Featuring products from Hiroshima prefecture:

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14736655

Working Lunch Day 1 (Western style)

Marinated salmon and raw scallop confit. Asparagus Charlotte with smoked cream, edible flowers.

Rockfish and mussel aqua pazzo with lemon and olives.

Chicken ballotine stuffed with shrimp scampi. Braised chicken thighs and mushroom tourte. Roasted bamboo shoots and fava beans with Supreme sauce.

Setouchi lemon and Miyajima honey semifreddo. Citrus cream with sake lees.

Lemon confit baguettes, English-style buns, Miyoshi wine walnut bread.

Working Dinner Day 1 (traditional Kaiseki)

From the Seto Inland Sea: Sake-steamed oysters with caviar. Tiger prawns marinated in shuto (sake, honey, mirin fermented fish intestines). Grilled bamboo shoots. Deep-fried crab. Milt monaka (flower shaped rice flour shells stuffed with fish sperm), okra, corn.

Sea bream and matsutake mushrooms in clear broth. Peas, fern, green yuzu.

Simmered stonefish, lobster. Winter melon, udo (wild mountain shoots), scallion.

Grilled Hiba Wagyu beef, red sea urchin, eggplant, wasabi, peppers.

Anago eel sushi, myoga buds (ginger).

Hiroshima sweets (too complicated to get into).

Working Lunch Day 2.

Shrimp and egg-yolk sushi, anago eel, sea bream roe. Fried and marinated greenling fish, pickled myoga, fava beans. Udo and squid dressed with pepper leaf buds. Grilled taro root with sea urchin, Daitokuji Temple natto (fermented soy beans).

Sea bream with kelp. Ise peninsula lobster with wasabi, yellow chives, udo and carrot.

Tilefish, wild plants with new tea, omelet strips, butterbur, white taro root stalks, fern, tea leaves. Grilled butterfish coated in dried mullet roe, tart cucumber sauce, shiitake mushrooms.

Grilled Omi beef with cherry blossoms, sweet pea sauce, paprika miso, shiso flowers. Temari sushi: sea bream, tuna, kohada (gizzard shad), anago eel, squid, smoked salmon. Deep-fried lotus root and mustard (pretty sure they mean mustard flower, rape blossoms) miso soup.

Parfait of matcha ice cream, sweet adzuki bean rice-flour dumplings, Castella cake.

Jill Biden saw a demonstration of how Hiroshima's famous signature dish is prepared. Somewhere along the way G7 guests were served oyster okonomiyaki.

Hiroshima's Okonomiyaki Academy came up with G7 versions:

France: galette
Britain: fish and chips
Germany: sausage, potatoes, sauerkraut
Italy: carbonara
Canada: apples and maple syrup
U.S.: hamburgers

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14850223

The neighborhood alarm just went off, 2:46 in the afternoon, in remembrance. I post this every year, sorry. It's terrifying.

The Sugar Plum Fairy:



It's snowing and I'm making sugar cookies. The perfect soundtrack:



From Solomon Volkov's "Balanchine's Tchaikovsky, Conversations with Balanchine on His Life, Ballet and Music":

"'The Nutcracker' is Tchaikovsky's masterpiece. He said beforehand that he would write music that would make everyone weep! I danced in 'The Nutcracker' as a child at the Maryinsky Theater. ... 'The Nutcracker' is a story by E. T. A. Hoffmann that was incredibly popular in Russia. ... They love him more there than in Germany. The Germans don't like Hoffmann for criticizing them. Hoffmann offended everyone, he was a true Romantic. ... 'The Nutcracker' is a ballet about Christmas. We used to have a fantastic Christmas in Petersburg. ... The tree had a wonderful scent, and the candles gave off their own aroma of wax. The tree was decorated with gold paper angels and stars, tangled up in silver 'rain,' or tinsel. I liked the fat glass pears -- they didn't break if they fell. ... Tchaikovsky remained a child all of his life, he felt things like a child. He liked the German idea that man in his highest development approaches the child. Tchaikovsky loved children as themselves, not as future adults. Children contain maximum possibilities. Those possibilities often do not develop, they are lost.

"The idea for all those dances belong to Petipa ... Petipa suggested Spanish, Arabian, and Russian dances. Tchaikovsky took a Georgian lullaby for the Arabian dance. It's a Georgian melody, not Arabian -- but who cares? ... The second act of 'Nutcracker' is more French than German. Petipa liked the idea of Konfituerenburg because at the time in Paris there was a fad for special spectacles in which various sweets were depicted by dancers. Actually, 'Nutcracker's' second act is an enormous balletic sweetshop. In Petersburg there was a store like that, it was called Eliseyevsky's: huge glass windows, rooms big enough for a palace, high ceilings, opulent chandeliers, almost like the ones at the Maryinsky. The floors at Eliseyevsky's were covered in sawdust, and you could not hear footsteps -- it was like walking on carpets. The store had sweets and fruits from all over the world, like in 'A Thousand and One Nights.' I used to walk past and look in the windows often. I couldn't buy anything there, it was too expensive.

