Yakitori

Yakitori - Skewered grilled chicken

Yakitori is grilled chicken speared on sticks. All different parts of the chicken, thighs, skin, liver, etc. can be used for yakitori. The following recipe shows one of the most popular kind which is prepared with chicken thighs and leek.

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Ingredients:

• Chicken thighs: without bone and skin
• Japanese leek (negi*), leek, or green onion
• Soya sauce
• Mirin* or sake*
• Sugar
• Honey or maple syrup
• Small wooden spears

* This ingredient may not be available in Western supermarkets, but you should be able to find it in Japanese grocery stores that exist in most large European and American cities.

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Preparation:

1. Mix together 4 tablespoons of soya sauce, 3 tablespoons of sugar, a little bit of honey or maple syrup, a little bit of mirin and water, and heat it up until it's homogenous.

2. Cut the chicken thighs into about 3x2x2cm large pieces.

3. Put the chicken pieces into the already prepared sauce, and let it stand for a while.

4. Cut the leek or green onions in about 3 cm long pieces.

5. Spear three or four pieces of chicken and some leek on each wooden stick.

6. Grill them, or use the oven at 200 degrees celsius. (You may want to wrap the wooden sticks with aluminium foil; otherwise, they may burn off.)

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General information:

Yakitori is popular among salarymen when they go out together after work. It is especially delicious with some hot sake.

Udon

Udon - Japanese Noodles

Udon are thick Japanese noodles. There are several ways to prepare Udon. This recipe shows three of them:

Kitsune Udon: Fox Udon
Tanuki Udon: Japanese racoon Udon
Tsukimi Udon: "Viewing moon" Udon (the yolk of an egg represents the moon)

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Ingredients:

• Udon*
• Noodle soup*: e.g. Ninben Tsuyu no moto
• Kitsune Udon:
  • Naruto*: Fish sausage with a pink pattern when cut
  • Atsuage*: baked tofu. You can use the triangular atsuage bags that are used for Inari Sushi; but put them first in boiling water for a moment to reduce their strong taste a little bit.
    
  • Leek or green onion
• Tanuki Udon:
  • Naruto*
  • Tenkatsu: crispy pieces that are left when deep frying tenpura. If not available, you can cut some leek, mix it with tenpura batter and deep fry it.
  • Leek or green onion
• Tsukimi Udon:
  • One egg per person
  • Naruto*
  • Leek or green onion

* This ingredient may not be available in Western supermarkets, but you should be able to find it in Japanese grocery stores that exist in most large European and American cities.

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Preparation:

Noodles

1. Boil Udon and boil some water in another pan (about 400ml per person, depends on the size of the bowl in which you will serve the noudles).

2. Cut naruto (about 7mm thin) and leek/green onion.

3. Put Udon into sieve and rinse it with hot water.
4. Add noudle sauce into prepared hot water. Consult the bottle label about the proportion.With "Ninben Tsuyu no moto" sauce the proportion sauce-water is 1:8.
5. Put the hot Sauce into a bowl and add Udon into it. (Use one bowl per person)

Kitsune Udon

6. Decorate Udon with atsuage, cut leek and naruto.

Tanuki Udon

7. Put the deep fried pieces (Rests of Tenpura deep frying), naruto and cut leek onto the noudles.

Tsukimi Udon

8. Put the york, cut leek and naruto onto the noudles.

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Serving and eating:

Noodle eating directions: Keep the distance between your mouth and the bowl quite small, and lead the noodles with the chopsticks step by step into your mouth producing sipping noises.

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General information:

Noodles (Soba, Udon, and Ramen) are very popular in Japan. Noodle restaurants can be found everywhere.

Sashimi

Sashimi is thinly sliced, raw seafood. Many different kinds of fresh fish and seafood are served raw in theJapanese cuisine. Sashimi, while similar to sushi, is distinct for its absence of vinigered rice. When slices of fish are served on top of a small ball of rice, it is called nigiri zushi.

Sashimi is usually beautifully arranged and served on top of shredded daikon and shiso leaves. The sashimi pieces are dipped into a dish of soya sauce before being eaten. The daikon and shiso can also be dipped in soya sauce and eaten; both have a fresh, minty taste. Depending on the kind of sashimi, wasabi or ground ginger may accompany the dish and be added to the sashimi as a condiment.

Some of the most popular kinds of sashimi are:

• Maguro: Tuna
• Toro: Fatty Tuna
• Ebi: Prawn
• Saba: Mackerel
• Ika: Squid
• Tako: Octopus

Tempura

Tempura - Seafood and vegetables deep fried in tempura batter

Tempura was brought to Japan by the Portuguese. Today Tempura is a very popular Japanese food, and as well one of the best known outside of Japan.

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Ingredients:

• Tempura batter mix*
• Tempura dipping sauce*
• Prawn: raw and large
• Seafood: almost everything is possible
• Vegetables: pumpkin, carot, sweet potatoe, eggplant, and more
• Mushrooms
• and much more to try.

* This ingredient may not be available in Western supermarkets, but you should be able to find it in Japanese grocery stores that exist in most large European and American cities.

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Preparation:

0. Prawn: Remove the head and the shell. Make little cuts on the inside of the curved prawn since they look nicer if their posture is straight.
1. Cut the vegetables in about 1cm thick pieces.
     
2. You can use whole mushrooms.

3. Mixtures: Cut various ingredients in small pieces and mix them together, eg. green onion, prawn and carots.

4. Mix Tempura flour with the amount of water described on the package. Do not mix it completely, but leave some small lumps in it.
5. Cover all the ingredients completely with the batter.
   Mix also the mixtures made of the small cut ingredients with batter, and try to deep fry it together. Don't let them fall apart in all the pieces.
6. Deep fry at 180 degrees celsius. Be careful, and do not use wet ingredients because the water would react strongly with the hot oil, which may harm your skin or eyes.

7. When the Tempura pieces are beautifully golden, take them out, and try to remove as much oil as possible.

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Serving and eating:

There are a few different ways to serve Tempura. Here are two of them:

• Serve the Tempura pieces on a plate, and prepare some bowls with Tempura dipping sauce.
• Tendon (Tempura Donburi): Put the pieces in Tempura dipping sauce, remove them, and put them on top of cooked rice in a bowl. (One bowl per person)

Sushi

Sushi is the most famous Japanese dish outside of Japan, and one of the most popular dishes among the Japanese themselves. In Japan, sushi is usually enjoyed on special occasions, such as a celebration.

During the Edo period, "sushi" refered to pickled fish preserved in vinegar. Nowadays sushi can be defined as a dish containing rice which has been prepared with sushi vinegar. There are many different types of sushi. Some popular ones are:

	Nigiri Small rice balls with fish, shellfish, etc. on top. There are countless varieties of nigirizushi, some of the most common ones being tuna, shrimp, eel, squid, octopus and fried egg.
	Gunkan Small cups made of sushi rice and dried seaweed filled with seafood, etc. There are countless varieties of gunkanzushi, some of the most common ones being sea urchin and various kinds of fish eggs.
	Norimaki Sushi rice and seafood, etc. rolled in dried seaweed sheets. There are countless varieties of sushi rolls differing in ingredients and thickness. Sushi rolls prepared "inside out" are very popular outside of Japan, but rarely found in Japan.
	Temaki Temakizushi (literally: hand rolls) are cones made of nori seaweed and filled with sushi rice, seafood and vegetables.
	Oshizushi Oshizushi is pressed sushi, in which the fish is pressed onto the sushi rice in a wooden box. The picture shows trout oshizushi in form of a popular ekiben (train station lunch box).
	Inari Inarizushi is a simple and inexpensive type of sushi, in which sushi rice is filled into aburaage (deep fried tofu) bags.
	Chirashi Chirashizushi is a dish in which seafood, mushroom and vegetables are spread over sushi rice. It can resemble domburi with the difference being that chirashizushi uses sushi rice while domburi uses regular, unseasoned rice.

Note that "sushi" becomes "zushi" in word combinations in which "sushi" is the second word, e.g. nigirizushi.

Soba

Soba noodles are native Japanese noodles made of buckwheat flour (soba-ko) and wheat flour (komugi-ko). They are roughly as thick as spaghetti, and prepared in various hot and cold dishes. The most basic soba dish is zaru soba in which boiled, cold soba noodles are eaten with a soya based dipping sauce (tsuyu).

Like pasta, soba noodles are available in dried form in supermarkets, but they taste best if freshly made by hand from flour and water. Soba making has also become a popular tourist attraction for domestic and international travelers. The activity is offered by many community centers and travel tour companies. Below you will find an illustrated description of the soba making process.

1st step: Mixing the flour

The first step, mixing the flour with water into a dough, is considered the most important and difficult part of making soba noodles. The correct amount of water is added step by step to the flour and mixed for several minutes until the flour becomes moist enough to be formed into a dough. The dough is then pressed until it becomes very smooth and contains no more air.

2nd step: Rolling the dough

The dough is then rolled into a thin square by repeatedly rolling it around a wooden rolling stick.

3rd step: Cutting the dough

At last, the dough is folded and cut into the noodles.

For zaru soba, the noodles are then boiled and cooled down with cold water, before served with a soya based dipping sauce (tsuyu), wasabi, nori seaweed and negi (Japanese leek). The water used to boil the noodles (soba-yu) is often added to the remaining tsuyu and drunk at the end of the meal.

Other popular soba dishes are noodle soups with various toppings, such as Kitsune Soba, Tanuki Soba and Tsukimi Soba. Despite the name, the popular dish Yakisoba is not made with soba noodles, but rather with Chinese style noodles (chukamen).

Ramen

Ramen is a noodle soup that was originally imported to Japan from China in the Meiji Period. In more recent decades, it has become a very popular dish in Japan, adapted to the Japanese taste. Ramen restaurants (ramen ya) number in the thousands, and instant ramen (invented in 1958) is popular both in and outside of Japan.

Ramen noodles are about as thin as spaghetti and are served in a soup that varies based on region, city and even specific vendor. Ramen's popularity stems in part from the fact that it is so inexpensive and widely available, making it an ideal option for budget travelers. In addition to freshly prepared ramen at ramen ya, supermarketsand convenience stores offer a large selection of instant ramen bowls.

Though ramen can be considered a one dish meal, gyoza are a common side dish offered at ramen ya. These Chinese style, pan fried dumplings are eaten with a soya and vinegar sauce. Shichimi (red chili mix) is usually available on the table to be added according to taste.

Ramen can be classified according to its soup base. The most popular ones are:

• Shoyu Ramen: Brown, transparent, soya sauce based soup
• Miso Ramen: Brown, non-transparent, miso based soup.
• Shio Ramen: Transparent, salt based soup.
• Tonkotsu Ramen: White, milky, pork based soup.

Ramen can also be named according to its ingredients. For example, chashumen is a ramen dish that features barbecued pork as toppings.

tsukemono

Japanese pickles (漬物, tsukemono) are an important part of the Japanese diet. They are served with practically every traditional meal alongside rice and miso soup. They are valued for their unique flavors and commonly used as a garnish, relish, condiment, palate cleanser or digestive.

Tsukemono first appeared way back in Japanese history in the days before refrigeration when pickling was used to preserve food. As a result, some traditionally prepared types of pickles can be kept practically indefinitely. The different methods used to make tsukemono vary from a simple salting or vinegar brining, to more complicated processes involving cultured molds and fermentation.

