One of the prized landmarks of Kanazawa is Omicho Market. Here you can buy fresh seafood, vegetables, flowers and more everyday except Sunday. The only thing I have bought here so far is flowers, I am too chicken to venture into the seafood arena. Right now it crab season. There are what seem to be hundreds of different types of crabs: hairy Hokkaido crabs, tiny local crabs, giant, spiny purple crabs. The prices range from 800 yen to 30000 yen (add a decimal point 2 numerals in, you get a general idea of what it would be in u.s. dollars).
The japanese consider the guts and brain to be equally delicious as the actual meat. This is good because some of the crabs here are so small that it would be too unsatisfying to pick out and settle for just the legmeat, although not good for me. I am not into eating crab guts.
Hopefully by the time we leave here I will be able to say I have purchased something other than cymbidium orchids and tortillas from the Diamond Store in Omicho Market. A few weird restaraunt experiences involving raw wormlike sea creatures and whole, ungutted cooked fish, where there was no mistaking the fine taste of the fish filet and the foul taste of when you had actually (and not intentionally) reached the bowels of the fish, and of course, fish ovaries, kind of turned me off of the whole fish thing. But I think I am almost ready to make a fresh start of it, or maybe I'll just buy more flowers and look.
3 comments:
I simply don't know what I would do without your blog. You have no idea what it means to me. My raw chicken story pales in comparison to your culinary adventures. I will never complain about being served raw chicken again.
Melissa, I would always rather be served raw fish than raw chicken, that is just wrong, although I do know quite a few people who have eaten it (unhappily, I might add). The absolute worse thing I have seen on a menu, that I could read, was raw horse meat, and let's hope neither one of us ever has that plate set before us!
I too wish I were braver with such exotic culinary delicacies, but I have a hard enough time eating a chicken with out it's head cut off. I guess like many American's I like my animal food objects to no longer resemble their animal likenesses, as if they magically grow on trees or something. I you do become brave enough to try something new, I want to hear about it though.
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