The Least Useful Guide to Fukuoka

For the past few days, there has been a big stock pot occupying my gas range. What is in the pot is oden, stewed many things; mainly various deep-fried fish cakes, some vegetables, some soy proteins, some animal protein, and some indescribable ingredients (have you heard of konjak ? and Chikuwa-bu? ), relatively lightly seasoned with soy sauce and a bit of mirin (a kind of sweet rice wine) .  

The variety of the fish cakes is really countless. Almost everything; quail eggs, sausages, gyoza and shumai (both are Chinese dumplings), root vegetables, and so on so forth, can get into the centre of the cakes.

Although I try to have a strong willpower not to buy too many fish cakes when I go to an oden-ingredient shop, I always end up with a huge shopping bag of fish cakes. Because the shop keeps releasing new product covering different things with minced fish.

To balance the protein and fat intake from the fish cakes and vegetable consumption (balanced diet!), I would have to cook a great amount of vegetables (basically root vegetables which wouldn’t fall apart while being cooked). They need a bit of preparation to be thrown into the Oden pot, parboiling both the vegetables and fish cakes, removing harsh taste by rubbing with salt, skewing bite-sized ingredients, all should be done independently. Having done all the cooking procedures, I always find something missed. This time I forgot to buy octopus legs and add something green before serving in order to make the Oden look appetising.

The result is this big pot.

We are eating the oden for the next several days, for lunches and dinners. Then a good amount of stocks which contains the flavour and taste of the ingredients will be left, which will give you another pleasure.

You can cook Udon noodle, or other noodles in the stock, which will be a substantial lunch on the day 4 or 5 of your Oden days.