Domo Arigato: Meals at Michi Cafe - Part 2 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Domo Arigato: Meals at Michi Café – Part 2 – Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After a little research in a Buddhist temple cookbook called The Legacy of the Japanese in Hawaii, I found a recipe for the salad dressing made with rice vinegar, sugar, and a little soy sauce.

A mound of lightly, fried shrimp, eggplant, green beans, and turnips came with one of my friend’s grilled teriyaki chicken dish, making me think he ended up with the best value for his money.

The Japanese got the idea for deep frying foods during the 16^th century from the Portuguese, on of the first nation to have contact with Japan.

Tempura shrimp stay nice and long when you cut along their underside.  I like the way the Japanese fry chicken with the skin on to keep them moist, but other people take the skin off.

My daughter Florence liked the beef teriyaki she ordered and said it was “juicy and tender.”  I like the way Yamato serves it teriyaki sauce on the side, if you ask them.

Teriyaki can be too sweet for some people.  It is a syrupy sauce make from soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar.

One of my friends complimented me on exposing my daughter to so many different cuisines.

I laughed and said she liked beef in various forms – Korean bulgogi, Mexican carne asada, and Japanese beef teriyaki.

We all tried the breaded pork cutlets that one of my friends ordered and loved the.  This dish is called tonkatsu and was adopted from the Dutch.  A spicy sauce accompanied the dish, but she said the cutlets were so juicy that they did not need any sauce.

The eel I ordered came over rice with thick, soy sauce in an orange-lidded box with flowers on it.  I had never eaten eel.  The flesh was fatty, but tasted good. 

Green tea-flavored ice cream came with our meal as dessert. 

Article end

The real sweet ending to this article is that you can buy green tea ice cream in Asian markets now.

The following cookbooks can help readers become familiar with Japanese menu items and cooking methods:

Japanese Soul Cooking:  Ramen, Tonkatsu, Tempura, and more from the Streets and Kitchens of Tokyo and Beyond by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat

Washoku:  Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Domo Arigato: Meals at Michi Cafe - Part 1 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Domo Arigato:  Michi Café - Part 1 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I became a restaurant reviewer for The Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) after sending in published samples of work I had done on the Olympic Games in Barcelona for newspapers in New Zealand and Rhode Island; I lived in Paris at the time and used the very first fax machines to send out queries to obtain published samples that all newspapers still asked for in the 2000s.

I had lived in Japan as an exchange student in high school, so one of the restaurants I asked to review a restaurant that served Japanese home-style cuisine – The Yamato Café (Now the Michi Café).  It is located in Marina, California. 

I wanted Monterey County Weekly readers to know that there was more than sushi in Japanese cuisine:

Domo Arigato – “Thank-You”

I go to the Yamato (Now Michi Restaurant) in Marina (CA), because this is where the Japanese people in town eat.  That is always a good sign.

Yamato’s interior reminds me of Japan, although there is more space between tables than one would find in Japan.

There is a blonde-colored wood sushi bar that seats six people, an imitation cherry blossom tree, rice paper windows, a karaoke bar, and a TV.

Everything is scrupulously clean.

The first thing I sampled was wakame udon, a soup made with a slightly sweet broth flavored with kelp, dried sardines, soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, and sake.  I ate the soup’s long, thick noodles with chopsticks.  The al dente udon noodles would please any pasta judge.

The three pink-edged fish cakes floating in the soup tasted like imitation crab, which is actually made of fish.  I ate delicious soup like every day when I was an exchange student outside Osaka, Japan.

After this great meal, I took two of my writing group friends out and Florence.  One of my friends ordered chicken teriyaki and shrimp tempura.  Florence chose beef teriyaki, another friend ordered tonkatsu – a breaded and deep fried pork cutlet.  I ate eel over rice.

Everyone’s meal came with a bowl of miso except mine.  I already had wakame udon in front of me.  After my daughter saw strips of wakame seaweed in her soup, she quietly passed that to me to eat.

One of my friends picked seaweed out of her soup like a pro and said she liked seaweed, but had never eaten it before.

Fresh cubes of bright, white tofu floated in the soybean paste soup made with a slightly, salty stock tasting of dried kelp and bonito.  We al drank the soup from our bowls as we lifted them like one does in Japan.

Our meals also came with a small salad, which we ate with chopsticks.  The sweet dressing intrigued us.

End of Part 1.

To be continued…

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks, Teen in China,  and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

French Club Activity: Drawing Picture Sentences Game to Improve French Noun-Gender Recall by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

French Club Activity:  Drawing Picture Sentences Game to Improve French Noun-Gender Recall by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Objective:

Improve Noun-Gender Recall for French Nouns using drawing to create picture sentences to help focus on gender-noun recall.

Method: 10 Tasks

Task 1 - Build a French noun (things) list using a reading teacher’s reference book, such as:

The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists 5^th Edition by Edward B. Fry and Jacqueline E. Kress

Foreign-language learners can use this book to build noun lists from lower elementary grades up through high school.

“Thing” words are words like “table” and “chairs.”

Task 2 – Look up the French translation of the words you selected, noting the gender designation that goes with the word – le, la, or l’.

Task 3 – Draw a picture of the word 5 times saying the word and the gender designation.

Task 4 – Draw a picture-word sentence using the word such as:

I see the chair.

-For I, draw a picture of your head

-For see, draw a picture of eyeballs

-For “the chair,” write “la chaise.

All together, write “Je vois la chaise” under the pictures you draw.

Task 5 – After finishing your picture sentences, read the sentences out 10 times before going to bed.

Task 6 – Test yourself by typing nouns and gender designations into an Excel sheet and alphabetize by French noun.

Heighten row lengths, so you have space to write, and test yourself on genders of nouns.

Task 7 – Score your test to see how many gender designations you got right.

Record score and date.

Task 8 – Repeat gender designation and noun test daily until, you get a perfect score.

Task 9 – Do test weekly, once you have made a 100% score

Task 10 – Keep track of scores with breakdowns on le, la, l’ to see where you need to improve memorization.

Desired Objective:

100% recall on nouns with gender designations.

Bonne Continuation!!!

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Fine Beer Reference Books Recommended by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Fine Beer Reference Books Recommended by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I own two “Go-to-Beer-Reference” books, because I have just started learning about beers around the world.  My interest in this subject was inspired by living in Stuttgart, Germany for five years.

When I saw a photo and 2-page spread devoted to Firestone Walker Brewing Company located in Cambria (Outside Paso Robles, California at the same exit for Hearst Castle), I immediately purchased a “fine beer book” that had information on California brew pubs that are patterned after German brew pubs:

The Complete Beer Course:  Book Camp for Beer Geeks:  From Novice to Expert in Twelve Tasting Classes by Joshua M. Berstein.

This book contains information that complements (rounds out) information in another reference book I own entitled:

Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion:  America’s Microbreweries and Classic Beers from Europe – the World’s Great Beer Styles, Gastronomy, and Traditions.

I think California pubs could earn extra money selling those two items for people who would like to do beer tourism and cook with beer at home.

Germans braise meat and put 1 pint of Amber (Dunkel) beer in with potatoes to bake for dinner.  I put carrots and celery root in my version of this dish.

Cheers!!!!

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie