Category: fish
Quotes of Category: fish
Yes, sir, but the Librarian likes bananas, sir.""Very nourishin' fruit, Mr Stibbons.""Yes, sir. Although, funnily enough it's not actually a fruit, sir.""Really?""Yes, sir. Botanically, it's a type of fish, sir. According to my theory it's cladistically associated with the Krullian pipefish, sir, which of course is also yellow and goes around in bunches or shoals.""And lives in trees?""Well, not usually, sir. The banana is obviously exploiting a new niche.""Good heavens, really? It's a funny thing, but I've never much liked bananas and I've always been a bit suspicious of fish, too. That'd explain it. book-quotefishevolutionAfter lunch we went to have our feet nibbled by hundreds of tiny fish. Then, after that- just kidding, I'll explain. The onsen offers a skin treatment where you dip your feet into a shallow pool stocked with , also known as doctor fish, which perform primitive exfoliation by slurping dead skin off your feet with their tiny jaws. This is illegal in most U.S. states, where health authorities believe that sharing fish between customers is as sanitary as sharing unsterilized tattoo needles. I find this reasoning persuasive. Naturally, we all went and joined a random stranger at the fish pool.I'd heard of this fish treatment before, probably from a "hey, you've got to see this" link passed around online, and somehow I had the idea that it involved the occasional wayward fish sidling up to your foot. Try dozens, hundreds, all gnawing simultaneously. You can feel the little bites. At first it provoked a deep-seated piranha fear which I quelled by sitting still, taking deep breaths, and telling myself I had nothing to worry about other than blood-borne diseases. After that, it proved quite relaxing, although I did give up before my allotted fifteen minutes and went back to the painful reflexology pool where you walk around barefoot on jagged rocks. My feet are still baby soft, but when I need my next treatment, I'll post to Craigslist. . book-quotefishfeetnibblingOur neighborhood ramen place was called Aoba. That's a joke. There were actually more than fifty ramen places with in walking distance of our apartment. But this one was our favorite.Aoba makes a wonderful and unusual ramen with a mixture of pork and fish broth. The noodles are firm and chewy, and the pork tender and almost smoky, like ham. I also liked how they gave us a small bowl for sharing with Iris without our even asking.What I really appreciated about this place, however, were two aspects of ramen that I haven't mentioned yet: the eggs and the dipping noodles. After these two, I will stop, but there's so much more to ramen. Would someone please write an English-language book about ramen? Real ramen, not how to cook with Top Ramen noodles? Thanks. {I did find a Japanese-language book called on Amazon. Wish-listed!}One of the most popular ramen toppings is a soft-boiled egg. Long before sous vide cookery, ramen cooks were slow-cooking eggs to a precise doneness. Eggs for ramen {} are generally marinated in a soy sauce mixture after cooking so the whites turn a little brown and the eggs turn a little sweet and salty. I like it best when an egg is plunked whole into the broth so I can bisect it with my chopsticks and reveal the intensely orange, barely runny yolk. A cool egg moistened with rich broth is alchemy. Forget the noodles; I want a ramen egg with a little broth for breakfast.Finding hot and cold in the same mouthful is another hallmark of Japanese summer food, and many ramen restaurants, including Aoba, feature it in the form of , dipping noodles. Tsukemen is deconstructed ramen, a bowl of cold cooked noodles and a smaller bowl of hot, ultra-rich broth and toppings. The goal is to lift a tangle of noodles with your chopsticks and dip them in the bowl of broth on the way to your mouth. This is a crazy way to eat noodles and, unless you've been inculcated with the principles of noodle-slurping physics from birth, a great way to ruin your clothes. book-quotefishporkeggs
