Saturday, February 5, 2011

Lunch at A Womb

I have posted about this place before so won't repeat myself except to say that A Womb is a very cool space with great food and friendly hosts (some English is spoken and you can book via email) - it is one of the few places in Kyoto that I keep returning to. I also had dinner there recently and will post the images of that "course" shortly. 

 menu

 Vegetables and yuba with roe
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A mixed plate of small obanzai - inlcluding fish 'scraps' cooked in soy and mirin, rolled duck, nama fu,  pumpkin simmered in dashi, aka(red) konnyaku with yuzu miso, salmon sashimi and 2 excellent "pressed" sushi - one with leeks and cucumber pickle the other with pickled daikon and shiso leaf
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Sake Kasu (sake lees) soup with daikon, tofu, yuba, ginger and spring onions
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Hot sushi, steamed in a fragrant hinoki (cypress) box with anago, fried tofu and grated yam
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Dessert was a small piece of baked apple, kuri (chestnut) cooked in syrup, matcha icecream and a spice cookie leaf - too cute!
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UPDATE: Early March 2011 - "plate lunch" - great prawn and veg tempura donburi with ankake sauce - plus, as you can see  - a few other tasty morsels - great little salads, furofuki daikon with nama fu, aka konnyaku, yuba etc, miso shiru with sake kasu.... Oooh and a chestnut, pear and castella parfait for dessert. oishii!!


4 comments:

  1. Wow that place looks like a dream - a comforting, whimsy sort of dream. I love the idea of fish 'scraps'; the Japanese do great things with frugal food, they have a real understanding of how to bring out the most of all the odd bits. And isn't it nice to realise what you're eating is both delicious AND healthy! Doesn't surprise me at all that their woman (traditionally anyway) are so slender.

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  2. Btw, I just realised you're the author of 'Snowflakes and Schnapps' so I suppose I also want to say I adore that book (recently bought it). There's really not enough cookbooks based on Scandinavian cuisine out there and yours is a very fine one! I'd really love to see a follow-up to it based on the traditional Scandi (and German) home-cooking, passed down from mothers and nans.

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  3. A womb is pretty dreamlike Jenny. A nice place to float around in - which I guess is the point. Yes, I love the way the Japanese utilise everything and it inspires me to cook that way whenever I can. The women are generally, enviously, slender but you should see them at a dessert buffet - they say they have 'betsu onaka' - a separate dessert stomach! I don't know where they put it. But I guess when you eat fairly healthily 99 per cent of the time you can get away with it.
    Thanks re Snowflakes! I have mulled over a more trad home cooking scandi/german title but it would take a lot more research, travel, time out and money!!! But you never know...
    Snowflakes was only ever meant to be an evocative, gorgeous winter cookbook (with a little tongue in cheek ski bunny humour thrown into the vibe/design to ensure it was different to the standard winter euro fare cookbook which traditionally don't sell well) so I would certainly like to do something a bit more trad and earthy as a counterbalance if all the planets aligned one day and the market was right. Thanks for all your comments - I will get to the others shortly. j

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  4. True, it would indeed be an excruciatingly difficult thing to source all the really authentic recipes of the Nordic; many trips through the blizzard towards cottage homes I'd imagine. But whatever, I am very happy with Snowflakes and btw, I used the red cabbage recipe (although I coupled it with grilled sausage, creamy mash and and apple sauce) and it was brill. I may try experimenting by adding a little orange juice next time just to see what the results are (or maybe not).

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