tokyo food file

autumn is bursting out in Tokyo

Chestnuts.

 

Or alien avian?

#秋 #栗 #旬 #宇宙鳥

Chef Thorsten Schmidt @ Farming Frontier 2012

 

The gleaming hot-tuned motors were all lined up to greet us outside the Big Sight expo hall on Saturday morning. But it wasn't the farmers and their produce that lured me to Farming Frontier 2012, nor the wagyu samples, nor even the promise of the so-called Sake Street with its extensive tastings of regional nihonshu. It was this:

 

Thorsten Schmidt is the chef at Malling & Schmidt, in the city of Aarhus, some 350 km from Copenhagen. I'd chatted with him briefly on his previous visit, and watched him prepare one dish at the Nordic Star Chefs' masterclass at the Hattori acadamy. I'd also heard great things of his collaboration with chef Yoshihiro Narisawa.

So I was keen to see him in action more. First though there were the inevitable speeches, with Dr. Yukio Hattori doing the honours before Schmidt got to work.

 

 

This was the menu du jour...

 

It was a very impressive presentation, showcasing Schmidt's inventive imagination, his technical ability and his creative use of ingredients, from exotic and high-end to simple, common-and-garden. 

The height of the stage and the hovering camera crews meant we couldn't see that much directly, but the big screen allowed us to follow as he talked us through the processes and how he came up with the ideas for these dishes.

 

The highlight was, of course, getting to actually sample the finished items. As a gentleman of the press, I was one of a lucky few ushered to a table and served a mini meal comprising all four courses we'd seen being prepared earlier – served by the chef himself.

 

 

Starting with the seasonal vegetables steamed with sea water, served with a creamy horseradish dip (the root grated to a smooth paste on a Japanese shark-skin oroshi-gane). 

 

Followed by a terrine of akaza-ebi lobster – produced through an ingenious but incredibly time-intensive process), served with two kinds of caviar – the usual black fish roe and also tonburi, aka "hatake no cabiaa" (field caviar) – accompanied by various seaweeds and finally bathed in a rich lobster bouillon.

 

The third and "main " course was steak tartare made not of horsemeat, nor of beef, but wild venison, carefully scraped and minced by hand (Schmidt now seems to be using all Japanese chef's knives), then fashioned onto the bone, to remind us, as he told us, that this meat actually has "an address" (ie it comes from an animal).

It was beautifully, painstakingly plated with blobs of pine-infused mayonnaise topped with berries and mushrooms, and given a wonderful rich sauce that Schmidt produced through the duck press visible in the photo above.

 

And thus to the final course: Oak chocolate covered with bread and chestnuts. The image for this came, Schmidt told us, from him visiting a charcoal burner in Denmark – in turn inspired by hearing that Narisawa-san's father makes Bincho charcoal – and watching the slow, traditional process.

The "charcoal" was nitro-chilled chocolate infused with oak. This was covered with "earth" – a syrup-sweetened black bread – and fine shavings of chestnut. And then "grass" was layered over the top in the form of fine-slivered sorrel leaf, adding a light tartness to the overall flavour.

Bravo Chef Schmidt! And many thanks!

 (photo © Thorsten Schmidt)

Daniel Cox pop-up dinner w/Libushi 里武士

Last weekend, Daniel Cox cooked dinner for me — well, me and a dozen or so other lucky souls who found their way to the obscure venue in Yokohama where he served three nigh-on-impromtu pop-up feasts.  

For those out of the UK gastronomic loop, Dan is the man in charge at Aulis in Cumbria (northern England), which is the research kitchen for L'Enclume, the Michelin two-star, 10/10 restaurant by Simon Rogan. Besides developing the menu, running the restaurant farm and going out foraging, Dan also serves exclusive multi-course chef's table meals at Aulis. That's the kind of dinner we had the other day.

 

Dan was brought over to Japan for a week by Tom and Emi of Libushi — more at their website here — who are based up in Nozawa Onsen, in Nagano Prefecture, where they have a farm. It was a massive opportunity for those of us who can't nip up to Cumbria on a whim, or even to Roganic, the much-lauded limited-edition (two years only) restaurant Rogan set up in London.

