Japan Chef

ポン酢 (Ponzu) Recipe

2010-07-20T23:26:00.000-07:00

Left: The sauce before being strained.
Ponzu is a kind of sauce that has a base of soy sauce and some kind of citrus juice, to which other flavorings are added, which is then allowed to sit and mature. It is probably my favorite sauce in all of Japanese cuisine; it is strong and sour and a perfect match for food simmered at the table, mushrooms, fish paste cakes, bonito, crab, etc. You can buy pretty good brands at the store, but just like anything, if you make your own the flavor will be much deeper and complex. It is easy to make and stores forever in the fridge, so even newbies to Japanese food can try this out if they have access to an Asian food market. My basic recipe is from Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art.

Ingredients:

1 cup lemon juice or other sharp citrus juice such as a mix of lemon and lime juice or sudachi juice. (Fresh-squeezed is miles better than the preserved store crap.)

1/3 cup plus 2 T rice vinegar

1 cup dark soy sauce

2 T tamari sauce

3 T mirin, alcohol simmered off (this step reduces bitterness in the sauce)

1/3 or 10 grams (a handful) of dried bonito flakes (hana-katsuo)

2-inch (5-cm) square of konbu, wiped

Mix all ingredients and let stand 24 hours. Strain through cheesecloth and mature 3 months in a cool dark place, or refrigerate. Keeps indefinitely, but should be used within 1 year for best flavor.

材料：

レモン汁：１カップ　(すだちとかでもいい）

酢：1/3　カップ＋大さじ１

醤油：１カップ

たまり：大さじ２

煮きりみりん：大さじ３

花鰹：１０g

昆布：５センチ角

材料を混ぜて、２４時間置く。漉して、３ヶ月すずしい、暗い場所におく(冷蔵庫でもいい）。持ちが長いですけど、どんどん味がすべるから、１年以内に終わった方がいい。

Official Announcement

2010-07-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

The time has come for me to hang up my professional coat, for a while at least. The intense and unrelenting stress of the job was breaking me down physically and mentally, and doing little good for my marriage. As of Saturday I am officially unemployed and loving it.

Not that I'm going to be just laying around. In fact, I'll be nearly as busy as before, but it will be working towards my own benefit instead of my boss's.

We are in the process of searching for a house with a downstairs that I can open a small restaurant in. The year I plan to take off will be spent polishing my Japanese, researching, developing, and testing recipes, and later on, setting up my first restaurant.

Ironically, this will mean that this blog will be getting a lot more attention than before. I'm still a chef in Japan dealing primarily with Japanese food, and anyone reading this will get the full experience.

鯛 (Tai); Red Snapper

2010-05-14T00:46:00.000-07:00

In any cuisine there are certain dishes or ingredients that automatically elicit respect. If what's in front of you has anything to do with foie gras, foam, Belgium, molds, whole animals, or a named blue cheese, even the non-foodie is going to view the dish on a different level than football-night buffalo wings. What's interesting is when you start crossing oceans and cultures and are proudly presented with food that might provoke emotions ranging from disbelief to horror in your own culture.

Japan is big on fish. You heard it here first. Fish get a respect that transcends their actual role as a foodstuff in a way that chicken and pork will never have, no matter how big of a role they play in the modern Japanese diet. In addition, the more a fish looks like it just leapt out of the ocean and onto your plate the better. A sanitized, cooked fillet is the lowest rung on the fish latter, 活け造り (ikezukuri, a fish filleted alive and presented still gasping), the highest. Fish guts, testes, eggs, and heads are all eaten with gusto. The guest of honor is traditionally presented with the head of the fish being served.

Tai (red snapper) in particular has been a celebration meal staple for a long time. The god of luck/happiness Ebisu (dude on the Ebisu beer cans) is pictured holding a tai. It is a pearly pink color, and red also being a symbol of good luck, it is often the main course at weddings, birthdays, etc. One popular dish that my restaurant just did a run of is 鯛飯 (tai meshi, red snapper rice) in which the rice is cooked in fish stock rather than water and served with the tai on top. The less deconstructed the tai the more high-class the dish; so a really expensive place might serve a whole, non-filleted tai. Other methods (listed in progressively less awe-inspiring order) are splitting the tai in half, using just a fillet, or mixing shredded meat into the rice.

I believe the average American would be pretty horrified at opening the lid to find an open-mouthed fish staring up at them (by the way, the eyes turn white and pop out of the sockets when heated, and if you're not careful, disconnect from the head and roll into the rice; very uncool presentation). The dish itself is nice, but to the disinterested palate a bit underwhelming considering the hype surrounding it. Tai is a good fish. So are a lot of other cheaper and easier-to-cook fish. But this works both ways; a former Japanese teacher confided in me that when she went to America and saw a whole Thanksgiving turkey squatting on the holiday table, she felt physically ill. There's a whole lot of culture and expectation dictating how we feel about a meal. Food isn't just about taste.

Doing it Yourself

2010-05-07T01:47:00.000-07:00

In America, every restaurant I worked at had professional cleaners doing their laundry. I'm not talking about issued T-shirts or hats that you might be expected to wash yourself, but the napkins, towels, aprons etc were as a matter of course picked up, washed with industrial bleach, and returned to the restaurant super-starched.

Maybe it's because the restaurants in Japan tend to be so much smaller- instead of the average restaurant seating 200 people, it might seat 20-50, 100 if it's really a good-sized chain. This is naturally much more noticeable in Tokyo. In any case, most restaurants do laundry themselves, usually aided by an ancient-of-days rickety washing machine usually located outside, and the wet things line-dried since owning a dryer in Japan is an almost unheard-of luxury. The restaurant I'm in now professionally launders the 白衣 (hakui, chef's whites), but we have to wash and dry the towels ourselves. I'm sure that would be violating all sorts of health codes back the States but it's actually nice to be able to control how many dry towels you have on hand. All the other restaurants I used to work at were nazis about the distribution of towels. On the other hand, during Japan's rainy season, there's no such thing as dry anything.

