When you wish upon...bamboo?

[spacealien_vamp]

Last Friday was Tanabata, a ceremonial (not national) holiday here. It is based on the myth that the lover stars Vega and Altair are separated by the Milky Way and can only meet once a year. The seventh day of the seventh month is their lucky day.

The day is celebrated by writing wishes on strips of paper and hanging them from bamboo branches. This year, the students at my school were all given colorful paper rectangles to write on, and at lunchtime they hung them from two large bamboo stalks in front of the main entrance.

Today the seniors began their final exams. I had two bright and early, so I spent most of the morning grading papers. After that, I'm pretty much done until the last exam on Friday. I do have a couple lessons with the second year students, but fewer than usual because the schedule was rearranged for another teacher who will be gone at some point. Next week we will only meet to give back the seniors' test results, and then I'm through with school for the summer.

In addition to my usual free time activities, this weekend I decided to try a little cooking adventure. I had previously bought Thai mango ketchup at the import store in Kyoto, but they stopped carrying it, and I eventually used up my supply. This was quite sad, because it tasted very good.

I read the ingredients on the label, and it said simply "mango, vinegar, sugar, spices," so it didn't seem like it would be complicated to replicate. I didn't have any mangoes on hand, but I did have some old plums that I bought on a whim and never finished. I decided to experiment with those.

5 small plums, peeled
(the plums here are small and red, but regular American plums would probably be similar)
1 Tbs. apple vinegar
7 tsp. sugar
1 pinch each of any spice on my spice rack that smelled good, which turned out to be allspice, coriander, and cardamon.

(One pinch = 3~4 shakes of the bottle)

I ran it through my food mill, which only took about three seconds to make a fruity sauce. This was okay, but it was kind of watery and didn't have the zing to it that I liked about the mango ketchup. I then did a quick web search for ketchup recipes, the results of which inspired me to add...

1 pinch salt
2 pinches each black pepper and mustard powder

I simmered it for about half an hour to boil away some of the water and get it to a proper ketchupy thickness. I tested it right away on a batch of sliced burdock fried in garlic/chili olive oil, and it was great. THAT was the flavor I was looking for. Yay!

The whole batch reduced down to about 3/4 of a small jam jar. Not, perhaps, the most cost-effective product, considering how expensive Japanese fruit is. However, it tastes darn good.

In other random food news, I found a new item on the fried-goods table at my local supermarket: breaded quail eggs on a stick. I bought some to try. They're really good with takoyaki sauce and mayonnaise.