kaki

'it was a clear, warm day, with a sky as clean and deep as laundry blueing above the buildings.'

revolutionary road, richard yates

and so it is autumn in melbourne. and my, the sky has been perfect these past few days. in japan i know feathertouch spring is blooming now, while autumn and its yellow orange red momiji waits in the leaves of the mountains. but when aki comes around it will bring with it what singularly evokes autumnal japan for me: kaki. bare-branched trees laden with orange kaki fruit in the countryside, picked kaki hanging to dry on the futon poles outside old windows, kaki branches for sale at the flowershops to make those quintessentially japanese arrangements, piles of orange fruit artfully arranged in the depaato basement gourmet shops, and kaki arranged simply in bowls on tables at home.

i went looking for kaki recipes but they are quite hard to come by online. i think not even the wonderful maki from justhungry mentions one. but i do have a japanese recipe for brown sugar poached kaki in a book i have by tomoko nagao called vegemania. i have translated the recipe and popped it into downloadable form over there to the right under the vegetarian recipes link - helping to share the joy of kaki.

you can see tomoko nagao's website here. if you are keen on beautifully presented modern vegetarian japanese food and have a japanese dictionary (or indeed are happily japanese and can dispense with the translating aspect), you can acquire vegemania via kinokuniya's bookweb (search under japanese books for ISBN 4-579-20759-9).

unless otherwise noted, the photos are from flickr - searched under 'kaki'. (sorry, in an oversight i didn't keep track of individual flickrers. if anyone sees their image posted here and would prefer not to please notify me and i will remove it. or if you recognise the image please notify me and i will credit it appropriately)

koson's nutcraker atop a parsimmon via ukiyo-e gallery

vegemania by tomoko nagao

tomoko nagao's brownsugar poached kaki and fig recipe