The washing machine's water is shut off with a little standardized key that you can get at a 100-yen shop. We also leave the washing detergent beside the machine, just off the street. I wonder if the bums have figured this out yet.

Squidward's Revenge

2010-05-01T04:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know why me and squid just can't seem to come to terms. This is what I found in the last squid I cleaned, and as I pulled it out of the dead bundle of rubber and ink and slime you can bet I got the willies. The complete scrub-your-hand-on-your-hip, little-shudders-running-down-your-spine, hairs-standing-on-end heebie-jeebies experience. I am proud of the fact that I didn't audibly yelp when I discovered that face-huggers infect more than just humans. After I regained control of myself I set it on top of a fridge to show the other cooks later and forgot about it; it dried out for a few days and I found it again. I stuck it in my bag to take home and show my SO and it stunk my bag up terribly and attracted my cats and I had to throw it away before anyone but Fugu Senpai saw it. This blurry photo is the only evidence remaining to prove that the alien invasion is once again underway.

Using Your Noodle

2010-04-25T04:23:00.000-07:00

Noodles are a big deal across Asia and Japan is no exception. The two most popular varieties are 蕎麦 (soba; buckwheat noodles) and うどん (udon, wheat noodles). Soba is the snobby northern noodle, thin and grey, and udon the cheaper, more laid-back southern variety, thick and slippery and white. Japan newbies often take to the chewy udon noodles more quickly, but they are devilishly tricky to eat with chopsticks; they slip away, slither around in the bowl, and if you get them hot, splash broth all over you in retribution. I've been witness to a visiting friend grab an escapee noodle and hide it under the table cupped in her hand because the waitress was approaching and she couldn't get it into her mouth with the chopsticks in time.

Udon, containing more gluten than soba and thus forming a stronger dough and less fragile noodle, is easier to make than soba and so the noodle novice starts there. The dough is formed from a medium-strength flour (less gluten than bread flour but more than cake flour). You start by mixing flour and salt water in a large lacquer noodle bowl, let it rest a while, then through that shit on the floor in a plastic bag and stomp all over it for a while. This is very therapeutic in addition to kneading the dough. Rest, repeat for a total of three times, then roll it out using a special technique that forms the now very-stretchy dough into a square.

This is scattered with flour and folded over, and now true skill comes into play: cutting the noodles by hand. Noodle knifes are wickedly big and heavy and look like a massive cleaver with the handle over the blade instead of to the side so that your weight is evenly distributed along the blade and you can cut straight, sliding a board across the dough with your left hand to guide it.

Fugu Senpai let me use his new blade; it set him back $800.

My first try, closely supervised, went pretty well. I've been chopping enough vegetables to have achieved a lower-level zen with my knives and this was basically the same movement even though the shape of the knife was different. My noodles were mostly the same size and didn't break. My keepers were pleased.

Modern Conveniences

2010-01-31T02:46:00.000-08:00

A counter restaurant's main visual feature is, not surprisingly, the counter, a long bar of wood that guests sit at while the chefs work directly across from them. Although we have tables and a tatami room too, the counter is definitely the focal point. Unlike Western cooking, where the atmosphere of a nice restaurant is concentrated on providing a sterile environment where servers melt in and out bringing dishes from the magical faraway realm of the kitchen, counter chefs work right in front of you, trying to accomplish inherently messy jobs with elegance. One of the reasons for the popularity of this system must be because so much Japanese cuisine is served raw or with minimal preparation.

One common denominator on both sides of the Pacific is the fantasy that chefs prepare all the food from the dirt/ocean up; guests like to imagine chefs visiting farms and selecting individual vegetables, buying whole fish directly from the fishermen, creating all the sauces from scratch. The reality, which sometimes needs to be concealed to keep up our cool image at the counter, is that all restaurants rely at least partially on pre-prepared foods. I was let in harshly on that fact back in the States when I went on a hunt for the recipe for my favorite restaurant's best dessert sauce, only to find out it came in a bag.

Japanese cuisine is no different. One of the things that surprised me was the fugu situation. Fugu requires careful, time-consuming preparation by a licensed chef, and it's not practical to do it yourself when you're putting out the volume we are. It turns out you can order your fugu already disassembled and skinned with all the little bits wrapped up and boxed. Each fugu has a license number (in case we end up killing someone after all), and all we have to do is get it out of the box and cut it up the way we want it. We just take care to unpack the fugu when nobody is in the restaurant so the guest can still imagine his chef choosing each fugu carefully at the fish market and we can actually get our work done, and everybody's happy.

Washing the Octopus

2010-01-24T04:39:00.000-08:00

...will be the name of my band once I learn an instrument.

Processing a raw octopus is a laborious task and unless you get your octopus from a fish market you're going to be getting a pre-boiled cephalopod. Raw octopi are grey-blue but turn purple-red when cooked. But before you get all excited about firing up the pot, you first have to work off the slime and dirt that gets stuck in the suckers and tenderize it by kneading the octopus in a bowl with either grated radish or salt for about an hour. When you're on a tight schedule in a kitchen with a limited number or chefs, taking one of them out of the game for that length of time isn't really an option, especially when your boss orders two or three octopi in secret so you get 24 tentacles worth of surprise right before your lunch break. Fugu Senpai cleaned out the innards and beaks and vanished with them, only to come back 45 minutes later, announcing that the laundry was done. I assumed I was misunderstanding the Japanese at first, but it turns out he actually laundered the octopi in the washing machine to tenderize them, proving that modern technology can be employed in the most surprising circumstances.*

*Japan Chef in no way endorses the use of unauthorized and untrained laypersons to engage in the activities described in this blog post. The actions here were executed by professionals. Please do not try this at home. **

**Or if you do, just leave out the laundry soap and remember to run an empty cycle afterwards so as not to cover your next laundry load in octo-goo.

