Recipes & Articles

This post was originally going to include three ponzu variations, but after I squeezed the juice from a couple dozen yuzu and an unbelievable citrusy perfume overwhelmed the apartment, my wife asked me to save some juice for shochu cocktails! Wait -- let me back up:

I found these big, hunky clams at the farmers market this weekend, each at least 2 inches across. But how to prepare them? My wife Momo found a bunch of recipes online, but we decided to go as simple as possible -- steam them with sake.

A few years ago I interviewed the chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten for a story and he mentioned something to me as an aside, that one of his favorite flavor combinations was butter and soy sauce. That stuck with me...

Here's an example of the spontaneity of Japanese cooking: My mother-in-law Nobuko is here to visit our baby (not us, but the baby :) ), and yesterday we took her to our local farmer's market here in Brooklyn.

So I was digging up research on Japanese-style tartar sauce for the new cookbook I'm working on with Tadashi, when I came across this dish.

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.

One of my favorite things to do in Japan is to browse the cookbook racks at a local bookstore. Unlike ours in America, most Japanese cookbooks resemble a cross between a magazine and book ("mook" as they're called). They're not dense tomes like American cookbooks...

Chawan mushi is one of those Japanese dishes I've enjoyed in restaurants for years but always thought would be too hard to make at home.

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.

Sorry Paula Dean, but nothing beats Japanese-style fried chicken. (To Mary in Austin and all my friends down south who make amazing fried chicken: Don't kill me! :) ). The secret is the marinade.

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.

Too bad baby Gen can only eat mashed rice: The chefs of the fabulous Kajitsu and their wives came over to our place in Brooklyn the other night for an impromptu Japanese dinner party, and I wish Gen could have tasted the amazing spread.