New Year's Eve Crab FEAST

Do check out today's entry on Cooking in Japan of the traditional New Years Day breakfast Lucas prepared for us this morning.
Photos from our New Year's eve dinner at the Yakitori lady's bar. Text to come soon, but check out all that crab. I reckon we had enough crab for 10 people, and I laugh to think how much all that would have cost back in Melbourne!

Fresh grilled crab legs. Nothing but a hot charcoal fire to bring out the taste of the sweet crab meat. Incredibly good. And that pile just kept growing. For about 40 minutes she just kept piling more and more crab legs on that little plate! We had a little pointy poking-out tool to get at our crab meat, but I found it easier to just chomp down on a leg, suck and see what happened. Sucking down all the crab juice that way was a bonus too.

Above and below: Crab Nabe; a soup made with seafood stock (which I could drink by the jugful), more crab legs (incredible to say, but we were seriously crabbed out by the end of this meal), silken tofu, wombok (Asian cabbage), onions and enoki mushrooms - which are really cheap here compared to Australia.


Below: Toshi Koshi soba - Okinawan style. This is traditionally what you eat just before going to visit the temple on New Year's Eve. Check out that slab 'o' pork on the top. It just fell apart at the touch of our chopsticks - fantastic! Interestingly, the noodles had the exact taste and texture of my Italian nonna's homemade tagliatelle. Marco Polo's legacy brought to life! That scary looking pink swirly stuff is fish cake and Lucas assures me that the pink colour is all natural! I have some scepticism.