黒マグロ (Kuromaguro)-Bluefin Tuna

2010-01-17T03:00:00.000-08:00

I listen to a lot of food podcasts from the States, and one of the big issues that's being batted around the food world is sustainability, especially for fish. Fish farming techniques tend to result in inferior product, and most Japanese food encyclopedias include descriptions and pictures in each entry on how to distinguish the two at the market. Farmed fish are usually fatter and have softer flesh and less flavor than their wild, hard-swimming cousins, and this is especially pronounced in muscular fish like tuna. American sports fishermen used to throw their bluefin tuna catches away until Japan started importing it, but now the worldwide sushi boom has depleted stocks to the point of the bluefin about to become listed as endangered.

One of my spouse's fellow flower-arrangement students comes from a tuna-fishing business and she lent us a DVD that followed the issue to a sushi competition in Britain. The whole program's tone was that of indignation that bluefin was not served there and that the whole issue is an attack by foreign countries on a Japanese way of life.

Interesting points:

1) The whole point of the sustainability argument, i.e. the fact that if bluefin is fished at this rate, it will disappear within a decade. Rather, it was repeatedly stated that this was a direct attack on a Japanese way of life and that the Japanese have a right as citizens of the country that invented tuna to claim priority on world stocks which are being 'stolen' from them by other countries (even if the tuna is imported from said countries).

2) The program's tone was derogatory towards those who avoid eating bluefin because of the conservation issues surrounding the fish, but Japan in general maintains the contradictory feeling of being the victim of the worldwide sushi boom driving down bluefin stocks and causing prices to jump. Shouldn't Japan be happy that people are avoiding consuming something seen as being Japanese for the Japanese?

3) Other types of tuna are not presented as an alternative to bluefin, so most people think that if bluefin becomes unavailable, all tuna is out.

My spouse pointed out that the average Japanese's opinion is shaped mostly by media (like the average citizen in any country) and that the media surrounding bluefin fishing in Japan is mostly likely controlled tightly by the fishing companies and the government officials receiving payout from them. I agree, but it's scary how such a relatively cut-and-dry issue has become so patriotic.

There is a push for Atlantic bluefin exports to be banned. I think this article is a pretty good example of the tone that I'm talking about.

(Note-I'm not blameless on the bluefin issue myself. I eat the scraps of bluefin we get thrown at the restaurant and I eat tuna other places too. But writing this entry may have been the final push for me to make my stand and ask if what I'm getting is bluefin or not and stop putting out cash for a vanishing species.)

An Osechi New Year's

2010-01-11T03:55:00.000-08:00

When the end of the year rolls around, the Japanese restaurants are swamped, not only by

忘年会 (bonenkai, 'forget the year parties' for groups of co-workers), but also because they begin gearing up for the iron chef cooking marathon that is お節料理 (osechi ryori). Osechi is traditional Japanese cold food arranged in boxes, meant to last and be eaten from Jan 1st-3rd, thus giving Mom a break in the kitchen over the holiday when everyone is supposed to abstain from work. Families who actually do this are perhaps one in a thousand. Most families buy or perhaps prepare a couple of their favorite osechi dishes; the richer families order them from restaurants. I say richer because osechi is extraordinarily expensive. A cheap one-tier box can may be had from the bento place down the street for $100. A nice three-tiered box set will run $400-$1000 or more. Our three-tiered sets were $700.

Since the food has to last for three days, it's nearly all partially preserved; no fresh sashimi here. The food also usually has symbolic meaning. Some restaurants will start prep as early as October, gradually getting more and more intense until the night of either the 30th or 31st, depending on when the pickup date is for the osechi, and the cooks will pull a 24-36 hour shift straight (by which I mean, one, maybe two meals and no breaks at all) finishing, arranging, and wrapping the boxes. More details about the food later, right now I'm barely starting to recover from the ordeal.

蝦夷馬糞雲丹 (Hokkaido Sea Urchin)

2009-11-15T00:07:00.000-08:00

Sea urchin and poop. What do they have in common, other than both of them being something the average American does not stick in their mouth?

雲丹 (uni, sea urchin ovaries) are one of the 'three great delicacies under the heavens' (天下の三大珍味), along with karasumi (salted dried mullet roe) and konowata (fermented sea slug intestines). From personal experience, I can tell you it's the best of the three. It can be used in sauces or steamed, then deep-fried, but that's for the inferior stuff. Really good uni, like everything nice in Japanese cuisine, should be eaten raw.

There are two main kinds of uni: 紫雲丹 (purple uni) and 馬糞雲丹 (horse poop uni). Purple uni has long, delicate spines and lighter-colored ovaries, and horse poop uni (named for it's shape) has darker orange ovaries with a finer texture and is the favored variety.

Uni usually comes pre-packaged lined up in little trays, but we got our hands on a box of live uni at the restaurant. It's the first time I've ever dealt with them in the original form. We cut the tops off and served them as-is with a spoon. The staff was given one to split. The liquid inside was like seawater but not bitter, and the ovaries were smooth and very mild, with a sweetness that hit you in the aftertaste. Truly excellent.

