Author: -N-

Ogatsu Suzuri

Some time ago, I wrote about Ogatsu stone, which is found in Japan.  It is a a dark grey stone, nearly black in color, easily carved and used for many purposes.  Ogatsu stone is famous for suzuri as it is a dense stone with low porosity.

A characteristic of suzuri carved from Ogatsu stone is that the outer borders and edges of the stone often are left as natural as possible.  The well is smooth, with an area for the making of sumi, and a deeper area to store the ink.  Touching the surfaces smoothed for ink making, it is an incredible soft feeling, very smooth without any sense of roughness beneath the fingertips.  Outside the well, the stone is smoothed, but the texture of the stone is allowed to come through.  The sides are rough, as if chipped away with another stone, but then smoothed over, enough to preserve the ripples in the slate, but not to be unpleasant or rough to the touch.

This suzuri is in two parts, a lid, and a stone for grinding and storing ink.  The lid is an extension of the stone from which the suzuri is carved, and simply rests on top of the the stone.  The weight of the lid helps prevent it from moving off the stone, but, unlike the boxes of Chinese ink stones, this one can slide, and a small disaster could certainly result if it were to fall to the floor!

The length of the stone, including the lid, is about 7.25 inches (18.5 cm) and 5 inches (12.5 cm) at its widest.  Total weight of lid and suzuri is about 2.5 lbs.

Every stone has its own characteristics.  Japanese stone differs from Chinese, from what I can tell, in that it is less porous than Duan or She.  It takes a bit more effort to make sumi with the Japanese stones I have, but not in a negative way – it is simply a different experience.  Fine stones from both countries are definitely worthwhile purchases, as are professional grade sumi sticks.

Braided Cardamom Bread with Raisins

My talented husband is a fantastic beer brewer, barbecuer, and when he wants, bread maker.  He put this bread together yesterday afternoon – what a treat to come home after an afternoon out!

The Bread

This is a fragrant loaf, delicious for morning brunch, dessert, or with coffee.  Allow yourself a half day to make this lovely bread.

  • 1 cup raisins
  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • 1  package active dry yeast
  • 5 cups all-purpose flour, with more for kneading
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
  • 1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
  • 1 1/4 cups warm whole milk, half-and-half, or cream
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  • 1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

    • In small bowl, place raisins in warm water to soak as you begin to make bread.

    Proof yeast by placing yeast, a pinch of sugar, and 1/4 c. warm (not hot – test with your finger) water.  The yeast has proofed when it foams – takes about 5 minutes.

    In large bowl, mix together flour, salt, sugar, and cardamom.  Drop the bits of butter into flour mixture.  Use fingers, pastry blender, or two knives to mix in butter until flour has appearance of coarse meal.  Make a well in middle of flour, and add yeast, whole egg, and milk.  Stir slowly into the outlying flour until soft ball forms.  Turn out onto floured board, knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.  Note: be sure to knead enough to develop bread gluten.

    After bread is kneaded, flatten and, after draining the raisins, sprinkle raisins across top of dough.  Fold dough over to seal in raisins.  Continue kneading, adding more flour if necessary.  The raisins add a bit of liquid to the dough, so as you knead in the raisins, the dough becomes a bit more sticky.

    Form dough into ball.  Place into large, buttered bowl.  Cover and let rise in warm place about 2-3 hours, or until double in size.

    Punch down dough, but do not knead again, as you do with traditional breads.  Divide into two balls, and then divide each ball into thirds.  Roll each 1/3 ball into a strand about 15 inches long, and then use 3 strands to create a braid,  Tuck ends of braids neatly under loaf.  Place braids onto bread sheet to rise, loosely covered, another 2-3 hours.

    30 minutes before baking, set oven rack to middle, and pre-heat oven to 350 F.  As oven is preheating, make egg wash, and brush loaves with it.  Place loaves in oven and bake about 30 minutes or more, until golden brown and having a hollow sound when tapped.

    Cool on wire rack.

