Japanese Salmon, Japanese Shrimp
Sep 6th, 2008 | By Hank Shaw | Category: Asian, Fish | Comments | 9 Comments |
If you ever want to learn how to coax great food from just a few ingredients, you could do worse than study the Japanese.
I am making my way through Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art
But as I learn more about Japanese cuisine I am struck by its similarity to Greek cooking. I know this sounds odd at first blush, but both cuisines appear at least to me to be founded on scarcity. We’ve all heard the story about Japanese paying exorbitant prices for a single peach or melon, and as I just mentioned, their bedrock ingredients are all relatively cheap staples.
Greek food relies on olive oil, oregano, lemons, mint, ouzo (in all its forms), bread and feta cheese in the same way. Yes, both cuisines are far more complex than this, but if you reduce a Greek meal to its core, you will get a hunk of bread, dipped in olive oil, with a piece of feta and a glass of ouzo or raki. If you reduce a Japanese meal to is core, you will get a bowl of rice, sprinkled with soy sauce, with some miso soup and a cup of tea, or a glass of sake.
Both cultures revere fish and seafood. And since I am also the About.com Fish & Seafood writer, this is a good thing. I tried my hand at a simple salmon dish the other day, and was happy I did. I’d bought some frozen sockeye salmon from Raley’s, which actually has some quality fish is you know what to look for, and decided to follow a recipe from Tsuji for Sake Nanban-yaki, or pan-broiled salmon with green onions.
I was struck by how flavorful the fish was, dressed with only a little rice vinegar, mirin, soy sauce and sesame oil (my departure from Tsuji — he uses butter, which I rarely have in the house). The only thing I messed up on was that I cooked the green onions too long; you can see they are no longer vibrant. They tasted good, however.
Next I cooked an unusual Japanese shrimp and egg dish from another cookbook. This one is even simpler, with only shrimp, eggs, dashi, sake and sugar as flavorings. When I made it, I thought it’d be one of those dishes enthusiasts call “subtle,” but which I typically call “bland.”
Boy was I wrong. You steam the shimp with cornstarch and sake, then pour beaten egg over them. This basically makes an omelet that you eat with the shrimp and steamed rice. But the eggs absorb so much flavor you want to parcel them out and eat a nibble with every bite. Really, this dish doesn’t look like much, but I highly recommend it. Easy, flavorful, low-fat even.
That is some gorgeous-looking salmon. And I love Japanese egg dishes – chawanmushi is marvellous comfort food.
Hank, my go-to marinade for frozen salmon fillets has been a similar Japanese treatment for years, not that I know anything about Japanese cooking. What I found was that using equal parts fire oil and sesame oil along with a healthy splash of soy could render any freezer burn nearly unnoticeable. This is great for salmon fillets that I’ve stocked in the freezer for more than, say, three months, meaning good grilled salmon year-round.
Loving your journey into the kimono!
I really enjoy a nice bit of tamago these days. I love the photo of the salmon.
Hola Hank! There’s something for you in my blog
Any free seats at your table? Mmmmm
Thanks, Heather — I am finding out that Japanese food is pretty commonly cooked up your way…
you can sit at our table anytime, Nuria! Just come out West for a visit!
Hey Hank, I’ve been lurking around your blog looking for ways to prepare salmon with a miso sort of glaze. I tried it with a little OJ and orange zest and soy — we ate with rice mixed with umeboshi, which was a nice combo, but any other thoughts?
I like your shrimp – egg idea too. There’s a Malaysian fried rice noodle dish with a flavor base of hot chilies and smoked shrimp pasta, that uses shrimp and eggs as the feature ingredients. It’s fabulous.
“If you reduce a Japanese meal to is core, you will get a bowl of rice, sprinkled with soy sauce, with some miso soup and a cup of tea, or a glass of sake.”
Soy sauce is important in Japanese cuisine but I think it would be very unusual to have it sprinkled over white rice. It would be much more common to see seaweed/furikake sprinkled over the rice if anything. I think a more plausible ‘core’ meal would be white rice, seaweed sheets, pickled daikon, and miso soup. But perhaps the most common meal would be white rice, seaweed sheets, fish cakes and miso soup.
Rick: You’re right about sprinkled soy sauce; I’ve been corrected on that one. Have you spent time in Japan?
Hank, thanks for this take on e simlarities between Greek food and Japanese food; I think you are definitely on to something. In fact, I love Japanese food so my wife and I took a few classes on preparing sushi and sashimi… I totally appreciate where you are coming from in respect to the ultimate simplicity that underlies the cuisines of both nations. Good stuff!