All kinds of vegetables and some fruits are used to make tsukemono including, but not limited to, Japanese radish (daikon), cucumber, eggplant, carrot, cabbage, water lily root, ginger, shallots and plums (ume). Sometimes seaweed and other seafood are added to pickle mixtures for flavor and variety. Some pickling methods are also used to preserve and flavor seafood and meat dishes.

A traditional pickles shop at Nishiki Market in Kyoto

Below are the some of the most popular types of pickles:

• Salt (shiozuke)Salt pickles, or shiozuke, are the simplest and most common types of pickles. The most basic consist simply of lightly salted, sliced vegetables, which result in pickles with the crisp texture and mild flavor of fresh (usually seasonal) vegetables. Heavily salted pickles, on the other hand, are more involved to prepare and have strong, complex flavors. Among these are red pickled Japanese plums (umeboshi), which are often used to flavor rice balls (onigiri).
  
• Rice Bran (nukazuke)Nukazuke are common household pickles fermented in a mixture of roasted rice bran (the hard outer skin of the rice that is removed when polishing the rice grain), salt, konbu, and other ingredients. Whole vegetables are stirred into the mash and allowed to cure anywhere from a day to several months. The resulting crisp, salty and tangy pickles are then rinsed clean, sliced and served. Nukazuke are rich in lactobacillus and said to aid in digestion.
  
• Sake Lees (kasuzuke)Kasuzuke are imperishable pickles preserved in a mixture of sake lees (the yeast mash that is left over after filtering sake), salt, sugar and sweet cooking wine (mirin). They are allowed to cure for anywhere from several days to several years, and the resulting pickles may be slightly alcoholic with flavors that vary from sweet and mild to strong and pungent depending on how long they were cured for.
  
• Soya Sauce (shoyuzuke)Shoyuzuke are pickles preserved in a soya sauce base. This method produces a wide range of pickles with flavors that vary from light and crispy to dark brown, salty, sweet relishes such as fukujinzuke. Note that shoyuzuke is a different preservation method than tsukudani, which are foods preserved by cooking in soya sauce and sweet cooking wine (mirin).
  
• Vinegar (suzuke)Pickles brined in vinegar are known as suzuke. Rice vinegar is commonly used as the pickling agent and lends a crunchy texture and sweet and sour flavor to the resulting pickles. However, rice vinegar has a low acidity and suzuke pickles will not keep long unrefrigerated.
  
• Miso (misozuke)Similar to nukazuke, misozuke pickles are made by covering vegetables in miso, a fermented soya beanmash. These types of pickles tend to be crisp with a salty miso flavor. Misozuke and nukazuke are made of similar vegetables, such as cucumbers, carrots and eggplant, and it may be difficult to tell the two types of pickles apart by just looking at them. Misozuke is also a popular way of preserving and marinating meat and fish.

Common pickle dishes

The following are some of the more common types of tsukemono that travelers are likely to encounter. Most can be found nationwide, except where noted, however the exact ingredients of each dish may vary from region to region and household to household.

Umeboshi Umeboshi are Japanese plums (related to apricots), which have been salted and dried. The wrinkly red pickles are extremely salty and sour, although sweeter versions exist. Umeboshi serve as a preservative and digestive. They are eaten with all types of traditional meals, and often accompany the rice in boxed lunches (bento). Umeboshi are also one of the most popular fillings for rice balls(onigiri).

Takuan Takuan is made of Japanese radishes (daikon), which have been sun dried and pickled in a mixture of salt, rice bran and sugar. The finished product is a sweet, crunchy pickle that is sliced and served alongside rice or other dishes. Takuan ranges from brownish white to fluorescent yellow in color. In Akita Prefecturethey are additionally smoked and enjoyed as iburigakko.

Nukazuke Assortments of nukazuke pickles consisting of cucumber, carrots, eggplant,daikon or turnip (kabu) are often served alongside set menu meals (teishoku) or as a part of the rice set (shokuji) in kaiseki ryori (Japanese haute cuisine) meals. Often similar assortments of vegetables pickled in salt or miso are served instead.