The Haunting

2009-11-01T05:55:00.000-08:00

Like every hotel ever built, any restaurant worth it's salt comes with a ghost. There is always talk of 'happenings' after close, when only one or two people are left in the building: cold gusts of wind, the phone ringing with no one on the line over and over, doors slamming, footsteps and other unexplained sounds, etc. Numerous chefs will claim these experiences, and then there is always The Story That Proves It, told by an old-timer who usually doesn't put stock in these things and related in utter seriousness. I don't really believe in ghosts, but it is quite creepy to be in a building usually flooded with light and people, empty and dark, and it doesn't take much to get spooked.

This ghostly tradition crosses borders and cultures. I was let in on the tales the other night over the staff meal. Apparently there is a cold wind that gusts near the front door sometimes even when it isn't open, and the phone plays tricks sometimes. The Story That Proves It is when Fugu Senpai was in the restaurant alone, and the phone rang. He could hear the voice of a child even though he couldn't really understand what was being said. That day outside the restaurant a little girl was in an accident and died. All involved swear to it's truthfulness.

Happy Halloween!

Failure

2009-10-25T01:55:00.000-07:00

With a job as exacting as kaiseki cuisine, there's going to be a lot of failure at first, and a fair bit even down the line. Chefs make mistakes, have bad ideas, and ruin food often. If it's the owner or the top chef doing something funky, it's overlooked, but us little guys get hauled over the coals frequently for screwing up, whether it was really our fault or not. I was recently subject to a full-on explosion when I didn't vinegar mackerel correctly and the flesh broke apart. Never mind that the fish was too fatty to take the salting and vinegar (salt will melt the fat and make fish with lots of fat disintegrate), it was my responsibility to turn out a class product regardless of the original materials. As my direct superior, Fugu Senpai got it twice as rough as me for not following my every move. I felt terrible about that; it's not as if he doesn't get ripped up by Soba Master every day without me contributing to his stress load.

The upshot of all this is that when you do obtain the stray phrase of approval (usually expressed along the lines of 'that's acceptable', or by not getting yelled at), it means so much more. Japanese kitchens are not there to built up future chefs, they are there to rip you to your bones, extract every mistake and weakness, and reform you in their image. It's a very rough life, but that's why Japanese food is the classiest in the world.

新蕎麦: Shin-Soba, New Soba

2009-10-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

Everyone in Japan gets worked up about the 新米 (shin-kome; new rice), the first rice from the fall harvest. The rice sits on the shelves from that time on, gradually drying out and getting tougher, so the softer, sweeter new rice is much regarded.

Soba is the same. The new harvest has just come out, and the 'aroma' of the soba is stronger using the new grains. Soba, aka buckwheat, has usual pyramid-shaped seeds which are ground and made into a flour used to make the grey noodles. Our current supply comes from Hokkaido. Most soba is grown in mountainous regions where rice was hard to grow, and became the staple.

It took me a long time to appreciate these very slight differences between things like this year's and last year's soba or rice. When I first came to Japan, everything tasted blah. I couldn't understand it when people got all worked up over a fish fresher than usual or a bowl of noodles in a fishy broth only slightly different from any other fishy broth. Not having the culinary background of this country, I also did things that shocked the residents because I treated the food differently. For example, I have been known to sauté soba noodles. Don't ever tell that to a Japanese person.

I get the subtleties now, and American food tastes too heavy and sweet. But it's still with a faint air of amusement that I watch those around me get excited or outraged over food that wasn't even a part of my life until a few years ago. To quote my former co-chef, we're making food, not building bombs, people.

I still recommend the new soba, though.

Eyeballs

2009-10-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

I know you've been wanting to see this ever since the squid post. Here are the eyeballs in person, along with the beaks and unwanted long sections of the tentacles. Eyeballs have been following me today- after completing this job, I politely refused the offer of eating as part of my dinner a fish eye rivaling the size of my palm. You're supposed to put the whole thing in your mouth, squish and drink up, and pull out the surrounding cartilage ring. Dude.

天ぷら: Tempura

2009-10-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

Speciality tempura restaurants, only serving fried food, are of the elite. You sit at the counter in front of the fryer and wait for tidbits to be deposited on your dish. They can cost more than a normal kaiseki meal if you go to a good place, i.e. $100 USD or more. It's hard for an American to swallow that kind of bill for a method of cooking associated with chicken fingers, so the best place I ever went only racked me up about $35 bucks.

The deal with tempura is that you have to get the batter right. At this stage in the chain of command at my restaurant, I've progressed to fry cook (again, dammit, I've gone through this stage in America so many times), at least for the cheaper lunch sets. The position is a bit more elite in Japan, anyway. My nemesis has turned out to be 海老, aka shrimp. People in various countries expect a certain aesthetic from their food, whether they realize it or not. Americans usually expect their shrimp to be curled up, the way shrimp do naturally. Japanese expect theirs to be stretched out straight, with the tail fanned, and when deep fried, to have plenty of batter bitlets sticking out of it. These are called 花 (hana; flower), because it looks like the shrimp is 'blooming'.

I'm lucky that we're using pre-mixed tempura flour and not making it from scratch, or this would be even harder; as it is, we have to go through a lengthy process of making cuts in the bottom of each shrimp, where the tendon is, and pressing them out to make them flat. The batter must be the correct mix, not too thick or the tempura will turn out cakey and not too thin or you can see the shrimp's skin through the batter (another no-no). Even with all the prep, the shrimp tend to curl in the fryer so you have to watch that, and squirting extra batter on top to form the right amount and texture of hana is the most irritating and difficult part. The shrimp are always served back-forward, so if the shrimp turned in the fryer and the hana formed on the stomach, it means nothing and the presentation is still bad. I'm gradually getting better, but I wonder where all these visual rules came from?