Here are a few images from the other evening, with simple descriptions of the dishes. Dan did describe the ingredients and preparations in considerable detail, but you'd have to ask him yourself about the finer points involved...

The venue was a discreet little second-floor cafe space in Yoshidamachi, a grungy but now gentrifying (with plenty of good things happpening) district just to the north of Kannai Station in Yokohama.

 

One long, large table; just over a dozen people sitting on one side; the kitchen space on the other. The pots of herbs and shoots set into the table were grown on the Libushi farm in Nozawa, and most of the produce used in the dinner came from them too.

We sat back and watched as Dan prepared the food, with the help of his sous-chef for the evening, Kensaku Katagiri — a.k.a. Ken-san — from Nozawa Onsen, where he works in the kitchen of his family's hotel.

 

Dan introduced each course, while Emi translated into Japanese, also adding a bit of extra context where necessary.

 

1. First up as an appetizer: Pig and Eel — croquettes of Beniton breed pork (raised in Iida, also in Nagano Pref.) with unagi eel. These were combined and cooked as croquettes, with a crispy deep-fried coating made with potato starch set with tapioca to make it fluff up beautifully. A great starter and an excellent way to kick off the meal.

Here it is, broken open...

 

And this is what we drank with it: Ryugan, a grape related to Koshu, from Colline de Sanctuaire, Nagano.

 

2. Next, another brilliant dish: red shrimp on thin home-made crackers, topped with a wicked sauce of mitsuba and English parsley (but grown in Nozawa). A beautiful – and delectable – symbolism: the coming together of the two countries at this event. You can just make out the layer of soft "cheese" that Dan made himself a day or so ahead of the event. 

 

Third course: Hokkaido oyster poached in its shell in ichiban dashi — made with Nozawa spring water and prepared the way Dan learned from umami-master Yoshihiro Murata of Kikunoi. Because it was cooked at a low temperature, it retained its shape perfectly.

Served on a bed of celery and nama-wakame seaweed (from Kagawa Pref.), it was garnished with oka-hijiki and fennel frond, and served in a lacquered bowl intended for miso-shiru (no actual miso in it; that would come later on).

And this is what we were drinking with it: a nifty junmaishu sake (from Nagano of course) called Michelle, after the Beatles ditty.

 

 

Next up: Carpaccio of akami tuna, seasoned with an amazing, aromatic charcoal-smoke oil that Dan prepared from the white ash of premium binchotan charcoal. This was served on a yogurt sauce with fine slivers of kabu turnip, garnished with kaiware daikon spouts and sprinkled with a mix of roasted seeds.

So good it deserves a close-up... Nice lacquerware too!

 

We were served a different sake with this one: Mizuo Hatsuyuki-no-mai (meaning: "dance of the first snow") hiya-oroshi brewed in Nagano. Apparently, the water used by Mizuo to brew its sake is the same Nozawa spring water that is used in all the dishes Dan prepared at this dinner. It's also the same spring that Tom and Emi use for watering their vegetables, herbs and shoots.

 

Course 5 was also very Japanese in inspiration and presentation...

A couple of days previously, Dan said, he'd been out in the forests of Nagano with a professional forager and eventually they came across a huge carpet of nameko, maitake, shimeji and other fungi — more wild mushrooms in one place than he'd ever seen before.

He served the nameko together with scallops that had been lightly smoked (in cherry wood), bathed in a stock prepared from the wild mushrooms in a torigara (chicken wings) base. The garnish was slivers of Nozawa-grown green shiso leaf, and finely grated British hazel nuts.

Course 6: Hirame (flounder) poached in dashi; kabocha puree; baby-leaf nozawana greens; a sauce made from onion, celery and fennel, with some miso in it as well as clam dashi.

The garnish for this was shaved crisp-fried chestnuts, foraged from the Nozawa woods. Lovely.

 

And this is what we drank with it: a very tasty Chardonnay from the St.Cousair winery [in... yes, you guessed, Nagano]

7. The meat course: Wagyu beef — the cut known as zabuton — from cattle raised (also in Nagano Pref.) on a diet of apples, which gives a wonderful sweet aroma to their meat. After long cooking at low temperature, it was seared over the teppan, then sliced and served with a splash of fragrant egoma (shiso) oil.

