Hackney Hanami

Last Friday Mr Middle brought home a trip letter from school for us to sign. It is for this Friday when his year group will join together at a local park for a hanami. It sounded fun but I had no idea what a hanami was, so when I discovered the letter stuffed in his lunch box way after bed time I had to google it. A Japanese picnic to celebrate the cherry blossom! How is it that I have reached my 43rd year and no one has told me about this fantastic thing? Hackney is positively bursting with blossom right now, as it is every spring, from tiny spindles of trees lining the pavements full of Victorian terraces, planted in optimistic New Labour days when planting trees in streets was not only seen as a good idea but actually funded too (some come out obscenely early and look almost top heavy they are so laden) to the thick trunked behemoths of blossom which have been knocking around for years. So why are there no hanami? What more excuse does anyone need to spread your picnic blanket beneath such a glorious sight?

Enough eulogising. It at least helped pin down that destination question this week and it seemed a no brainer to travel to Japan.

And upon discovery of the great little website www.somewhereintheworldtoday.com I even had some recipes to hand.

THE DISH

Yakitori chicken

Chicken and marinade:

• 400 – 500g Boneless Chicken pieces – thighs and/or breast are best
• 3 tablespoons dark Soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons Sake (I used sherry... I know it's scandalous. But several blogging gurus said it was OK and where was I gonna get Sake on Chatsworth Road?.)
• 8 to 10 Bamboo skewers, soaked in water so as they don’t burn
• Oil

Tare:

• 100ml Soy sauce
• 100ml Mirin (I, erm, just left this out. I know - scandalous. But the blogging gurus said there isn't a substitute and you might as well just leave it out.)
• 50ml Sake
• 1 tablespoon Sugar or Honey

1. Toss the chicken piecse in a bowl with the soy sauce and sake marinade ingredients. Set aside for at least 15 or 20 minutes.
2. Mix the tare ingredients together in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over a medium heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 15 minutes.
3. Thread the chicken pieces on the soaked bamboo skewers, leaving an inch or two free at each end and brush lightly with oil.
4. Grill the chicken over hot charcoal or grill in the oven, turning part way through to cook both sides. When the chicken begins to brown, spoon over or brush with some of the tare.
5. When the chicken is cooked through, give the skewers another brush with the tare and serve while still hot.

Tamagoyaki - sweet omlette

• 4 eggs
• Sugar (1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon depending on how sweet a tooth you have)
• 1 tablespoons water)
• 1 teaspoon mirin
• 1 teaspoon Japanese soy sauce (or light soy sauce)
• Pinch salt
• Vegetable or sunflower oil for cooking
• Optional sesame seeds for topping
• Extra mirin, soy sauce and sugar for dipping sauce

1. Beat all the ingredients (except oil) together with a fork.
2. Heat a little oil in a heavy frying pan* over a medium heat, it really just wants to be brushed over the bottom and sides of the pan and not in a pool.
   *If you want to be a` perfectionist then you can buy a special square pan so as to have more solid ends to your Tamagoyaki which makes slicing neater.
3. Add some of the egg mix to the pan (about 2-3 tablespoons) and tilt it around so it spreads out. Cook gently until its nearly set on top. Using a spatula (preferably wooden) roll up the egg pancake to one side of the pan.
4. Brush the pan with more oil if necessary. Add the same amount of egg mix again letting it run right up to the edges of the cooked omelette and even underneath it. When this second layer of omelette is nearly set then roll up the whole of the omelette to the other side of the pan.
5. Keep on in this way until all the egg mix has gone.
6. Allow to cool to room temperature and slice. You can serve the Tamagoyaki immediately sprinkled with a few sesame seeds and with an accompaniment of 50% soy sauce, 50% mirin and a little sugar as a dipping sauce. Or it can also be used use as a filling for sushi rolls. (Sushi maki).

Hanami salad

• 200g Rice vermicelli (fine noodles)
• 2-4 Spring onions
• 100g Pack asparagus or mangetout
• A few radishes
• 1 large carrot
• 2 tablespoons mirin
• A dash of sesame oil (ordinary oil will do but add a few sesame seeds or a handful of peanuts to the salad to give it a nutty flavour)
• A dash of light soy sauce

1. Cook the rice noodles according to the packet instructions and then plunge into cold water to cool. Drain really well even blotting with kitchen roll or a clean tea towel to remove as much of the excess water as possible.
2. Blanch or cook the asparagus or mangetout for a couple of minutes and then plunge them in cold water too. Drain well, again trying to get rid of as much excess water as possible.
3. Chop the spring onions and slice the carrots and radishes finely into discs. Using a sharp knife cut 5 or 6 V shaped nicks out of the radish discs evenly spaced around the edge to make them into a flower. You can do the same with the carrots or use a flower shaped vegetable cutter (a metal clay cutter or cookie cutter will do just as well).
4. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and toss well to coat with the oil, mirin and soy sauce.

Sekihan rice

400g Japanese glutinous rice (or you can use Sushi rice)
1 can of azuki red beans
1/2 teaspoon salt
Gomashio (black sesame seeds and salt) for topping (optional)

1. Wash rice and drain in a colander.
2. Cook the rice (according to the instructions on the packet) along with the azuki beans and  colored liquid from the can. Season with salt and mix well.
3. Sprinkle mixture of salt and black sesame seeds over the rice before serving in rice bowls with chopsticks

A little bit about the festival is here.

THE REACTION
Mr Middle positively beamed when I said we were going to do a hanami picnic. Eldest and Youngest looked a bit bemused, but we had a few johnny-come-latelys join us from school so pretty much everyone was happy. The setting - park surroundings, football, blossom to throw and grass clippings to build with - did rather distract from the eating thing. But that's always the way with picnics. The lovely P brought down some Miso soup in a flask so we felt well authentic but only her two kids and my Eldest got the gold star for eating it. But I must say that even my Youngest tasted it, which would have been unheard of 6 months ago. The wasabi chickpeas were an unnecessary addition that no one seemed interested in. The tamagoyaki came out next and was wolfed by my two boys before anyone else even clapped eyes on it. Chicken ditto. Some liked the rice, some the noodles in the salad. Even the flowery carrots were a hit. Radishes? Not so much.

THE VERDICT
I think we could definitely get away with yakitori chicken again. And Sekihan rice with a bit of persuasion. Even I was a bit doubtful about the glass noodles in the salad, but with the suggested addition of peanuts it was quite an interesting mix. It wasn't quite the environment to get proper feedback... been a bit slack about that recently. But eating out on the grass, on a blanket, from teensy bowls with chopsticks, and delicate pink blossom falling around our ears was always going to be a winner!

THE PUDDING
Erm. I bought a packet of Oreos. Somehow they strike me as so American that I feel sure they'd be ubiquitous in Japan (what kind of perverse logic is that?). Melon appears to be popular, so I bought a peachy cantaloupe melo and skewered some melon balls in a nod to the fact I had not be quite bothered enough to make the special three colour hanami dango (dumplings).

The kids played crazy grass and petal throwing games on their scooters, P and I talked about the travesty which is post occupation Iraq and the evening sun drenched the hospital workers as they filed out of the Homerton and onto the buses whizzing past. Should probably do this every Tuesday in May. We left when one of the drinkers who hang out in that little piece of ground lit a bonfire of a pile of grass clippings and started smoking it. I wonder if that's a feature of many hanami in Japan?