Washoku, Japanese citrus and yuzu-cha (yuzu 'tea')

I’m catching up on a few things! First of all, I have a new article in a special Japan Times supplement. It tries to answer the question, “What is washoku?”, or traditional Japanese cuisine. Back in December (previously) washoku was designated as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and this is more about the subject.

Also (and I am a bit late posting this…) from this month my regular Japan Times column will have a recipe with the article. First up is an article about the different kinds of winter citrus fruit that you can get in Japan, plus a recipe for yuzu marmalade. Marmalade made with yuzu fruit is truly outstanding - so fragrant, with just a right amount of bitterness - so I hope you’ll give it a try!

If you want to do something even simpler, try making yuzu-cha or yuzu tea. All you do is to freeze some roughly cut up yuzu, then add it to a sterilized jar. Add half its weight (or as much as you like) in sugar, and leave it somewhere where you will see it every day. You should use granulated or castor sugar (superfine sugar). The yuzu is frozen to break down its structure so that it releases more juice and oils, but you can just it fresh if you like.

Give it a good shake at least 2-3 times a day until the sugar has melted. You can use the whole fruit, as shown in the photo below (the container on the left), or use the peel only and the juice for something else. Store the jar in the refrigerator once the sugar has melted.

The yuzu-cha is added to hot water or tea to make a sweet ‘tea’, which is really refreshing. Try a tablespoon or so in a mug with boiling water.

You can use honey instead of sugar, but I think in this case sugar works best since it doesn’t interfere with the yuzu fragrance. (The jar on the right has kumquats in syrup. If there is interest I’ll post that almost-not-a-recipe too.)

An even easier way to enjoy yuzu year-round (especially if you are trying to stay away from sugar…) is to peel off the yellow part or the zest thinly, and to just freeze it. You can julienne or chop it up if you like before freezing, or cut it up as you like when you use it. It adds that wonderful yuzu fragrance to soups and vegetable side dishes, to grilled or simmered fish, or anything you like. A bit of the peel floated on a cup of hot tea is really nice. We can get very expensive fresh yuzu here in France…it costs the earth, but I buy a few just because that fragrance is so irresistable.

And finally: just for people who have been kind enough to send me words of encouragement — I just have two more seeks to go of this latest round of radiation therapy. It is making me kind of sick again but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully by spring I’ll be out and about again!

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Masataka Taketsuru, The Father of Japanese Whiskey And His Two Loves

(I originally wrote this elsewhere, but I thought you might enjoy reading it too without having to sign up there. :) So here it is. It involves a fine beverage, a man who made it his life’s works, and a story of enduring love against the odds.)

Whiskey first became widely available in Japan (least amongst the wealthy) in the 19th century, mostly in and after the 1870s, although it seems to have been introduced in the 1850s. Whiskey distilling in Japan did not get going until the 20th century though. The establishment of distilleries in Japan was spearheaded by a small group of men who fell in love with whiskey, and wanted to establish distilleries in Japan.

Of these, probably the most important one was Masataka Taketsuru(????), the “Father of Japanese Whiskey”. Born as the third son of a sake brewer, he learned sake making of different kinds in high school. He was supposed to take over the family business when he graduated since his two older brothers showed no interest in brewing, but in school he got deeply interested in western alcoholic beverages. He eventually fell in love with Scotch whiskey. This was the start of a lifelong love affair.

In 1918, he went to Scotland to study the process by which Scotch is made, by visiting many distilleries and studying organic chemistry at the University of Glasgow. While there, he fell in love with the daughter of the owner of the house where he was lodging: Jessie Roberta “Rita” Cowan, the other love of his life. (Her sister was also a student at the University.)

Rita and Masataka, 1920.

Rita fell in love with Masataka too - some say their love was born when they sang Auld Lang Syne together. Against all objections, especially from her family, they got married at the registrar in Glasgow. Masataka and his Scottish bride moved back to Japan in 1920.

Masataka also brought back with him 2 notebooks filled with his notes on the whiskey distilling process. They are still preserved in a museum. They are probably the most important documents in Japanese whiskey making history.

Masataka first went to work for the company that had sponsored his studies in Scotland, but they weren’t able to go ahead with their plans to establish a distillery due to a post-WWI depression. He was working as a high school chemistry teacher, when a company called Kotobukiya found him. They were looking to establish a distillery and made enquiries in Scotland for an expert, and were told “You already have one fully qualified in your country” and were directed to Masataka.

He went to work for Kotobukiya in 1923. He was instrumental in planning and building their first whiskey distillery in Yamazaki, near their headquarters in Osaka, indeed the first in Japan. His main ally and supporter in the company was Shinjiro Torii, the founder and boss of Kotobukiya, who was the one who had seen a need for a domestic whiskey distillery to be built. Kotobukiya later changed its name to Suntory.

However, the very first whiskey produced by the Yamazaki distillery, Suntory Shirofuda, was not a success; Japanese whiskey drinkers were used to blended whiskeys (mostly mixed together by pharmacists), and some in Kotobukya thought he was too fixated on the Scotch method, which in their opinion just wasn’t suited to Japanese tastes. He was eventually transferred away from his distillery, to a beer factory in Yokohama owned by Kotobukiya to run it. He wasn’t happy, but he felt obligated to stay at the company at least 10 years, which he had initially promised to do.

In 1934 (10+ years after he joined hte company) Masataka resigned from Kotobukiya and established his own company, called Dainippon Kajuu KK. The name of the company meant Great Japan Fruit Juice Company…he basically lied to investors about his intentions, and said he wanted to make apple juice. The company set up in Hokkaido, the northernmost big island in Japan. He chose Hokkaido because the climate was the most similar to that of Scotland. He also had ready access to peat, barley and other products used to make Scotch whiskey. He had wanted Kotobukiya to establish a distillery in Hokkaido 10 years ago, but they had refused because it was too far away from Osaka.

In 1940, he finally introduced his first distilled whiskey, and called it Nikka Whisky. (The Scottish spelling is used for whiskey in Japan without the e, since it’s using the Scotch method.) However, almost immediately afterwards whiskey was declared a commodity critical for national defense by the military controlled government. The distillery came under the control of the Imperial Navy, and for the duration of the war he made cheap military ration whiskey for the troops. That did, however, allow the distillery to survive.

When the war ended, Masataka had to continue to make cheap third grade whiskey at the insistence of his investors. In their view the postwar Japanese populace was too poor to afford fine whiskey. But Masataka kept on stubbornly and persistently going for quality, refining his methods even if he couldn’t sell the output.

In 1964, Nikka Whisky (they changed the company name to that formally in 1952) introduced three first grade whiskeys. His old nemesis Suntory quickly responded by producing their own. Quality Japanese whiskey became established over the next decades, helped a lot by that rivalry.

