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30 results for "technique"
Videos: Japanese Fish 101, Plus Three Techniques
Okay, get ready for some serious how-to video. Last weekend I moderated an incredible Japanese fish cooking class at EN Japanese Brasserie featuring Chef Hiroki Abe and owner Reika Yo. We stepped through a dozen delicious techniques that any home cook can master -- and videotaped them.
November 19, 2010
Three Great Techniques from the CIA Conference
Master Japanese chefs shared amazing techniques, recipes, ingredients, know-how, theory and more during the two and half days of the CIA's Japan:Flavors of Culture. Here is a trio of methods I came across that I loved, and jotted down in my notebook:
November 9, 2010
Videos: Clam Soup and Sake-Steamed Clams
In these two videos Chef Abe demonstrates two great techniques for clams, both easy and delicious. For the clam soup he uses Little Neck clams, and for the sake-steamed technique (sakamushi) he uses smaller Manila clams.
November 19, 2010
How To Make Amazing Gyoza
Ah, gyoza. What can I say, I love gyoza. Whenever I'm in Japan, sniffing out gyoza shops is de regueur, and gyoza always arrives with my ramen (a frosty beer completes the hat-trick). These steamed-and-fried dumplings are easy to make at home, too, and I'm going to demonstrate how soon at my upcoming Japanese comfort food workshop at the Brooklyn Kitchen on the 19th. To get ready, I've been working on perfecting my technique.
April 4, 2011
Simmered Chicken and Vegetables
First, a little theory: Nimono, or simmering, is a primary Japanese cooking technique, and a vast one. Nimono dishes are considered one of the classic kaiseki courses, as well as a mainstay of home cooking.
September 22, 2010
Videos: Japanese Knife Skills
For me, one of the great pleasures of studying Japanese cuisine has been perfecting my Japanese-style knife skills, techniques that open a range of cooking possibilities - and not just for pros.
October 13, 2009
Simmering: More Thoughts on Seasoning
In my post on simmering kabocha and chicken, I got into some of the underlying ideas behind nimono, or Japanese simmering technique, that Chef Isao Yamada explained to me. I wanted to touch on a few more of Yamada-san's thoughts about nimono.
February 27, 2010
4 Workshops, 100 Dishes: Cooking Series at EN Japanese Brasserie
Japanese home cooking is incredibly versatile: Learn a few simple techniques and you can cook, literally, hundreds of things. But this simplicity has to be learned. That's why I'm extremely pleased to announce a series of terrific Japanese cooking workshops to be taught by EN Japanese Brasserie's remarkable Chef Hiroki Abe, and moderated by yours truly.
September 22, 2010
Ikejime: The Japanese Way to Butcher Fish
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.
December 17, 2009
Chicken Simmered with Carrots and Daikon
I've talked about simmering before, so you know it's one of my favorite cooking techniques in Japanese cuisine. It's a simple and fast way to infuse amazing flavor into ingredients. The secret is the traditional seasonings:
January 16, 2011
Spring Vegetables Steeped in Dashi (Ohitashi)
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.
May 21, 2011
Video: Breaking a Fish, Japanese-style
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.
November 26, 2009
Chicken Mizutaki Hot Pot Video -- More Details
In this video we got explain more details about cooking one of our favorite hot pots, Chicken Mizutaki. Check it out -- technique we go over here apply to all the hot pots in our book!
September 21, 2009
Tuna Marinated in Soy Sauce and Mirin
God, this looks good, doesn't it? And it's just the leftovers! When I saw local tuna for sale at the farmers market, I remembered a technique the amazing Tadashi Ono taught me called maguro zuke, an old Tokyo style of marinating tuna, which he serves to great acclaim at Matsuri restaurant.
September 13, 2009
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
The Power of the Otoshibuta (or, the Drop Lid)
An amazing thing happened when I watched Chef Isao Yamada simmer ingredients in the Japanese way, a technique called nimono. When the simmering liquid started to boil, he laid a lid, a wooden lid smaller than the saucepan, directly on top of the cooking ingredients. The liquid immediately started boiling up, but then he adjusted the heat, and it calmed down, happily bubbling away under that lid. What was going on here?
February 27, 2010
Video: Fish Teriyaki
Check out how Chef Abe demonstrates how to make the real-deal teriyaki, not the gummy goopy excuse for this technique we find too often here.
November 19, 2010
Flounder Kara-age
Kara-age is a technique for deep frying without a batter, to highlight the natural taste of an ingredient. Foods are simply dredged in flour or starch, to seal the surface, and plopped into a vat of bubbling oil (okay, not literally a vat -- a saucepan is fine!).
April 24, 2011
Japanese Knife Skills
In this video, I join my coauthor Tadashi in the Matsuri kitchen to demonstrate a few incredibly versatile and useful Japanese knife techniques (please note the video starts in black for 5 seconds).
October 14, 2009
Steamed Chicken with Cucumber and Wakame
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.
November 25, 2009
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
Sharpening Japanese Knives
I love working with Japanese kitchen blades. I've visited blacksmiths before and have written about them, and own several blades. Right now I'm in Tokyo for a few months apprenticing at several restaurants (more on that soon), and cutting every day for hours. Chefs here have been graciously instructing me on my technique.
May 3, 2009
japanese chefs knives
Please check out my story in Salon.com about Japanese kitchen knives! It published today (when you click to the site, wait a couple of seconds and an "Enter Salon" button will appear in the top right corner to view for free). Here's some more information, in case you're interested:
February 1, 2008
Japanese Cooking Workshop with Sono-san
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:
December 14, 2009
Onsen Tamago, or poaching eggs in their shells
Recently, a TV reporter visited my restaurant Ganso and asked a typical reporter question: How many distinct ingredients do we use to make a bowl of ramen?
December 28, 2012
Salt-Cured Bonito Sashimi
Atsushi and I hit the Union Square farmers market a few times during his stay. On Saturday and Wednesdays fishermen from Long Island's North Fork sell pristine seafood. On one of those mornings we spotted a majestic whole bonito on ice. We quickly snapped it up.
August 6, 2008
Read This Book: Japanese Kitchen Knives
Hey, I could have shown you a cover shot of Japanese Kitchen Knives, but I thought you'd rather see a photo of the craftsman who actually fashioned the very knife pictured on the book's jacket!
June 30, 2009
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
Layering Flavor into Vegetables
During the staff meal break the other night at Matsuri, I noticed Chef Ryuji cleaning a pile of fiddlehead ferns. Ryo is the Chef du Cuisine at the restaurant. I love watching him in action -- this man knows how to cook. During the break I can usually find Ryo by himself behind the line, working on something in the remaining quiet moments before service -- and its attendant frenzy -- begins.
March 26, 2008
More on Dashi...
Today the NY Times ran my story about dashi, a look at how Western chefs across the country are now cooking with this essential stock of Japanese cuisine. As regular readers of the Report know, I'm intrigued by dashi. I thought to add a few more ideas about this remarkable broth to expand on the article.
October 15, 2008