Japanese food

WHY I'M NOT A FAN

Last night I saw a Japanese film called An (Sweet Bean) which featured lengthy sequences showing the making of a traditional Japanese snack food called dorayaki - a type of pancake - well two, with a sandwich of a sweet bean paste between. The bean paste is basically made from azuki beans and sugar with something added at the end, which may be oil or may be glucose - I couldn't tell.

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Having sat through a really rather wonderful little film, but with such a large portion of it dedicated to the sweet bean paste, it would therefore seem churlish not to comment on Japanese food somehow.

I am not a fan of Japanese food. I don't actively dislike it, mostly it just tastes bland to me. And I am very conscious of the fact that Japanese food is very 'in' in Australia. Our local Woolworths supermarket has a sushi bar inside it for heaven's sake, and my small grandchildren eat sushi sometimes. Sushi bars abound. Every suburb has one. And then there is tempura, and teppanyaki, udon noodles and a whole lot of other things that I really don't know about - witness the dorayaki.

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It's all so exquisite and so somehow zen. And to me somehow alien. Which got me to thinking about national foods, and national stereotyping. We all have our favourite cuisines - most likely due to our own personal histories but also partly to fashion. In Melbourne there is probably a restaurant or café showcasing the cuisine of just about every nation on earth - and this is wonderful. But everyone has at least one cuisine that is not really for them.

And this extends to the nations themselves. Deep down we most likely all have a prejudice against a certain nationality or nationalities - derived from the national stereotypes that have grown up over the centuries and sadly this leads to conflict. Racism rears its ugly head with prejudice and discrimination the result. And I do have some national prejudices myself. But I also honestly do feel that when it comes to an individual person, for me it's just a case of whether I like them or not. There are good people and there are evil people and the vast majority sit somewhere in between. And none of this has anything to do with which country we happened to have been born and/or raised in. I judge a person on their own behaviour - and if everybody did the same then we would perhaps not be in such a parlous state. Witness in our quiet little suburb of Eltham, which has just taken in some 120 Syrian refugees. They arrived on Saturday and there was a huge police presence in town because, apparently, there were demonstrators, likely to turn nasty, at their arrival. Hopefully the brouhaha will die down and they will be absorbed eventually into the multicultural society that is Australia.

And on a more trivial note, so it is with food. I have an innate prejudice against Japanese food as bland, exquisite nothingness, that is very expensive and a pain to make. But as my friend, who has visited Japan, said as we left the film, I had not been in a Japanese home and had not eaten 'real' Japanese food. Very true, although I was not convinced. I actually know very little about Japanese food - those dorayaki seemed very alien to me - it looked stodgy and unappetising. Though interestingly the central character was experimenting with the mix at the end of the film - toying with adding salt. Sort of like salted caramel which is currently very in. So although I admit my innate prejudice and although I shall most likely be eating Japanese food at some point in the future, I shall not be seeking it out.

A footnote - one of Australia's most lauded chefs is Tetsuya - a Japanese chef who has a small, exclusive and no doubt hugely expensive restaurant in Sydney. I have his book - the cover of which is below - though why on earth I bought it I do not know. A moment of desire for perfection? The cover is below - it's exquisite.