mmmmm



It's been so hard looking at these shu's developing up on the shelf but knowing we have to wait a year before we can savour the hard labour, so we decided to make a new one each month, so that next summer there will be a new one to drink each month ....

Tokyo tako.

Leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll eat good food again.... isn’t that how the song goes? Or it should. In our travels we've been in not a small amount of airports and had not a small amount of pre flight atrocities when there's no other place to go, I'm looking at you Miami, just to pick random name. South East Asian airport may tend to not be the most well run, but usually you can still pick up some great food (Bali excepted). Tokyo though blends the two nicely, a super modern, super efficient airport that still caters for the nations obsession with food. We pulled in at this little takoyaki bar, two girls cranking out row after row of takoyaki to the hungry people sitting at the bar as well as from the small takeaway on the side.



We decide on one plate with mayo and green onion and a plate with three dips.
Taking the time while the takoyaki cook to snap a few action shots, the nonstop flow of dumplings is really impressive, the polished moves of the tako girls have obviously been honed making a few thousand or so.





The first takoyaki; plenty of tako and bits to batter ratio, plenty of mayo and green onion. It’s good.



The second eight plain takoyakis, with a side dish of ume salt, ponzu and soy.



If we don't find a good takoyaki near us there's going to be a lot of international flights in our future (not a bad thing either).

Takoyaki bar
Upstairs Narita International Airport
Tokyo, Japan