Dec 15

Around Japan in 47 Curries: Mrs. Matsui’s Ishikawa Slugger Sauce

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Tom Baker (Chiba, 1989-91) is writing a 47-part series of posts on his Tokyo Tom Baker blog, in which he samples and comments on a curry from a different prefecture each time. Here’s an excerpt from his 16th installment, in which he tastes a facsimile of the home cooking that the most famous person from Ishikawa Prefecture grew up on.

Professional baseball player Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui was born in 1974 in the town of Negari, in Ishikawa Prefecture. Most mothers want their sons to grow up to be big and strong, but few succeed as dramatically Mrs. Matsui did. As a kid, he was already such a powerful right-handed hitter that the other boys wouldn’t play with him unless he switched to batting left-handed. He did – and still went on to become one of the top batters in the world.

There must have been something in his mom’s cooking. Maybe it was her curry…

Now that Godzilla is retired, he has taken to hawking a brand of curry called “Matsui-ke Hiden no Kare,” or the Matsui family’s secret curry. In a clever bit of marketing, there is garlic-free “renshu-chu” curry for “during training” and also “shiai-mae” curry, which is loaded with garlic, for “before the game.”

Read the full entry here.