Day 12

The bad news is, I've come down with the flu!  Fortunately it's just a mild one, mostly causing me to feel tired, sore, achy, slightly nauseated, and a little confused.  It comes in waves, so I'll feel fine for about twenty minutes and then the next twenty minutes  I'll feel like I've just taken a few Vicodin on an empty stomach.  I've also chemically burned all the fingers on my left hand by cutting up jalapenos without gloves.  Boooo.

The good news is that I've crossed something off my bucket list that's been on there for three years: prepare, cook, and eat my very own Bonairean lionfish!

Those spines are venomous!  Fortunately you can cut them off with scissors.

Now to be fair, I didn't catch this lionfish myself.  Only long-term residents of the island are allowed to take the lionfish hunting class and get a speargun for fishing them.  Lionfish are an invasive species; they have no natural predators, can eat everything, and multiply like crazy.  To help curb the lionfish problem, they can be hunted by divers with spring-loaded spearguns called ELFs, which is an acronym for 'eradicate lion fish.'  Lionfish are the only animals you can go spearfishing for.

Now, on Monday I finally caved to the cold and bought a 5mm wetsuit, and I was very excited to try it out.  I went on a dive last night intending to be a lionfish spotter, but the new wetsuit was too tight around my neck and was making me dizzy, so I had to end the dive after a few minutes.  Fortunately we were a team of three, so my two buddies, one of whom is a legal lionfish hunter, kept going, and came back with the beautiful specimen pictured above.

My buddies exiting the water.  The guy in front has a PVC container for holding the lionfish.  You don't want to stick yourself with their venomous spines!  They can still stick you when they're dead.

Being a kind and generous soul, (and also because I asked very nicely,) he bequeathed the lionfish unto me.  I was so excited that for my entire bike ride home, I sang a little song about my pretty new lionfish and how tasty he was going to be.

It's a big one!

Once home, I realized that we didn't have any knives sharp enough to filet my fish.  My dive knife was perhaps not the perfect choice, but it got the job done.

Isn't my dive knife pretty?  I love that thing.

Lionfish are an easy fish to filet--if you've got the proper knife.  You make a cut behind the gills, along the backbone, and along the belly, then peel back the skin and cut along the bones.  Hopefully next time I'll remember to scrape off the scales first.  I admit that I definitely need more practice!

First cuts made, and skin peeled back to the tail.

Can't believe I forgot about the scales.  What a mess.

Two good-sized filets!

As far as fish go, lionfish are a very non-fishy fish.  Once I threw away the carcass, there was no smell of fish left in the house.  They look fatty and good for sushi (and I've heard that the sushi restaurants here serve it a lot) but I didn't have the stuff to make sushi.  I did, however, remember seeing cilantro, limes, roma tomatoes, onions, and jalapenos in the three grocery stores on the island--all the makings of pico de gallo.  I went out and got my ingredients, but came down suddenly with flu symptoms when I got home.  So sadly, my lionfish filets went into the fridge.

Today was better but I'm still obviously sick, so I got sent home from work.  After a five-hour nap, I finally felt well enough to hold a knife.

Because I'm just one person and I had two good-sized filets, I decided to try two different ideas--because who needs recipes, right?  The first idea was a combination of ceviche and pico de gallo.

Ceviche de gallo!  Pico de lionfish!

Wow!  It's incredibly delicious!  I honestly didn't expect it to be so good.  Plus it's very simple and easy to make.  I give myself a 10 out of 10 on this one.

If I didn't have the flu, I'd have eaten it all already.

My other 'idea' was to just take every spice on the shelf and throw it on.  I rubbed a mixture of garlic salt, oregano, black pepper, and paprika on the filet, then pan-fried it in butter.

Oh my goooooodness it's so good!

Tender, moist, juicy, flavorful, melt-in-your-mouth--this thing was perfect.  And it took less than five minutes to season and fry it.  The only fly in the ointment was that it had a few little bones in it, but it certainly made the house smell amazing.

Mmmmm.  This recipe gets a 10 out of 10 too!

Lionfish is really healthy too; it's got lots of omega 3 fatty acids and protein.  Yum!  I can't wait to try lionfish sushi!

Here's hoping I get better and can help hunt for more lionfish soon!  :)

Cheers,
Ashton

Day 376

JAPAN - FOOD FOOD FOOOOOD

You probably know this about me, but I love food.  I LOVE IT.  Now I don't have an instagram and I don't have any fancy filters to make my food look crazy cool, but I think I'm making up for that in weirdness.  I tried a lot of foods in Japan.  Some were strange, some were good, some were awful.  I love trying new foods!  I'll try to describe all the foods, and rate them from 1-10.