栗: Chestnuts Pt 2: The Revenge of the Pods

2009-10-04T01:46:00.000-07:00

When I was little, we gathered blackberries from an empty lot in the neighborhood before it got built up. But I think most Americans don't really get into gathering stuff from the wild. We're a culture extremely preoccupied with food safety issues and cleanliness, and the idea of just picking up something from the ground and eating it is very unappealing. The Japanese are more open about that sort of thing. Groups of friends or families often go on mushroom-hunting or 山菜 (sansai: mountain veggies) gathering trips at the appropriate seasons. One of the reasons 'organic' hasn't taken off in such a big way in Japan is because the Japanese already see it as self-evident that wild, uncultivated or at least barely touched ingredients are best, and don't feel they need to label something so obvious. While I don't do a lot of food-gathering in the Tokyo streets, I had a pleasant experience when I went back to my old home in Ibaraki Prefecture north of Tokyo. Fall was already well under way, and while dirt biking we pass some chestnut trees.

We got off our bikes, stuffed them in our bags (those spines go through bike gloves), and I soaked them overnight and spent the next afternoon peeling them. We made 栗ご飯 (kuri gohan; chestnut rice) for a BBQ the next day. The aroma was incredible, it blew store-bought chestnuts out of the water. Though they were tiny compared to the cultivated version:

栗ご飯作り方:

栗ー　　　いっぱい（むいたもの）

米ー　　　３カップ

だし汁ー　９００cc

薄口醤油ー４０cc

みりんー　１５cc（必要ではない）

塩ー　　　小さじ１/２

酒ー　　　３０cc

１. 米は洗ってざるに上げ、３０分おく。

２. 栗は半分か４分の１に切る。

３. だしに薄口醤油、みりん、塩をあわせ、かき混ぜて塩を溶かす。

４. ご飯用の鍋に洗い米３.の調味しただしじる、栗を入れて炊く。

５. 炊き上がったら酒をふり、１０分を待つ。

Chestnut Rice Recipe:

Chestnuts-As many as possible (peeled)

Rice (short-grained)- 3 cups

Dashi Stock- 900 cc

Usukuchi Soy Sauce (regular works fine too)- 40 cc

Mirin- 15 cc (optional)

Salt- 1/2 teaspoon

Sake- 30 cc

1. Wash the rice and let it sit 30 minutes in a colander.

2. Cut the chestnuts into halves or quarters depending on size.

3. Mix the dashi with the soy, mirin, and salt until it dissolves.

4. Mix the rice with the seasoned dashi from Step 3, add chestnuts, and cook.

5. When done cooking, sprinkle the sake on top and let sit 10 minutes before eating.

栗: Kuri; Chestnuts

2009-09-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

Despite the Christmas song, chestnuts were never something I really imagined eating until I came to Japan. They are firmly associated with cooler weather, and are often sold as 甘栗 (amaguri; sweet chestnuts) at small stands. They are also made into 金団 (kinton, sweet chestnut paste), which is used in confections and may be more appealing to those whole don't like the red bean 小豆 paste more commonly used.

Chestnuts are faintly nutty, with a mealy texture, and are usually candied if not made into the paste. They are always served at New Year's. A French treat that has never taken off in the States but that got popular here is marrons glaces, or candied glazed chestnuts that are often sold as expensive gifts. We're using them to garnish the grilled fish right now.

PS- they're also a complete pain in the butt to peel. You have to soak them in water overnight to soften the outer shell, then peel it off, then cut away the bitter inner skin, shaping each chestnut into a 6-sided figure. Try not to get roped into it by yourself.

風干し鰈 (Kaze-Boshi Karei): Wind-Dried Flounder

2009-09-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

Drying fish is a basic technique that seals in and strengthens flavor as well as helping to preserve the fish longer. Although I have to admit I was pretty horrified when I saw raw fish just being hung up for hours, even in the summer. I always imagined dried food to be done in stainless, sterilized surroundings, or at least in a special room. Not in Asia. It's really weird seeing fish hung out to dry amidst the skyscrapers and Tokyo bustle. We're on the second floor of a building but we head up the stairs and tie the fish to hangers on the third floor's stairwell.

After scaling, deheading, and cleaning the flounder, you soak it in 立塩 ('standing water', the word for water that has the same salinity as the sea, about 3%) for 30 minutes. This adds flavor and tightens the flesh of the fish. Drain, dry, and make a slit along the spine in both the front and back of the fish. Skewer by the tail and dry outside, preferably on a breezy coolish day, for about 6 hours. The fish keep about a week but are best used as soon as possible. They are usually grilled. I like it when we do big batches of fish like this, because I can get in on the knife action. I did most of the knifework on these guys myself.

Footwear

2009-09-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

When I was in the States, it was a sign of machoism to wear anything other than boots in the kitchen. The tough chefs wore hard clogs, but between using a hose on the concrete floors and flying food, hot oil, and dropped knives, it was a risk to have anything other than treated leather covering your toes. Not so in Japan.

First of all, there are no dropped knives in Japan. When you're dealing with lengths of metal that cost as much as a month's rent, you don't drop them. There are no 'house knives' here, and you don't use other chef's knives here, period. The most arrogant way to pull rank in the kitchen is for a senior chef is to use an inferior's knife instead of bothering to break out his own. Secondly, Japanese chefs work clean. Food is rarely if ever dropped, and seen as a direct loss. As a direct result, floors are cleaned less often, more like once a week rather than every night. Usually long boots are provided for said cleaning by the house.

