Morimoto - Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking

Contents

1. DASHI: THE EASY, ESSENTIAL JAPANESE STOCK
   
2. GOHAN: RICE
   
3. SUPU: SOUPS
   
4. YAKU: TO GRILL, BROIL, AND SEAR
   
5. MUSU: TO STEAM
   
6. NIRU: TO SIMMER
   
7. ITAME RU: TO STIR-FRY
   
8. MEN: NOODLES
   
9. AGERU: TO FRY
   
10. AE RU: TO DRESS
    
11. TSUKERU: TO PICKLE
    

Long before I was an Iron Chef with a restaurant empire of my own, I was the young executive chef at Nobu restaurant in New York City. Nobu Matsuhisa, the owner and chef, served boundary-crossing Japanese food inspired by his time in Peru. He dazzled American diners with dishes that fused exotic-seeming elements of Japanese food (raw fish, mysterious-sounding ingredients like uni and yuzu) with the bright flavors of Latin Americachiles, lime, and cilantro.

At the time, I was struck by the fact that perhaps his most celebrated dish, the one that earned breathless reviews from the New York Times and cost diners $25 a plate, was miso-marinated black cod. As a boy, Id gobbled this dish many times at the table in my familys little house in Hiroshima prefecture. My grandmother might have used a more modest fish than rich, silky black cod and left out the bright pink pickled ginger shoot and drizzle of sauce that garnished the plate at Nobu. Otherwise, hers was essentially identical.

Because Americans were unfamiliar with the dish and because it shared a menu with all that creative fusion food, the staple of Japanese home cooking seemed like a brilliant chefs invention. Nobu-sans real stroke of brilliance was simply realizing how much Americans would love the dish. The praise it inspired revealed how thrilling even the simplest Japanese home cooking could be.

The years since then have been good ones for Japanese cuisine in America. Weve seen sushi go from exotic rarity to supermarket staple. Weve seen tempura become a household term. Weve witnessed the rise of ramen and soba and yakitori. The enthusiastic embrace of Japanese food was no surprise to those of us who grew up relishing its lightness and healthfulness, its simplicity and its umami, that hard-to-describe fifth flavor that is sometimes translated as mouth-fillingly delicious.

No question: Americans adore Japanese food. But though other cuisinesMexican or Italian or Frenchare locally beloved, cooks here dont even attempt to make Japanese food at home. Why not? I have a theory: lore and mystique plague the cuisine. Americans have heard again and again that the best sushi chefs train for years before theyre allowed to even touch rice or fish. Theyve heard tales of kaiseki, the elaborate parade of tiny dishes made from ingredients that might be in season for mere weeks. Theyve heard about the Japanese penchant for specialization: restaurants are devoted to one ingredient (like eel) or dish (like tempura), and master practitioners dedicate their lives to the craft. The takeaway: this cuisine is best left to experts. No wonder home cooks are afraid to try it!

But we Japanese chefs know a secret. The flavors that our customers adore arent so hard to create. They exist in the incredible, underexplored world of Japanese home cooking.

Its true that I spent many years learning the intricacies of fish and rice making so my sushi would satisfy connoisseurs spending $200 on dinner. Home cooks across Japan, however, make a different kind of delicious sushi. They fold a mixture of vinegar, sugar, and salt into cooked short-grain rice and set the result on the table alongside nori (easy-to-find sheets of dried seaweed) and a modest array of vegetables or fish. The family digs in, everyone spreading the rice onto the nori, adding the filling, and rolling the package into a cylinder by hand. This is temaki zushi, or hand rolls. They require no special skills or equipment to make. Yet because you make them yourself, the nori stays crisp, the rice stays warm, and gummy, soggy take-out sushi rolls become a distant memory.

This is true for so many exalted dishes: they might take years of training to produce at the highest level at the most celebrated restaurants, but they require only a little know-how to become tasty, satisfying dinners at home.

The finest soba noodles, for instance, are handmade from freshly milled and meticulously polished buckwheat. Yet in Japanese homes across the globe, store-bought dried noodles make a delightful centerpiece for a simple meal served with grated radish and dipping sauce. Youll pay dearly for featherweight fried maitake mushrooms and lotus root at the finest tempura restaurants in Tokyo, where chefs create edible art with bubbling oil. Yet once youve mastered a few simple techniques, youll impress your friends with vegetables encased in impossibly light, greaseless crunch. The now-famous black cod with miso, too, has its fussed-over versions. Yet all my grandmother did to make misoyaki was slather a four-ingredient marinade onto fish and broil it. Hers is still my favorite.

Ironically, it took me leaving home to experience real home cooking. I loved my mother, but she was not a good cook. She grew up wealthy, surrounded by housekeepers who cooked and cleaned for her. She barely had to put her clothes on herself. After World War II, her family lost everything. By the time she married my father and had me, she was too busy working to catch up on all the cooking experience she had missed.