Fun Cooking Continues at International Culinary Center

Posted on Jul 22, 2012 in Hiroko's Blog

Day 2 was the day in which the students learned how to cook yakitori over Japanese Binchotan charcoal fire. Chef Jiro Iida of Aburiya Kinnosuke joined us as a guest chef. Chef Jiro showed the students how to cut the chicken, how to place each piece correctly on a bamboo skewer and how to cook and baste chicken properly to produce glossy, juicy yakitori items. By the way Binchotan produces radiant, infrared ray, that makes this style of preparation exceptional. If you want to read more about Binchotan, go to my archive. Next I introduced miso – young aged, medium aged and aged – to the students and we prepared the very popular eggplant-miso dish. Licking delicious miso sauce was a favorite of every students. Then, we prepared Miso marinated cod, miso soup (with Swiss chard, shiitake mushroom and tomato; this miso soup was not usual boring tofu, wakame and scallion) and rice tossed with aromatics.

Here are some photos from Day 2.

Today, Day 3, was the day of Simmering, Braizing and Blanching, which are one of the most frequently used cooking techniques for protein and vegetables in the Japanese kitchen. We braised short-ribs (well, short-ribs are not Japanese cuts, but I have adopted them successfully into Japanese kitchen) in sake/mirin/Worcestershire sauce/sugar/soy sauce; we then simmered branzino in sake/mirin/shoyu/ginger. The final simmering was vegetables dish. We cooked summer squash, carrot, Japanese turnip, shishitogarashi and tomato in dashi/mirin/sugar/salt/shoyu.

During the class I have introduced the preparation rules used in the Japanese kitchen, which were developed based on Five Element Philosophy.

Here are some photos from Day 3.