Recipes & Articles

For me, the holy grail of Japanese cooking boils down this: The ability to look in the fridge, see what I've got and cook something fabulous with it. I've witnessed this two-step over and over in Japanese homes, watching slack-jawed with admiration as home cooks knocked out great dishes on the spot.

Last night a bunch of hungry souls joined me at EN Japanese Brasserie to experience an amazing meal based on classic makanai, or staff meal, cooking. A highlight was Chef Abe's delicious butajiru, or traditional pork miso soup, the recipe of which he graciously shared with me, below.

My friends at EN Japanese Brasserie are planning a very special dinner party on Saturday, January 16th. The theme: "fish heads, eel bones and beer" -- in other words, food (and drink) inspired by traditional Japanese restaurant staff meal cooking. The host: yours truly. I hope you can join us. Here's the blurb on the event:

We covered some fantastic miso soup in my latest miso soup post, but what about the ingredients that might be unfamiliar? To help you navigate Japanese markets and find these gems, I wanted to share a trio of photos of key ingredients I mentioned.

In Japan, miso soup reflects the full bounty, breath, spontaneity and endless creativity of the cuisine -- the varieties are mind boggling and delicious. Case in point, the list that follows, sixty six miso soups that a Japanese cookbook editor and fabulous cook named Nobuko-san just sent me.

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 amazing chestnut rice I cooked in the last post must have put me in a serious rice kind of mood, because here's another incredible rice dish, this one mixed with soy sauce-infused chirimen jako (dried, tiny fish, a fantastic ingredient we'll get to in a minute) and sansho (intensely aromatic, seductive accent, ditto about getting into in a minute).

A friend in Japan just sent me this recipe for chestnut rice (kuri gohan) and I cooked it tonight. Wow! So simple, but with such a play of delicate flavors. You have to try it.

One of the most useful skills I've been perfecting this fall working in the En Japanese Brasserie kitchen is boning chicken legs and thighs. I've boned dozens of these suckers so far and I can tell you that knowing how to do so is extremely practical and useful at home, too.

Before that stunning black cod in the picture above was a dish, it was a fish. How did it get from there to here? I asked my man Chef Abe-san at En Japanese Brasserie to demonstrate how to break a fish the Japanese way, a technique called sanmai oroshi -- three part filleting.

My new favorite cookbook is a Japanese-English paperback called (at least in English) "Traditional Japanese Recipe Book with English Translation." Not the most evocative title, for sure, but the book's packed with great recipes, techniques and useful information.