Plus: Alice Waters is this week’s guest on Food with Mark Bittman
I’m on vacation this week, so I thought it’d be a good time to rerun our interview with the esteemed Alice Waters. This interview between her and me and Mark originally ran a year and a half ago, and it was personally quite warm and fuzzy for me to witness the friendship that she and Mark have cultivated over the years.
I also took the next set of questions from food stylist Barrett Washburne. Last week I talked to him about how he got into food styling and how he feels about it; why pots and pans always look so clean on TV; and how to get YOUR pots and pans really clean. This week we talked about how much food is thrown out vs eaten on a photo shoot, the best way to make something look like it’s fresh out of the oven, and food styling tips/tricks. — Kate
Follow Food with Mark Bittman on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Amazon Music
Meanwhile, in Tokushima, Japan …
After leaving Saga we traveled to Fukuoaka to get the train to Tokushima, in Shikoku, the next island up the chain of Japan’s main islands. (The trains in Japan are brilliant, but you don’t need me to report on that; just confirming what everyone who’s traveled here already knows.) We were scheduled to hike for the next four days, a trip set up by the people from the excellent Walk Japan — you go from one inn to the next, your bags get shipped, they tell you where to go and help you get there, and it’s your job to climb up and down to the next valley — that kind of deal.
The first day was quite flat (there was a little elevation, but not so’s you’d notice) eleven miles. Yes, the distance wore us out a little, but it was a simple one-foot-in-front-of-the-other day, not much of a challenge. The best lunch on offer was after a mere three miles, a wonderful and simple place in the middle of nowhere, serving udon in good stock with oden: vegetables, tofu, and egg, simmered in seasoned dashi, on wooden skewers, so you can you just take what you like. It was almost the best meal of the week.
In fact, from a food perspective, this was not a terrific few days: We stayed mostly in modest, traditional Japanese inns, slept on futons on tatamis, ate breakfasts and dinners from set menus that were in general uninteresting, ate lunch, if at all out, of our backpacks, often food purchased at 7-Eleven or the like. (Sometimes not bad – filled rice balls, for example – sometimes terrible, sandwiches about the equivalent of those sold at US 7-Elevens, despite the international reputation of Japanese 7-Elevens as the home of outstanding sandwiches.)
But eating wasn’t really the point. We were seeing temples both simple and grand; buddhas and bells; striking scenery of mountains, valleys, rivers, sea, and sky. We were climbing and descending steadily, often with challenging footing, often a few steps at a time. It’s worth saying that Shikoku, like Kyushu, is well-known for its abundance of hot springs (onsen) and even the most modest hotels have a central bath (separate for men and women), while many also have Japanese-style soaking tubs with abundant way-too-hot water in every room. We took full advantage of these.
The fourth day, after climbing 500 meters (about the height of the Empire State building), descending the same, then hiking another 500 up – I was practically crying the last 50 or so – we took a cable car up and over a couple of mountains, a thrilling ride, down to a town in a remote valley, where we caught two busses to get to our destination, a lovely inn near Kawaguchi Dam in Tokushima prefecture.
Although still a tatami-futon situation (it’s hard to get up and down from the floor, especially at my age, and crabbing along the floor isn’t an efficient way of moving your body) this was a larger, brighter room, with a beautiful view of the river, and a large, pretty, central bath. In addition, the food was either much better or my expectations had been lowered. (I can’t for the life of me remember much about what we ate, anywhere, except the worst bits, like the stone-cold food served in a chilly room in a spartan Buddhist Temple we stayed in one night. And I took very few pictures, which tells me that the food didn’t excite me; I don’t shoot out of duty but because the food is thrilling enough to want to tell you about.)
The next (and, for us, last) day, we hiked a few up-and-down miles with occasional views of the Pacific, and ultimately took the train to Tokushima city, where we spent two nights not exactly recovering but in catch-up mode, doing laundry, emails, some of this kind of thing. We ate at a not-good izakaya, we ate a Chinese buffet, we ate a couple of terrific croissants for breakfast. A notable, enjoyable, different week capped by a weekend of chillin’.
Now we are off to Kyoto, about which I’ll report next week.
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