Japanese Food…

It is a while I wanted to talk about Japanese food. I think it exemplifies very well for the title of this blog — “keep it sweet and simple”. And I am not just talking about sushi, but the large variety of small, delicately cooked dishes, which are put together in little plates and beautifully decorated bawls.

When presented with the food, you feel a bit like an orchestra director, with lots of different instruments to play with, or rather, different foods to try. You can combine different textures, sweeter or spicier tastes, in whatever order you fancy, and then whenever you want, you come back to the sticky rice, or the delicious soup, which set the beat and average out your pallet for the next food composition. And the fascinating thing is that in each round you can try something different.

This is very different to traditional European food, where courses come one after the other and there is very little degree of flexibility on how and in which order you eat things. Ah… and a very important thing: regardless of how much you eat, it always sits very well with you, making you enjoy it for hours to come– what good is it excellent food if it leaves you with a heavy and painful evening…?