It was an honor and pleasure to participate again at the Worlds of Flavor Conference at Greystone on Nov. 1-3. I had an opportunity to meet for the first time with such great chefs such as Maxime Bilet, Kyle Connaughton, Musa Dagdeviren, Erez Komarovsky, Mourad Lahlou. We, Chef Jiro Iida of Aburiya Kinnosuke and I, presented Bincho-tan session and workshop. I presented Shio-koji and koji workshop with Chef Lars Kronmark. Chef Kronmark gave a master piece of presentation on...
Read MoreDay 5 Last Day of Essentials of Japanese Cuisine with Chef Masato Shimizu of 15East
Chef Masato may be one of the most celebrated sushi chef in New York City. He is charming (very handsome), very low-key, generous and a very fun person (you cannot guess from his serious face during his work at 15 E!).We were so blessed to have Masato with us. Each student received one whole fluke to tackle with it. A BIG CHALLENGE. Chef Masato first showed the students how to remove scales and how to fillet the fish into 2 back-side fillets and 2 belly-side fillets. Every...
Read MoreEssentials of Japanese Cuisine Day 1 and Day 2
I am back on the Essentials of Japanese Cuisine teaching at French Culinary Institute. Day 1’s highlight was the preparation of dashi stock (requires a state of zen mind), fun home-made udon noodles and perfect tempura using seasonal vegetables. Here are some of the photos from the class. To roll the dough out I had to stand on a stand….short person’s dilemma. Everyone rolled out the udon dough into perfect thickness, resulting delicious cold udon dish...
Read MoreLast Fresh Edamame Before the End of Summer
Heralding the arrival of summer, edamame, are one of the most celebrated delicacies in summer in Japan. It is almost impossible for us to endure the long hot and humid summer without these delicious green beans. Boiled green soybeans dusted with sea salt with a glass of ice-cold beer or barley tea is a summertime treat throughout the country. In the past several years edamame has become indispensable snack items at US Japanese restaurants. As they became popular...
Read MoreBincho-tan 2
For bincho-tan cooking there are two ways to build the fire – one in a vertical way, tatezumi, and the other, in a horizontal manner, yokozumi. The photo (in the previous blog) with the fish is the former structure. Durign the cooking oil drops down to the ground but not over the charcoal, so it does not cause any undesirable flame flair-ups. In this way you can enjoy the natural, clean flavor of each ingredient uncontaminated by smoke from burning fat and oil. On...
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