"Everything that appears in the second act of 'Nutcracker' is a candy or something tasty. ... The Sugar Plum Fairy is a piece of candy and the dewdrops are made of sugar. The Buffon is a candy cane. It's all sugar! The Petersburg 'Nutcracker' also had Prince Coqueluche. Coqueluche means whooping cough. I think Prince Coqueluche was supposed to represent a lozenge or cough drop. ... All this makes up Konfituerenberg, land of sweets. ... They're supposed to make everyone's mouth water! ... I think that people also like 'Nutcracker' so much because nowadays everyone is interested in how children used to live and play. In my day there was no interest in that. No one asked children how they lived, what they thought. Children simply tried to become as much like adults as quickly as possible, and that was that."

Paris Opera:

The New York City Ballet, choreography by George Balanchine.

From Solomon Volkov's "Balanchine's Tchaikovsky, Conversations with Balanchine on His Life, Ballet and Music":

"'The Nutcracker' is Tchaikovsky's masterpiece. He said beforehand that he would write music that would make everyone weep! I danced in 'The Nutcracker' as a child at the Maryinsky Theatre. ... 'The Nutcracker' is a story by E. T. A. Hoffman that was incredibly popular in Russia. ... But Petipa did not develop the plot from the Hoffman story, he took the version by Dumas. ... Petipa was French, he could relate better to the French fairy tale. He never did learn how to speak Russian well. People say that when Petipa tried to speak Russian, he came up with all kinds of inadvertent obscenities.

"'The Nutcracker' is a ballet about Christmas. We used to have a fantastic Christmas in Petersburg. ... On Christmas night we had only the family at home: mother, auntie, and the children. And, of course, the Christmas tree. The tree had a wonderful scent, and the candles gave off their own aroma of wax. The tree was decorated with gold paper angels and stars, tangled up in silver 'rain,' or tinsel. I liked the fat glass pears -- they didn't break if they fell. ... Tchaikovsky remained a child all his life, he felt things like a child. He liked the German idea that man in his highest development approaches the child. Tchaikovsky loved children as themselves, not as future adults. Children contain maximum possibilities. Those possibilities often do not develop, they are lost.

"The second act of 'Nutcracker' is more French than German. Petipa liked the idea of Konfituerenburg because at the time in Paris there was a fad for special spectacles in which various sweets were depicted by dancers. Actually, 'Nutcracker's' second act is an enormous balletic sweetshop. In Petersburg there was a store like that, it was called Eliseyevsky's: huge glass windows big enough for a palace, high ceilings, opulent chandeliers, almost like the ones at the Maryinsky. The floors at Eliseyevsky's were covered with sawdust, and you could not hear footsteps -- it was like walking on carpets. The store had sweets and fruits from all over the world, like in 'A Thousand and One Nights.' I used to walk past and look in the windows often. I couldn't buy anything in there, it was too expensive. ... Everything that appears in the second act of 'Nutcracker' is a candy or something tasty. ... The Sugar Plum Fairy is a piece of candy and the dewdrops are made of sugar. The Buffon is a candy cane. It's all sugar! ... All this makes up Konfituerenburg, land of sweets. It was Hoffman's idea, but Petipa saw that it would be beautiful and interesting in a ballet."

"Halloween was last night. Children went out trick-or-treating, dressed as hobos or rich glamorous people, and some kids went as grownups: wore dark dowdy clothes, walked stiff, talked funny, and got sore at everybody. The candy they received, and sweet rolls and apples and quarters, they richly deserved. It was the end of October, when the long dark places between houses seem to reach out for you, poor innocent child, and draw you toward the shadows.

"Most of the trees have lost their leaves, except one old maple across from Clint and Irene Bunsen's, which was slow to turn color, a luminous phosphorescent yellow -- at night, with the streetlight behind it. It was so bright you could read by it. Most other trees were bare, so sound travels farther, and last night, in the middle of supper, you could hear a door slam half a block away, and hear seven fast sharp footsteps, XXXXXXX. The door whanged when it hit the frame and bounced back open, and there were seven slow footsteps going back to shut it. Thunk. Everyone around the supper table stopped chewing. A man's voice: 'Get in here! It servers you right!' And a boy:'I can't talk to you, you're crazy!' Forks hovered as everyone around the table held their breath, waiting for the gunshot. The door was opened and closed, and there were muffled angry voices. My mother sighed, 'I always dread the week before an election.' she said."

The Raven:

http:

His parents were Vietnamese immigrants, grew up in a food insecure community and household:

"When I think of family meals that my mom cooked at home, I think of a bare chicken carcass that she got from the butcher shop because it was free. Credit to a lot of our mothers in their efforts to innovate dishes, to create recipes, to nourish their family, to make things delicious, because that's what love is."

Phu tried concentrating on traditional Vietnamese food for his restaurant, but came back to his mother's food. That with all his training as a chef he couldn't cook better than his mother and other Vietnamese mothers who had spent their lives cooking.

Couple of years ago I read a book about a famous chef who used to have an exclusive expensive restaurant. His staff spent days in finicky preparation of complicated high tech innovations, but he said what stumped him, what he couldn't do no matter how he tried, was make a good tortilla. In Mexico he'd watch women make tortillas -- perfect every time.