In some ways, you could regard the change in Japanese whiskey quality as a mirror of what was going on in Japanese industry as a whole in the postwar period, going from cheap and low quality to first class, and now to world-beating quality in a few decades…

Japanese whiskeys did not really become internationally recognized or exported in significant quantities until the 2000s, when they started to win international awards. Nikka and Suntory have been the main recipients of these accolades, such as these two from Nikka, Taketsuru Pure Malt and Yoichi Single Malt. (See: the list of awards won by Nikka Whisky).

Until his death in 1979, Masataka Taketsuru lived for whiskey. Nikka Whiskey is still thriving (as a subsidiary of Asahi Breweries, since 2011) and produces award-winning whiskeys.

Rita Taketsuru supported Masataka faithfully through all his ups and downs, until her death in 1961. Her income as an English teacher got them through some rough patches, and she endured a lot of abuse during the war when she was regarded as ‘the enemy’. She never returned to Scotland. Although they were unable to have children of their own, they adopted Masataka’s nephew, who becamse the second Master Blender for Nikka Whisky after Masataka.

This is Rita, dressed and coiffed in the Japanese way. A road is named after her, Rita Road, in Yoichi, the small town in Hokkaido where Masataka established his distillery.

Whiskey consumption in Japan continued to rise until the end of the ’80s, as the country became ever more prosperous. When the economy soured, whiskey consumption dropped too. However, since the late 2000s there has been a revival of interest in whiskey.

There’s a very nice article about the Taketsurus here, especially Rita: The Rita Taketsuru Fan Club.

The story of Masataka (Massan) and Rita Taketsuru will be the subject of the NHK Asadora (morning serial drama) starting in September 2014. More info here.

In 1989 Nikka Whisky bought the dormant Ben Nevis distillery in Scotland, and brought it back to life. Masataka would have probably heartily approved.

Asahi Breweries was a financial backer of Nikka Whisky via its chairman, Seitaro Kaga, for many decades, so Nikka becoming its subsidiary was not a hostile takeover or anything but rather a consolidation of sorts.

About Masataka Taketsuru on the Nikka Whiskey site.

The official Suntory sites don’t mention Masataka Taketsuru much (the Japanese site doesn’t mention him at all, and the English site has just a sentence or two), but gives most the credit for establishing that first distillery in Yamazaki to their founder, Shinjiro Torii. But without Torii’s persistence in establishing the distillery and keeping it open against the objections of his partners, Suntory may never have become a major whiskey maker.

One more bit of trivia: Shinjiro Torii seems to have actually been more interested in port, and thought that would become the big hit western alcoholic beverage in Japan due to its sweet flavor.

Suntory is now one of the biggest beverage manufacturers in Japan, if not the world (they also own several soft drink brands like Orangina, Ribena and Lucozade).

(The original version of this article is on Quora, but this version is more complete.)

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Kasutera - Japanese Honey Castella For Chinese New Year

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Washoku (traditional Japanese cuisine) designated as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

(Photo credit: The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan)

Yesterday, UNESCO put washoku or traditional Japanese cuisine on ther list of Intangible Cultural Heritage Of Humanity. The details are here. It’s only the second national cuisine to be put on this list, after French cuisine in 2010, but it’s by no means the only food-related one to be there, not even the only one for 2013 (more on that later).

This has been in the news in Japan for some time, and it is regarded as quite a big deal there. There has been a lot of concern amongst some purists that washoku is slowly being eclipsed by the popularity of food imported from elsewhere, especially the west. And, I have to say this about my countrymen: Japanese people just love it when they as a collective or a Japanese person gets official recognition overseas. To be a bit sarcastic, it’s like one has not really and truly ‘made it’ until they get some kind of award from a non-Japanese entity. It’s a bit weird.

In any case, as someone who is deeply interested in the history and sociology of food, I think that recognizing food as a crucial part of our heritage is a great idea. Food is as noble a cultural heritage as dance or art or crafts, is it not? And I don’t understand the snark and negativity that I have seen around it either, both about the designation of French cuisine when it happened and Japanese cuisine now. Food gets little respect amongst some people, I tell you.

However, I’m not too sure what that Intangible Cultural Heritage designation does. Does it help to boost tourism? I don’t know, and haven’t really been able to find out, if it did anything for French cuisine in any way. Don’t people travel to France for the cuisine anyway, and to Japan too? It is a hook to hang some promotions on.

Or, maybe it’s most important in raising awareness of the value of the cuisine within the country itself. In Japan as in many other developed nations, many people are increasingly going for convenient pre-processed foods and taking shortcuts. At the same time there’s also an interest in going back to natural ingredients and traditional ways of doing things anyway. Perhaps this UNESCO recognition will boost such efforts.

This is the video that presented the case of washoku to UNESCO. (They seriously need to get another narrator the next time…but the video itself is nice.)

As I mentioned above, Japanese cuisine is not the only food and drink related tradition to be recognized this year. Here are the other ones:

Also, if you want to know exactly what an Intangible Cultural Heritage is, there’s a definition here on the UNESCO site. I think this is the part that is most important:

The importance of intangible cultural heritage is not the cultural manifestation itself but rather the wealth of knowledge and skills that is transmitted through it from one generation to the next. The social and economic value of this transmission of knowledge is relevant for minority groups and for mainstream social groups within a State, and is as important for developing States as for developed ones.

If you want to learn some of the basics of washoku and you missed my Japanese Cooking 101: The Fundamentals of Washoku a few months ago, just start here and follow the links at the bottom.

And last by not least, English Cookpad is showing a link to a washoku recipe on the site in Advent-calendar style until December 25th. I have a little essay on the page where I talk a little bit about how Japanese expats feel about the ‘cuisine from home’. I hope you enjoy it. ^_^

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The Mystery of Japanese "Sauce"

Miso, soy sauce, bonito flakes…these are the kinds of ingredients you’d expect to be used in Japanese recipes. But there’s another ingredient that appears very often, and it’s usually just called “sauce” or so-su (???). What is this “sauce” anyway?

This is the most popular brand of Japanese “sauce”, although there are several other makers. It features a picture of a Bulldog. Some people call all “sauce” Bull-Dog sauce.

On the English version of the Cookpad site, it was decided early on to call it “Japanese Worcestershire-style sauce”. It does indeed taste like that classic English sauce made with mystery ingredients including anchovies, but it’s a lot thicker, sweeter, browner. “Sauce” appears on all kinds of foods, from Japanese hamburgers (which are more like ‘hamburger steaks’ rather than American burgers)…

…to okonomiyaki…

…and a lot more. Besides being used as, well, a sauce, it’s also used to add flavor to stews and soups, in marinades, and a lot more.

So what is this “sauce” anyway? While there are variations, called tonkatsu sauce (used on tonkatsu or breaded deep fried pork cutlets); chuunou sauce (pictured above) which just means ‘medium-thick’ sauce, usta- sauce, which is the Japanified version of Worcestershire (but usta- sauce is nothing like original Worcestershire sauce); okonomiyaki sauce, and so on. There’s little difference between them though, except in the degree of sweetness, and a slight difference in fruitiness and viscosity. Most “sauces” list “vegetables, fruit and spices” as their ingredients, plus amino acids (umami), sweeteners, caramel coloring and other things depending on the type.

