The rhetoric of food is more than just words or language. Its about communicating a variety of ideas. Each of these pieces, whether it be recipes, podcasts, Tasty videos, annotated bibliographies, or reviews, all have a reason for existing. It’s because the author wanted to share those ideas that they had. And there’s always a reason for why the author wants to share these things. That’s why we have to look beyond just what is written and look at the context, the history of both the author and the time they lived in, as well as the audience he wants to speak to. By looking at these things, we can see why a piece of work is so successful (or not). That’s why it’s important for us to be able to communicate with each other so we can share in these experiences.

For some people, they write because they want to show the disparity between certain groups of people. For me, I found a photo essay that demonstrated how different school lunches can be across the world. For other people, they may want to share something that their mother cooked since it brings back so many wonderful memories for them. Sometimes, these recipes have been passed down for an even longer time. All of these things tell us about each other as people, and with the written word, these experiences can last for a very long time.

The assigned reading that I most enjoyed would definitely have to be “A Guide to Venezuela Arepas.” As I am very interested in online content/media, I found this piece to be a joy to read and just see the animations that must have taken hours to make. The commentary was also humorous, making it easy to digest. There are so many versions of the arepas, and it made me understand that each person makes it their own way. It reminds me of the Japanese savory pancake, okonomiyaki, because like arepas, okonomiyaki is also a dish that is made “your own way.” It was also once a staple, back when Japan was still struggling after World War II. Since reading, the article, it has made me interested in trying out the arepa, and that’s the kind of work that I want to be able to create. I want to make something that gets other people curious about Japanese food and culture so they can try it out for themselves.

The favorite reading that I have chosen for myself would definitely have to be “Rice, Noodle, Fish” by Matt Goulding. Matt Goulding has such great narrative voice as he describes his travels and naturally, as an award winning writer, he is great at describing experiences with food. I didn’t expect for him to make me care about okonomiyaki, as much as I did, but he told Fernando Lopez’s story with such great detail that it made me care. Lopez was pretty much a nobody, an outsider from Guatemala in Japan, until he found his way to an apprenticeship under an okonomiyaki chef. And even being released from his apprenticeship didn’t mean he was successful immediately. He had to struggle to build his top-selling restaurant in Hiroshima. Matt Goulding tells stories about food that I had never read before, and I absolutely love his writing, so check out his books or the website he contributes to, Roads & Kingdoms.

“Photo essays”are a bit of an interesting genre, as they do not always feature text despite having essay in their name. Instead, photos become the main focus for the author to use to convey some kind of idea. In my five photo essays I’ve chosen, they all feature varying levels of text, but they all have photos.

Sources:

A Worldwide Day’s Worth of Food
This is what school lunches look like around the world
Photo Essay: Learning About Olive Oil With California Olive Ranch.
How Not to Live: A Photo Essay on State Fair Food.
Japan: A Food Photo Essay

Always:

Photos:
Photos are a must for the photo essay genre. They are featured in all 5 of the sources I have listed above. Their arrangement just might be different and may have the text formatted around it, such as the slideshows in “A Worldwide Day’s Worth of Food” and “This is what school lunches look like around the world,” or just have them in-body as the reader scrolls downwards on the website.

Have a theme:
Each of the texts I have picked have a general theme that the author has chosen to put them together as a collection. It could be daily eating habits, school lunches, olive oil, State Fair food, or just Japan, which the authors have chosen to do in the above sources. There is not just a senseless arrangement of pictures.

Convey an idea or illicit emotion:
The reason for this arrangement is that the author is trying to give a sense of what is going on with their theme. For example, TIME’s “A Worldwide Day’s Worth of Food” (USA) shows some levels of disparity between cultures, and similarly, Independent’s “This is what school lunches look like around the world” (UK) shows how people should be concerned how their children or eating compared to other countries. Some may just be purely comedic, like “How Not to Live: A Photo Essay on State Fair Food.”

Sometimes:

Text:
The amount of text may vary for each photo essay, to the point that a photo might not even have a caption, leaving the interpretation up to the viewer. This is the case with “Photo Essay: Learning About Olive Oil With California Olive Ranch,” but not the case for the rest of the texts which always have text with the photo. “Japan: A Food Photo Essay” notably features no introduction and has very short captions.

Slideshow:
Of the sources, 3/5 of them actually show the photos in a slideshow with captions alongside the photo. Thinking about it, I feel as though I’ve treated the work I’ve done for Jpop Dallas to be like photo essays, but I wonder if anyone else would think of it as being like a photo essay according to my list of characteristics?

Online or in print:
“A Worldwide Day’s Worth of Food” is actually only an excerpt of “What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets,” showing that photo essays can be in print too.

