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Grill Time! Need Recipe Testers for New Cookbook

Calling all friends of the Japanese Food Report! Just in time for summer grilling (or winter grilling south of the equator), my coauthor Tadashi Ono and I are in the thick of writing an exciting new cookbook for Ten Speed Press called, appropriately enough, "The Japanese Grill." We're now organizing a team of volunteer recipe testers to evaluate our dishes, and need your help.

March 17, 2010

Our Grilling Book Has Published! (Plus Recipe!)

Just in time for grilling season, Tadashi and my newest cookbook is now available -- The Japanese Grill! Run, don't walk, to your local bookstore (brick or virtual) and pick up a copy; I guarantee you'll love it.

April 27, 2011

Konro Grilling

How bad did I want a Japanese konro grill? Let's just say I had a picture of one tacked up on the refrigerator of my Manhattan apartment for at least five years in the hope, the hope, that someday that I'd have a backyard or rooftop where to use it.

April 26, 2010

Grilling Videos: Steak, Scallops, Chicken and Veggies

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!

June 21, 2011

Yuzu-Kosho Grilled Scallops

I realize it's a little late for barbecue (at least in NYC), but I want to share this method, which you can also do on the stovetop using a skillet. I learned it from my friend and grill-master-of-the-universe, Chef Tadashi Ono of Matsuri. Sure, we wrote a hot pot cookbook together, but you gotta see this guy in action on the Weber.

September 13, 2009

Grilled Eggplant Simmered in Dashi

I found some beautiful (or, "byu-DEE-ful," as they like to say here in my homeland of Brooklyn) Japanese eggplants at the local market, so I started digging through my notes and cookbooks for ideas on how to prepare them.

August 23, 2009

Video: Grilling Lesson With Chef Takahashi of Hyotei

This past week, something remarkable happened: More than forty of Japanese greatest chefs descended on the Napa Valley for the Culinary Institute of America's Japan: Flavors of Culture conference.

November 9, 2010

Video: Foil-Grilled Fish

From our EN Japanese Brasserie workshop, here is what's called hoiru yaki in Japanese -- "hoiru" is Japanglish for "foil." This is a super simple technique but the results are amazing.

November 19, 2010

Video: Boning and Grilling Chicken Legs

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.

November 26, 2009

Grilled Kyoto-style Eggplant

For our dinner with Atsushi, Kyoto native that he is, Chef Ono found a Kyoto variety of eggplant called kamo nasu. Kamo nasu are squat and round, about four inches or so long, eggplant that traditionally were native to Kyoto, which is a city that's also its own agricultural district.

August 6, 2008

Grilled Kyoto-style Peppers with Tomato Puree

On Mondays and Fridays at the Union Square farmers market, a farmer of Korean descent named Yuno sells lovingly grown Asian vegetables, the only one there who offers these varieties. Atsushi was thrilled to find at her stand fushimi togarashi, heirloom Kyoto peppers, and snapped up a bunch.

August 22, 2008

sakekasu-cured grilled fish

I became interested in sakekasu (or sake kasu) at Matsuri, the restaurant where I volunteer as a cook. Chef Ono prepares his delicious version of glazed black cod by first marinating the fish for several days in a mixture that includes sakekasu. I wondered about the effect of this ingredient. But before I get into this, let me pause for a quick definition:

December 27, 2007

Grilled Mackerel

Melissa Clark's excellent article on cooking bluefish that appeared recently in the N.Y. Times got me thinking about preparing oily fish, Japanese-style.

August 19, 2009

Grilled Shishito Peppers

For our dinner with Chef Ono's family, Atsushi and I picked up beautiful shishito pepper at the farmers market, a bright green Japanese pepper about an inch to two inches long that looks like a hot green chili but has a mild flavor (except for every once in a while, when you bite into a fiery one!). Chef Ono evidently also heard the shishito siren call, and picked up a bunch, too.

August 6, 2008

Videos: Breaking a Chicken, Yakitori, and Yaki Onigiri

Last night my coauthor Tadashi and I gave a talk and demo on Japanese grilling at the Japan Society in New York. But how do you demo grilling in auditorium where you can't grill? With videos, of course!

June 17, 2011

Tosajoyu, Katsuo Bushi-Infused Soy Sauce

Earlier this month, Gourmet.com ran my story on robata style grilling, which I put together thanks to Chef Jiro Ida of the terrific midtown Manhattan restaurant Aburiya Kinnosuke. Over the course of a few weeks, Jiro-san graciously invited me to his kitchen before service to watch him in action and teach me about robata.

August 29, 2008

The Ultimate Unagi

I'm in Japan now for a quick trip, and when I rolled into Gifu Prefecture yesterday, I asked the usual question -- what should I eat? Simple: Grilled unagi, the river eel this region is famous for, which is in peak season right now.

July 4, 2011

Nira Tamago, or Simmered Garlic Chives with Eggs

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.

September 27, 2011

Cooking with Chef Ooe at Kozue

"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...

May 4, 2009

Simmered Pork and Daikon

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.

May 19, 2011

Fastest Fish Teriyaki Yet

I've written about teriyaki before, the real teriyaki, that is -- the thin glaze brushed on while sautéing or grilling that instantly adds tremendous flavor and a beckoning sheen to foods. There are bunch of ways to prepare teriyaki; here's one I just tried that works amazingly well for fish, and is super easy:

February 24, 2011

Videos: Miso Curing Fish & Yuan Yaki Marinating

Miso is such a versatile ingredient (hey, we did a whole class on it). In this installment of our recent fish workshop at EN Japanese Brasserie, Chef Abe, owner Reika Yo and I walk through how to miso-cure fish, plus how to marinate fish for grilling yuan yaki style, a traditional, and incredibly easy, Japanese technique.

November 19, 2010

New York's Best Japanese

At least in my opinion... New York is fortunate to have a sizable Japanese expat community -- and real deal restaurants to serve them. I'm talking about Japanese cuisine beyond sushi, which is just a tiny part of the food culture there, despite its popularity here. Many friends ask me to recommend Japanese joints in the big city, so here I go: Check out the half-dozen restaurants below (listed alphabetically) to discover a world of Japanese cooking from sophisticated cuisine to tapas-like pub food to home style chow. And what about your favorite places? Any Japanese restaurants you want to add? (And not just in New York) Please share your thoughts in the comments!

April 20, 2008

sabrina's chicken shack

May 22, 2005

All About Salmon

I was curious to see the reaction of fellow commuters as I stepped onto a Brooklyn-bound subway holding a clear plastic bag filled with 20 pounds of salmon parts.

April 21, 2010

Yakitoriya, Los Angeles

Ah, yes, a counter-eye view of a master at work! Visiting LA last week, I had the pleasure of dining at a real-deal yakitori joint called Yakitoriya. I knew I was in for a treat when the chef, Toshi-san, asked if it would be okay if he served his bird on the rare side.

October 15, 2009

Original Teriyaki

Okay, time for teriyaki, but I mean the real thing, not the ho-hum dish we typically see here in America, the one with a gummy, starch-thickened sauce that drowns chicken or fish.

August 16, 2010

masa's soul brother

June 1, 2006

Cooking with Atsushi

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.

August 4, 2008

New Class! Register for Workshop and Tasting at Saveur Magazine

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?

November 10, 2009