“Sauce” apparently made its debut in the late 19th century in Japan, when it was sold as a different kind of soy sauce. This didn’t work out well, since it tasted so different from well, real soy sauce. “Sauce” really only took off in the post-World War II era, along with the rapid growth in popularity of westernized or yohshoku (yoshoku) cooking, which had previously been limited to the big cities.

While it’s still associated with yoshoku, as its use on things like okonomiyaki and takoyaki shows it’s now used as a flavoring ingredient for all kinds of cooking. For example the Japanese version of stir fried noodles, yakisoba, is flavored with “sauce”, unlike the Chinese version (lo mein) which is flavored with a soy sauce base.

Well..it all depends on how much it costs for you. If you live near a Japanese, Korean or general-Asian grocery store, and it’s fairly inexpensive, then by all means have a bottle around. You can use any brand you like, although Bull-Dog brand is quite reliable. (Bull-Dog sauce apparently used to be called “Inu-jirushi So-su”, which means “Dog Brand Sauce”. I think the name change was a good idea…)

“Sauce” can be used for things other than Japanese food - on all kinds of meaty or deep fried dishes, in stir fries, and so on.

As I mentioned above, I don’t think there’s a big enough difference between the “sauce” types to require stocking up on all of them, unless you want to of course or can spare the cash and space. Okonomiyaki sauce is sweeter and thinner than chuuno sauce for example, but there’s not a big difference. See below for ideas for doctoring any kind of “sauce”. For what it’s worth, right now I have one bottle of chuuno sauce in my fridge.

If you don’t have a Japanese/Asian grocery store near you, you can substitute other brown sauces. Traditional British Worcestershire sauce (such as the one from Lea and Perrins) is a great sauce and flavoring ingredient to have around anyway, but it’s not really a good substitute for Japanese “sauce”.

For that purpose I have at various times used A-1 Steak Sauce in the U.S., and HP Sauce in Europe. (Here in France, the latter is sold in our local supermarché in the “ethnic” food section.)

Both are a lot tangier than Japanese “sauce” though, so you need to temper it a bit. Adding sugar works, but molasses or golden syrup may work better. You can try adding some grated apple (a sweet variety, not a sour cooking variety) too. For okonomiyaki, you may need to add sugar or other sweetener in a 1:2 ratio of sweetener to sauce to come close to commercial okonomiyaku sauce. Or, if you like your okonomiyaki with mayonnaise too, add a bit more mayo to neutralize the sauce’s tanginess. Of course if you like tangy sauce anyway, you can just use one of those sauces straight.

I have seen a few recipes suggesting oyster sauce as a “sauce” substitute, but to me the flavor profile is quite different, so I recommend one of those sauces mentioned above instead.

[By the way, I’m boosting up my ‘Japanese ingredients explained’ section. If you need a Japanese ingredient explained in detail, and you can’t find an explaination here yet, just let me know and I’ll see what I can do.]

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About shokupan, or Japanese sliced bread

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my sudden yearning for making Japanese sliced bread. I was actually inspired to get the bread machine while writing my latest Japanese Kitchen column for the Japan Times, which is indeed about shokupan, or Japanese sliced bread.

As you can see from the article it’s basically um…well, sandwich bread. It is an edible (but delish! to me anyway) edible napkin, like Wonderbread. Hence my guilt about craving it. But you know…the much lauded French baguette is really not that much better nutritionally speaking. ^_^ Like everything else, soft white bread needs to be enjoyed in moderation. (And I don’t think that whole wheat bread is that much better for us anyway…if we want ‘good grains’ we should just eat whole cooked grains. So phooey to those wholegrain bread nutrition-snobs I say. (I do enjoy whole grain and alternative grain breads, but mainly for their taste.))

Anyway, as I noted in the article, the thicknesses at which shokupan is sold varies around the country. Since my Japan base, and where I grew up, is the Tokyo-Yokohama area, we rarely ever see big thick slices of bread. But in Kyoto for instance, this kind of thing is pretty normal.

This is cheese on toast that’s about 3 cm thick. The cheese on top is very ordinary sliced processed cheese (cheese awareness in Japan is not that high yet…) and the bread is regular shokupan, but it was so delicious. It’s served at a tiny cafe, which was about a 2 minute walk from the house of a family friend that I am allowed to stay at sometimes when the owner is absent. I had it with a cup of outstanding coffee almost every day for a week.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the article!

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What's so healthy about Japanese food?

A lot of people who come to this site or JustBento are here because they think Japanese cooking is very healthy. By and large it is, but, like any cuisine it’s not 100% healthy by any means. I’ve been thinking about what parts of Japanese cuisine are indeed healthy, and what aren’t, following up on my previous posts about sushi here and here. Here’s what I have come up with.

The biggest health issue with Japanese cuisine may be that it’s centered around refined carbohydates, in the form of white rice, noodles made white flour, and bread - most of the bread consumed in Japan is as white as snow. Some people think soba noodles are healthier than other types of noodles, and while buckwheat (soba) may have some beneficial qualities, most of the soba you can get, especially the dried kind, contains a lot of white wheat flour (buckwheat on its own is pretty hard to form into thin noodles). Japanese cuisine is quite high in salt. Condiments like soy sauce are quite salty of course, but there are lots of salt-preserved foods like umeboshi, pickled, salt-cured vegetables and fish. Salt was very important as a preservative before the widespread adoption of canning and refrigeration, as were drying/dehydrating, smoking and sugar. Until fairly recently the leading cause of death in Japan was by diseases related to high blood pressure, such as stroke. (Both my maternal grandparents died of stroke-related complications.) If you don’t have blood pressure problems you don’t have to worry too much about salt probably, but if you do it is an issue. Modern Japanese cuisine, from the Meiji period on, has quite a lot of battered, breaded and deep fried foods. Tempura has been around for a while, and it’s been joined by things like tonkatsu, ebifurai (breaded deep fried shrimp), korokke (Japanese croquettes), menchikatsu and more. Sugar is used quite a lot in savory dishes. Mostly it’s used in tiny amounts, but some dishes are quite sugary even if they are savory. (One reason for could be that traditionally, Japanese meals did not have a dessert course; sweet things were eaten as in-between meal snacks.) Although a spoonful at a time of budo mame will not hurt me too much, I do have to limit my intake of it severely. Some of the most popular Japanese dishes around the world are sadly not that healthy. Besides the issues with sushi, ramen for example is wheat noodles in a fairly fatty (but oh so tasty) broth; tonkatsu is, as mentioned above, breaded and deep-fried; and Japanese curry is basically a hearty European style stew served over a big mound of white rice.

Two foods that are integral part of Japanese cooking are tofu and green tea. Tofu is a great source of vegetable based protein, that has been eaten for hundreds if not thousands of years in East Asian countries. However, when people take the idea behind tofu and consume massive amounts of it, in the form of soy protein isolate and so on, it may or may not cause some problems. I do feel there’s quite a lot of bad science around this issue, too. Western anti-soy/tofu advocates tend to underreport the typical amounts of tofu that Japanese or Chinese people traditionally eat (it’s not that uncommon to eat a whole block of it at a meal by yourself for example), but it’s really hard to over-eat plain tofu the way you can over-dose perhaps on protein shakes and the like.

