Sake is a popular beverage but how it pairs with food is still a mystery to most of us. While many people first encounter sake on sushi menus, where sake really shines is with izakaya or tavern style Japanese small plates. Izakaya is getting more and more popular in San Francisco. Great places to try izakaya dishes include Hime, Oyaji and O Izakaya Lounge.

Here's another great opportunity to try izakaya style cuisine paired and sake. The Japan Society of Northern California, in cooperation with Sozai Restaurant and Sake Lounge and True Sake, presents its next Japanese Language & Cultural Experience Workshop: Sake Appreciation.

Matching food and sake is just like matching food and wine. It's a fun, imprecise process that largely depends on your own unique taste buds. What's a perfect match to one may be the ultimate mismatch to another. The important thing is what's delicious to you!

What: Sake Appreciation
Where: Sozai Restaurant and Sake Lounge, 1500 Irving St., San Francisco
When: 6:00pm-8:00pm, Tuesday, July 15, 2008
How: $30 Japan Society Language Students, $35 Japan Society Members, $45 Non-Members, Space is limited; please RSVP by Friday, July 10th.
Why: This informative tasting workshop will detail different types of sake and answer questions about the intricacies of food pairing. A variety of seasonal delicacies will be served during the tasting, pairing each sake with traditional and contemporary Japanese tapas, all created by Chef Mari.
Note: Although this is a language workshop and some sake-related vocabulary will be introduced, all Japanese language levels are welcome to participate.

On display through the wonderful internets are hundreds upon thousands of photographs of everyday lunches. No soggy PB&J's here, though. One forum, the Mr. Bento Porn Flickr group, posts their collective creative efforts to make mid-day meals visually appealing, healthful, delicious and, yes, a little easier on the wallet. Their cousin site, Diet Bento, includes impressively low calorie counts for those whose 2008 resolutions (for now at least) include trimming down a little of their own belly fat.

Portable meals have been with us for as long as farmers have trudged off to their fields and soldiers have marched on in war. The Japanese took it a little further, of course. Where other countries preferred banana leaves or woven baskets, Japanese al fresco diners preferred compartmentalized boxes. By the 17th century, bento meals became elaborately arranged celebrations of the full moon and cherry blossoms, a leisurely way to enjoy intermission with friends at the theatre or, like the older form of sushi, essential food for travelers in an age before planes and bullet trains.

Fast forward to the 20th century for aluminum tins, insulated containers, microwaveable cups and, last but not least, those brightly colored, plastic Hello Kitty boxes that accompany kids to school. Adult versions abound, too, although Ichiban Kan's bento aisle seems pretty well populated by over-twenty-somethings. For those who want to pack with style, <a href="http://www.plasticashop.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=P&Product_Code=BNTOBX&Category_Code
Designer boxes">Plastica offers a sleek, stackable set in elegant colors.

Japan is not the only country with distinctive lunch boxes. Vietnam has its aluminum ca men that families carry every morning to the market to pick up breakfast, a different soup in each of the layers prepared exactly as each person prefers. The beautifully painted enamel tins of Malaysia are collectors' items, while in India, no-nonsense tiffin boxes show wonder less in their appearance than in their amazing daily travels from home to office and back again.

In Japan, there are nearly 500 magazines dedicated to showing parents (read: mothers) how to pack lunches that will entice and impress. The proper order to place in the elements, the proper balance of color and flavors, the proper container for the right food, the secret to making flowers and hamsters and their favorite manga characters out of edible delights: childrens' meals are no less subject to codification and over-the-top creativity than anything else the Japanese do.

A few English-language books attempt to translate the techniques as well as the art of bento. Some designs would only appeal to an obsessive artist with lots of free time, but many are simple and worth trying. It's a good way to get the kids involved the night before. Lay out some ingredients, flip to a fun photo and suddenly packing lunch becomes a game. Two titles to check out are Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go for a how-to guide and Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes for an aesthetic treatment of the topic.

Another good resource is Biggie's Lunch in A Box site, where parents will find excellent suggestions for getting their kids off to school with good food. She has hints that acknowledge the need for speed in addition to the desire to make lunch and snacks both healthy and fun.

Like with most good habits, packing meals for lunch requires practice and foresight at first, then as the regimen settles into a comfortable part of your day and week, merely some momentary foresight during weekend shopping and prep. Simple tips include washing and cutting your vegetables ahead of time, freezing food in smaller batches and learning to pack more flavor than bulk.

