Butter

Some thoughts from reading this book:

• In Malayalam, we call it as “kaipunyam” (aka the taste of one’s own hand). Some humans have this knack to make the food they make essentially tasteful; even for simple meals.

“Back in their university days, Reiko had often come over to cook in the Hatanodai apartment where Rika lived with her mother. Both Rika and her mother were astonished to discover what a good cook Reiko was. Even when making simple meals like ochazuke or pasta, her little additions of yuzu rind or salted lemon displayed her inventiveness, giving her dishes the sort of taste that made you want to take your time savouring them.”

• Planning to make a simple dish sometime which just involves japanese rice, soy sauce, and butter. Will it be delicious?

“For a moment, Rika failed to process Kajii’s words, and she let out a quiet, ‘Hm?’ ‘Add butter and soy sauce to freshly cooked rice. Even someone who doesn’t cook can manage that much, I’m sure. It’s the best meal to truly understand the glory of butter.’ Her manner of delivery was so grave that it made it impossible to even think of ridiculing her. ”

• The narration of cool butter on warm rice:

“‘The butter should still be cold. Remove it from the fridge just before. Superior-quality butter should be eaten when it’s still cold and hard, to truly luxuriate in its texture and aroma. It will begin to melt almost immediately with the heat of the rice, but I want you to eat it before it melts fully. Cool butter and warm rice. First of all, savour the difference in their temperatures. Then, the two will melt alongside one another, mingle together, and form a golden fountain, right there inside your mouth. Even without seeing it, you just know that it’s golden – that’s the way it tastes. You’ll sense the individual grains of rice coated in butter, and an aromatic fragrance as if the rice were being fried will ascend to your nose. A rich, milky sweetness will spread itself across your tongue …’”

“The first thing Rika felt was a strange breeze emanating from the back of her throat. The cold butter first met the roof of her mouth with a chilly sensation, contrasting with the steaming rice in both texture and temperature. The cool butter clashed against her teeth, and she felt its soft texture right down into their roots. Soon enough, just as Kajii had said, the melted butter began to surge through the individual grains of rice. It was a taste that could only be described as golden. A shining golden wave, with an astounding depth of flavour and a faint yet full and rounded aroma, wrapped itself around the rice and washed Rika’s body far away.”

• Soy sauce, mochi and a slice of butter:

“‘Etchan was saying that a kid she works with sprinkles sugar and soy sauce on her toasted mochi, and finishes it off with a slice of butter. Don’t you think that’s disgusting? Apparently it’s how the younger generation like to eat them these days.’ ‘Butter, eh …’ Rika felt the inside of her cheeks puckering, and saliva welling up slowly in her mouth. She knew by now that the taste of butter in combination with any kind of carbohydrate was one of inexplicable fullness. There was no way that the trick wouldn’t work with mochi too. Rika washed her hands then arranged the smooth, pre-cut mochi dusted with rice flour inside the toaster. ”

• Ramen is best tasted from a regular chain restaurant, not the air-conditioned one:

“‘Is it the cold that makes a bowl of ramen from a regular chain restaurant taste that good?’”

“Across from him, Reiko was slurping a bowl of noodles. ‘It’s my culinary speciality: Sapporo Ichiban salt ramen with butter on top. It looked like she didn’t have much of an appetite earlier. For once, she asked.’”

• If a chef is making a turkey roast, they would be defrosting the turkey in the fridge, and not outside. This whole process takes three days. If you do it outside, it damages the outer skin of the turkey.

“Rika had initially been imagining cooking the turkey as an extension of her research, but she soon gave up on the idea. According to Madame’s notes, a 5-kilogram turkey took three whole days just to defrost. Once it was defrosted, you had to prepare it, leave it overnight, and then roast it for three hours, keeping watch over it all the while. ”

• Roasted turkey for Christmas is probably the most difficult of the dishes to prepare. There is a high chance there might be food poisoning especially since the stuffing comes in contact with the raw meat.

“Soon enough, steam began to seep out of the vents in the rice cooker. Breathing in the smell of the umami-rich rice mixture, Rika felt the tension building. According to the food blogs and articles she’d read, stuffing a turkey brought with it the danger of food poisoning, because the stuffing came into contact with the raw meat. The important thing in that regard was to make sure that the meat was cooked through – yet if you focused exclusively on that, the whole thing may end up dry. She’d read that so long as you made sure to stuff it just before cooking, not too tightly, and basted the turkey with butter as you were cooking, you would probably be fine, but Rika was very conscious of the fact that she was cooking for nine people. Not only that, but it was mid-summer, and there was a small child. If anything bad happened, it would be on her.”