It took a while but I believe I can settle on a topic that I truly am interested in. I wasn’t certain until I talked with Thea, but I really feel like it would be interesting to compare the recipes for what people consider to be the “top” foods of Osaka and how they vary across regions, even if some of the opinions are from blogs or videos. Some of the foods that people really like can be found in these lists:

http://www.withhusbandintow.com/foods-to-eat-in-osaka/

https://triplelights.com/blog/10-foodsmust-tryosaka-91

Most notably, I would love to take a look at okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancake), takoyaki (battered octopus balls), and karaage (fried chicken). I remember the occasion where I walked down a single street in Osaka and every minute, there would be another place selling their own variation of takoyaki or karaage. Similarly, there are many variations on recipes found on the internet as well as well known cookbooks such as Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art which has adapted recipes for cooking in America and Tadashi Ono’s Japanese Soul Cooking, which has recipes from “Tokyo and beyond”. I am also interested in Japanese cookbooks which have been translated rather than written in English first. There is one additional book I’ve found that is interestingly published in both English and Japanese within a single book called Recipes of Japanese Cooking by Yuko Fujita. There is even a documentary called “Wa-shoku ~Beyond Sushi~” which details the westernization of some of these Japanese dishes.

I really would love to see how recipes have changed across regions because I know that I had to adapt my own recipe based on what I could find at HEB.

The only thing I’m not really sure about is if I should stick to those three foods or do less/more. Maybe upon further look at the material.

Continuing with the theme of Japanese food, I decided that I wanted to look at some of the history of Japanese food and how they developed into the modern day forms that we know (ramen, sushi, fried chicken, etc). However, I have to do more research to see exactly what materials are available in English. What little I do know is that Osaka is generally considered the “food capital” of Japan, and there is even a saying that Osaka is “bringing ruin upon oneself by extravagance in food.” I wanted to narrow down the idea even further to how Osaka became the center for “Japanese fried food” but I’ve hit a few dead ends in searching specifically about fried food and also pieces on Osaka specifically.

There is one book, “Sushi and Beyond: One Family’s Remarkable Journey Through the Greatest Food Nation on Earth,” by Michael Booth that I found via Google that seems to be about Japanese food in general. Michael Booth seems to be an accomplished writer for a variety of magazines and newspapers from what I can find, but I don’t really know what else could possibly make him a “qualified” writer. Is just being published in a magazine or newspaper enough?

Further searches on the UT libraries search engine seemed to show that looking for “Japan cuisine” and “Japanese food” will net me almost different results for the top 5. Is anyone else experimenting with their search queries? “Japanese food” seemed to give me, on average, older books in the top 5 while “Japan cuisine” gave me some results post-2000. I find it interesting that just synonyms can make a large difference.

Studying abroad in Japan naturally led me to trying out new foods. In Osaka, Japan, I discovered the wonders of Japanese fried food. Within the bustling Namba ward of Osaka, there were these succulent pieces of chicken with a slight crisp on the outside that were ever so pleasant to bite into.  This Japanese fried chicken, or karaage, left a deep impression in my mind. Never had I ever had such juicy chicken in my entire life, and it took less than 15 minutes to cook after dredging it. Most people would imagine fried chicken as being salty, but karaage was different. While it does have some saltiness, the lemon helps cut straight through that flavor. The chicken thigh itself was tender which contrasted the perfect crispy fry on the outside. When I had this chicken, I knew I wanted to try to reproduce it at home.

The best part of karaage is the ease of preparation and the scale at which it can be produced. A week’s worth of protein can be prepared and served with just rice. For college students, this can be especially desirable once they have learned to fry food. Karaage is notably also included in many lunch boxes sold in Japan and a staple of a loving mother’s homemade lunch box as well.

The Recipe

Adapted from Namiko Chen’s recipe
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes
Serves: 3-4 people

Ingredients

• 1 lb. chicken thigh without bones
• Sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• ¼ cup corn starch (potato starch, or katakuriko, gives a crunchier coating)
• ¼ cup all-purpose flour
• Oil (high smoke point oils like vegetable, corn, sunflower, and peanut work)
• Lemon wedges

Marinade

• 1 inch ginger
• 8 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. sake (or dry sherry)
• 1 tsp. sugar

Tools

• 8 inch knife
• A cutting board
• 2 bowls for mixing
• Plastic wrap
• A half wok or pot (woks are safer!)
• Tongs
• Grater
• Plate with paper towel
• Thermometer for frying (strongly recommended)
• Garlic presser (optional)

Marinating the Chicken

1: Begin by cutting the chicken thigh into pieces that are about 2 inches each. Make sure that all of the pieces are the same size so that the fry will be even. Feel free to remove any amount of fat to preference at this step.

