At a dinner party earlier this week, a nutritionist from China told me point-blank the main problem with American diets is the overwhelming meat consumption. Meat was a bigger culprit that carbs or complex sugars, he said. Americans think nothing of eating a 22 oz. steak or a bucket of fried chicken in a single meal, with potato as a "vegetable" side. There's not moderation in this country, and that's why obesity is such a huge problem. I nodded and agreed, mentioning, among other things, the now notorious Double Down. 

The next night, without thinking, I made a pound of pork belly for dinner. 

To be fair, it was one of those cold and windy April days, and braised pork just seemed like a good idea. Frequent readers of this blog may remember that I have numerous other pork recipes. I mean, it's kind of a sin for someone of Asian descent to not be obsessed with fatty pork.

Excuse me for a second, while I rhapsodize about fast food in Asia.

As frequent travelers know, the #1 cardinal sin when visiting a new place is eating at fast food chains (unless you are in a developing country and just need a clean public restroom.) I have had bad luck when breaking this rule. Food poisoning from a Beijing KFC, for example. I have also had good luck. On one of those painfully humid summer mornings in Shanghai, I escaped into an air-conditioned McDonald's and discovered the joys of Sichuan-spiced chicken sandwiches.

Then there is my relationship with Yoshinoya. I can't speak for the quality of Yoshinoya's chains in the US (one in NYC, the rest mainly in around LA). But while living in Beijing and Shanghai, every couple of weeks I would succumb to my immense craving for their beef bowl, or gyudon. Even if it meant eating in a dingy mall basement with ambient arcade noises, alongside mega hoards of teens.

It took a trip to Japan to realize I've been making edamame wrong all these years.

Well, not necessarily wrong wrong. But not the best way possible.

When I discovered the joys of edamame about 10 or 12 years ago, I would buy bags of the frozen stuff, microwave them, and sprinkle table salt on top. Then I progressed to boiling them in a pot. When I discovered fresh edamame in Chinatown, and replaced Morton with Malden, I thought this was as good as edamame could get. After all, it tasted the same as at all the Japanese restaurants in the US. 

Then I went to Japan. In Tokyo this past summer, I noticed something slightly different about the fuzzy little legume that was as good an accompaniment with omikase-style sushi as it was with beer at 2 a.m. My meals of tempura, sashimi, fugu, and yes, even fugu sashimi were all bookended by a dish of edamame that tasted, well, better. Was it just because my subconscious dictated that the Japanese food had to taste better in Japan?

One night when returning to the guest house, a traveler from the north of Japan was snacking on some edamame in front of the TV. He was watching game show contestants clad in knee pads and mud hurling themselves around an obstacle course. He offered me some edamame.