'No I would not give you false hope'.

I love how the Japanese play with words.  But it’s when they explain it that has me in fits.  I was having a chat with some friends about Japanese food and what kinds of dishes I could easily whip up myself.  My friend, Bridget suggested a dish called ‘Oyako-don’.  ‘Do you know?’ she asks.  I said that I hadn’t heard of that dish before and she immediately starts reciting the recipe to me with grand gestures complete with sound effects.  It’s basically pieces of cooked chicken mixed in with some hondashi (Japanese soup stock), onions, soya sauce, God forbid SUGAR, and a few lightly beaten eggs cooked in a frying pan and served on a plate of steaming, hot rice.  The sizzling heat emanating from the rice ensures that the egg is adequately cooked by the time you choose to shovel it into your mouth.  Sounds like a fairly easy dish to make.  I asked Bridget to breakdown the meaning of the dish’s name.  She then told me that ‘Oya’ is parent and ‘Ko’ is short for ‘Kodomo’ which is the Japanese word for child.  The parent is the chicken, and the child is the egg, hence the name.  Hmmmm

This dish even features on Wikipaedia.  There was mention that the song, ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ by Paul Simon took its’ name from this dish.  Another source claims that Paul Simon had been sitting in a Chinese Takeaway Restaurant.  While looking over the menu and the comical English translations, he spied the ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ dish, which inspired the song that was eventually written. Incidentally the song is not about the dish.  I’m not sure whether the Chinese Restaurant borrowed this signature Japanese dish and made it their own, or whether it had been misreported, and Paul Simon had in fact been sitting in a Japanese Takeaway Restaurant flipping through a Japanese Menu.  

There is a difference you know.