Chefs

Here was my grand idea: I wanted to invite a top-notch Japanese chef to come over to my apartment and cook with me. I've been fascinated by Japanese cooking for years, and have been studying the cuisine diligently, but I have lots of questions still begging for answers. Why not ask a great chef, while chopping veggies together at home?

At my recent workshop at Saveur, I taxied over a live fish for Chef Sono to butcher the traditional way, a method called ikejime. Why share a cab with a flopping fish? I've been fascinated by this killing process since I first witnessed it in Japan, and Sono-san was kind enough to demonstrate it and explain the technique. This week I learned even more, thanks to an outstanding presentation organized by the Gohan Society and featuring the revered chef Suzuki-san of Sushi Zen restaurant.

Oh, where to begin. Last week chef Chikara Sono of Kyo Ya restaurant led a remarkable workshop at the Saveur magazine test kitchen. In the kitchen: a Tasmanian sea trout, a wild black cod, a live striped bass and thirty curious participants. On the agenda: all fish, all the time. Here's some of what we learned:

The Japanese way of expressing raw fish is, of course, unparalleled. But doing raw right -- that is, sushi and sashimi -- is a function of deft knife skills, which is a function of years of chef training. So what about the rest of us?

Since I returned in June from three months of cooking in Japan, I've been itching to keep building my skills. Luckily, Abe-san, the chef of the fabulous En Japanese Brasserie in lower Manhattan, graciously invited me into his spacious open kitchen.

Please join me as I moderate: "From Soba to Artichokes: Vegetarian Cooking, Japanese-style," featuring Chef Masato Nishihara of Kajitsu restaurant, at the Saveur test kitchen on Monday, October 26th from 7p to 9:30p, featuring a sake sampling from boutique importer Joto Sake.

"Japanese cooking is simple," Chef Ooe told me as we stood in his kitchen at Kozue, the stunning Japanese restaurant of Tokyo's Park Hyatt. "Only cutting, dashi, grilling... simple." The hard work of achieving this simplicity? Well, that's why I was in his kitchen...

Hollywood has its paparazzi. So, apparently, does food. I took the shot above at last week's Tokyo Taste event in Japan, where a ruck of photographers rushed to snap dishes prepared by famous chefs. What a sight.

The final dish Chef Honma showed me how to cook when I visited him at EN Japanese Brasserie recently was this one, a customer favorite, EN's incredible sautéed duck breast.

I recently visited En Japanese Brasserie to learn more about Chef Yasuhiro Honma's cooking.

Monkfish are huge, ugly and incredibly tasty. I first came face to face with one in Akita Prefecture last year (more on that below). Today I got to watch Chef Masaharu Morimoto of Iron Chef fame dramatically offer this fish as the sacrificial lamb of his demonstration at the annual StarChefs Congress.

For the past two weeks, I've had a visitor from Japan stay over at my apartment here in New York, a terrific guy named Atsushi Nakahigashi. All of 22-years-old, he's already an accomplished professional bass fisherman -- and an accomplished chef. Since the age of 14 or so, Atsushi's been working at his father's legendary restaurant in Kyoto, Sojiki Nakahigashi. His dad, Mr. Hisao Nakahigashi, is one of my absolute culinary heroes, a wonderful man who I've had the privilege to get to know and write about. Atsushi's his dad's talented protégé, and since he was here in New York... I put him to work in my kitchen! Actually, Atsushi, wise, thoughtful and mature way, way beyond his years, graciously offered to teach me a few things about Japanese cooking. It's been a seminal couple of weeks.