Simmering

Last night we enjoyed a beautiful Japanese dinner at home that reminded me why I love this cuisine so much: grilled shiosaba (Boston mackerel salted for a few days), freshly steamed rice and nira tamago, or garlic chives with eggs.

I usually think of grilled fish as a mainstay of a traditional Japanese breakfast (especially salted half-dried shishamo, smelt, which I love), for his recent class at the Brooklyn Kitchen, Atsushi Nakahigashi decided to cook the amazing simmered pork pictured above.

I've talked about simmering before, so you know it's one of my favorite cooking techniques in Japanese cuisine. It's a simple and fast way to infuse amazing flavor into ingredients. The secret is the traditional seasonings:

First, a little theory: Nimono, or simmering, is a primary Japanese cooking technique, and a vast one. Nimono dishes are considered one of the classic kaiseki courses, as well as a mainstay of home cooking.

Here's another amazing dish I cooked during my recent session with Chef Isao Yamada. I asked him to teach me a method for sardines, a delicious (and sustainable) fish that I feel more of us should be eating.

In my post on simmering kabocha and chicken, I got into some of the underlying ideas behind nimono, or Japanese simmering technique, that Chef Isao Yamada explained to me. I wanted to touch on a few more of Yamada-san's thoughts about nimono.

In my last post I made dashi with Chef Isao Yamada, who I cooked with recently. So now that we had some beautiful dashi, the fundamental stock of Japanese cuisine, what to do with it? Yamada-san didn't waste any time cooking a slew of fantastic dash-based dishes, including this one.

During his stay in New York, Saveur's editor-in-chief Jim Oseland graciously invited Atsushi to demonstrate his cooking at the magazine's test kitchen, and prepare lunch for the editorial staff. Atsushi planned a wonderful menu, incorporating dishes we had cooked plus new ones. After last minute sprints to the farmers market and Sunrise Mart, the Japanese food store in lower Manhattan, we arrived at the magazine laden with supplies, and Atsushi set to work.

Here's another dish that makes use of the invaluable otoshibuta. Atsushi and I picked up a small whole sea bass from the farmers market, so fresh its eyes were crystal clear and gills bright red. We cleaned and scaled it and decided to simmer it whole, something I've wanted to learn how to do.

At the farmers market, Atsushi and I spotted local Long Island Sound flounder, in peak season right now. I asked him how to prepare this delicately fish and he suggested poaching it in sake and salt, a simple method to subtly and elegantly express its flavors. We picked up a bunch, iced them down, and brought them over to Chef Tadashi Ono's house to prepare for his family (hey, I wan't the only enjoying Atsushi's cooking!).

When Atsushi and I visited New York's Union Square farmers market together we found lovely okra as well as fresh carrots and white Japanese turnips (kabu). I asked Atsushi to prepare a simple dish to bring out their natural, peak-of-season flavors, so he decided to simmer them in dashi, and add a touch of usukuchi shoyu to give the vegetables a little saltiness.