Cooking
While I love going out for Japanese food, I would never make it at home. And neither would Eric Gower, the "Breakaway Cook". At a recent dinner and cooking demonstration the cookbook author and private chef explained that when he lived in Japan he could get all the great Japanese food he wanted eating out, but Japanese ingredients intrigued him just the same. So he experimented and came up with a new style of cooking.
The Breakaway Cook is a cookbook that uses lots of ingredients that might be considered exotic, including many Japanese ingredients but uses them in simple, accessible ways. Before taking on the recipes you'll want to hunt down ingredients like maccha (green tea powder), umeboshi (pickled plum) miso (fermented soy bean paste) and yuzu juice (citron). Gower also uses other "flavor blast" ingredients that aren't Japanese like one of my favorites, pomegranate molasses.
You can check out recipes for Five Flavored Salts, Crispy Tangy Tofu, Matcha Poached Eggs, and more here. His non-Japanese ingredient recipes are terrific too, I tried his tip for folding yogurt into scrambled eggs and loved it.
On the other end of the spectrum is Iron Chef Morimoto. The only holdover from the original and truly wacky Japanese version of the Iron Chef show who also stars in the American version. If you've ever seen him in action you've had to wonder, how did he make some of those challenge-winning recipes? In the new book Morimoto The New Art of Japanese Cooking, you can find out. His recipes also use Japanese ingredients but often in very unusual ways.
Sadly many of the ingredients such as kinki fish, Japanese soy lecithin sheets and live abalone, and techniques like cold smoking and using co2 canisters are likely to be inaccessible to the home cook. But the book is inspiring nonetheless and many of the recipes aren't nearly as daunting. Recipes like Sushi Rice Risotto, Morimoto Bouillabaisse, and Bagna Cauda with Crab Naan and Eggplant Shigiyaki (a kind of eggplant parmesan with mozzarella and red miso sauce) all merge Japanese ingredients with Italian, French and even Indian classics. In addition to the restaurant style of many of the recipes, the book also features several recipes made on Iron Chef, which were originally accomplished in under one hour.
FOOD
- Why Do You Cook, Eric Gower?
Eric Gower's food excites me. His approach to cooking is creative and fresh. Like me, he loves to play with ingredients and find new and different ways to use them. Having lived in Japan, he often combines Western style techniques with Asian ingredients...
- Noodles, Noodles, Noodles!
I'm so crazy about noodles I could eat them every day and never get bored. Even the family I lived with in Italy was amazed at my capacity for eating pasta. And I love all kinds of pasta--Asian varieties along with Italian, being top of the list....
- Eating Japanese Or Italian?
One more Japanese food post at Epicurious: Italian Food, Japanese Style About eating Japanese pasta in Tokyo©2016 Cooking with Amy. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission. ...
- Quiz Answers
Finally! We have some winners of Morimoto The New Art of Japanese Cooking. Congratulations to Tim, Shiree, Arlene, Julie and Melinda. Most of the answers were in an article in the September 2004 issue of Food & Wine magazine. Here are the answers...
- Second Chance To Win Morimoto
Looks like my quiz has really stumped you! No one got all the answers right, and only one person was even close. But I really do want to give away copies of Morimoto The New Art of Japanese Cooking. So I'm giving the answers to two of the questions...
Cooking
Using Japanese Ingredients Anew
While I love going out for Japanese food, I would never make it at home. And neither would Eric Gower, the "Breakaway Cook". At a recent dinner and cooking demonstration the cookbook author and private chef explained that when he lived in Japan he could get all the great Japanese food he wanted eating out, but Japanese ingredients intrigued him just the same. So he experimented and came up with a new style of cooking.
The Breakaway Cook is a cookbook that uses lots of ingredients that might be considered exotic, including many Japanese ingredients but uses them in simple, accessible ways. Before taking on the recipes you'll want to hunt down ingredients like maccha (green tea powder), umeboshi (pickled plum) miso (fermented soy bean paste) and yuzu juice (citron). Gower also uses other "flavor blast" ingredients that aren't Japanese like one of my favorites, pomegranate molasses.
You can check out recipes for Five Flavored Salts, Crispy Tangy Tofu, Matcha Poached Eggs, and more here. His non-Japanese ingredient recipes are terrific too, I tried his tip for folding yogurt into scrambled eggs and loved it.
On the other end of the spectrum is Iron Chef Morimoto. The only holdover from the original and truly wacky Japanese version of the Iron Chef show who also stars in the American version. If you've ever seen him in action you've had to wonder, how did he make some of those challenge-winning recipes? In the new book Morimoto The New Art of Japanese Cooking, you can find out. His recipes also use Japanese ingredients but often in very unusual ways.
Sadly many of the ingredients such as kinki fish, Japanese soy lecithin sheets and live abalone, and techniques like cold smoking and using co2 canisters are likely to be inaccessible to the home cook. But the book is inspiring nonetheless and many of the recipes aren't nearly as daunting. Recipes like Sushi Rice Risotto, Morimoto Bouillabaisse, and Bagna Cauda with Crab Naan and Eggplant Shigiyaki (a kind of eggplant parmesan with mozzarella and red miso sauce) all merge Japanese ingredients with Italian, French and even Indian classics. In addition to the restaurant style of many of the recipes, the book also features several recipes made on Iron Chef, which were originally accomplished in under one hour.
FOOD
- Why Do You Cook, Eric Gower?
Eric Gower's food excites me. His approach to cooking is creative and fresh. Like me, he loves to play with ingredients and find new and different ways to use them. Having lived in Japan, he often combines Western style techniques with Asian ingredients...
- Noodles, Noodles, Noodles!
I'm so crazy about noodles I could eat them every day and never get bored. Even the family I lived with in Italy was amazed at my capacity for eating pasta. And I love all kinds of pasta--Asian varieties along with Italian, being top of the list....
- Eating Japanese Or Italian?
One more Japanese food post at Epicurious: Italian Food, Japanese Style About eating Japanese pasta in Tokyo©2016 Cooking with Amy. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten or redistributed without permission. ...
- Quiz Answers
Finally! We have some winners of Morimoto The New Art of Japanese Cooking. Congratulations to Tim, Shiree, Arlene, Julie and Melinda. Most of the answers were in an article in the September 2004 issue of Food & Wine magazine. Here are the answers...
- Second Chance To Win Morimoto
Looks like my quiz has really stumped you! No one got all the answers right, and only one person was even close. But I really do want to give away copies of Morimoto The New Art of Japanese Cooking. So I'm giving the answers to two of the questions...