In my favorite movie, Things Change, the elderly Sicilian shoemaker (played by Don Ameche) is lured to a fateful appointment by the promise, “There will be shoes there.”
At the photo shoot for the Japanese menu in our May issue, there were not only no shoes, but there was also no water, and no electricity. Also, there was no Japan.
The location was a beautiful Japanese house and garden in Philadelphia called Shofuso. We arrived at the crack of dawn on one of the hottest July days I can remember. The absence of water and electricity didn’t really scare me. Cooking without creature comforts occasionally can make my job exciting and fun. I knew that the food, though seemingly exotic, was actually incredibly simple; and besides, our crew, as a rule, consists of real troupers. We brought a portable butane cassette stove to make the broth, cook the fish, and sauté the eggplant. Everything else was pretty much prepped ahead. We set ourselves up outside under a small tent—far from the house, lest we burn it down—and proceeded to ignore the heat as best we could. By 7 A.M., it had to be at least 100 degrees. By midday, it was worse.
Our cooler was losing the battle, and the dessert, an elderflower jelly served with honeydew melon, was starting to melt. We begged the Shofuso staff for a corner of its refrigerator, which turned out to be surprisingly warm, and desperately tried to keep the jelly set just long enough to shoot it. Assistant food editor Andrea Albin, who was riding shotgun on the shoot, painstakingly babysat the jelly; she remains emotionally scarred to this day.
As the day wore on, we became increasingly heat-deranged, but this was probably good, since it allowed us to appreciate the comedy of the situation. We weren’t permitted to wear shoes or go barefoot in the house. We trudged around in flip-flops while outside, but had to slip on socks each and every time we entered the house. Sometimes we’d have to go in and out five times in a minute, carrying food back and forth, and each time we’d have to sock and de-sock.
By the time we packed up for the evening, we were beside ourselves. Our food had perished in the heat, and the priceless carp in the meditation pond were starting to look tasty. But when I look at those pages in the issue, I’m transported to Japan, and I see verdant green, cool, calm. Behold, the wonder of photography.
View all the pictures and recipes from the Learning Japanese menu in our May 2008 issue.
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