The scene
In the end, all three sisters made it to their father's funeral, including Sachi, with the help of a coworker. They meet their teenaged half-sister Suzu who seems perhaps exceedingly polite and maybe a bit shy.
Suzu.
With the passing of their father, Suzu was in a weird spot. Still underage and unable to live on her own, she would've had to put up with a stepmother she didn't particularly like and who probably didn't have much of an attachment to Suzu either. As the sisters are about to take the train back to Kamakura, Sachi asks Suzu if she'd like to come live with them. Momentarily taken aback by the surprising offer, she eventually excitedly agrees to move in with her sisters.
This scene happens the day Suzu moves in. Her belongings have just been transported to Kamakura and Chika has shown her to her new room. When Sachi asks Yoshino to help with cooking, Yoshino wonders if they should order something in instead, but Sachi says she'll cook some noodles. Chika chimes in and asks if they could make lotus root and eggplant tempura too. Suzu politely offers to help but Sachi tells her that they'll take care of it while Suzu should start unpacking her stuff.
We see Yoshino and Sachi cooking in the kitchen. Sachi is in charge of the tempura while Yoshino busies herself with rinsing the steaming hot soba noodles with cold water.
Sachi and Yoshino cooking.
Sachi's eggplant and lotus root tempura sizzling in the oil.
They then bring the food to the living room porch opening to the garden. Suzu and Chika are in the middle of eating and we also meet Mr. Hamada, Chika's chill boyfriend who runs a sporting goods store in town.
Chika, Hamada and Suzu eating while waiting for more tempura and noodles.
Everyone gathered on the porch.
The food
This time we know almost exactly what's for dinner. We already know there's lotus root and eggplant tempura and we also see a big bamboo plate of soba noodles. Mr. Hamada says the pickles are delicious which confirms we once again have some tsukemono (Japanese pickles). The drink of choice is, again, likely tea.
Tempura
Tempura is the Japanese way of battering and deep-frying food. I understand the Portuguese are the ones responsible for bringing the idea of deep-fried food to Japan, but since then, as with many Japanese foods, the Japanese have made it into their own, distinctly Japanese thing. A classic example of this is ramen, which is originally a Chinese dish but is nowadays one of the staples of Japanese cuisine.
I'm nowhere near an expert on deep-fried foods, but as far as I understand, tempura is generally somewhat lighter and fluffier than other deep-frying methods. Sachi here is deep-frying eggplant and lotus root, but you can make tempura out of just about any vegetables as well as seafood.
Zaru soba (cold soba noodles)
Zaru soba is a cold noodle dish commonly eaten in the summer.
Soba noodles are honestly pretty neat. Good both hot and cold and they're made of buckwheat which makes them rich in protein and fibre (plus - 100% buckwheat soba is gluten-free!) and thus healthy, but it also makes them quite tasty on their own. They actually have enough flavour (somewhat nutty, perhaps) in them that you could just eat them by themselves and have a pretty good time, especially if you add a bit of sauce on 'em. This is what we seem to be seeing here too.
The plate Yoshino brings out has a big ol' pile of noodles topped with some strips of nori seaweed. Now, I've made zaru soba before, and most recipes will tell you to serve them with mentsuyu, a cold dipping sauce made with soy sauce and tuna flakes as its main ingredients. However - I can't see any of the characters dipping their noodles into anything. Yes, everyone has a bowl in their hand and it could be that's where the dipping sauce is, but I doubt this because Sachi also puts a piece of tempura in her bowl and I don't think you're supposed to dip tempura in mentsuyu (more on this later).
We also get to learn some Japanese table manners. See how Yoshino first moves the noodles into her small bowl from the communal plate? It is impolite to eat directly from a communal plate, so you should first move the food to your own plate before eating. Double dipping is also considered rude, as it damn well should be in any civilized society.
Tsukemono
As with their breakfast, the sisters have again brought out the pickles which are in this bowl. And why not - as I mentioned before, tsukemono is something you'll likely have in the fridge at all times and they're an easy side dish that go well with just about anything. It looks like we've got carrots and daikon radish, but there's also a red vegetable that I don't recognize.