Green tea has also been consumed in East Asia for quite a long time. Green tea has been given all kinds of amazing health benefits - mainly in the West. In the countries where drinking green tea is part of the culture, people don’t really think about the health benefits; they just drink it because it’s enjoyable. I’m always rather suspicious about things that are purported to have amazing health benefits, because it seems to me that the more exotic and foreign or just plain odd something is, the most miraculous it’s supposed to be. This applies to almost any place. For instance, in Japan green tea it too common to be miraculous, but pu-erh tea is supposed to lower your cholesterol, make you lose weight, and grow hair on your head. (I just made the last part up, but you get the point.) Green tea probably does have some health benefits, but drinking green tea while maintaining an otherwise unhealthy lifestyle is not going to make you healthy. And again, there’s really no telling what will happen to your body if you take massive amounts of any food, no matter how ‘natural’ it is.

I’ll get to what I think is the healthiest aspect of Japanese cuisine in a minute, but to go over some individual things:

The wide variety of vegetables and legumes (beans) consumed is a good thing. The Japanese diet includes quite a few land and sea vegetables (seaweed). Not that many cuisines are into sea vegetables, but they are very low in calories, pretty high in fiber and packed with minerals. Beans are a big part of Japanese cooking too. Seafood is mostly good too. Fish is lower in calories generally speaking than meat, and the fats it contains are of the ‘good’ kind. (The biggest things we have to be concerned about regarding fish consumption these days are the near-extinction of some species, and the amount of mercury.) Fermented products add various kinds of beneficial flora to our digestive systems, which are critical to their er, smooth functioning. Miso is the best known fermented food in Japan, but there are also a wide variety of fermented preserved foods, as well as rice malt or koji, both sweet and salty. Salt-cured rice malt or shio-koji has become very popular in Japan in recent years, and I see it slowly making its way onto the shelves of Japanese grocery stores in other countries too. I hope it becomes as commonly available as miso because it’s really versatile. People have been using sakekasu or sake lees in cooking for a long time too. I don’t count the use of sake and mirin, two alcoholic products, as part of the ‘healthy fermented foods’ mix, but the lees or mash left over after sake production are pretty low in alcohol and full of that beneficial flora. (Soy sauce is too salty to be taken in amounts big enough to take advantage of its fermented nature.) Japanese cuisine also uses quite a few things that are naturally high in fiber and low in calories. Shirataki noodles is the best known of these: it seems to be trendy all around the world, or at least in North America and Europe, as a ‘guilt-free’ alternative to pasta. There are other foods like that too, such as konnyaku which is made from the same substance as shirataki. I described some of these foods in a mini-series a while back: seaweed or sea vegetables, dried vegetables, and of course konnyaku and shirataki.

The best, healthiest parts of Japanese cuisine have little to do with individual food items. It has to do with the way food is consumed: in moderation, and with lots of variety. During a typical day, a Japanese person consumes about 15 to 20 types of food if not more; nutritionists in Japan urge everyone to eat at least 30 different types of food a day. This may seem impossibly daunting if you come from a meat-and-two-veg food culture, but it’s not a big stretch in Japanese food culture. If you eat a lot of different foods, you are much more inclined to eat a healthy balanced diet. Of course you can cheat and choose 30 types of snack foods and candies, but that would be silly. As I explained during the Japanese Cooking 101 course, a typical Japanese meal has ‘1 soup, 3 dishes” besides the main carbohydrate. Even if you don’t cook Japanese style a lot, trying to add more variety to your meals may make your everyday meals just a bit healthier.

And the other part of Japanese cuisine, or Japanese food culture, that makes it relatively healthy is small portions and moderation. If you go to Japan you will see that the streets of its cities, especially Tokyo, are just filled with restaurants and various food related establishments. People enjoy a huge variety of cuisines and foods, some of them not at all inherently ‘healthy’. French pastries for example are tremendously popular, despite reports to the contrary. All kinds of junk food abound in stores. Yet, most Japanese people manage to stay pretty slim. It’s all about portion size and moderation. You can eat your cake and your ramen and your tonkatsu, as long as you don’t eat it all the time or in huge portions and you balance it out with other foods. It’s not a sexy quick-fix kind of characteristic that grabs headlines. But I’m convinced it’s the most important one.

This is not nearly as concise as Michael Pollan’s rule of “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”, and I sort of disagree with him on some things…but anyway here’s a list I came up with yesterday when answering this question on Quora.

eat a lot of vegetablesa decent amount of fruita moderate amount of protein and carbohydratesmonounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats over saturated or trans fatsdon’t forget fiberas well as getting some beneficial flora into your system via fermented foodswatch out for sugar and refined carbohydrate overload (critical if you’re a diabetic; still important if you don’t)some people need to watch their salt intakevariety is goodAnd above all, MODERATION.

I admit I don’t follow these rules all the time myself! But, I aspire to. ^_^;

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The guilt trip on the way to Japanese shokupan (it's just sliced bread...)

Ever since we were burglarized and lost most of our small kitchen appliances along with many many other things (TV, computer monitors, etc.) I have been trying to really re-think my need for Stuff. Although we did get the insurance payout for the things lost, it wasn’t nearly enough to cover the replacement cost for everything that was stolen of course, since that’s the way insurance works. Partly because of that, and partly because I always have a yearning for a simpler, more minimalistic lifestyle, we’ve been very slow with replacing the lost things. For instance, we still haven’t replaced the TV, or the slow cooker. We found we didn’t really miss either of them.

I was feeling pretty good about all this restraint. But then last week I sort of…lost it. I was going through my old photo files to gather some up for a potential project…and I kept on pausing on ones like this.

And…this.

Even this.

These are all Japanese sandwiches. They aren’t that expensive or special - the last one is a combini (convenience store) version, the ‘lettuce sandwich’ from 7-11. You can see it’s just filled with loads of lettuce (iceberg!) thin ham, and a slice of processed cheese. As I said, nothing too special. Even the one above it, the egg sandwich, is at the end just an egg salad sandwich…although it is so rich and egg-y tasting it’s amazing. (It’s from a local bakery chain called Shinshindo in Kyoto.)

What makes a Japanese sandwich special though is the bread, which is called shukupan (???) - which simply means ‘edible bread’. It is basically a Pullman loaf derivation - sliced sandwich bread, usually made of plain white flour. The crust is so forgettable it’s usually removed, and used to make breadcrumbs and stuff. But the actual bread itself is smooth, soft, slightly elastic, and just the right texture for a sandwich. It’s not the star, but is definetely a critical supporting player.

