The Flavorful Japanese Grill by Ruth Paget
Avid grillers might enjoy the novel flavor combinations in The Japanese Grill: From Classic Yakitori to Steak, Seafood, and Vegetables by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat. Salty, sweet flavors along with those that are spicy to fiery hot add zest to grilled foods for cooks who want to travel from the backyard.
Ono and Salat write that three basic marinades flavor meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetables. These marinades follow and give a good idea for what Japanese grilled foods taste like:
1-garlic-soy sauce for all red meat – made of soy sauce, garlic, olive oil, and black pepper
2-Yuzu kosho marinade – made of fiery chilies, salt, tangy yuzu citrus fruit and its juice, soy sauce, and olive oil
3-All-purposed vegetable marinade
One of the book’s best pieces of advice for yakitori (chicken) grilling Ono and Salat write that they grill the chicken partway. Then, they coat the chicken with sauce and finish grilling it. The authors give recipes for sauces, tare, along with advice on how to best skewer chicken for even cooking.
Ono and Salat list pantry items including some that might be unfamiliar such as the following:
-mirin – sweet wine
-miso – fermented soybean paste
-tanbanjan – fiery chili paste
-wasabi – horseradish
-sansho – relative of Chinese Sichuan pepper
-shichimi togarashi – ground chili, sesame, mustard, and citrus among others
Ono and Salat give recipes for side dishes that might interest grillers looking for refreshing vegetable dishes. Recipes of interest include:
-green cabbage salad with carrot-ginger vinaigrette
-daikon radish salad with dried tiny shrimp
-spinach with ground sesame
A final very useful item in this book is the list of pantry ingredients with large, Japanese characters for the item to assist with in-store shopping.
Avid grillers and students of Japanese language and culture all can find something of interest in The Japanese Grill: From Classic Yakitori to Steak, Seafood, and Vegetables by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
