Alright, so for those of you who remember my "
Sushi Gallery" thread, this is another food focused one. Like in the aforementioned link, everything I'm about to type is as I understand it. I am entirely open to and would very much appreciate some proper criticism (looking at you nyororin =D).
Or, if you have any questions regarding the cuisine, please feel free to ask.
**/This thread is meant to be used as a guideline to advancing your understanding Japanese cuisine. In order for this to be useful, you will have to apply some of your own logic./**
The Basics of Japanese Cuisine
The basics of Japanese cuisine revolve around a relatively small set of ingredients. If you can acquire an understanding of these and their utilisation, then you can very easily re-create nearly any Japanese dish you come across.
Sauces
Sauces are one of the most important aspects of any dish. It provides a depth of flavour profiles as well as adding textures, and colour.
A few principles to consider when making a sauce:
- Acids thin, meaning if you add lemon to a cream based sauce, it will reduce the viscosity of the sauce.
- Starches thicken. Typical examples would be when you use a roux or corn starch to thicken a sauce.
- Reducing concentrates flavours. To reduce means to simmer for an extended period as to evaporate the water from your sauce.
- To deglaze a pan is to add a liquid (broth, water or wine) to the pan so to absorb the residue from previously cooked products. This is how gravy is made.
Nearly every sauce uses one or more of these ingredients:
- Shoyu (soy sauce of varying darkness')
- Sugar
- Sake (Japanese rice wine)
This following list contains the ingredients that are strictly or at least distinctively Japanese and are apart of the above list:
- Mirin (a by-product of sake)
- Miso (from red(dark) to white(light) with red being saltiest)
- Dashi (made from first boiling kombu in water then adding katsuo or bonito shavings)
Just to give a few examples:
- Tentsuyu (the sauce for tempura) is comprised of dashi, shoyu, and mirin.
- Teriyaki is made with shoyu, mirin, and sugar.
- Shoyu Ramen is very easily made by adding shoyu to dashi.
- A zuke sauce (which is bloody awesome with tuna) can be made from a 1:1:1 ratio of shoyu, sake, and mirin.
- Miso soup is nothing but dashi and miso.
- Gindara is even simpler. Marinate a white meat fish (chilean sea bass is a favourite) in a 1:1 ratio of sugar to miso for two days and broil at 350 for 5-8 minutes on each side to make one awesome side.
- Age-dashi tofu is made by pouring a mixture of dashi, mirin, and shoyu over deep fried tofu.
- etc. etc. etc.
If you've noticed, all those sauces revolve around a central list of ingredients in differing ratios. They're all very basic recipes and many people have their own variations (such as adding a small amount of ginger to the teriyaki sauce or squeezing some yuzu into the zuke.)