It’s so familiar looking. But yet, I’ve never been able to find the equivalent of shokupan, unless I go to a Japanese grocery store that carries Japanese baked goods. This wasn’t an issue when I lived in New York, or even in Zürich. But the closest one of those to us here is in Geneva, which is about 3 1/2 hours away by car and across a national border. I am not crazy enough to go that far for sliced bread.

Shokupan is also closely related to French pain de mie. Pain de mie is, of course, readily available in France. But…and here I am going to risk annoying some French people…it’s like the pain de me has been forgotten by French bakers. You can never find it at a proper boulangerie, where all the love and attention is bestowed on the baguette, the pain de campagne, the pain au levain and other wonderful things. Pain de mie is only available at supermarkets…and it’s uniformly bad. If you squish it even a tiny bit it becomes gluey. Readymade sandwiches using pain de mie, which we buy occasionally on the road, are pretty terrible.

So…back to last week, and losing it. I was looking at those pictures of Japanese sandwiches. And I thought that I simply must try to make shokupan myself. I could get a proper square loaf pan, and try to figure out the dough of course. But my itchy i-Click finger clicked on this baby.

Yep, it’s a bread machine. Bread machines were invented in Japan, and introduced in 1986. They are called “home bakeries” in Japan, and they’re they are probably the 3rd most popular small appliance in Japanese kitchens behind the rice cooker and the microwave. (Panasonic, formerly Matsushita Electric or “National”, was the first company to sell a bread machine in Japan. I selected a Panasonic model just in case.)

I really shouldn’t have gotten it. I am not really supposed to be eating bread regularly after all. And…like, I’m in France! Home of the baguette! Why am I obsessed with sliced white bread of all things?

But anyway, it is here. And so I’ve started my pursuit of the right formula for proper Japanese style shokupan. It’s been slow going since I only allow myself 1/2 to 1 slice per day max, and the rest of the loaf has to be dealt with. (The Guy has been happily dealing with most of it, but there’s an awful lot piling up in the freezer already.) The bread formulas that came in the instruction book, meant for the European market, haven’t hit the spot so far. I suspect it’s a matter of the right ratio of salt vs. sugar vs. butter. The flour may make a difference. I’ve been looking up information about the protein ratios of Japanese vs. French flour.

I look at the thing as it sits on my countertop and sigh. I really shouldn’t have gotten it. But now that it’s here, I’m going to make it earn its keep.

Do you have any appliances you are kind of ashamed of owning? Maybe they take up too much space, or you don’t use it enough. Or it just makes you feel guilty for some reason. (I had feelings like that towards our old deep fryer, before we finally ditched it.)

And of course I’ll let you know when I come up with the best formula for shokupan. As I said, that thing has to earn its keep!

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Japanese rice, grown in Europe or the United States

While it is possible to substitute other types of rice for Japanese rice (see: Looking at rice) sometimes a Japanese dish just isn’t right unless you use Japanese-type or japonica rice. Whenever I write about Japanese rice, I always get asked about the best brands to get, whether rice grown in Japan is worth the extra cost, and so on. Here’s what I recommend, depending on where you live.

Please note I only have info for Europe and North America I’m afraid. I’m not familiar with what’s available in Australia/New Zealand for example. Maybe you can share that info in the comments!

When I say japonica rice, I mean a short to medium grain rice that cooks up to be slightly sticky. It is the rice to use for sushi, and most Japanese recipe.

Koshihikari, Sasanishiki and Akitakomachi are varieties of japonica rice. There are hundreds of named varieties in Japan, but these 3 are the bestsellers in Japan. A variety called Yumegokochi is also mentioned as the variety for one of the rice brands below.

Any rice, whatever the quality, must be cooked properly. See my very detailed instructions for how to prep and cook Japanese-style rice here.

In years past, the only choices we had for japonica rice in Europe were imported, either from Japan or from the U.S. Happily this situation has changed in the past few years. There are now japonica type rice grown in Spain and Italy, under the supervision of Japanese food companies - mainly by Japan Food Corporation International (JFC), a major food import/exporter and distributor.

I’ve tried most of the Spanish or Italian grown japonica rice types, and my favorite is a brand called Yume-Nishiki. It’s Koshihikari type rice grown in northern Italy, and is distributed by JFC. Yume-Nishiki is now the standard rice we get.

I like Yume-Nishiki for the following reasons:

It tastes just as good as most Japan-grown rice brands. Even my mother approves of it, and declared that she doesn’t feel the need to ship rice to me anymore. (OK that’s my loss … ^_^;) It’s fairly reasonably priced for japonica rice. It’s anywhere from 2/3 to 1/2 of the cost of rice imported from Japan, and it’s also cheaper than most of the U.S. grown rice brands except for Nishiki - but it’s a grade higher than Nishiki in quality. It’s available as both white and brown rice.It’s grown in Europe, so it’s not coming from the other side of the globe.

JFC does carry other European grown rice types like Haruka and Megumi, but both are more expensive than Yume-Nishiki and I don’t see any quality difference to be honest. Plus, I have never seen brown rice of either variety being sold. You can read more about Yume-Nishiki on the JFC site.

Incidentally, there are several local types of rice available from both Italy and Spain, as well as France that can be used in Japanese recipes. Paella rice for example can be cooked in the Japanese way and used in Japanese dishes. See Looking at rice again for some Italian-type rice suggestions. In France, look for riz rond du Sud, from Taureau Ailé. (I refuse to link to their site because it sucks.)

Japan Centre in London, who has been a long time supporter of JustHungry and JustBento, has a special coupon code for JH/JB readers that will give you 20% off a mailorder purchase until October 31st. Click here or on the Japan Centre banner ad on the sidebar for details! (Restrictions apply, but you can surely use the coupon code for rice!)

Japonica rice and japonica-hybrid (crossed with another variety) has been grown for a few decades already in the United States. California is the biggest grower, but there’s some rice grown in Arkansas and Texas also. The market is mature enough to support different levels of quality of Japanese-style rice.

The grains of this type are bit longer than true japonica rice but can be used in the same way for sushi and other Japanese dishes.

Calrose may be the most widely available, and least expensive, japonica-hybrid type of rice available in North America. Personally I’d only get this if I was on a very tight budget, but you may find it acceptable. Some background on Calrose. I recommend giving it some extra rinsing and soaking time.

Nishiki is grown under the supervision of JFC in California. It’s one grade lower than the brands mentioned below, but quite acceptable unless you are very picky about your rice. The JFC site has more info, but doesn’t mention what variety it is. It’s available in small to gigantic bags, and as white or brown rice.

Kokuho Rose was developed by Koda Farms in California. It is pretty similar to Nishiki in terms of quality and so forth, and is also available in small to humongous packs, and as white or brown rice.

When I lived in the U.S., my rice of choice (unless I was broke) was Tamanishiki. It too is grown under the supervision of JFC, and is a hybrid of Koshihikari and Yumegokochi varieties. It’s just about as good as any Japan-grown Japanese rice with the exception of some super-special types. It’s also the rice the sushi restaurant my mom ran in NYC used. More on the JFC site.

