Another Lovely Noto Weekend

After finishing my morning Ikebana class, I joined two other girls (who also work at a couple of my schools) and our Ikebana instructor at her house for lunch. We cooked and ate okonomiyaki, which is one of my very favorite foods in Japanese cuisine. Okonomiyaki consists of chopped cabbage, other vegetables, and mix ins like squid or shrimp, stirred together with batter and then pan fried with thin slices of ham on top. It is very healthy, filling, and delicious! We also had a side of mochi with black beans. Mochi is a rice product that you can toast in the oven until it becomes hot and soft, then we dipped it in a sauce of sugar and soy sauce. 

Mochi with black beans

Okonomiyaki on the grill!

Okonomiyaki

For dessert, we ate a batch of Kinako cookies that I baked the night before. Kinako is roasted soy bean flour, and has a rich nutty flavor! We ate the cookies while drinking green tea. As our teacher has explained to me before, since green tea is so bitter you are supposed to have it with some small little sweet item. This addition of something sweet with your tea keeps the bitterness of the green tea from overpowering your taste buds. 

Later that day I headed to the neighboring town called Suzu, where I joined several friends to participate in the town's pub crawl. The town sold tickets which provided four stubs for each person, each stub got us a food item and a drink at one of the many participating restaurants, or bars in town. Usually, the restaurant prepares a special set drink and food item, so you get to be surprised about what type of interesting food or drink they will serve you! 

Our first stop was a restaurant where our ticket stub served as a 750 yen coupon. So we could order whatever we wanted, and stub would pay for 750 yen (which covered the cost of most meals on the menu). I selected a Ginger Grilled Pork Stomach dinner set, and it was amazing!

Ginger Grilled pork, miso soup, rice, pickles, and fruit

We continued on with our crawl, stopping at a place that specializes in gyoza. There we consumed 70 gyoza! (Between 13 people) Our fourth stop was another good one! The older lady running it was lovely and she patiently served excellent drinks to our cumbersome party of 13 foreigners. Every place we walked in that night had a bit of a shock when they saw our large party of varied people walking in with various levels of Japanese ability. But she handled it expertly. To crown our pub crawl, she served us a surprisingly excellent dish! It was a stew in a dark but creamy savory broth, with sides of buttered toast and fresh fruit. We ended our night excited for more food which we would eat at the food festival the following day!

In the morning, our lovely host Kira whipped up some French toast for a quick breakfast. After that we quickly got ready to go over to the town hall where the Marukajiri food festival was held. Along a street next to the town hall booths were set up on each side purveying various delicious foods! We walked up and down the streets stopping at vendors representing various local businesses to try their goods. Here are some of the highlights:

Squid burger with a squid ink bun!

Ichigo Daifu- A sweet white mochi filled with red bean paste, topped with a ripe red strawberry, and dusted with powdered sugar. These were so good, that after eating one and walking through several other stalls we had to go back and eat one more!

Soy doughnut, hot from the fryer!

Excited to eat our huge skewers of beef!

All of the food was fantastic! I wish there were awesome food festivals like this in America!

To finish my delicious weekend, I made a pot of nabeyaki udon for Sunday night dinner. Nabeyaki udon is cooked by layering all the ingredients into a nabe pot and simmering them together until done. Nabeyaki usually includes pieces of chicken thigh meat, spinach, shimeji mushrooms, spring onions, and fish cakes (and udon on bottom of course!).

Delicious!