Yo bro,
Lotje Deelman was editor-in-chief of ELLE Eten, has been working for Allerhande for almost 15 years, and worked behind the scenes on television programs such as MasterChef, Worsten van Babel On Tour and De Nieuwe Lekkerbek. She ate pig’s trotter with Anthony Bourdain and flirted with Gordon Ramsay in his Aston Martin. Lotje is the (co-)author of more than ten cookbooks and, in her kitchen in the Drenthe countryside, is never too timid to set something on fire. On FavorFlav, Lotje shares what’s on her mind every week. This time: glowing coals, Kobe beef and ramen in Japan.
One day you talk to each other every day, and the next you hardly ever do. That’s how it goes with a brother and sister who live on opposite sides of the world. I do think about you often. Well, not really about you, actually. A little about you. More about your funny, handsome Japanese baby son, whom I always call Showbinkie when I can’t remember his name, and then I immediately remember that his name is Shotaro. But most often I think about what I ate while visiting you in that crazy Japan.
Whale
That sushi with pufferfish, fugu, which made me feel a little queasy, unlike you, of course. That two-hundred-year-old restaurant where we baked strange little eels on glowing coals in a clay barbecue on the floor, and where the Japanese professor and his much younger female student were so drunk that they kept toppling over onto their tatami mat. The whale, still illegal at the time, which tasted a little like horse steak. The feast with every gradation of Kobe beef on your subtropical island of Ishigaki.
How are you? Have you already cleared the recently acquired patch of jungle next to your house with machetes? Can Showbinkie count to ten in Dutch yet? Does he want to become a sumo wrestler when he grows up? I really hope so. Those guys are so cool. Eating a lot and doing a bit of pushing and pulling for a living—that would suit me too, by the way.
Pizza guru
Although I’m very much a glass-half-full kind of person, I also often think about the things I didn’t eat. In Tokyo, for example, we tried to eat at one of David Chang’s pizza gurus’ places, but it never worked out. I wish I had been more persistent then. I would also have liked to go to the fish market every morning to eat sea urchins, but after two weeks in Japan our mother very clearly needed something other than fish. Especially for breakfast …
The things I didn’t buy in Kappabashi Street cause me the most pain. Kappabashi Street has become my favorite street in the universe—did I already tell you that? I went there alone twice more, when I suddenly realized it was around the corner from our hotel, while you were all still asleep. Even now I dream about shops full of chopsticks, shops full of hand-forged chef’s knives, shops full of bowls for ramen, shops full of barbecues far too heavy to take on a plane..
Cool-blooded
By the way, I haven’t dared eat ramen here yet, let alone sushi. It can only disappoint, and I can’t afford the Okura right now. Remember when we ate there, just after you had started studying Japanese, using saved-up rijksdaalders? And how you calmly ordered all those crazy inedible things that only Japanese people order?
Anyway, to cut a long story short: I’d really like the recipe for that salad with octopus and chopped tomato, topped with those tiny bunches of seaweed. The one we ate at that little fish restaurant where the owner was so mean to all the Westerners except us. I’ll send you the photo. I think it was the most delicious thing I ate in Japan.
Gochisosama-deshita. My favorite little Japanese phrase. Thank you for the feast fit for the gods.
YourSister
PS If you happen to watch Chef’s Table on Netflix, you should watch the episode about Ivan Orkin in season 3. He’s a neurotic New Yorker who ran a ramen shop in Tokyo for 10 years, and also picked up a few Japanese wives and children along the way. I wouldn’t have minded having a brother like that either, but you’re pretty good too.
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