There are some trends in food that seem to have gone on forever. Do you want to know why? It’s either because they’re super easy and convenient to do, like hosting Summer Cocktails, and can be jazzed up to suit the individual chef’s needs (think of tapas – you can never stop the creativity with tapas!) or are so precise and out of our comfort zone that we would rather visit a restaurant and let the professionals take care of it (think of sushi and other Japanese dishes … most people would rather throw over the cash than even think about where to look to begin creating one of these
meals).
The Japanese trend is slowly but surely making its way into kitchens. It’s a little different to the other Asian cuisines that we are used to; it sometimes involves heat like Indian, and the Japanese are even famous for their (katsu) curries, it embodies much of the same spices that the Chinese use in their cooking, can be quite reduced on the ingredients like Thai food and yet still manages to combine all three and then add a bit more originality for good measure. So you’ll be forgiven if you haven’t tried to replicate a Japanese dish in your kitchen just yet.
Where to Start?
If you sincerely don’t know where to begin and what dish to create first, have a scout around online for some simple recipes. Noodles and soups are good places to start from, and offer a familiar base to work around until you are more confident to move onto more complex dishes; you have probably already had experience with more popular dishes like ramen and hot & sour soup.
Learn from the Best
Japanese chefs are meticulous and precise – they have to be when they are dealing with raw foodstuffs. Ensure that you get tips from reliable sources such as Kamikoto Blog as to what knives to use when slicing, how thick certain sushi should be and a wealth of other information that is essential should you wish to go further in educating yourself than mastering the basics of this brilliant cuisine – it’s worth it.
Know the Herbs and Spices that Make the Dish
The main thing to remember when learning about Japanese dishes and the basics surrounding them is that they don’t take much to make a meal taste great. There are five basic seasonings used – salt, sugar, vinegar, soy and miso. Dishes can be made spicy with their seven spice powder, and there are a few other things that can be added on the side (wasabi, ginger for example), but apart from that they rely on the getting the flavours from the complex combination of flavours of the five staple seasonings. Their recipes don’t call for a lot of ingredients to begin with, so enjoy the simple life and take heed of how little it takes to create great flavour – it’s something we could do with incorporating into quite a lot of our meals to take away unnecessary stress!
