Here's a simple method my pal and coauthor Chef Tadashi Ono of Matsuri mentioned to me last week: Steaming a whole chicken with sake. It couldn't be easier. Salt a whole chicken. Find a big pot (a Le Creuset French oven works perfectly) and stick a steaming basket inside (unscrew and remove the post in the center). Pour a mixture of water and sake in a 1:1 ratio into the pot until it reaches the top of the steamer. Position the chicken on the steamer and turn on the heat. Cook until the chicken is done, oh, about 45 minutes or so. You can test for doneness by making a cut between the thigh and the breast and peeking inside. If the juices run clear and the meat by the bone is no longer red, you're, as they say, golden. While the chicken is steaming, grate some daikon to make daikon oroshi (grated daikon). Also, pour ponzu sauce into individual serving bowls. Okay, now, very important: When the chicken is ready, allow it to cool to room temperature or so inside the pot. This way it will retain its succulence. If you pull it out of the pot and cut it up immediately, you'll end up with dry chicken. Patience is key. When you're ready to eat, add some daikon oroshi to the ponzu to give it body, and dip pieces of the chicken into the sauce. What you'll discover is that the steaming sake tenderized the chicken while it cooked, so it turns out incredibly moist and flavorful. Finally, you can reduce the steaming liquid down to a sauce and pour over the chicken if you'd like (more French than Japanese, but, hey). This chicken, leftover and out of the fridge, is also fantastic. Guess what I ate for lunch today? Tadashi, you are one amazing cook, brother. Thank you.
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I remember the first time I tasted sake, and sushi for that matter, back when I was in college in the 80s. A friend who studied in Japan took me to a sushi bar on Irving Place in Manhattan, where he introduced me to raw fish on rice and sake served as hot as a steaming mug of coffee. I didn't know much about sake at the time; I thought it was some generic tipple -- and in fact, most sake available at the time was indeed low-caliber. Fast forward a decade or so, as premium, small-batch sakes began filtering in from Japan, amazing brews as deep and sublime as the finest wines. I was hooked. But now, I was told, to savor these delicate brews refrigerator-cold. So hot sake was bad sake, and cold sake was good sake? Well, not so fast.
I thought about my initial encounters with sake, and attendant questions, as I listened to a fascinating and immensely useful seminar last week at the Japanese Culinary Center, called "Sake Temperatures: How Hot Is Too Hot?" I was thrilled that Mr. Nori Kanai, the founder of Mutual Trading (which runs the center) gave the presentation. First, a little bit about Mr. Kanai, a spry 87-year-old: (a) he's a legend, (b) he's the man responsible for introducing sushi to the West and (c) he was just anointed a "Living National Treasure" by Emperor Akihito for his life's work promoting Japanese food culture around the world. Wow. (By the way, Mr. Kanai credits his vitality to eating soba for breakfast every morning. Duly noted.)
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My wife and I and a houseguest visiting from Japan cooked this dish on New Year's Eve from a recipe dug up in a Japanese newspaper. Soba is the traditional meal on the last day of the year, the noodles symbolizing long life and health for the upcoming annum. I particularly liked this dish (it's a hot pot, of course I liked it!), a tasty combination of chicken, mushroom, abura age and soba. The dried soba you drop into the pot raw, so it cooks in the broth and thickens it. Nice touch, and easy. And to top it off, you accent this dish with one of my favorite Japanese ingredients, citrusy, fiery yuzu kosho, dissolving it right into the broth. God, this was good. What a way to ring in the New Year.
A couple of days ago, as I was shivering my butt off in the current deep freeze enveloping New York City (anyone want to invite me to their home in the Bahamas for... forever?), my thoughts drifted back to this satisfying, comforting, warming, fantastic hot pot. Why just eat it once a year? Here's how I prepared it:
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I was going to wash the rice for dinner myself, but my house guest, a talented young Japanese chef stepped in to do it. When I worked beside him for a month last year in Tokyo, I was awestruck by how sensitive he was to the foods he cooked. I was reminded about that again as I watched him wash rice.