Tamaki rice, grown by the Tamaki Corporation, is another California rice. The variety is Koshihikari again, and it’s on par with Tamanishiki. It was my other go-to rice when I was not broke when I lived in New York. More on their website.

There are some other types of ‘premium’ or ‘super premium’ rice types available, such as Nagomi, Megumi, etc., but the above two are my favorites.

This is a a difficult question really. If you are really picky about your rice, or insist on a certain variety of rice that isn’t available from domestic growers, then it could be worth it. From the listings above you can see that the ‘premium’ type rices are all Koshihikari based. Koshihikari is a rice with a strong stickiness, which a lot of people prefer, but some prefer the less sticky and rather light tasting Sasanishiki. Akitakomomachi is even more sticky than Koshihikari, and fans swear it has more umami too. But to be honest, I don’t think most people can tell the difference that well.

If you can get a hold of new harvest rice, wherever it comes from, it may be worth paying a premium for it. See my ode to new harvest rice (shinmai) that I wrote a while back for The Japan Times.

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Japanese Pickled Ginger (Gari) Recipe

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September 12, 2013Japanese Pickled Ginger (Gari) Recipe

We are in the season of young ginger. Tender, mildly spicyand gorgeous to look at, the creamy hands are making their way to Asianmarkets. I saw super beautiful ones in Oakland Chinatown last week butrefrained from buying because I was bound for the banh mi photo shoot. I saidto myself, “The next time you see young ginger, buy it to pickle.” Yesterday Isurprisingly found the ginger at my local hippie-dippy market. It wasorganically grown, from Hawaii. The cashier had no idea what it was.

In Asian vernacular, there’s young and old ginger. The youngstuff has paper bits of translucent skin whereas the mature ginger is coveredby tan, dry skin. Most of the year, we’re all cooking with old ginger, whosebite punches up many foods and warms our bodies. Young ginger can be eaten raw– I’ve had Thai fermented sausage with raw ginger, which complements thesausage flavor and functions as an antibacterial.

But there’s only so much young ginger I can eat. My mainmethod of using it is by pickling it Japanese style for what most of us recognize as sushi ginger (gari in Japanese). I enjoy it with sushi (obvious) but also mixed into sushi rice and stuffed into fried tofu pockets. It's a terrific side to grilled oily fish such as salmon or mackerel. 

There are fabulous recipesin cookbooks by Elizabeth Andoh and Hiroko Shimbo but this time around I used KarenSolomon’s recipe from Asian Pickles:Japan. It’s currently sold as a $2.99 ebook and is part of her upcomingbook called – you guessed it, AsianPickles – which will be released in its entirety in Spring 2014. Publishinga book in parts is an interesting way to offer readers the option to buy thechapter that they’re interested in.

I got the enhanced iBooks version that camewith audio pronunciations of the recipe titles and ingredients, which ishelpful if you’re not versed in Japanese food terms. Otherwise, the regularebook of Asian Pickles: Japan sold onlinewill be fine.

Karen lived in the Japan in the 1990s and writes with an infectiousverve. I bought two hands of ginger, about 1.5 times the amount she called forso I simply did the math for the recipe below. Some things to note:

If you can’t find young ginger, use regular oldginger but peel it. During the blanching, let the ginger sit in the hot waterfor 45 to 60 seconds instead of the 20 seconds called for below.Homemade pickled ginger may turn a blushing pinkbut not the torrid pink of storebought pickled ginger, which may have a littlehelp from dye.Use a mandoline or super sharp knife to cut theginger. You need very thin pieces. I put my mandoline in a square baking pan(see photo above) to keep it in place and safely use it.Don’t throw away the pickling brine. It’sdelicious. The dried kelp is my addition, a little umamitrick I learned from Japanese food authority Elizabeth Andoh.

Karen’s recipes are fun, written without the burden ofbowing to tradition. As a non-native, she gives readers an undaunted take atAsian foodways, opening the door as if to say, “What have you been waiting for?Don’t be silly. Just dive in. I have.” You can’t lose with a $2.99 investment.Along with the Japan e-booklet, there’s also an Indian, Korean, and Chineseone.

Recipe

Japanese PickledGinger

Gari

Yield: About 1 1/2 cups

Ingredients

9 to 10 ounces (270–300 g) young ginger6 tablespoons plus 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt9 tablespoons unseasoned Japanese rice vinegar2 squares of dried kombu (kelp), each about thesize of your thumbnail (optional)

Instructions

Use an inverted spoon to scrape off the thin,paper bits from the ginger. Use a mandoline or very sharp knife to cut theginger across the grain into super thin pieces. They should be nearlysee-through.Toss the ginger with the 1 1/2 tablespoons ofsugar and salt. Set aside for 30 minutes to reduce its harshness.Meanwhile, partially fill a small saucepan withwater. Ready a fine-mesh strainer and 2-cup (.5 liter) glass jar. In anothersaucepan, combine the remaining 6 tablespoons sugar, vinega,r and kombu (ifusing). Set this stuff aside near the stove.About 10 minutes before the ginger finishesmellowing out, start the water pot going on the stove. When the ginger is done,add it all to the boiling water, stir and blanch for 20 seconds to further reducethe harshness. Drain in the mesh strainer but don’t rinse. Shake a few times toexpel water, then put into the glass container. Bring the mixture of sugar and vinegar to aboil, give things a stir to ensure the sugar has dissolved. Then pour into thejar of ginger. Push down with chopsticks or a spoon to submerge. Cool, uncovered,then cap and refrigerate. Depending on the ginger, it may be ready to eat in 1to 3 days. Taste and see. Store refrigerated for months.

Adapted from Karen Solomon’s AsianPickles: Japan (ebook edition, Ten Speed Press, 2012)

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Comments Japanese Pickled Ginger (Gari) Recipe

We are in the season of young ginger. Tender, mildly spicyand gorgeous to look at, the creamy hands are making their way to Asianmarkets. I saw super beautiful ones in Oakland Chinatown last week butrefrained from buying because I was bound for the banh mi photo shoot. I saidto myself, “The next time you see young ginger, buy it to pickle.” Yesterday Isurprisingly found the ginger at my local hippie-dippy market. It wasorganically grown, from Hawaii. The cashier had no idea what it was.

In Asian vernacular, there’s young and old ginger. The youngstuff has paper bits of translucent skin whereas the mature ginger is coveredby tan, dry skin. Most of the year, we’re all cooking with old ginger, whosebite punches up many foods and warms our bodies. Young ginger can be eaten raw– I’ve had Thai fermented sausage with raw ginger, which complements thesausage flavor and functions as an antibacterial.

But there’s only so much young ginger I can eat. My mainmethod of using it is by pickling it Japanese style for what most of us recognize as sushi ginger (gari in Japanese). I enjoy it with sushi (obvious) but also mixed into sushi rice and stuffed into fried tofu pockets. It's a terrific side to grilled oily fish such as salmon or mackerel. 

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Japanese Cooking 101: Final thoughts, or what was the point?

