Vegetables

I love grabbing a drink in Japan, because it's never just about the booze -- there's always some kind of food involved. At its most elemental, that grub is tsumami, savory finger-snacks to whet the palate, to make you wanna knock one (or more) back.

Here's another dish from another one of my Japanese cookbooks, this one titled "Gentle Vegetables, Gentle Tableware." This book features gorgeous shots of foods arranged in simple yet rustic and breathtaking tableware. There are no recipes, per se, just a list of ingredients for each dish, and the author's thoughts on the cooking.

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.

Here is my all-purpose salad dressing which I use to dress leafy greens as well as raw veggies like the tomato and cucumber salad in the picture, garnished with finely julienned shiso leaves for a nice, herby accent.

Here are more videos Tadashi and I shot for last week's Japan Society presentation of our book, The Japanese Grill. Check out how to turn out amazing steaks, scallops, chicken, veggies, using marinades and rubs with garlic-soy sauce, miso, yuzu kosho, sansho and more... So don't delay: Fire up the Weber and get grilling right away!

Here's the final recipe from Atsushi Nakahigashi's class last week at the Brooklyn Kitchen: Lightly cured pickles. I've talked about Japanese pickles on this blog before - so you know I've never been totally comfortable with the word "pickles..."

Now that summer's coming soon to a neighborhood near you (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), you have to keep this simple but magical technique -- ohitashi -- in mind. Ohitashi is a method of steeping vegetables in a delicate dashi, which infuses ingredients with umami and lovely flavor but retains the food's natural taste and sensibility.

Shungiku are leaves of a variety of chrysanthemum and have a distinctive taste that I love. They have many uses in Japanese cooking, this might be the simplest preparation.

If you haven't ever tried edamame picked fresh from the vine, please scour your local farmers market, just in case someone's selling them. I happened to drop by the Union Square market in NYC and came across a pile -- and grabbed 'em fast.

Turnips, daikon, beets and radishes aren't only about the tasty bulbous root -- the leaves are just as important.

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.

Last week, a couple of dozen curious food lovers joined me at the Saveur magazine test kitchen for a Japanese vegetarian cooking workshop with the amazing Chef Masato Nishihara of Kajitsu restaurant. What an incredible night.