The Japanese Food Report

Atsushi's Stuffed Zucchini Blossom Tempura

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:37:31 -0500

When my friend, and supremely talented young chef, Atsushi Nakahigashi visited New York last summer, he whipped up some terrific dishes for me. Now that he's visiting Gotham once again, I posed a challenge...

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Dine At This Restaurant: Kajitsu

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:14:02 -0500

A few months ago, I mentioned the opening of Kajitsu, a Kyoto-style vegetarian restaurant in the East Village of Manhattan. On Sunday night my wife and I pulled up seats along the lovely wood counter there for dinner. What a magnificent meal.

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Read This Book: Japanese Kitchen Knives

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:40:05 -0500

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!

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Saving Traditional Japanese Farmhouses, Or In Praise of Thatched Roofs

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:36:18 -0500

As I've traveled through the Japanese countryside I've occasionally come across magnificent old farmhouses with roofs made not of clay tile, but of thatch. I say occasionally, because, as I learned recently, these old buildings are quickly disappearing from the landscape here.

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Italian and Japanese in Fukuoka

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:24:34 -0500

Yosuke and Mami Kanamaru win my vote for the most adorable husband and wife chef team on planet earth. Adorable, and exceedingly talented.

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Fukuoka's Yanagibashi Market

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:33:27 -0500

On my way to the restaurant in Fukuoka where I'm currently a shugyo, or trainee, I bumped into my chef, who motioned me to join him. His destination: the Yanagibashi market.

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Cooking at Takegami

Mon, 25 May 2009 18:26:55 -0500

For the past three weeks I've been working as a shugyo, a trainee, at Takegami, a traditional ryotei in Tokyo's Akasaka district.

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Video: Sharpening Knives and Cleaning Fish

Mon, 25 May 2009 18:14:04 -0500

I love these guys. Ueno-san on the left, Nagase-san on the right, two exceptionally talented chefs at Takegami who run the restaurant's dining counter, and who taught me a ton about knives and knife work. Let's talk a little... Read the full post »

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Udon-suki Hot Pot

Mon, 25 May 2009 18:08:06 -0500

When I mentioned to Chef Abe of Takegami that I just finished writing a hot pot cookbook with my friend Tadashi Ono, he said he'd show me Takegami's signature version the following day. What a hot pot.

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Cooking with Chef Ooe at Kozue

Mon, 04 May 2009 23:50:25 -0500

"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...

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Sharpening Japanese Knives

Sun, 03 May 2009 12:09:50 -0500

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.

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Cooking Miso Soup with Hiroko Shimbo

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:45:26 -0500

A few weeks ago I kicked off the Miso Soup Project, an occasional series about this versatile, healthy, elemental and, of course, supremely delicious Japanese dish. To learn more, I visited the remarkable Hiroko Shimbo, Japanese food authority and author of The Japanese Kitchen, The Sushi Experience, among other terrific books. Hiroko graciously invited me to her kitchen to teach me about miso soup, and show me how to cook three tasty versions. Here's our interview:

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Making Sake

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:29:08 -0500

At 8am the toji, the sake brew master, makes his morning rounds. He inspects the moto, a mingling of rice, water, koji rice, yeast and lactic acid that fulminates for about two weeks. He steps into the warm, fecund koji room to check out cottony mold blooming on steamed rice spread on large wooden trays. He works a twelve foot pole to stir the moromi -- the sake mash -- moto, rice, water and koji percolating in thirteen hundred gallon steel tanks, a mixture like gurgling oatmeal that ferments for about twenty five days before being pressed to release clear liquid -- sake.

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Making Tofu

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:03:46 -0500

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.

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Miso Clams Over Rice, From "Dashi and Umami"

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:03:11 -0500

When I worked on a story on dashi last fall, I searched mightily for all the English-language information I could find on kombu and katsuobushi (dried kelp and dried, shaved bonito), the elements that make up a classic Japanese stock. I wish "Dashi and Umami" was available when I was writing my article.

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