These were popped pieces of rice covered in cheap chocolate.
2/10

Matcha milk is surprisingly good!  It's milky but not too sweet.
Also, you have to label all your food in a hostel.  Or else.
7/10

I tried some dango, which is a popular food made from glutinous rice powder.  They're basically the same as the rice cakes in Korea.  The rice balls themselves are flavorless, so dango is put on a stick and covered in something to give it flavor.  (In Japan, the bun hairstyle is called 'dango' because it looks like the food.  In Korea, they call it 'dung,' because it looks like poop.  I think I'll stick with 'dango,' thank you.)

Dango!  These dango were in some sort of sesame sauce.  It wasn't very sweet, but it actually tasted pretty good.
5/10

They're rice cakes on the inside, so the only flavor is the sauce.

Sushi variety.  Cheap and simple.
7/10

Okinawan fruit called Goya.

It's very bitter, and is used in stirfrys.  

Apparently it's really good for you, but... ew.
0/10

Here's that Okinawan sugar candy that the old ladies kept feeding me.  It's called 'kurozato' (which means 'black sugar') and it's made from sugar cane.  It's made by boiling down the juice of the sugar cane and adding a wee bit of lime.  Because it's not very refined, it apparently has some health properties?  I'd take that with a grain of salt.

Pretty tasty... for the first few bites.  After that it's too much.  8/10
Photo from kyotofoodie.com.

There's a lot of variety in appearance!
Photo from okinawatourism.ti-da.net.

And of course, the alcohol.  I love how cheap traditional alcohols are in Asia.

These are traditional Japanese liquors!

They have unusual lids.

This is awamori, the traditional Okinawan liquor.  It tastes exactly like water, and barely has an aftertaste.
Honestly, you could probably pass this off as water if you gave it to an unassuming person.
2/10

This is sake of some kind.  It was milky and had goopy chunks in it.  Bad bad bad.
-2/10

I kinda went crazy with the candy at the grocery store.  All this stuff was less than 75 yen (about $0.75) so I didn't feel guilty about buying any of it.  Let's go counterclockwise from top left.

Awww yeah variety.

Okay, first up, top and left, is the cheeseburger-flavored snack.  It didn't taste like a cheeseburger as much as it tasted like cheesy chili fries.  There were four or five of the flat, round crisps inside.  This bite was the only bite I took.  They made me feel bad inside.

Cheeseburger chip: 1/10, would eat if I were stranded and this was the only edible thing I had.

Next up was this apple-shaped thing.  It came in a few other highlighter colors but the green looked the most appetizing/least toxic.  I thought there would be an easy-open pull tab or something, since these are for kids, but I ended up having to cut it open.  I thought it would be a juice inside, but it was actually more like extra-gummy green jello.  It wasn't apple flavor, or any other flavor I'd normally associate with the color green.  (You know, like lime, or... are there other green flavors?)  Kinda gross.

Too solid, weird flavor.  1/10.

Next up, these little cuties!!!  So cute!!!  Inside each one was a little bag of BB-sized chocolate balls.

Awww!  Chocolate balls get 7/10.  Packaging gets 10/10.

I somehow lost that long strip in the middle and never got to try it, but next up is the chocolate pancake sandwich.  It's two tiny round pancakes with a chocolate-flavored gel in the middle.  The chocolate flavor is not doing such a great job of imitating the chocolate.  The pancakes were soft though.

Weird fake chocolate flavor.  3/10.

Next up: mochi.  The brand name is mochitto, which sounds adorable.  Mochi are Japanese rice cakes with filling.  The red letters next to the price tag say that this particular one is ichigo (strawberry) flavor.

Mochitto are kinda cute.  Look at their little bunny logo!

It's a little flour-colored ball that appears to be covered in cornstarch.

Strawberry filling on the inside!  Pretty good, but very sweet.
8/10

There's also a 'purin' flavor.  'Purin' is the Japanese word for 'pudding.'  Little cups of flan-like pudding were popular and cheap, and I ate a lot of them.  This purin mochi wasn't great.

Not as good as the strawberry flavor.
5/10

Next up is another type of dango.  Dango and mochi can look very similar.  The difference is that  mochi has filling inside, but dango doesn't.

No filling.  I can't tell if it's cornstarch or powdered sugar on them.

