Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

     Right as we were leaving our apartment for good last week, our farmer friend (the one I mentioned saying good-bye to in the previous post) appeared and gave us a HUGE bag of satoimo. What he thought we'd do with a big bag of potatoes en route to England, I'm not sure, but it was kind of him nonetheless. And we did find time to use them, luckily. Too bad I don't know his name or address in order to thank him. We usually just called him Doc, since he resembled Doc Brown from Back To The Future. Minus the Delorean, unfortunately.
  ...Known by the name of taro root in English, satoimo is a kind of starchy vegetable/potato that is rather slimy once peeled. You can avoid the sliminess by boiling the satoimo first and then getting rid of the resulting gunky water, or I'm told that you can also fry them to form a sort of crust on the outside, thus preventing said sliminess from occurring. Or, you can embrace the sliminess and use it as part of the dish you're making. Which we did when we made this big batch of satoimo/tofu crumbles. It was a really easy recipe and tasted even better after chilling overnight. Yet another Japanese food that I'm going to miss!
 PS This may be the last post for a while, since I'm told that our internet and telephone in England won't be up and running for another couple of weeks. Sigh. Resisting the urge to compare it to Japan's ever-speedy service and keeping fingers crossed that weekS is an exaggeration!

                                       Raw, unpeeled satoimo

       
                                    The cooked product: looks unappetizing, tasted great!