酢豚の酢が許せない男 #193

Best Buy #1: Pork Belly Block and Pickling Sheet

A listener letter from radio name Takuwanmottara-san posed a simple question: "What's your best buy this year?" Ureshita-kun answered without hesitation—a block of pork belly, around 500 grams, bought with the specific intention of making pancetta from scratch.

Pancetta is salt-cured pork belly, one step before bacon (which adds smoking), and a standard ingredient in Italian cooking—carbonara, amatriciana, and so on. The closely related guanciale is made from salt-cured pork cheek (tontoro); the classical pasta gricia is little more than cheese and rendered guanciale fat, and adding tomato yields amatriciana while adding egg yields carbonara. The long-term goal is to make guanciale himself and use it in a proper carbonara.

The inspiration came from a piece of bacon from Yamanomura Farm. One bite showed him that what he had been buying at the supermarket didn't deserve the name. Normally pancetta is cured in the dry cold of winter to minimize spoilage risk, but recording took place in August. His workaround is wrapping the pork belly block in Pickling Sheet—a food-grade sheet that draws out moisture and odor—securing it with rubber bands and cling wrap, setting it on a tray, and swapping the sheet every few days in the refrigerator. The process takes about a month, and at the time of recording, success or failure was still undetermined.

The Carbonara Argument: No Pepper, Not Carbonara

The pancetta discussion led naturally to carbonara, and Ureshita-kun had a grievance to air: most of what is sold as carbonara, he argues, is not actually carbonara.

The word derives from the Italian carbone, meaning charcoal—the black pepper scattered across the pasta is supposed to look like specks of coal. Carbonara is, at its core, a pasta built around pepper, and the widespread practice of serving it topped with onsen tamago but no black pepper is, to him, unacceptable. He currently grinds whole peppercorns with an electric mill, but notes that the most aromatic method is toasting whole peppercorns in a dry pan and then crushing them by hand—he laughed that a mortar and pestle might be entering his kitchen in the near future. Black pepper was once precious enough that people sailed to India for it during the Age of Exploration; carbonara, he contends, should honor that history by letting pepper take center stage.

The Sweet-and-Sour Pork Dispute: He Only Understands the Pork

The subject of vinegar brought out Ureshita-kun's strongest reaction of the episode. He describes the smell of vinegar as "the smell of rotten food," and his verdict on sweet-and-sour pork: it was delicious right up until the vinegar was added at the end.

The rebuttal came from a self-described sweet-and-sour pork fundamentalist. Chinese cuisine can be broadly divided into northern (hot-pot traditions), Sichuan (spice-forward), Cantonese (seafood-focused), and southern. Southern China's proximity to Southeast Asia made pineapple a natural local ingredient, so both the pineapple and black vinegar in sweet-and-sour pork are historical markers of the dish's southern origins. Ureshita-kun fired back that if pineapple tenderizes meat, it can stay in the prep stage and need not appear on the finished plate. He was duly summarized as someone who "only understands the pork half of sweet-and-sour pork." A side note rounded out the section: children's aversion to sour or bitter tastes is an instinctive defense against rot and poison, and adults who outgrow it learn to enjoy those flavors.

Tea Preferences: Zero-Scent Purist vs. Exotic Blend Hunter

The same pattern of irreconcilable tastes emerges with tea. Ureshita-kun wants as little aroma as possible, which means Darjeeling exclusively—Earl Grey's bergamot, in his view, is an unwelcome intrusion.

The other host goes in the opposite direction entirely. He has worked through Lupicia's Dongding oolong (凍頂ウーロン茶), Mariage Frères Marco Polo (a blend evoking vanilla, caramel, and honey), a smoky Earl Grey produced as a collaboration between Lupicia and the National Art Center Tokyo, and Suntory Hao Oolong (好ウーロン) in mango and jasmine oolong varieties. The mango Hao Oolong earned particular praise: "the mango flavor hits first, fades cleanly, and then the oolong aftertaste follows." He added that he wanted to reward the company's effort through his purchasing choices. He also visited a Chinese tea specialty shop in Shin-Nihonbashi, where he experienced brewing Taiwanese oolong using a wenxiangbei (聞香杯, aroma cup) and learned that the first steep is traditionally discarded to open the leaves.

Best Buy #2: Electric Vehicle and Ny Chair X

The other host's best buys were a Ny Chair X (ニーチェアX) for his study and—still under deliberation—a Subaru Solterra. He describes the Ny Chair X, a single-person sofa, as "the best of both a sofa and a hammock," and praised its wrapped-in feeling, lightness, and design.

The Solterra is Subaru's electric vehicle. His current car, an Impreza G4, returns 10.6 km/L—less than half the Aqua's 23–28 km/L. He framed the gap as "the other car running a permanent 50–75% discount at the gas station." A recently purchased second-hand detached house with all-electric utilities and a built-in EV charging setup made switching feel increasingly logical. His one remaining hesitation is whether to abandon his preference for sedans.