A few months ago, I mentioned the opening of Kajitsu, a Kyoto-style vegetarian restaurant in the East Village of Manhattan (map). On Sunday night my wife and I pulled up seats along the lovely wood counter there for dinner. What a magnificent meal.
I thought a lot about cooking vegetables during my recent stay in Japan training in kitchens there. I love how fine Japanese cuisine strives to retain an ingredient's natural flavor, highlighting each vegetable in its peak season of flavor, never doing too much to stray from a root or green's intrinsic taste and texture, and infusing these ingredients with mouthwatering umami through subtle flavoring with dashi, shoyu or miso.
At Katjitsu, a restaurant based on vegetarian Buddhist shojin cooking, Chef Nishihara deftly demonstrated these ideas, and more. I found especially delightful his use of local ingredients -- broccoli, corn, peppers, yellow and purple cauliflower -- preparing them in an completely Japanese way, like his delicate puree of broccoli in dashi, served with chunks of roasted, charred eggplant. Fantastic. Nishihara-san, who trained in one of Kyoto's most renown kaiseki restaurants, also demonstrated his cooking mojo with the signature shojin ingredients of that city, like yuba and nama-fu, which you can see in the picture above. And I absolutely loved his handmade soba served with an incredible shiitake-infused dipping sauce. If you want to know what soba should really taste like, try his.
Everything about Kajitsu, which was launched by a Kyoto fu-making family, gave me the feeling of dining in Japan, from the breathtaking wood and tableware, to the deft service and the chefs working on the other side of the dining counter. The menu is a set tasting course, which changes every month. I can't wait to come back in July. I hope you check out Kajitsu. (And when you do, please let me know your reaction in the comments!)
Kajitsu, 414 East 9th St. between 1st Ave. and Ave. A, 212-228-4873
Posted by Harris Salat in New York | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this story
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!
Japanese kitchen knives are incredible, precise tools, and I spent countless hours practicing my cutting techniques these last few months training in Japan. I first discovered this book, written by Chef Hiromitsu Nozaki and Kate Klippensteen (check out her Cool Tools
, too), while I was in Tokyo, and found it hugely instructive, helping me understand cutting techniques, knife maintenance, and the blades themselves. Kate recently emailed me to say Japanese Kitchen Knives, which I flagged in an post about sharpening, has now been released in America. If you're serious about Japanese cooking, you have to read this book.
I've been very interested in the blacksmiths and sharpeners who shape these blades in Sakai City, the epicenter of this craft, located just outside Osaka. These masters follow age-old traditions to hand-produce traditional Japanese single edged knives. It's incredible how much sweat and effort it takes to make each knife. I wrote about these masters last year (see my story in Salon), and earlier this month I visited Sakai again, where I met more of these amazing artisans. When I mentioned how helpful I found Kate's book, they told me they were the ones who handcrafted the knife on the cover. Incredible.
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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. A couple of weeks ago I took a drive with an architect who's made it his mission to save these traditional farmhouses. This remarkable man, named Hirosuke Suzuyama, is committed to preserving not only the buildings but the know-how to maintain these old homes as well as their antique wood.
On a glorious Sunday, Mr. Suzuyama drove me through rural Saga Prefecture on Kyushu Island to visit his preserved farmhouses. Saga is one of my favorite parts of Japan, a place I keep returning to because of its breathtaking beauty, traditional ways and magnificent pottery in Karatsu and Aritsugu (see my Karatsu story in Gourmet from a few years ago). As we toured our first farmhouse, over 150 years old and preserved by a lovely young family, Mr. Suzuyama pointed to its thatched roof. Called kusabuki in Japanese, it's constructed of tightly packed reeds (ashi) that do more than just keep rain and snow out of the living room. Mr. Suzuyama explained that these roofs act like a huge baffle -- and are integral to cooking. How?
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Posted by Harris Salat in Japan | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this story
Yosuke and Mami Kanamaru win my vote for the most adorable husband and wife chef team on planet earth. Adorable, and exceedingly talented. They run a stylish new restaurant called KASA, 13 seats with a dining counter and two tables. I discovered it, and Yosuke and Mami's fantastic cooking, during my recent stay here in Fukuoka, Japan.