    Preparation

    In the aftermath of Japan’s 8.9 earthquake, all of our good intentions to be prepared for catastrophes tend to resurface.  However, the fact is, they are simply intentions – it is the actual task of getting prepared that takes a bit of work.  Human nature lives in denial, and we all think that it cannot, or will not, happen to us.  So, we put off until tomorrow what should have been done yesterday.

    Living in California, I should know better.  I remember the Northridge earthquake – it happened on Martin Luther King Day, one day before the new semester began at CSUN.  A week or two later, the semester finally began, the campus had some ruins, and driving there I saw Reseda Blvd. was lined with collapsed buildings.  But, as I was not in the middle of the damage, my mind just puts it as something that happens to someone else, not me.

    Being ready for a catastrophe requires forethought and action.  When we prepare for events which never arrive, we feel foolish and stupid, as if we wasted our time.  Hopefully, we will always be met with that!  But when, and if, we meet with disaster, our ability to get through it may be a little easier, and we may be able to help others as well.

    Looking through the web for ideas on what is needed to be prepared for an earthquake, there are several sites, many of which tout their “all in one” kit, for a price.  Maybe they are good deals.  However, I thought this link had some good tips, and was quite thorough.  Here is a PDF which is very comprehensive, and includes a lot of great information from state and federal agencies.  For emergencies, we need to be prepared not just at home, but at work, and in our car.  When I lived in Colorado, I had food, water, sleeping bag, and so on, with me all the time in the car.  Makes sense, even in California, to be prepared.

    The expression “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is incredibly cynical, but ironically too true.  I’ve got the intentions, but I hope I don’t get to hell before I get those kits together.

    Looking

    There are days, as anyone creative knows, when you “get it” and things come along perfectly.  Everything you do feels right, you learn, and all the knowledge you have acquired throughout your lifetime pulls together and you create something you love, feels satisfying, and adds to your ongoing growth as an artist.  And then, there are days where anything and everything you do is crap.

    My walk around the neighborhood the other day was satisfying.  The ants-in-the-pants restlessness was put into action.  While I took some pictures I thought were pretty good, it wasn’t until I got home and started playing with some of them in black and white that I began to get a sense of composition in photos.  Sure, I know the rule of thirds, etc., but I wasn’t really using it in a way I found meaningful.  When I began the post-processing, I began to appreciate some of my photos a bit more, and with some cropping, rotating, contrast enhancement, or whatever, I ended up with a few I really liked.

    This picture was simply a quick shot into the tree above me.  I like the shape of tree branches and leaves, the lines created against the sky.  Turned into greyscale, the picture was too dark, and the texture of the bark was lost.  I backlit it to the extreme, and it pushed the picture to this.  A bit of contrast enhancement and playing with the histogram, and this is the result.  It’s a rather edgy picture to me – not very serene – but there is something I also like about it, such as where the upper branch begins to get so bright it begins to disappear.

    I cropped this picture a lot – it is evidenced by the size of the signature in the corner!  Anyway, this crop is of some tiny cactus flowers on a lovely plant with pointy needles.  I decided to emphasize the pointiness, both on the spikes, and more generally on the shadows.  The back-and-forth movement of light and dark is the idea behind this picture, both soft and sharp.

    I cropped this one to bring the focus onto the leaf itself.  I pushed this, with contrast and edge sharpening.  This is the underside of the leaf, which has a lot of linear texture.  I also think this one has the potential to go further in subject matter – calla lily leaves are really lovely to look at through light because the veins in the leaf are so intricate.

    Finally, there is this one.  I played with it a bit, and finally cropped it and rotated it so that the main branch of the leaf became horizontal and rested in the lower third of the photo.  Again, the contrast was pushed, and the final image cropped.

    You can see all these photos on Flickr, in B&W and in color.

    Altogether, the post-processing was quite a satisfying experience.  I thought about my compositions, and saw things in the original photos I liked, did not like, and I learned more about framing an image as I cropped and turned.  I may not get great photos out and about, but I do think I will be looking at the entire image more carefully before snapping a picture (unless I am crawling in the mud!).