denbushi | blog

Here’s an great recipe which uses ingredients from your local しょぼい Tokyu Store or 丸正. Moreover, it’s super-easy and always gets rave reviews. (Okay, I’ve actually only cooked it once, but we all thought it was pretty good.) Anyway, here’s what you’ll need:

• 12 Shiitake mushrooms (Japanese-grown, not Chinese, if you want to avoid getting a load chemicals along with your champignon)
• 12 surimi chickn balls (these are the ones typically used for nabe dishes and come in packs of twelve)
• Blue or Gorgonzola cheese
• Minced garlic
• Minced onion
• Chopped black olives
• Olive oil, butter, sherry, salt, pepper, etc.

1. In a small fry pan, sautee the onions, garlic and black olives in butter and olive oil.
2. Meanwhile, remove the stems from the mushrooms and then slice off the protruding center of the opposite side of the cap to create a flat surface.
3. In another fry pan, melt some butter and lightly sautee the mushroom caps.
4. Remove the mushrooms to a shallow baking dish, stem-side up.
5. Remove the onions, etc. in (1) to a side dish.
6. Using the same fry pan, lighly sear the surimi chicken balls. (A splash of Tio Pepe or other Sherry at the end under a tight-fitting lid will provide a nice, savory finish.) Remove.
7. Place a small dollop of blue cheese in each cap, then cover that with a surimi ball.
8. Drizzle the onions and black olives from (1) over the top of the stuffed mushrooms, then grill for 15 minutes.
9. Remove to a serving dish, then pour the liquid for the baking dish over the top.
10. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and serve immediately.

Where would I be without KEXP? Musically worse off, that’s for sure. It’s almost as if they followed me over here from Seattle, with a streaming audio site that just might be the best one out there. If you don’t know it already I suggest you have a listen.

A recent” find” of mine there is Joanna Newsom, a gifted harpist and songwriter who weaves some of the most poignant melodies and lyrics I’ve heard. Take this passage from Emily, the opening track on her new release Ys.

in due time we will see the far butte lit by a flare
I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
and row through the nighttime
gone healthy
gone healthy all of a sudden
in search of the midwife
who could help me
who could help me
help me find my way back in
there are worries where I’ve been

say, say, say in the lee of the bay; don’t be bothered
leave your troubles here where the tugboats shear the water from the water
(flanked by furrows, curling back, like a match held up to a newspaper)
Emily, they’ll follow your lead by the letter
and I make this claim, and I’m not ashamed to say I know you better
what they’ve seen is just a beam of your sun that banishes winter

let us go! though we know it’s a hopeless endeavor
the ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
though there is nothing would help me come to grips with a sky that is gaping and yawning
there is a song I woke with on my lips as you sailed your great ship towards the morning

come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
peonies nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow, with
hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up-a their brow and everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
the butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
and my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines
- come on home, now! all my bones are dolorous with vines

Other reviews I’ve read suggest her voice-a lilting, cracked and warbling affair–takes some getting used to, but I am finding difficult to get enough. It sticks with me throughout the day, making want more and a still closer inspection of her rich lyrical escpades. Highly recommended!