All this leads to most chefs wearing a lot less protection on their feet over here than I am used to. Sushi chefs in particular often opt for 下駄, or Japanese wooden sandals, and socks. I've gone with a pair of rubber clogs with holes for ventilation, and only wipe them down once a week.

Choking it Down

2009-09-11T20:57:00.001-07:00

One of few nice thing about working the hours that I do is that I get fed twice a day. The flipside is that the Japanese adhere to what your mom always told you: clear what's on your plate with no comments. Japanese restaurants don't do food waste. If something can't be served anymore, we get it. I'm lucky; the owner of my restaurant eats with us, and he makes sure we eat pretty good (sometimes great) and will pull food that isn't the absolute freshest and give it to us instead of hanging onto it until it goes bad. At another place, I've seen fish that had actually started to stink being broken out and served to the staff.

However...I don't mind choking down the occasional not-tasty, odd, or maybe gross thing at a friend's house, and I consider myself pretty open to most foods. But I've been an adult for a long time, and having the restaurant dictate the majority of what I consume is hard to bear. It's very much like being a small child, and taking whatever Mom dishes up. Fugu Senpai is also under a lot of pressure to spend as little as possible on ingredients and to cook them as fast as possible, so that the instant the last customer leaves the restaurant, we are sitting down to eat. This leads to a lot of stir-fries and fried food. Which is where my real problem comes in. I've been really sensitive to oil since I was a child, finally cutting it from my diet altogether. I just can't stomach it. I tried to just eat less when fried food was served up, but I felt like crap for the rest of the day. Fugu Senpai is a nice guy and he's been trying to accommodate me by using different preparation methods for my food. I really appreciate it, since observing special dietary needs aren't part of his job description. It does make me realize how much I enjoyed cooking for myself, though, and is getting me more motivated to be the one to cook the meals at the restaurant.

秋: Fall

2009-09-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

The heat has finally broken a bit and we've officially hit the fall season as far as ingredients are concerned. Fall is when Japanese cuisine really comes into it's own. You've got 秋刀魚 (Pacific saury), 栗 (chestnuts), 銀杏 (ginko nuts), 梨 (Japanese pears, my favorite fruit), and a variety of 茸 (mushrooms), the king of which is 松茸 (matsutake; pine mushroom). Matsutake have an incredible aroma when grilled lightly, and one of the more spectacular meals I saw served was when the owner broke out some charcoal and grilled slices of matsutake right at the counter, then shaped the piping hot 'shrooms into sushi. The smoky aroma of dashi is brought out by the cold too, and soups are especially good at this time. People really interested in Japanese cuisine should get out at least once in the next 6-8 weeks.

Note: The worldwide climate change is real. We've been serving 秋刀魚, a fish which has the character for 'fall' in it's name, since mid-summer. Everything is coming out earlier and earlier and the food seasons are ending more quickly. In a cuisine that is based as firmly on tradition as Japanese, you are supposed to eat certain types of food at certain times of the year or on certain days, but gradually this is becoming obsolete as the Earth warms up.

Hands

2009-09-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

Every chef knows the agony of hands. Having them, I mean. They crackle on the ends of your wrists, catching on cloth and smearing blood unexpectedly. Bend your fingers and feel the skin strain to breaking over your knuckles. Try to put them in your pockets and let the grimace of pain break through your tough-guy face. All chefs have half a dozen cuts, burns, cracks and scrapes healing half-heartedly on their hands at all times, but the real enemy is dryness. Your hands are wet most of the day, washed uncounted times, in contact with soap and cleansers and bleach for hours. You may try the girly glove approach for a while, but you nearly always ditch them when you've gotten into that hardcore cleaning drive that barely allows you time for the bathroom, much less tracking down and pulling gloves already your already-devastated paws.

Forget fashion magazines or bath shops. Cooks are the ones that can tell you about skin creams. Having naturally dry skin to begin with, I suffer doubly, and in the winter my hands are twin suns of radiating pain. I've tried the range of lotions from Wal-Mart to department stores where they sell it by the ounce, all the Burt's Bees products, antibiotic cream, Bag Balm, shea butter, cocoa butter, pure petroleum jelly, prescription medical cream, etc. I've done it all, man. This is the bottom line and the only thing that keeps the pain at bay: pure lanolin. Not anything lanolin-based; you need the 100 percent smelly sheep's fat, and you need to smear it thickly on your hands at least every other night and put on cotton gardening gloves to keep it on your skin instead of on your sheets. (Rubber gloves make your hands break out and do weird stuff if you use them every night.) The gloves make hitting the snooze button interesting in the morning, but add a certain Fight Club atmosphere to the bedroom.

RIP TMNT

2009-08-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

Any job entails you do stuff you don't wanna do, and it gets more hands-on and gritty the further down the social chain you go. Being a chef, despite the celebrity status it is often given, is a blue-collar job. You don your uniform, scrub and wash and chop and work with your hands for long, unusual hours and weekends to serve the people with normal jobs. You are also occasionally faced with moral dilemmas.

Chefs in America cook food. Chefs in Japan prepare food, the preparation of which may or may not require cooking. This means you need fresh materials, and fresh means either extremely recently deceased or still living when you get ahold of it. One of the more gruesome tasks is dispatching turtles, which are made into a 鍋物 (one-pot dish), several of which have come our way recently. You have to cut off the head, slice up the still-moving body, clean the meat, and get it in the pot. The heart keeps beating until it is actually simmered, even when the turtle is in pieces. (You have to be careful of the head too, which can continue to bite for up to half an hour after you cut it off.) Octopus is another grisly job. Casually slaughtering an animal that may have lived up to 10 years or is estimated to have the intelligence of a 2-year-old isn't easy and may not even be right. I have pretty strong vegetarian tendencies and almost never prepare meat at home, and I'm pretty torn about how to take all this. I've taken the stand that I'm still the apprentice and need to know about this stuff, even if I decide not to do it or serve it when I break out on my own professionally; basically a suspension of decision. I also decided not to post the picture of the turtle seconds after it was killed. Turtle blood is as red as human blood.

