(5) "At the heart of kaiseki is the notion of shun 旬 [seasonality or being in season; on the other hand, Japanese also have 旬 in traditional Chinese meaning: 上中下 旬 of a month] * * * Some kaiseki chefs divide the year not into quarters but into seventy-two micro-seasons. The meal's first course, sakizuke 先附 [an appetizer], is like a waymark on a map: You are here. In mid-January, when I ate at n/naka, with the Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Bill Addison, that [先附] meant a display of subtropical winter sweetness: diced Hokkaido scallop under a vivid orange gelée. * * * * * * Our server, an elegant Japanese woman in a sharp black blazer, told us to think of the second course, a multitude of two-bite dishes arranged on an oblong tray, as the table of contents for the rest of the meal: ankimo (monkfish liver [defined in (4)]) pâté; a skewer of lobster sashimi daubed with salty-tart preserved plum; a tiny porcelain cup of chawanmushi 茶碗蒸し (savory [egg] custard); enoki-mushroom tempura"
(a) Following China, Japan had 二十四節気 sekki (from 立春 to 大寒), each of which is divided further (by Japanese) into three kō 候 (thus altogether 72 候 in a year; five days in a 候, which is translated as "micro-season").
(b) waymark (n)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/waymark
(c)
(i) French-English dictionary:
* gelée (noun feminine; from the feminine past participle of [French verb] geler [to freeze], from Latin verb gelare): "jelly"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gelée
(ii) English dictionary:
gelée
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gelée
(pronunciation)
(d) sharp (adj): "STYLISH, DRESSY"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sharp
(6) "Nakayama runs n/naka according to omotenashi [hospitality], a practice of compassionate service that involves anticipating guests' wants. The spacious dining area is divided by wooden screens into intimate subsections. * * * The thirteen-course meal costs two hundred and twenty-five dollars per person * * * The popular story dates it [kaiseki] back to the sixteenth century, when the tea master Sen no Rikyū 千 利休 [1522 – 1591; 茶人 ('no' is no reflected in his Kanji name, as is so often in ancient Japanese names)] is said to have codified its essential principle of seasonality. He is also said to have declared that the meal should consist of no more than a cup of soup with rice, fish, and pickles, all of which had to be of the highest quality—an opulence of perfection, rather than of wealth. Eventually, kaiseki branched into two traditions: the spare meal 懐石 [料理] still served with the tea ceremony today, and the luxurious kaiseki 会席 [料理] served in restaurants—without tea, but with plenty of sake on hand. In kanji, there are two ways of writing 'kaiseki,' to refer to these different strains. * * * Ingredients with narrow, days-long windows of shun—like bamboo shoots in spring, or plum blossoms in winter * * * Almost all of kaiseki’s rules can be subverted by the chef * * * For the hearty course called shiizakana, which typically features a meaty soup or stew, Nakayama serves pasta: a swirl of spaghetti alla chitarra, tossed in a creamy ragu of abalone liver [which Japanese, but not Italians, eat -- as a whole or in paste] and pickled cod roe, topped with Burgundy [a French region] black truffles."
(a) Prunus mume 梅 (in both China and Japan, where the kanji is pronounced "ume," which English language mangled into "mume;" "came from in the south of mainland China around the Yangtze River and was later introduced to Japan") en.wikipedia.org for Prunus mume.
is hermaphrodite (has both male and female organs) but needs cross-pollination (pollins from another tree; mediated by insects) to bear fruit.
(b) The shiizakana 強い肴 is defined in (4). It is a dish in both 懐石料理 and 会席料理.
(c) spaghetti alla chitarra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_alla_chitarra
(a variety of egg pasta typical of Abruzzo [region], Italy; They have a square cross section about 2–3 mm thick)
Quote: "The name of this spaghetti comes from the tool (the so-called chitarra, literally 'guitar') this pasta is produced with * * * The tool named chitarra was invented around 1890 in the province of Chieti. Before then, pasta was cut with a special rolling pin with notches to obtain its particular shape." (citation omitted).
(i) Italian-English dictionary:
* alla (contraction of a + la (feminine singular definite article)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alla
(ii)
(A) The (Modern) Italian noun feminine "chitarra" is guitar.
(B) guitar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar
section 1 History: "The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, and the French guitare were all adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة (qīthārah) and the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient Greek κιθάρα (kithara), which comes from the Persian word 'sihtar.' This pattern of naming is also visible in setar, dutar, and sitar. The word 'tar' at the end of all of these words is a Persian word that means 'string. " (citations omitted).
(iii) chitarra the tool.
(A) Deb Lindsey, Spaghetti Alla Chitarra. Washington Post, Mar 3, 2016 (under the heading "Recipe Finder")
https://www.washingtonpost.com/r ... _term=.f73b159746de
("The design [of the special pasta-cutting tool, chitarra,] is simple: a rectangular wooden frame strung with metal wires that cut sheets of pasta into strands. The resulting shape of these noodles -- square, rather than round -- gives them textural appeal")
(B) Dave Bayer (a math professor), Making a Pasta Guitar. Columbia University, undated
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/Chitarra/
(how to use la chitarra: "One rolls out pieces of pasta dough by hand, places each sheet of fresh pasta on the wires, and presses the sheet through the wires with a rolling pin")
The German, Scandinavian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic) name Bayer means "someone from Bavaria (German Bayern)."
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