Yosuke is an Italian chef who cooked at the Nikko Hotel in Dusseldorf, while Mami trained as a Japanese chef at a number of top Fukuoka restaurants. When I found that out, I asked them to cook me a dinner composed of both Italian and Japanese dishes. Naturally.
My meal progressed from a delicious amuse of octopus in tomato vinegar, sun-dried tomato puree and olive oil (his) to renkon manju, a delicate minced lotus root and bamboo shoot croquette served in dashi (hers) to fresh sardines grilled in tomato, rosemary, olive oil and salt, served with young potatoes and amazing Italian ham (his).
As I savored the sardines, I hankered for a piece of crusty bread, which was served to other diners. Why not to me, too? I found out as Mami took to the stove to create the final flourish: rice zosui, rice porridge, the shime, or finish to the meal, this one cooked with seaweed and flavored with soy sauce and fresh wasabi. Heavenly.
What I really loved about both Yosuke's Italian and Mami's contemporary Japanese cooking was their simplicity, sensitivity and delicate touch. Also, to me, Yosuke's Italian had a delightful Japanese sensibility to it, subtle cooking that also looked beautiful.
KASA is located on the ground floor in Konya building, a hip urban redevelopment project with galleries and creative companies and a couple of guest rooms for visitors (like, me), as well as a huge sign announcing "UFO parking" stenciled on the roof. Kasa's phone number is 092-986-4350. You have to try this restaurant if you're in Fukuoka.
Here are photos of dinner and the restaurant:
Posted by Harris Salat in Fukuoka | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this story
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.
Established in 1916, this old market is a warren of stalls and narrow passageways, a cooperative of shops that reflect the easygoing charm of this city, the biggest on Japan's Kyushu island, one of my favorite parts of Japan.
As we entered the market the chef greeted fellow chefs also shopping for their restaurant. We stopped at a fish stall with rows of flying fish, tilefish, grunt, bonito, huge squid, sea urchin in their shells, clams and other sea creatures resting on ice or swimming in buckets. A fishmonger served us tea and the chef placed his order.
But chefs weren't the only shoppers at the market. Ordinary residents of the city walked the isles, too, snapping up the same pristine fish and vegetables the chefs cook with at their restaurants. And that's what I love about Japan: The quality and variety of ingredients here are so outstanding -- and readily available to everyone.
What also struck me is the leeway this bounty of ingredients gives the chef in the kitchen. His restaurant serves classic kaiseki cooking, an arresting procession of exquisite seasonal dishes. There's no menu, of course; diners expect the chef to select the finest expressions of "shun," an ingredient's peak season of flavor. And that's exactly what the chef does every morning at the Yanagibashi Market.
Posted by Harris Salat in Japan | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this story
For the past three weeks I've been working as a shugyo, a trainee, at Takegami, a traditional ryotei in Tokyo's Akasaka district. Kamiya-san, the chef-owner (the gentleman on the left) graciously invited me into his kitchen, where I worked under Chef Abe-san (on the right) along with a group of outstanding cooks.
Akasaka is an area famous for its traditional Japanese ryotei - in fact, if you take a walk there around 4pm any sunny afternoon, you'll see a bunch of ryotei cooks on break milling about, wearing their Japanese-style white chefs coats and seta, traditional sandals. Takegami is tucked into a tiny side street (directions at the end of this post), a restaurant known for its handmade toothsome soba -- served 14 different ways -- and kaiseki-style menus, seven to choose from.
I worked quite a bit on my knife techniques at Takegami, especially cleaning fish and cutting vegetables. Please see my post with video on how to clean fish, and on knife sharpening, which I also focused on.
Speaking of knives, one of the key things Chef Abe instilled in me was to use the entire blade of my knife. Japanese knives are specialized and very practical. The length of the blade is not arbitrary. For example, the chef demonstrated how to peel kamo nasu, a squat eggplant, by sliding the entire blade of an usuba in a twisting motion to create a spiral cut. So the simple act of peeling itself became artful and beautiful. (Except when I tried it. But I got better after a dozen eggplants...)
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Posted by Harris Salat in Tokyo | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this story
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