お見上げ: Gift-Giving

2009-08-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

Giving gifts of food is a pretty standard part of the Japanese society of 10 years ago and before. Recently it's tapered off, but if you go on a trip someplace and don't bring back a box of edible treats, preferably a famous brand specific to that region, then you're a tool. You also give or receive food gifts on the occasion of weddings, formally meeting new people, when moving into a new house, etc. The Japanese restaurant business is firmly entrenched in tradition and is built up on knowing people. This translates into tidbits or delicacies always laying about or being served up at meals, and unlike your average bean-filled bun or dry cookie, the people in the biz know good food and so give the best. Since I've started 5 weeks ago I've had eel sent from an eel farm, incredible 煎餅 (senbei, rice crackers), cakes, cookies, homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers (the cucs were like nothing you've ever had), various fish, and tonight some really freakin' good yakisoba, even though I normally don't touch the stuff. People also purchase stuff from the restaurant to give: sushi, ayu, soba, etc. A perk of the job is that you can impress the socks off someone by giving them a gift like a box of ayu and rice (that would normally cost $30 per fish) for cost. I did exactly this for my mother-in-law.

My Debut: 鱸薄造り (Thin Sea Bass Sashimi)

2009-08-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

My restaurant serves fugu (pufferfish) and so I'm learning how to slice fish and plate it according to how fugu is done. The picture is what I did today. I cut it and plated it all by myself, Mom! It seemed to impress the bosses enough to talk about me starting to study for the fugu test in a year or two. For how simple sashimi looks, it really requires a lot of know-how and technique to make it look good. It's like sports; it looks effortless when a pro is doing it and it becomes obvious how difficult it really is when a rank beginner is at it. I'm pleased with myself today.

By the way, 鱸 (すずき、sea bass) is an excellent fish for sashimi. It has a firm texture, with almost a 'crunch' to it, and absolutely no 'fishy' taste. The one I did today was for us to eat; it was a gift from a server's father, who is a fishmonger.

All In the Family

2009-08-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

Today Soba Master, Fugu Senpai and I went on a field trip to check out a new knife shop. I mentioned before that a restaurant has personal connection with a chosen knife store and buys all their knives from there, so it's a relationship coveted by said store. We're in the courting stage now. My school knives are laughable compared to the professional thing, so today's trip ended up in my ordering one custom knife and purchasing another 薄刃 (usuba, vegetable knife). The usuba set me back ¥24000, or about $240 USD. That's a mid-grade knife price; my superiors' knives run about $400 apiece. It's basically a training knife. You can see in the second picture how much bigger it is than my old knife. It's a 7.5 寸 compared to my old 6 寸 (寸, 'sun' is an old Japanese measurement still used by knife stores). It's also square-ended, which is Kanto style. My old one was Kansai style and it embarrassed me a little to use it in Tokyo.

I was really lucky to be invited along on this trip. Those who just walk into a shop will not get the best of the best; you have to be introduced properly with real connections, like in the Mob. One of the main reasons for me to go along today was to show my face and be introduced formally with the support of my restaurant. That counts more than money in these old-school circles.

Drinking on the Job

2009-08-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

...is an integral part of the job of a counter chef, at least for the owner. Us scrubs rarely get in on the action unless a patron decides to buy a bottle for the whole house and call us all out for a toast.

The top chef's job is not just slicing and dicing, but entertaining patrons. You have to be good at conversation and be up on all the current events. It is vital to read a newspaper every day and know how to handle all sorts of people. The tables are a different matter, and they don't get the attention the people at the counter do. Smart diners will always opt to sit at the counter, as those are the ones that will get extra tidbits and special treatment. In return, it is traditional to pour a drink or five for your host. This ends up with your boss being drunk every night, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Concentrate on Being Natural

2009-08-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

Japanese cooking is more about presentation than anything else, and the main focus is to make things look 'natural' and thrown together, even though there are strict rules for arranging food (盛り付け). For example, things should be presented in odd numbers and should be arranged slightly to the back of the dish, you use pottery in winter and ceramics in summer, a dish should face the direction that the signature on the bottom faces, etc. The most difficult thing is making a presentation looks like it was blown together elegantly by the wind and not touched by human hands. There is one dish I just can't get right; dark red fish is fanned out on one side of the plate and I have to make a little pile of sliced myoga (a kind of mild ginger) and soba no me (buckwheat sprouts) on the side. Both of these are slippery and tend to fall over. Then Fugu Senpai applies his chopsticks of power and suddenly the plates look great. Hmm.

鮎- Ayu (Sweetfish)

2009-08-09T05:11:00.000-07:00

...are freakin' awesome. They are smallish fish traditionally caught by trained cormorants. The fish are attracted to fires lit on the boats. They are also very territorial and another method to catch them is to hook a live ayu and fish with it as bait; other ayu will attack it. That's pretty horrific, though I think the main way of getting them commercially now is by traps.

Anyway, they are a summer fish and usually salt-grilled. You see them at festivals on sticks, and are supposed to eat the whole thing, head, bones, innards and all. They are always skewered so it looks like they are swimming.

My restaurant does a different method, involving grilling and steaming and simmering and making the ayu super-soft, then serving them over flavored rice mixed with sauteed burdock and carrot. The leaves are tade, a bitter leaf that is often made into a violently green vinegar sauce. One of the best dishes I've eaten in my life was a single perfectly salt-grilled young ayu, so soft that the bones barely crunched, so well-shaped that it didn't lay flat on the plate but stood up on it's breast fins.

