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27 results for "workshop"

Scenes from a Japanese Cooking Workshop

Last week, a couple of dozen curious food lovers joined me at the Saveur magazine test kitchen for a Japanese vegetarian cooking workshop with the amazing Chef Masato Nishihara of Kajitsu restaurant. What an incredible night.

November 5, 2009

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

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

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

Register for Workshop and Tasting at Saveur Magazine!

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.

October 1, 2009

Introduction to Japanese Tea: Workshop and Tasting

Calling all tea lovers: I'll be teaming up with my friend Stebastian Beckwith, tea authority and a founder of In Pursuit of Tea, to present an evening of tea tasting and stories from Japan.

September 27, 2010

Miso Nikomi Udon

This past Sunday, I joined Chef Hiroki Abe of En Japanese Brasserie to cook with miso, part of a series of workshops at the restaurant. Great workshop!

October 24, 2010

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

Two Versatile Miso Dipping Sauces

At Sunday's miso workshop at En Japanese Brasserie, Chef Hiroki Abe introduced a couple of fabulous, fast and easy miso dipping sauces that I wanted to share with you.

October 25, 2010

Two Must-Try Miso Dressings

Man, was Chef Abe-san on a roll at Sunday's miso workshop at En Japanese Brasserie! Here are two of his versatile, super tasty miso dressings -- miso dressing and sesame miso dressing.

October 25, 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

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

Japanese Beef Curry From Scratch

I've been working to perfect making Japanese curry from scratch, as I'll soon be leading a workshop entitled "Comfort Food All-Stars: Curry, Tonkatsu, Gyoza" at the fantastic Brooklyn Kitchen. I love Japanese curry, but I don't love those ubiquitous packages of Japanese curry mixes, which are highly processed with junk ingredients...

March 31, 2011

"Secrets of the Sake Brewery" Tasting and Fundraiser for Tsunami Relief at Matsuri!

Please join Chef Tadashi Ono and Sake Samurai Timothy Sullivan, with yours truly as moderator, for an important fundraiser for Japan earthquake/tsunami relief at Matsuri restaurant on Tuesday, April 12th at 7pm. The fundraiser will be very special workshop and tasting that goes behind the scenes at Japan's legendary Dassai sake brewery, where Timothy has just spent two months training.

April 1, 2011

Making Tofu

There's nothing like fresh, handmade Japanese "silken" tofu (called kinugoshi in Japanese). Coaxed from just soybeans, water, and nigari, a coagulant derived from seawater, it's a quintessential expression of Japanese cuisine -- the idea of finessing something so sublime from a few simple elements. I first tasted the real deal at the workshop of a traditional tofu maker in Kyoto I visited one morning before sunrise. With a lovely custard-like texture, delicate natural sweetness and seductive fresh soybean flavor, their tofu had as much to do with the stuff sold in supermarkets as a beautiful farmstead ricotta does with a tub of Polly-O.

March 16, 2009

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

mr. iwamitsu, wood carver

November 27, 2007

Remembering Karatsu Potter Jinenbo Nakagawa, 1953-2011

The first time I traveled to Japan it wasn't for the food, but for the pottery. Back when I was a TV news producer in Washington in the early nineties, I caught a number of phenomenal Japanese pottery shows at the Smithsonian's Sackler-Freer Galleries that simply blew me away.

December 26, 2011

kyoto tofu maker

November 16, 2007

iga donabe maker

November 17, 2007

Jinenbo Nakagawa's Pottery

I heard from a few readers curious about the beautiful piece of pottery in the picture of my post on simmering kabocha and chicken. This stunning vessel is the work of the esteemed Karatsu potter Jinenbo Nakagawa, who I met years ago and wrote about in a story for the late, great Gourmet in 2005.

February 26, 2010

Iron Chef Demonstrates Home Cooking

November 1, 2009

what makes good nori good?

December 11, 2007

japan's far north

May 13, 2007

japanese potters: mr. & mrs. kajiwara

July 23, 2005

Video: The Japanese Approach to Fish

What makes the Japanese way of preparing fish so special?

May 13, 2010

Videos: Fish Tempura & Oroshini

Making tempura is tricky, but if you understand the underlying fundamentals, you can definitely get the hang of it at home, and impress family and friends! (Not to mention cook a super delicious meal.)

November 19, 2010