2: Place the chicken into a bowl and season with sea salt and black pepper.

3: Grate the ginger with the grater and mince the garlic. A garlic presser or using the flat side of the knife to crush the garlic is fine.

4: Combine the ginger, garlic, and other marinade ingredients in the bowl with the chicken. Ensure that all of the chicken has some of the marinade coating it.

5: Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Longer is better, because the marinade will soak into the chicken.

Frying the Chicken

1: Get a wok or pot and put about an inch of oil in it. Less is possible but requires moving the chicken more to get an even fry for a longer duration.

2: Set the stove on high, heating up the oil to about 360°F.

3: While waiting for the oil to heat up, the starch and flour can be mixed together in one bowl and then added to the bowl with the chicken. The mix does not have to be perfectly even as it results in different textures for each piece.

4: Check if the oil is ready. This can be done by putting in a bit of the flour-starch mixture and seeing if it bubbles or by using your thermometer to check the temperature.

5: Put about 3-6 pieces of chicken into the oil slowly. Avoid overcrowding the wok or pot. Putting too much chicken into the oil will lower its temperature resulting in soggier chicken.

6: Cook the chicken for about 90 seconds while maintaining the temperature. More chicken can be added if the temperature of the oil needs to be lowered. If the oil is smoking, the temperature is definitely too hot and must be turned down. If there are absolutely no bubbles coming up to the surface, the temperature is too low.

7: Remove the chicken when it is a light golden brown color and put it onto the plate with the paper towel. Do this for the rest of the chicken before frying a second time.

8: Fry the chicken for a second time for about 45 seconds or until it is a nice golden brown color. Place back onto another plate with a paper towel when done.

9: Serve the chicken with a wedge of lemon.

The typical recipe contains at least a list of ingredients with their measurements and instructions on how to prepare the dish. What is a recipe for then if not just those two items though? A question posed by Gopnik is “What’s the recipe for?” A recipe can mean much more than just a simple instruction book. According to Gopnik, it can be “self-revelation.” The recipe can have an introduction detailing the story or the history behind the food itself, the discovery of the food by the author, or even just a reason for why they chose to write the recipe. For example, Fisher describes in “The Art of Eating” that minestrone is “probably the most satisfying soup in the world for people who are hungry.”  Interestingly, two aspects that Fisher’s minestrone recipe is missing is the number of servings and the preparation and cook time that many other recipes have such as V’nut- Beyond Redemption’s “Japanese Chicken Karaage (Fried Chicken).” Her recipe lacks an introduction, but includes the total time (1hr 20mins), serving size, yield size, and a lot of commentary such as “Don’t put only a few pieces,” and “If you see bubbles as soon as you put a wooden chop stick into the oil, this is too hot.” So another answer could be that maybe the recipe or cook book is that it “should supply the rules, the deep structure—a fixed, underlying grammar that enables you to use all the recipes you find” as stated by Gopnik. Recipes come in all shapes and sizes, with some lacking an introduction, the time to cook, or serving size, and maybe someone can try to write a recipe without measurements or instructions. In general, a recipe seems to just talk about the preparation of a food.

With all recipe writing though, there’s more than just the form. There’s also the content in the form of a recipe, which is written by the author for a given audience. As in Fisher’s minestrone recipe, she wants to write for an audience that is hungry and wants to make soup. An interview by the New York Times in 1990 states that while many others were writing about “the struggle for power and security,” she instead chose to write about food. Her reason for writing is instead that “our three basic needs, for food and security and love are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.” It is a basic need and a love for it that makes her want to write about food. It’s a combination of the author’s experiences and what they want that a given text exists.

Brown and her book, “Good and Cheap,” was made with another idea in mind. Brown wanted to write about dishes that could be made with “$4 or less,” showing that her target audience could be beginners or people who are on a budget, and it was published during a time where the American people were still struggling from the downturn of the economy. There’s context for why the recipe exists. With the idea of “$4 or less” and that the book should be freely distributed, she had hoped that more people could eat well despite the many struggles of the middle class and below. Brown shows that experience of living in that time by writing such recipes, showing her expertise.

So a great recipe does more than just state a dish and how to make it with a given list of ingredients. V’nut- Beyond Redemption’s recipe may have more features of a recipe with the serving size, cook time, and yield size, but it does not hold the same strength as recipes that are found in Fisher’s or Brown’s books.  A great recipe brings you in as the author displays their expertise through storytelling and giving you reason to cook a recipe. It’s through their vivid imagery or being able to make it relatable, such as recipe writing for the downturn of the economy, that can convince the reader to want to consume what they are reading about. To be able to connect the reader with the content within a given context is a great success for the author.