Murota - Tokyo Cult Recipes

CULT RECIPES

100 DISHES FROM THE GASTRONOMIC MEGACITY. IF YOU WANT SUSHI, MISO SOUP, GYOZA, RAMEN, DONBURI, BENTO, TONKATSU, LOTUS ROOT CHIPS, MOCHI, OR A YUZU SORBET THEYRE ALL HERE.

Maori Murota was born and grew up in Tokyo. She left Japan when she was seventeen to live in New York, and she also spent time in Indonesia. In 2003 she settled in Paris, where she worked as a stylist before exchanging the world of fashion for food in 2009. Completely self-taught, Maori became chef at Parisian restaurants Do and Bento at La Conserverie. Now an event caterer and private chef, she also gives classes in authentic Japanese home cooking.

PREFACE

When I arrived in France, I noticed that Japanese food wasnt very well understood there. It was often confused with other Asian cuisines, or else it had a fairly limited image. People would ask me: So, do you eat sushi every day at home? No, not all that often. It is more of a special occasion meal orchestrated by a sushi master at a restaurant. I dont like tofu, its bland. There are many ways of preparing tofu, and it is also important to choose the right tofu for each dish. Miso soup has no flavor. Its just salty. Make your miso soup with real dashi stock, and you are sure to change your mind! So I started giving cooking classes. Not just for sushi and yakitori, but also for the everyday dishes eaten in Japan. What a pleasure to hear the responses: Japanese cooking is so simple! There are a lot of flavors I didnt know about. What looked complicated isnt that hard! Yes, it is simple. You just need to learn a few basic techniques and how to identify and use quality ingredients. Becoming a sushi master may not be within everyones reach, but everyday Japanese cooking is not difficult to learn. Born in Tokyo, I grew up there with parents who were passionate about food. My father, a real Tokyoite and proud of it, took me to all the restaurants he loved, from luxurious sushi restaurants at one end of the scale to yatai, the crude but incredibly good mobile yakitori stands at the other, with traditional soba noodle restaurants in the Asakusa district in between. My mother, equally enthusiastic about food, made a bento box for me every day to take to school. Or rather, she made the best bento of the class, the one everyone wanted to taste. At home we cooked together, and every meal was a topic of serious discussion! So, in this book, I want to introduce you to the authentic dishes of the Tokyo I grew up inthe food cooked at home and the food served in restaurants. The recipes are drawn from my memory and the trip I made for this book, visiting my favorite neighborhoods and going back to family sources. I hope this book will help you discover the true flavors of Tokyo and Japan. I will be delighted if it inspires your everyday cooking and gives you the pleasure of sharing it with someone!

ASA TEISHOKU

BREAKFAST

The traditional Japanese breakfast is made up of rice, miso soup, tsukemono (pickles), fish and eggs. This meal is an integral part of Japanese cuisine because it contains the essential elements of our dishes, such as rice and dashi (stock). In day-to-day life, we dont always have time to make this traditional breakfast, instead having coffee, toast and pancakes in the Western style, but it is still very much enjoyed.