Dealing Death

2009-08-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

Tip: The most delicious part of a fish is the little chunk of sweet soft boneless flesh in the cheek. Especially if it has been charcoal-grilled or simmered. I wonder if that's the reason that the guest traditionally gets served the head.

Fugu Senpai took the fugu test yesterday. In order to get certified to be able to off any customers who displease you by serving them bits of a poisonous animal, you have to take a rigorous test that includes a written exam and a timed practical. This will be his fourth or fifth try. Osaka is much more laid back about the fugu test and apparently hand out licenses left and right, but Tokyo takes it seriously. On the other hand, the Osaka license is good only for Osaka and the Tokyo one is good anywhere in Japan. Once you get it, you keep it for life with no more re-certifications. Prerequisites include already having a chef's license and 2 years experience in a place that serves fugu, plus a letter of recommendation from said place(s).

Anyway, we won't find out if he passed until the middle of October, which is absurd. How long does it take to tell if you're homicidal or not? Then again, I've slipped through the cracks this long...

Japanese Knives

2009-08-01T09:02:00.000-07:00

I got a lesson in knife-sharpening today.

I love Japanese knives. When katanas became illegal to carry in Japan, many of the sword makers turned to making knives, which are just smaller versions of the swords. They are even sharpened the same way, using water stones (in contrast with the oil-and-stone method used for stainless knives). Japanese knives are made of carbon steel, which translates into an easily-warped edge that will rust within a couple of minutes of being in contact with water. That's why Japanese chefs are so particular about wiping their knives off all the time, every time they put the knife down. The wooden handles are also susceptible to mold and discoloration if not cared for and dried properly. But the edge can literally cut a mosquito in two.

A good restaurant will develop a personal relationship with a knife shop and buy exclusively from them. A good knife can range around $500 USD. They are big, heavy, and can cut with just their own weight, with little or no pressure applied. If you can sharpen them correctly. God-boss took a hour of his time today to demonstrate his way, and worked on correcting my knife edges, which were not straight. This is amazing. Most old-school restaurants wouldn't even allow you to sharpen your knives on the premise at all; you'd have to tote them home and do it on your own time. You'd think after 45 years of experience he'd be tired of doing something like teaching a rank beginner basic techniques. It's like Tom Morello dropping by to teach you a guitar slide.

Tired

2009-07-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

Being a chef in Japan means working a minimum of 12 hour days 6 days a week. The hardcore apprentices only get maybe 6-7 hours away from the restaurant a day, and usually come in for at least a little while even on off days. I'm a little luckier but I'm still pulling something like 87-hour weeks, 93 if you count the train rides that I can never sit down in. Then I have to sharpen my knives when I get home, or get up early in the morning to do it before I go to work.

As Slimy As It Sounds

2009-07-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

Ahh, squid. I learned how to cut open the body today and get out the beak and eyeballs without squishing them and getting eye juice all over the meat. I'm rarely grossed out by the shit I see anymore but carrying a handful of squid eyeballs and mouths and red juice to the garbage in my hands had me performing this mantra: 'I do not have a handful of eyeballs that look like human eyes I do not have eyeballs in my hands I have EYEBALLS in my HANDS oh no GET IT OFF ME AHHHH!!' Luckily the trash can only took a few seconds to reach.

I can deal with cooked squid; I've gotten used to the rubbery texture. But even though I've consumed my fair share of raw squid during my stint here, I just don't like it. There is a fairly popular dish called 塩辛 (shiokara) that we serve, involving cutting raw squid up into thin strips and mixing it with a soupy mess made of miso and the innards of the squid that have been rubbed through a mesh screen. It's as horrible as it sounds. Let that sit in your fridge 3 days and you've got something that rivals natto for smell.

Cooking for the Crew

2009-07-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

An apprentice's job includes cooking the meals for the staff, which means at least lunch and dinner, and sometimes breakfast, depending on the place. This requires a basic idea of a Japanese home-cooked meal which every Japanese possesses and I don't. This is not what I studied. I know high-end Japanese cookery, but I don't really know what Mom might serve. It's the difference between serving a pate and serving a green bean casserole back home. I'm so afraid to make a misstep (a neurosis throughly enforced by my last job, where everything you did was wrong always) that it paralyzes me. Well, Fugu Senpai is having none of it. He's been dropping hints that I need to get on the creative end of the staff meals and told me flat out today that it was necessary to get my butt in gear. So I've armed myself with cookbooks and sticky notes for tomorrow. I guess pressure's the fastest way to learn.

Cracked Up

2009-07-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

Today I broke a vase.

This could have been a pretty big deal, as dishes and pottery in Japan are not something to be taken lightly. Most places require you to handwash all articles, and some places with especially nice pieces only allow the owner to wash them. This is taken to the extent that there are professional dishwashers in Japan that deal with old or famous pieces. Japan is unlike most of the world in that, with expensive dishes, each piece is handcrafted and not a duplicate. Often tea people will have pieces dating back hundreds of years that they keep stored and only bring out when special tea ceremonies are held.

Luckily my boss is pretty laid-back and the vase turned out to not be so expensive. (I put it in front of an open window and a strong gust blew it off the sill.) In another place, this could have cost me my job.

Near the end of my shift, Fugu Senpai gave me a piece of fish to practice slicing and I got tips from him and Soba Master. That would have never never never happened in most places. I'm really lucky to be where I am.

Off To America

2009-05-10T07:27:00.000-07:00

I'm anxious to check the hot competition I'm sure to find in my hometown in Tennessee.