Haircut and Kimchi

Posted on 2007/07/29 11:27:50 (July 2007).

[Saturday 28th July]
Had a very Japanese (well Japanese/Korean) sort of a day today.

First of all, I went and got my hair cut - as always it was somewhat overdue. It's the second time I've been to this Japanese place in Soho now. Again the very talented Tomoko-san transformed the floppy unkempt mess atop my noggin into, in my opinion at least, a rather nice looking head of hair. I have to admit I have turned into a bit of a girl in this respect - going to get my hair cut always used to be a chore, now it is something I really look forward to. Besides the obvious nicety of jut being pampered a bit, there's a really nice atmosphere in this place, and it is always a really good opportunity to practice my Japanese. It's also a great way pick up some local knowledge about the best places to find Japanese food and drink in London - apparently Akari comes highly recommended - I shall have to try it out sometime soon.

Once I'd been follicularly reconfigured, I took advantage of my location in Soho to pop to one of the Japanese food shops there (Arigato for a change, rather than our "usual" Rice Wine). I rather fancied kimchi nabe for dinner, so I bought a few bits and pieces for that.

I headed back home after that and then Chie and I went off to Sainsbury's to get some more things for dinner. We also popped into Rippon Cheese Stores on the way there, which was rather exciting - it was reminiscent of the cheese shop I used to go to with my parents in Melton Mowbray when they ran the pub.

Back at home again, I decided to embark on a bold culinary experiment. When we used to live in Pangbourne, we occasionally used to make our own kimchi - however we were never doing it the entirely authentic way, as we used a bottled sauce. So today I thought I'd go one step further and try to actually make the sauce from raw ingredients. I didn't use a proper recipe - I just guessed at the ingredients. So my version was basically just crushed garlic and ginger, Korean chilli powder, and then a bit of salt, a bit of sesame oil, and a tiny splash of rice vinegar.

Although we had a packet of shop bought kimchi in the fridge, we ended up leaving that unopened, and just using our own home made kimchi for the nabe. The results were really rather pleasing - my randomly concocted sauce did actually taste like kimchi! I think the hakusai (chinese cabbage) probably needs to mature a bit longer to be entirely authentic ( so we've left another batch in the fridge) but initial results have seemed very promising.

To finish off the Japanese(ish) themed day, we watched a Japanese film (by a Chinese director) called Cafe Lumiere. It was, I suppose you could say, "atmospheric", perhaps in a slightly similar vein to Lost in Translation. It had a strange approach to a film narrative in that the story just didn't really develop - there was a situation presented (the main character announced she was pregnant), and then you saw how her friends and family reacted to it - and basically that was it. Nothing really "happened" as such. It was very slow moving, lots of long takes containing almost no dialogue, where the camera just focused on some trains going past or tempura being made. Still, the imagery was all very Japanese which I quite enjoyed actually - very reminiscent of my time there.

Kimchi as far as I know needs to "rest" in the sauce for quite some time... But then again I really do not know how to make it, I wish there were oriental food shops in Italy like you have them in London, but alas even the few that we have are rather small and do not sell hakusai or similar things... Good effort anyways! As for the movie it sounds terribly boring the way you talk about it!! :D

Posted by Lox at 2007/07/30 03:21:38.

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