I’m still getting reactions to the recently completed Japanese Cooking 101 course (if you missed it, here’s the complete list of lessons.) While the reactions have been overwhelming positive, I’ve gotten a couple of negative comments too.

One I wanted to address in particular is the accusation, if you will, that the lessons do not represent that way most people cook in Japan anymore. One person even opined that I was not a ‘real Japanese’ because I didn’t cook like ‘the Japanese people I know in Tokyo’ or something like that.

Well you know what, that person is right one one thing: Many (not all!) people in Japan don’t take the time to make their own dashi from scratch, or grow their own shiso or other herbs. Some rely on prewashed rice called musenmai (???) so they don’t have to bother with rinsing rice either. A lot of recipes on various Japanese cooking sites call for the use of mentsuyu (????), bottled noodle sauce concentrate, a readymade combination of soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and dashi. It saves time having to pull out each individual ingredient and adding it one by one, for sure. There are just as many convenience foods and ready-made foods in Japan as there are anywhere else - not to mention tons of restaurants, fast food places, and the like. You can easily avoid having to cook, ever. And sadly, a lot of people are like that. Japan is after all one of those so-called developed countries where such a thing is possible.

I have plenty of quick and easy recipes on JustHungry, and many more on JustBento - although I do try to stick as much as possible to real ingredients. (Some of my Japanese recipes call for the use of dashi stock granules, especially when they’re used as an underlying flavor rather than the main flavor. They’re too convenient, plus I’ve heard from many readers that they’re easier to get a hold of than bonito flakes and konbu seaweed.)

The whole point of the Japanese Cooking 101 course was to show how things are done for the best possible results, using traditional methods.

Most of the readers of my sites do not live in Japan. I’m not writing for a Japanese audience obviously, since I’m writing in English. I’m not even writing for an audience of English speaking residents of Japan - although I know there are some who’ve been following along for years (hi guys!). (My column in The Japan Times on the other hand is aimed at English speakers in Japan, so has a rather different focus.) Unless you live in a city with proper Japanese groceries, it can be very hard to get a hold of the right ingredients. Things like mentsuyu are often too expensive to rely on all the time.

Let’s face it, most Japanese ingredients are expensive outside of Japan, if you can even get a hold of them. If you’re going to try to make proper tasting Japanese food under those circumstances, I would much rather you spend your precious money on basic, fundamental, real ingredients rather than manufactured convenience products. If you have access to a Japanese grocery store you can get things like mentsuyu, or the Japanese equivalents of Hamburger Helper and the like. But they’re expensive - too expensive for everday use. On the other hand, although soy sauce, mirin, sake, konbu seaweed and bonito flakes to make dashi, plain old miso and so on are not cheap either, they’re a much better investment of your money if you want to create many authentic tasting dishes.

The point is, I want to be able to teach a little bit about how to cook Japanese food the proper way, through my sites, my book and my other writings. Cooking from scratch is, in my opinion, a fundamental skill, and I’m fighting the battle to keep that skill alive. Even if that notion is laughably old fashioned for some people.

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 6: Putting It All Together

Welcome to the last lesson in Japanese 101: The Fundamentals of Washoku. I hope you’ve enjoyed the course and learned a few things along the way. In this last lesson we’ll take a look back at what we’ve learned, and also see how to put it all together to great an authentic traditional Japanese meal at home.

First we looked at the basic pantry ingredients for the course, which are also the basic pantry ingredients for a traditional Japanese kitchen.

Then learned how to make proper dashi stock, which is the foundation of many savory dishes in Japanese cooking. We also learned how to make miso soup and clear soup using that good dashi stock.

Next, we took a good hard look at how to prep and cook Japanese style rice. Rice is central to Japanese life, not to mention most Japanese meals. We also learned how to make sushi rice.

Then we got to the dishes that go with the rice and soup, starting with nimono or simmered dishes (even without dashi). We went on to sunomono and aemono - basically prepped or precooked vegetables with some kind of sauce.

We then ended by looking in-depth at arguably the most important protein used in Japanese cooking, fish, from a simple teriyaki to whole fish opened up to breaking down whole small fish and using every part of it.

If you missed the course by the way, just follow the links in the paragraph above in sequence! Or, just start at the very beginning intro, then go to the first article linked below that, required ingredients. After that just keep clicking on the ‘next’ article link below each article.

There’s a reason why I presented the parts of the course in the order I did:

Dashi is so fundamental to traditional Japanese cuisine that it’s important to know how to make it and how to use it. This way of thinking - flavoring something with a little umami - permeates other types of cooking in Japan too. Soup also is a part of most meals, even breakfast. Rice forms the center of most Japanese meals. Sure, sometimes we deviate and have some noodles or something else, But we keep going back to rice. The word for cooked rice, gohan (??)is also used to indicate the whole meal. When mom called out “gohan dayo-” when we were out playing, we knew she meant “it’s dinner time”, not just “it’s rice”. Even if that bowl of rice was not always 100% - poor people often had to mix in other grains like barley or millet - the ideal was always that plain bowl of white rice. (Ironicly of course these days people mix in these zakkoku (??), the ‘other grains’ formerly looked down upon, into rice for their nutritious benefits. See more about zakkoku-mai or mixed grains with rice.)

A balanced Japanese meal is supposed to have__ ???? - ichijuu sannsai - 1 soup, 3 side dishes, to go with the rice. It may sound like a lot, but it’s not that much more than many western style meals if you think about it. A typical western meal might have a soup as a starter, then a main dish with steak, potatoes, and some side vegetable like steamed broccoli, followed by a sweet dessert. A traditional Japanese meal doesn’t have separate courses - everything is served at once. (This differs at top end Japanese ryoutei or kaiseki restaurants, who often serve single dishes one at a time in multiple course.) Having more than 3 sides is extravagant, although in the olden days people avoided having 4 sides since the number 4 is unlucky in Japanese culture. (4 can be read as “yon” or “shi”, and “shi is synonymous with ?, or death. Most Japanese buildings don’t have a 4th floor, just like most Western buildings don’t have a 13th floor.)

The bare basic Japanese meal is ???? - ichijuu issai - 1 soup, 1 side dish, plus the bowl of rice.

(Incidentally, there’s also no tradition of having dessert with a meal, which may be why many Japanese main dishes have a bit of sugar in them. Sweets are eaten separately during the day, not with a meal. This is changing, and many people have some fruit or a light dessert after a meal, but that is a recent thing influenced by western style eating.)

Traditional Japanese meals are served in multiple serving containers, one for each item. And there are some basic rules to follow as to how to line them up.

Here’s how to line up a basic ???? - ichijuu issai - 1 soup, 1 side dish, bowl of rice meal.

As you can see, the rice goes on the left, the soup on the right, and the side dish is behind that. The rice always goes on the left, even for lefties. That left corner closest to the diner is considered to be the most ‘honorable’ position (don’t ask me why it’s honorable…) so that’s where it goes. If you think about it it it’s not the most convenient way to arrange things for a right handes person, who’d have to reach over the soup to get to the rice. Maybe this is why you usually lift up your rice bowl and your soup bowl to eat from them. (You don’t life up the other serving dishes though.)