Dan served it with wedges of beet and red frill mustard leaf, a puree made from apple cider, and a sauce fragrant with the umami of miso (white and hatcho) and sake [and yes, my notes are getting sketchier by the course here!]. 

The drink paired with this one was cider [unfortunately no photo for this, but it was a stonker].

 

 

And finally dessert: freshly made soft sorbet made from the locally-pressed juice of mikan mandarins, which was accompanied by a crisp sponge honeycomb; a puree of sweet potato (grown by Tom and Emi); garnished with a sprig of shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) and sprinkled with a few yellow chrysanthemum petals.

We also had some of that same mikan juice to drink along with dessert. Produced for Ken-san's hotel, it tasted almost as thick and rich as a mango smoothie. No wonder it's called "Superlativ"!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that, basically, was it. What a great meal! We staggered off into the night, just in time for our last train. At least we didn't have to get back from Cumbria...

Thanks again, Dan! And to Tom and Emi: great job!

 

PS: And if you go over to the Libushi site, they've now posted a very cool video taken at this event, showing the tuna dish being plated.

lunch at Fujiya1935 — one of our most memorable meals of 2011

Although we'd heard some positive whispers about Fujiya1935, nobody we know in Tokyo had actually been there, so we really didn't know what to expect. In other words, it was a stab in the dark (apologies, but that's the way Osaka often looks from the lofty distance of the eastern capital). An adventure.

So our appetite was well whetted with great anticipation as we entered...

From the ground floor reception area — still laden with flowers celebrating the annointment of the 3rd Michelin star — you look into the small, bright, pristine-clean kitchen area as you are shown upstairs. Chef Tetsuya Fujiwara and his wife work together here, occasionally emerging to help their friendly serving staff.

The dining area (no photos, sorry) is split into two separate rooms, has a modern Scandanavian feel, with birch wood beams and virtually no decoration. We had booked online, and hadn't specified which menu we wanted. So there was an element of surprise there too. Fortunately, we were given the upper of the two lunch menu options (¥6,500). This is what it comprised...

(click the pics for enlarged versions)

 

The first appetizers:  "Snack of chestnut; a bite-size truffe".

The snack of chestnut was a crisp, savory (but slightly sweetened) cookie, incorporating plenty of fresh chestnut puree...

The bite-size "truffle" was a delightful trompe l'oeuil, wonderfully presented in a black lacquerware box, laid on a bed of cacao nut shavings. Beautiful. And yes, they weren't whole truffles — though they were of course deeply imbued with that wonderful aroma.

 

The truffle theme continued in the second appetizer plate. "Bread of truffe  a lot of bubbles" was the menu description. An alternative name might well have been "chou a la creme aux truffes". Sandwiched inside the "bread" — which was indeed full of sponge-like cavities — was a gorgeous truffle-infused cream.

Next up: "slow-roast foie gras". A morsel of smoked foie gras, presented on a large handsome platter, with a fragrant sauce poured over it. The foie was not in the least bit gras, just super-concentrated in flavour, perfectly complemented by the slivers of ginger root (raw but blanched, with only a mild heat)...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To follow: "turnip". It sounds simple; it was anything but. A quarter of delicate kabura, lightly seared on its inner surfaces; served with fine, translucent slivers of a different variety of turnip...

The bread is served warm in a hand-made wooden box, with the butter tray, side plates and butter knives also made of wood — the same fine-grained keyaki (zelkova).

At the bottom of the bread box there was a very hot slab of slate, to keep the bread rolls warm throughout the meal. They're not baked in-house, but custom-made each day by Le Sucré Coeur one of Osaka's premier boulangeries. The butter was scattered with shreds of roasted onion.

 

"Fish is Kinmedai, Chikurinu."

A perfectly cooked fillet of alphonsino, crisped skin, soft flesh; garlicky swooshes; chicory-sharp leaves; floral accents for extra color. 