Stoplights!  I couldn't really tell if they were different flavors, they were just very sweet.
4/10

The other stuff in the photo: the blue bag had chocolate-covered peanuts, and the pikachu block was basic chewing gum.

This looks like an ice cream cone, and looks is the key word here.  This was not frozen, or even refrigerated.  It comes in a bag.  The 'cone' is actually a very thin piece of flavorless, edible cardboard.  I have no idea what that stuff in the cone is, but it ain't ice cream.  It had the consistency of beaten butter or warm whipped cream.  It also kinda tasted like beaten butter.  So wrong.  Why, Japan, why would you make this?

Looks are deceiving.  -5/10

I've already shown the Okinawan tacos on another post, but here's another look:

The vending machine where you order the Okinawan taco.

Many of the buttons are the same.

The Okinawan taco looks like it was made by someone who had only heard a vague description of a taco.  It's rice on the bottom, meat and shredded lettuce, topped with crushed Doritos.  It's pretty good!

Yum!  10/10!

You can order with bacon (actually just ham, pictured below), cheese, eggs, ketchup, and/or avocado.  

Why is 'bacon' never bacon outside of America?  Is it really so hard to make it a little crispy?

Within 24 hours of getting into Japan I had eaten ramen twice.  I had just gotten into the country and was hungry, so my first was a bowl from Family Mart (the ubiquitous convenience store of Japan and Korea, although it's called CU in Korea).  And it was gross.   Like, so gross that I took it outside and dumped it.  I think it was fish flavored.  I also had green tea chocolates that were gross, and a purin (pudding) cup that was the only saving grace of my dinner that night.

Green tea chocolate: 1/10, I gave this away.
Ramen: 1/10, what the heck, this was nasty!
Pudding (actually it says "custard"): 10/10, delicious!

The next day, after touring the Narita-san temple and doing a spot of shopping, I found a real ramen restaurant and ordered soy sauce ramen with pork and a side of gyoza (dumplings).  SOOOO GOOOOOD.  That ramen noodle block that comes in a plastic bag bears zero resemblance to this masterpiece of fine food.

So much flavor... and sodium, probably.  That pork was delicious.
Everything in this photo gets a 10/10.

If you're my friend on facebook, you've probably seen my Kit Kat photos.  Japan is famous for having a lot of strange and unique flavors of Kit Kat chocolate bars, but they seem to be sold only at the airport.  I am not proud of the amount of money I spent on Kit Kats in Japan.   I bought every flavor they had, which was five.  (Actually that's not quite true... there was a sixth flavor, dark chocolate, they I had already tried and it wasn't anything worth writing home about.)

Ichigo (strawberry) flavor, easily my favorite.  10/10.

Green tea flavor.  5/10.
It has a strange taste that I don't care for but everyone else seems to love.  This was the favorite among my coworkers.

Green tea and cherry blossom flavor.  8/10.

Passionfruit flavor.  0/10, ew.

Blueberry cheesecake gets 3/10.  On top of green tea cherry blossom.

So for those who can't read, that was:
1) Strawberry
2) Green Tea
3) Green Tea with Cherry Blossom
4) Passionfruit
5) Blueberry Cheesecake

There's also that dark chocolate flavor but it was boring so I didn't bring it home.

The blueberry cheesecake is missing from this photo.

The green tea flavor got a bit melted.

The strawberry flavor is by far the best.  The green tea/cherry blossom flavor is second, and green tea comes third.  Blueberry cheesecake is okay, and passionfruit is downright bad.  No really, it's gross.  That's why I'm giving it away to my students.

And now, I've saved the best for last.  In Korea they sell these cute little coffee drinks that are about 5% coffee.  My favorite is the mocha flavor, which is like chocolate milk with juuuuust enough of a hint of coffee that I feel okay about drinking it in the morning.  Unfortunately there were no mocha coffee drinks in Japan, just regular lattes and whatnot.  However, they did have this, and it was the best thing ever:

OH MY GOD SO AMAZING.
10000/10.

This is a mint chocolate chip ice cream drink.  Actually it says "chocominto dorinku", or "chocolate mint drink," so they're not even pretending that it's a coffee drink.  It tastes like a melted milkshake made of Baskin Robbins mint choco-chip ice cream.  I must have had ten or fifteen of these while I was here.  They were so refreshing and addictive!  I'm kind of glad they don't sell them in Korea because I think I'd become poor, fat, and diabetic from drinking these constantly.

I think that sums up most of the interesting foods I ate or attempted to eat/put into my mouth while in Japan!

Cheers,
Ashton