Infusing

God, this looks good, doesn't it? And it's just the leftovers! When I saw local tuna for sale at the farmers market, I remembered a technique the amazing Tadashi Ono taught me called maguro zuke, an old Tokyo style of marinating tuna, which he serves to great acclaim at Matsuri restaurant.

I found some beautiful (or, "byu-DEE-ful," as they like to say here in my homeland of Brooklyn) Japanese eggplants at the local market, so I started digging through my notes and cookbooks for ideas on how to prepare them.

Now that summer, I mean the real thing - 90 degrees, sticky and humid - has finally arrived in New York, I want to share some simple Japanese dishes perfect for these scorching days.

Here's another dish Chef Honma taught me at En Japanese Brasserie. Like the mushroom ohitashi, this obanzai-inspired dish relies on dashi.

Chef Honma of En Japanese Brasserie features this dish on his seasonal obanzai menu, which evokes the traditional home cooking of Kyoto.

Earlier this month, Gourmet.com ran my story on robata style grilling, which I put together thanks to Chef Jiro Ida of the terrific midtown Manhattan restaurant Aburiya Kinnosuke. Over the course of a few weeks, Jiro-san graciously invited me to his kitchen before service to watch him in action and teach me about robata.

At Saveur, Atsushi demonstrated a fundamental notion of Japanese cooking through this utterly simple dish, composed of Japanese cucumbers, a good konbu-katsuobushi dashi and myoga for garnish.