kewpie shortage
It was Ulrich’s turn to make dinner tonight, and he spent the afterglow of lunch thumbing through the NYT cooking app for quick recipe ideas.
“hmm…tomato soup with grilled cheese…” he murmured with a furrowed brow, and it dawned on me that he’d never had a grilled cheese sandwich before.
“do you know what that is?” i asked, excited.
“grilled ch- ahh! halloumi?” exclaimed Ulrich, his voice wavering between confidence and anticipation.
“OMG - you’ve never had a grilled cheese sandwich! you’re going to love it so much! letsdoit letsdoit letsdoit!” i cheered.
one of the ingredients in the New York Times recipe was mayonnaise, although i don’t personally recall ever making a grilled cheese with mayo before. we thought it’d be fun to use kewpie mayo, which we’d found at the nearby asian store when we made egg salad sandwiches earlier this year (the Japanese brand was specifically recommended in another New York Times recipe).
That had been my first encounter with kewpie mayonnaise, although i had definitely heard of the name before and seen the eponymous doll in various pop culture references. when we took our first bites of the egg salad sandwich i remember thinking how the mayonnaise had a delightfully light and fluffy consistency to accompany a velvety, umami taste, somehow reminding me of the delicateness of sesame oil while tasting nothing like it.
but alas: the kewpie mayo was sold out at the asian store today. which was strange, because Ulrich and i both remember seeing the shelves fully stocked with the white-and-red bottles just a few days ago. perhaps there are many lunar new year recipes which call for mayo? i desperately skimmed the rest of the japanese aisle but was greeted only with rows of bamboo mats and sushi rice varieties, Kikkoman sauces, pre-packaged curries, packages of pickled ginger and jars of wasabi.
although my mom cooked taiwanese food at home, many of the building blocks for our meals were japanese: kikkoman soy sauce and kadoya sesame oil, a short-grain rice variety whose texture is very similar to sushi rice, and miso as a base for most soups. i later grew up to adore korean food almost as much as taiwanese and even more than japanese food - most of all the pickled banchan, the bubbly tofu stews and the spicy-sweet flavor of gochujang, but when it comes to cooking, i still find myself leaning towards the japanese brands. korean soy sauce is too thick and sweet for me; i don’t know how to handle it in a balanced way. it wasn’t until recently that i realized that the short-grain rice which i much prefer over long grain is actually called Japonica rice, having been introduced in Taiwan by the ruling Japanese during their occupation in the first half of the twentieth century.
Ulrich was no longer in any mood to cook after his long day of work meetings finally wrapped, so we wound up getting kimbap (Korean sushi) at a nearby restaurant. afterwards we stopped at Rewe (German grocery chain) to pick up the remaining ingredients for our rain-checked tomato soup and grilled cheese, so that we can finally make it tomorrow for lunch. In the condiments aisle we considered the different mayonnaise varieties - I veto’ed sugary Miracle Whip outright and worried that Thomy might also be too sweet. In the end we agreed on Hellmann’s, my personal tried-and-true favorite when I was growing up in the States.