And if you just want to have a cute lunchbox without the work, well, they do make excellent take-out containers. Buy one with straps or handles to carry to your favorite deli counter and do your part to cut back on disposable ware.

Amy Kaneko is a Bay Area resident now, but she spent time living in Japan and earlier this year she published her first book, Let's Cook Japanese Food! Her book details some of her favorite recipes for home-style Japanese cooking.

How is Japanese home cooking different from what's served in Japanese restaurants?
Here we get a lot of sushi, teriyaki, and tempura, the three stations of the Japanese food triangle, as per American tastes. But there are so many really fantastic things to eat--using really familiar cooking techniques, just with a little tweak--that are part of contemporary Japanese food and what people eat every day at home and in restaurants, take out, etc. in Japan, that I think Westerners would just love, things like croquettes, gratins, rice bowls, stir frys. They are not all super esoteric ingredients or completely devoid of fat and flavor, either. A meal of Japanese style fried chicken, a rice ball, spinach with sesame dressing, even potato salad is very Japanese and not what Westerners might expect people are eating in Japan.

You mentioned in your book that your husband brings certain ingredients back from Japan. What ingredients do you miss most now that you are living in the US?
1/2 fat mayonnaise! That is #1. In fact, I am panicking a little because my secret Thanksgiving dish (which I bring to any Thanksgiving event to which I am invited) is the kabocha (pumpkin) croquette in the book, and I need the mayo to make it. So I will need to suck it up and pay like $5 to get a small bottle to make the croquette for Thanksgiving this year, since we recently ran out. The other thing is packaged beef curry in vacuum bags. In Japantown you can buy vegetable curry but it is not a good brand. In Japan you can get fantastic prepared beef curry in a boil in bag thing, and it is extremely good. Don't tell the dogs at customs. And sansho, a kind of peppery spice but apparently it is illegal in the U.S. It is essential for eel dishes.
(note: Sansho is available in the US, I recently found it at Super Mira)

Where do you recommend shopping for Japanese ingredients in the Bay Area?
I am lucky that I live on the Peninsula and have two great markets nearby: Suruki in san Mateo on 4th St. and Nijiya (a chain, but good) on El Camino near 92 in San Mateo. There's also one in the city. Super Mira on Sutter in the city is also good. And 99 Ranch (all over) has a lot of the ingredients. Try the Japanese brand organic eggs at Suruki. They are unbelievable, with a golden yolk and great flavor. We eat them raw mixed into natto. Yum.

What is "yoshoku" cuisine?
Yoshoku is literally Western and basically refers to all the Westernized and borrowed dishes in Japanese cuisine, like curry rice, hayashi rice, gratins, doria, and so on. It is SO popular in Japan. Omu raisu (omelettes stuffed with rice), and wafu spaghetti are other examples. Japanese have take western cuisines and adapted them to their own tastes. Croquettes are from Netherlands, tempura is from Portugal, etc. Yoshoku is incredibly popular in Japan, and I have a lot of yoshoku (and chugoku (Chinese) ryori (cuisine) in the book.

What are the main ingredients cooks need to create authentic tasting Japanese food at home?
Soy sauce, mirin (sweet rice wine), sake, sugar, and dashi (bonito fish stock). these are the core Japanese flavorings. And although dashi doesn't taste all that fishy and is fairly easy to find, I substituted chicken broth in a lot of my recipes and the taste was still OK. And rice! Very easy to get short/medium grain rice here. Cooking it, not so easy, unless you have a rice cooker or are patient.

What's your favorite dish in the book?
There are two, toriniku no kara age (fried chicken) and toriniku no amasu an (chicken meatballs with sweet sour sauce) But I am influenced a lot by what I can serve quickly to my two little girls that I am assured they will eat, and these are no-fail. To be honest, I eat every recipe in this book, so it is very personal--it is edited very specifically to my and my family's tastes!

Come back next week for a review of Amy Kaneko's book, Let's Cook Japanese Food!

During a discussion this past week about authenticity, someone asked me what I thought about Japanese restaurants run by Koreans, while another person asked my opinion about the Japanese government's desperate fight around the globe to save sushi.

There are lots of glib answers, but they all skip over some important issues about food and culture. I need to take another week to mull this over.

In the meantime...please enjoy...

In case the YouTube logo gets in the way of the subtitles, here's a link to the video.