This is how the full ???? - ichijuu sannsai - 1 soup, 3 side dishes and rice meal is arranged.

There are no rules really to dictate where the side dishes go in relation to each other. But again, the rice and soup are closest to the diner, with the rice on the left. Plus, the main fukusai or side dish is in the most prominent position.

I arranged the dishes we made during the course for dinner one day following these rules. (Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

The little dish of umeboshi is not really considered to be a proper side dish so you can ignore that, but as you can see the rice is on the left, soup on the right, and the side dishes beyond that. As I mentioned in the salmon teriyaki chapter for fish, the skin side goes on the top or the far side; the same goes for a piece of skin-on chicken for example. If you are serving a whole fish the head goes to the left.

When you put a Japanese meal together, pay attention to the balance of flavors and cooking methods. Ideally you should aim for 1 yakimono (???), something cooked with dry heat - grilled, pan-fried, or deep fried; 1 nimono (??), something simmered, and 1 aemono (???) or sunomono (???) - a cold dish with a sauce, dashi based or vinegar based. This gives a good balance of flavors and textures. While the yakimono is usually a protein, the two other sides can be all-vegetable, or contain a little protein (e.g. a little seafood), and so forth.

In practice, on an everyday basis most families would have maybe 2 side dishes plus some pickles or something. But this is the ideal anyway. And it’s not impossible to achieve since many dishes can be prepared in some bulk in advance, especially the nimono. What makes things a little easier for the cook when preparing Japanese food is that not everything has to be piping hot. The soup certainly should be, and the rice should be freshly cooked and hot too. And some yakimono or protein dishes should be too. But the side dishes to round out the meal don’t need to be.

There are a lot of recipes on the site that you can use for any of these categories. Take a look!

So how was that walk through the basics of washoku, traditional Japanese cuisine? I hope it was interesting.

For people who were looking forward to more fish lessons, I’ve decided to hold off on them for a bit and possibly put them in a more advanced course down the line. Stay tuned!

I’m also planning at least one more ‘course’ series like this this year, but I’m still open to ideas about what it should be about. If you have some ideas please tell me in the comments.

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 5 extra: Fish bone crackers (hone-senbei) with shoestring potatoes

There's no need to throw away the bits of fish that you cut off when you filet them and so forth. Fish bones and heads can be kept for making soup. Or, if the bones are tender enough they can be made into delicious fish-bone crackers.

At the sushi restaurant in New York I worked at many years ago, the chefs used to serve these as extra treats to customers who sat at the counter. One of those was a lovely little girl, who used to come regularly with her father. She just loved those fish bone crackers. One year the chefs made a big batch of them and gave her a takeout box full for her birthday. She was so happy I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.

I've paired these with shoestring potatoes, which taste surprisingly sweet next to the umami-rich fish bones. The type of potato is important - choose a nice firm waxy type, not a floury type like Idaho baking potatoes. Alternatively you can use sweet potatoes.

A frugal way to deal with the bones taken out of small fish like sardines. Tip: Always fry the potatoes before you fry the bones, or the potatoes will take on the flavor of the fish.

Prep time: 15 min :: Cook time: 10 min :: Total time: 25 min

Yield: 2 servings

16 to 20 fish bones from fresh sardines 2 Yukon Gold or Bintje potatoes, or similar firm potatoes, medium sized salt, to taste flour or cornstarch, to dust the fish bones oil, for frying These are the fish bones taken out of the fish. Wash them off, and pat them dry with paper towel. Leave to dry out a bit on a plate for an hour. (Do this in the refrigerator if the weather is hot, or if you have some feline overlords about.)
Peel the potatoes and cut them into small matchsticks. Rinse them and then pat them dry, and leave on a sieve to dry out some more until you're ready to fry everything. When you are ready to cook and while the oil is heating up, coat the fish lightly with flour or cornstarch. Heat up some oil for frying. Heat the oil to a low cooking heat, about 170°C / 340°F (see this for how to gauge frying oil temperature with wooden chopsticks). Fry the potatoes until cooked but not browning yet. Take them out and drain. Heat up the oil until it reaches the high range, about 180°C / 355°F. Put in the pre-cooked potatoes and fry until a golden brown. Take out and drain. Put the fish bones in and fry until golden brown and crispy. Take out and drain. Lightly salt the fish and the potatoes. Serve as a snack or appetizer. It goes very well with beer.

(Below is for search engine purposes)

By Makiko Itoh

Published: April 26, 2013

Type: Japanese, fish, washoku, appetizer

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Japanese Cooking 101, Lesson 5 - Fish, Part 3: How to break down small fish

We are entering the home stretch here for both Lesson 5, Fish and the whole Japanese Cooking 101: The Fundamentals of Washoku course. I hope you’ve been enjoying it so far!

In this lesson we are going to get very intimate with fish. Basically all fish needed to be prepped the same way: the head taken off (sometimes the head is cooked with the fish or separately); de-scaled if it has prominent scales; gutted, and then usually fileted and/or boned. And usually you need a sharp knife for these operations.

However, with small fish like sprats, sardines and anchovies, you don’t even need a knife at all, except to take the heads off. They are tender enough that you can just prep them with your hands. This is a great way to really get to know a fish, and it’s kind of fun too.

This is a plate of fresh sardines, popular around the world, especially in the two places I spend the most time - Japan and southern France. Beautiful, aren’t they? They have nice clear eyes.

The one thing you do need a knife for is taking the heads off. You could pull them off, but that’s a bit messy. So, here are the beheaded sardines, with some of the ingredients we’ll be using with them later to make the plate look prettier.

To deal with the sardines, position yourself at your sink and have a thin stream of water running out of the tap.

Take one of the sardines, and just run your thumb down the belly and pull it open. You’ll see a bit of guts there; just pull it out and wash it off with the running water. (If you don’t have access to running water, just use a bowl filled with clean water and swish the fish in it.)

The next thing is to take out the bone. This comes off easily in one go. Pry it off at the head end, and just pull. Don’t be hesitant. Give it a tug and it’s gone, tail and all.

Don’t throw away the bones by the way! Put them on a plate to deal with later.

Here’s the gutted and boned sardine - so easy! At this point, run your finger carefully down the surface of the fish. If you feel any little bones left in there (which you shouldn’t if you ripped out the backbone properly) take them out with your fingernails or a pair of fish bone tweezers.

Here it is on the other side.

Wash each filet again to get rid of any stray bits of guts and stuff.

This next step is somewhat optional, but does improve the texture of your fish. The skin of the sardine peels off quite easily. Just pry up a corner with your thumbnail, and pull it off in one go. As with the bone, don’t hesitate here or the skin will rip and it becomes harder to take it off.

Here are the skinned filets. Put them on absorbent paper towels to drain off the excess water.

At this point you can pan-fry them in a bit of olive oil or butter (maybe coat them with flour or cornstarch first), or marinate them, or whatever you like to do with such fish. You can even turn it into sushi!

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