The pasta course: "Wild boar, hand made pasta; big black pepper". Delicate hand-made pasta, described to us as "somen" but only to convey the fineness of the gauge. The wild-boar ragu was outstanding: the meat was cooked down in freshly squeezed carrot juice. And there was a delightful sense of playfulness in the black "peppercorns" that were scattered over the top.

Surely we can't eat those peppers whole like that, we asked. Just try it and see, was the answer from Madame Fujiwara as she served it. And of course, they aren't what they seem: they turned out to be crumbly balls of black olive tapenade with just a hint of pepper spiciness. This was outstanding. 

 

The last main course: "Cow cheek meat, Red sauce". That description sums it up perfectly. Plenty of beetroot in that vivid sauce. And garnished with dried raspberries and tiny amaranth leaves.

A work of art. Delectable.

Desssert: "pudding of a chestnut, Jelly of coffee and rum". Again beautifully presented...

Coffee jelly is a popular old-style dessert, often served in traditional kisaten coffee shops. This was the best I've ever tried — the strong coffee flavor only lightly sweetened, and with plenty of booze to add a deep counternote.

The box — made of kiri (paulownia) wood — contained whole chestnuts from Okayama, simply dry-roasted ("iburi " in Japanese) and peeled, sweet, mealy, and tasting wonderfully of autumn, laid on a bed of chestnut shells.

 

The final dessert, to go with our tea: "cold souffle of white chocolate" on a thin layer of thick citrus sauce, and sitting on a bed of crunchy chocolate "dirt".

One of the best meals of the year, and most definitely worth the shinkansen journey. Next time, though, we're planning to go there for dinner.

Big thanks to Chef Tetsuya Fujiwara and his wife and team!

 

There's plenty of information in English on the Fujiya1935 website.

  

PS: There was some enigmatic prose inscribed on the back of our menus. Feel free to interpret it any way you like:

        It begins from a mountain in autumn. It turns to laying eggs or hibernation.

        It moves about in search of food. The body is attached firmly.

        We eat he power which burns.

Autumn in a ramen bowl: Afuri's chestnut tantanmen

There's always a line at Afuri. Our general rule of thumb is that if the queue only goes as far as the door — about 10 people ahead of us — then we wait. But if it extends out onto the street, then we come back later or eat elsewhere.

 

But we'd spotted the sign for the new autumn special — so we decided to wait anyway.

 

Aki no kuri-tantanmen — autumn chestnut spicy noodles.

 

One reason we like Afuri so much is the look, the style, the ambiance. The staff wear black tees and caps, and look like they're enjoying their job, despite the incessant flow of punters filling the seats along the narrow counter.

 

The kitchen is clad in white tiles and shiny stainless steel. The walls are scuffed white concrete, plain and unadorned. And overhead a widescreen monitor flickers silently, playing loops of music videos or anime movies. Post-industrial ramen was how I described it in my first Japan Times mention...

Plus the noodles are excellent. One of the features is that they grill the sliced chashu pork over charcoal before it's placed on top of the ramen, to give it an extra level of flavor.

 

Of course it also adds to the waiting time, so we usually order a beer or two. The house brew is draft Kohaku-no-toki, a premium amber lager from Asahi, with a lot more flavour and character than the bog-standard SuperDry.

 

It usually takes 5 minutes or so until the noodles arrive. They are certainly worth the extra wait. And it's always good to watch the kitchen crew in action...

 

This was the kuri-tantanmen. The spicy ground pork was mixed with bits of chopped chestnut; and alongside the half-hard boiled egg there was half a chestnut as a garnish.

 

The noodles were great, and so was the soup, even though not as spicy as I'd hoped. However, the chestnuts were sweet and straight out of the can, which I found detracted from the overall balance.

Verdict: good but not as great as anticipated.

 

However, we also ordered a bowl of the standard yuzu ramen, and that was the same as it ever was — great.

The noodles are garnished with the powdered peel, and the heady aroma of fragrant citrus wafts up with the steam from the broth.

[NB in the background, the conical cover over the pan in which the charcoal is brought up to glowing heat]

 

You'll find Afuri outside the back entrance of Ebisu Yokocho.

Here's a map link...