The Kamogawa Food Detectives

I didn't know if I wanted to read this book since it was so similar in its plot to another series. This book reminds us so much of of Cafe Funiculi Funicula in the three books of 'Before the Coffee Gets Cold'. But Libby gave me a 'skip the queue' digital copy, so I borrowed it. Never question why one gets books early. Oof.

It's 'The Kamogawa Food Detectives' (originally published in Japanese in 2013) by Hisashi Kashiwai, and translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood in October 2023. We're in Kamogawa Diner in Kyoto. The nondescript diner is run by retired policeman Nagare Kamogawa and his daughter Koshi. Nagare's wife Kikuko has passed for two decades, and he never remarried. They don't do any sort of advertisement for the diner, and the one-liner ad in a food magazine didn't provide any addresses or details. They would like to keep it that way.

After Nagare and his daughter Koishi meet the clients to get all the details from their memories, it usually takes about two weeks to investigate and then recreate the dish. Father and daughter do the investigating and cooking respectively, re-creating their clients' memories of 'lost' dishes of their childhood, or a dish a deceased loved one used to cook for them. Nagare and Koishi help their clients to recreate those happy experiences, ease grief and pain, and even help them come to terms with some things that they themselves never knew, until hindsight alerted them to it.

There're six stories titled according to the foods missed by the clients. The book terms it as 'chapters' — (I) Nabeyaki Udon (II) Beef Stew (III) Mackerel Sushi (IV) Tonkatsu (V) Napolitan Spaghetti (VI) Nikujaga. Once I read the first story, I realized that there isn't anything supernatural in this book. It's simply a deep understanding of recipes, how people cook, how they think, and how this father-daughter team go about recreating these specific dishes for their clients.

(I) Nabeyaki Udon 鍋焼きうどん is one of my favorite homecooked dishes. It's so easy to whip out. And this story got it right. It's the ingredients that make every home's version of nabeyaki udon different. The water, dashi and udon used make a huge difference to one's memories of this meal. Hideki Kuboyama missed his deceased wife Chieko's nabeyaki udon and would love to taste it one more time before he moves to north to Takasaki and marries his new wife Nami. 

It was quite fun to know that Chieko's little chant of "masa, suzu and fuji" before she sets out to do groceries referred to the shops she needed to stop by. The food detectives finally figured out that it meant Masugata (market), Hanazuzu (for fresh udon and prawn tempura) and Fujiya (for Matsumae kombu and Soda bonito and mackerel flakes to make dashi). The final touch was hilarious. Nagare had asked Koishi to throw a whole fistful of powder into the soup at the end. Koishi didn't know what it was. Neither did the readers. It was quite funny when Nagare finally told her/us.

'Instant dashi powder. He'll need to get used to that stuff if he's going to live with Nami.'

'So that's why he thought the stock was a little saltier than he remembered!'

'Yes. If I can just get him to think that's how Chieko's version always tasted, then even if Nami's version is a little less ... delicate, he shouldn't have notice the difference.'

The second story of (II) Beef Stew has got nothing to do with the last story of (III) Nikujaga. These are very different dishes. The beef stew in this story was really referring to a western-style stew with roux that Nobuko Nadaya ate in Kyoto in 1957, like 55 years ago. With patchy details provided by Nobuko who couldn't even remember the name of the young man she met and spent the day with, the detectives found the beef stew in question, eaten at a restaurant named Furuta Grill and even retracing her steps spent in Kyoto that day. Ahhh... of a missed chance at a possible love and marriage, and regret. 

(VI) Nikujaga is 肉じゃが, a meat (usually thinly sliced beef) and potato stew. It's literally niku 肉 - meat and jagaimoゃがいも - potatoes. Everyone calls it the 'taste of home', of 'mom's cooking' おふくろの味. I call it おばあちゃんの味 because my paternal grandmother sorted out my diet mostly growing up. She made it more salty than sweet for me. I loved it on rice.

In this story, a self-made entrepreneur and slight cocky Hisahiko Tsuda is looking for the nikujaga of his childhood, a dish that he thinks his mother made with high quality ingredients because his family then was well-off. He bears anger and resentment towards his stepmother Sachiko and not-blood-related older stepsister, and recalls an incident in childhood in which he found two pots of nikujaga on her stove, one with meat and one without. He's even slightly overbearing in his abrupt attitude and tone to Nagare and Koishi by telling them that if they can't recreate these flavors, he will have a celebrity chef do it with A5-grade Matsusaka beef and Hokkaido potatoes. 

Hisahiko tasted Nagare and Koshi's nikujaga and said that it tasted exactly like Sachiko's stew, not his mother. Nagare promptly put him in his place. It was nowhere near high quality beef as assumed. It was canned beef his mother had used, because that was a lean cut of beef — Yamto-ni / soy-stewed beef. Hisahiko didn't like fatty beef. He remembered the stew with a reddish tinge because he hated carrots and the mother had to mash carrots before they went into the stew. By the time Sachiko took over the cooking, Hisahiko had stopped minding carrots and she just started chopping them up the usual way. There was a whole book of recipes both his mother and stepmother wrote and shared for him.

'You only ever ate one type of nikujaga stew, Hisahiko. One mother simply handed the baton over to another.'

'So Sachiko went to the trouble of making a separate stew, just for me...' murmured Hisahiko, gazing into space as he remembered the two pots on the stove.

'Still, I imagine that whatever that celebrity chef cooked up for you will make much better content for a trendy women's magazine. I caught a glimpse of it just now, and it's certainly a good fit for your image. Canned meat would come across a little rustic, wouldn't it?'

I quite like the little stories behind the dishes. I especially enjoyed how Food Detective Nagare linked up the meagre clues, and seemingly solved the issues without much trouble. Like magic. Hehehe. I like how the author set the clues to connect together to piece together a story from each character's incoherent memories.

I was seriously hungry after finishing the book. These were all the comfort foods of my childhood, and up till now! These are the dishes that I can cook without a recipe only because I remember the flavors and still hold memories of how my grandmother used to do it. 

Except for the Napolitan spaghetti. Or maybe it's spelt as 'Neapolitan' in some places. That was and still is the one thing I absolutely dislike in its Japanese pasta iteration. It was the one childhood dish that put me off ketchup forever. I had severe allergies as a kid, and there were limited food items I could eat. I wasn't and am still not allergic to cheese, gluten, wheat and tomatoes. I remember people kept feeding me pizza and that Japanese Ketchup Pasta in Singapore and Japan. Ugh.