Tea
Yeah, that's tea again. Now, at this point I'd like to say that I don't think I'm a picky eater at all - in fact I'll try just about anything and try to appreciate it - but cold green tea isn't really my thing, even though I like hot green tea and other varieties of tea too. At first I honestly found cold green tea nearly revolting. However, it's a very common drink with a meal in Japan, for example most restaurants I've been to serve it chilled (sometimes with ice), so I guess I'll just need to get used to it.
Recreating the food
Here is my recreation of this moving day dinner:
Soba noodles are very easy to cook. Bring your water to a boil and throw in your soba and let simmer for anywhere from 5-8 minutes, depending on the instructions in the package, then take off the heat and immediately rinse with ice cold water (if you're making a cold soba dish like zaru soba) to wash excess starch off of them and to stop the cooking process. The nori strips are simply a nori sheet cut into bits with scissors. Usually you would eat zaru soba with a dipping sauce (mentsuyu) and green onion, but I didn't see any in the scene so I left that part out. I've had it before, however, and it's a nice, light and extremely simple meal to whip up in just a few moments.
The tsukemono is the same stuff as in the breakfast post: cucumber, carrot and daikon radish pickled with the easy pickling powder I bought at Tokyokan. By the way, this stuff is kombu-flavored. I think I'll be buying more since I find the results absolutely delicious, however I'll also be trying pickling vegetables from scratch soon so I get different kinds of pickles.
The tsukemono is the same stuff as in the breakfast post: cucumber, carrot and daikon radish pickled with the easy pickling powder I bought at Tokyokan. By the way, this stuff is kombu-flavored. I think I'll be buying more since I find the results absolutely delicious, however I'll also be trying pickling vegetables from scratch soon so I get different kinds of pickles.
And finally, the tempura itself. As mentioned before, I'm not an expert on deep-fried foods and don't really eat them often, much less make them myself. In fact, I had never deep-fried anything myself. However, now I had the task of making tempura in front of me and I was honestly kind of terrified. Would I destroy my kitchen and kill myself in a gigantic grease fire explosion? Would I suck at making tempura and only manage to make it oily and nasty? There was only one way to find out.
Eggplant and lotus root cut up for the tempura. I was happy to find out East-Asian shops in Helsinki have both fresh and frozen lotus root (this was from a bag of the frozen stuff I'd bought some time ago)
My first lotus root pieces sizzling in the oil.
Yes - it turned out making tempura was pretty fun and I had batter left, so I decided to throw in some other random veggies I had, like green onions and carrots!
Some lotus root tempura pieces.
I have to be honest, the whole frying things in scalding hot oil had me feeling some amount of apprehension, but in the end I was actually quite surprised by how easy making tempura was.
You can't see any in the scene, but tempura is usually served with a dipping sauce. I decided to try it anyway since I was making tempura for the first time ever. Again looking at Just One Cookbook's recipe, it turned out tempura sauce was essentially the same sauce as the basic noodle sauce used in many Japanese dishes: dashi, soy sauce, mirin and sugar boiled for a short while so that the sugar dissolves. So... maybe they were actually dipping both the tempura and the noodles in the same sauce into the scene? Ahh, oh well.
Trying it out
The hot, fluffy tempura (with its dipping sauce) and the light, cool noodles were a great pairing, and it was fun to see how different vegetables worked in a tempura form. I'm not a massive fan of lotus root, but the tempura was great, and the carrot and green onion tempura also were very tasty. Some of my eggplant slices were a bit too thick and were still cool in the middle, which was not optimal, although the thinner pieces were nice. Tsukemono goes with just about anything and I could eat that stuff all day long. Overall, I would say my tempura adventure was a success, and I wouldn't mind making some again, perhaps with different vegetables, mushrooms or shrimp!Finally, a warning - I severely misjudged the amount of tempura the recipe would make. Since there was such a huge pile of it and I was cooking and eating by myself, some of it had time to cool before I got to it, and a whole lot of it was left over too, and I found out that tempura is best served piping hot, and it's not an amazing experience when eaten cold. So I definitely recommend having a friend around to help with cooking and eating if you want to try making tempura yourself.
Recipes used
Tempura: Just One Cookbook
Tempura dipping sauce: Just One Cookbook
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