He added the rice to a large mixing bowl and filled it with water. He gently sloshed the water around and carefully poured out the now milky colored. He added more water and did the same thing again. And again. And again. All the while he never actually touched the rice. Now he added water to the bowl and began lightly caressing the rice with the tips of his fingers, barely touching it. "The most important thing is not to break the grains of rice," he said. My friend drained the water and repeated this process another five times until the water was almost clear. Then he picked out a raw grain of rice, lifted it to his mouth and bit into it. I did the same. It tasted like, well, a raw grain of rice. What was he doing? "I'm checking if the grain feels polished and smooth," he answered. Oh. This was way beyond my toothy ken. He again filled the bowl with water but this time let the rice soak in it. For about 20 minutes, he told me.
We were working on something else in the kitchen and I noticed him lift some grains of rice out of the water, feel them with his fingertips and inspect them closely. What was he looking at? Checking if the rice was ready to be drained, he answered. I looked at some rice grains myself. They were pearly white with a few translucent flecks. "They need more time," he said. How did he know? About 5 minutes later he drained the rice. Now the each grain was entirely milky white, the translucence gone. He placed the rice in a colander and let it rest.
"Rice is difficult," the young chef explained. "Every cook has a different way to prepare it."
Rice is the most fundamental food in Japanese cuisine. So fundamental, the word for it, gohan, also means the meal itself. What struck me watching the chef was how even the act of washing it could be so subtle and deep and revealing. Such a humble task, yet one, at least in his hands, offering such a profound window into the cuisine. I know the rice gods were smiling.
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For me, the holy grail of Japanese cooking boils down this: The ability to look in the fridge, see what I've got and cook something fabulous with it. I've witnessed this two-step over and over in Japanese homes, watching slack-jawed with admiration as home cooks knocked out great dishes on the spot. This versatility, spontaneity and creativity is what Japanese cooking is all about, on any level. Since I don't have this awesome culinary knowledge wired into my DNA, of course, I've been trying to figure out a way to break it down and explain it in some kind of coherent -- and replicable - fashion (the journalist in me). It's a work in progress...
I thought about all this as I watched my friend and houseguest prepare us dinner last night. He's a young chef who cooked at the incredible Ryugin in Tokyo, where I had the privilege last year of working beside him for a month. We were both hungry, so we checked the fridge. There was precious little inside: a thinly pounded fillet of chicken breast, still frozen, an onion and a half a bunch of asparagus. (Yeah, time to go shopping!) "How about pizza," I mused. My friend just smiled. "I can make something with this," he said, and went to town. Ah yes, that irrepressible Japanese cooking spontaneity in action! I tried to capture what he did as best as possible in the following recipe. Stay tuned as I work out how to explain the underlying ideas behind it. Here's the dish:
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Last night a bunch of hungry souls joined me at EN Japanese Brasserie to experience an amazing meal based on classic makanai, or staff meal, cooking. A highlight was Chef Abe's delicious butajiru, or traditional pork miso soup, the recipe of which he graciously shared with me, below. As Reika Yo, EN's owner, pointed out, butajiru is essential home cooking, a humble but hearty miso soup perfect for winter. No wonder it's a staple of staff meals, food for the restaurant's own family. This recipe, like most Japanese cooking, quite flexible. Omit ingredients, add more of something, or substitute, say, the sweet potato for regular potatoes. Abe-san cooks his soup with thinly sliced fresh pork belly, but you can use another cut of pork if you'd like. He also uses two kinds of miso, but you can use either/or, or buy prepared awase miso (mixed miso) at the Japanese market. Finally, I have some pictures to share of the event and the food, after the recipe. Enjoy!
1 tablespoon sesame oil
5 1/2 oz (about 150g) pork belly, thinly sliced
14 oz (400g) daikon, thinly sliced
7 oz (200g) carrot, thinly sliced
7 oz (200g) Japanese sweet potato (imo), thinly sliced
2 quarts (about 2 liters) dashi (make or use dashi packs)
5 1/2 oz (150g) burdock root, cut into shavings (like sharpening the end of a pencil, keep in water until using)
1 package (100g) konnyaku, cut into small cubes
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
4 1/2 oz (130g) white savory miso (shiro miso)
1 1/2 oz (40 g) red savory miso (aka miso)
1/2 cup sliced scallions
Serves four: Add oil to a saucepan over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the pork, cooking and stirring until it turns white. Add the daikon, carrot, and sweet potato, cooking and stirring for about 1 minute. Add dashi and bring to a boil. Add the burdock, konnyaku and onion and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes or until cooked through. While the soup is cooking, mix together the two miso. When the ingredients are just cooked through, turn off the heat and dissolve the miso in the soup (see primer). Garnish with sliced scallions, and serve.
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