Kyuri Asazuke Kyuri asazuke are simple pickles made of cucumbers marinated in a salt brine (shiozuke) that is sometimes seasoned with konbu, togarashi pepper and/or vinegar. Whole cucumbers served on a stick are often pickled this way and sold by street vendors at festivals, temple approaches and popular tourist spots, especially during spring and summer when they are a refreshing treat.

Hakusai no Sokusekizuke Hakusai no Sokusekizuke is a quick and simple salt pickle dish made of lightly salted hakusai cabbage which is often mixed with carrots and cucumber and seasoned with yuzu zest, konbu and togarashi pepper. The result is a salty, crisp pickle with a slightly spicy citrus flavor. It is one of the most common pickles found in Japan and is often served alongside set menu meals (teishoku).

Narazuke Narazuke are deep brown pickles native to the Nara Region of Japan, from which they get their name. Vegetables, typically daikon, uri or cucumber, are soaked in sake lees (kasuzuke) in a process where they may cure for several years. As a result the pickles have a strong, pungent flavor which is often punctuated with an overtly alcoholic bite.

Shibazuke Shibazuke is a Kyoto specialty pickle made of cucumber, eggplant, perilla leaves (shiso), ginger and myoga (a mild flavored relative of ginger) pickled in plum vinegar (umezu), a byproduct of making pickled plums (umeboshi). The salty, slightly sour, purple pickles are commonly served in Kyoto cuisine.

Senmaizuke Senmaizuke is another Kyoto specialty pickle. It is made of thin slices of turniparranged brined in sweet vinegar seasoned with konbu and togarashi pepper. The resulting thin disks (senmaizuke means thousand layer pickle) are sweet and sour with a slightly crunchy texture.

Saikyozuke Saikyozuke (lit. West Kyoto pickle) are slices of fish, typically a whitefish such as cod or sablefish, which have been preserved and marinated in miso(fermented soya bean) paste. The slices are then grilled or broiled, and served either hot or at room temperature. Fish preserved this way gets a sweet, caramelized flavor due to the miso.

Nozawana Nozawana are a specialty pickle from Nozawa Onsen in Nagano Prefecture; however, they are commonly served all over Japan. Nozawana are a type of turnip greens which are dried and pickled in a salt brine seasoned with togarashi pepper and wasabi. The salty, slightly spicy leaves and stems are served cut into bite-sized pieces or chopped into a fine relish.

Matsumaezuke Local to Matsumae Town in Hokkaido, matsumaezuke is an interesting combination of regional specialties of Hokkaido such as squid, konbu, kazunoko (herring roe) and carrots, seasoned with sake, soy sauce and mirin (sweet cooking wine). It has attained nationwide popularity.

Gari Most tourists are probably already familiar with gari, the thin slices of sweet pickled ginger that is served alongside sushi. Gari has a sweet and sour flavor with a slightly spicy bite. It is meant to be eaten between sushi pieces as a palate cleanser, so that the unique flavor of each piece can be fully appreciated. Gari is naturally light yellow, but may also be dyed pink.

Beni Shoga Beni Shoga is julienned young ginger that has been pickled in plum vinegar (umezu), a byproduct of making pickled plums (umeboshi). The bright red, salty and spicy pickles are served as a garnish on top of a variety of dishes such asgyudon, takoyaki and yakisoba.

Fukujinzuke Fukujinzuke is a mixture of Japanese radish (daikon), lotus root, cucumber and eggplant which are preserved in a soya sauce and sweet cooking wine (mirin) base. The sweet brown or red relish is served as a garnish to Japanese curry(kare raisu).

Rakkyo Rakkyo are sweet pickled scallions that are served alongside Japanese curry. Rakkyo lend a sweet, crunchy bite that, like fukujinzuke, helps to augment the spicy and salty flavors of curry.