509 Japanese recipes. Page 4 of 22. Compare ingredients and cooking times. California Roll, Kinpira Gobo, Yuzu no Kawa-ni (Glossy Candied Yuzu Peel).
Rice wraps the outside and the nori sits hidden within, an inside-out construction that keeps the dark seaweed out of sight. The roll is credited to Japanese chefs in North America in the 1960s or 1970s, but who made it first, and whether in Los Angeles or Vancouver, is still disputed. The inside-out wrap is said to have started because American diners peeled the seaweed off.
Most of burdock's aroma is near the skin, so it is scrubbed clean with a brush rather than peeled. A dried red chili in the pan leaves a little heat trailing behind the sweet soy flavor.
Thick yuzu peel cooks down translucent and glossy while keeping its shape, and because the fragrant yellow layer is barely trimmed, the finished pieces smell strongly of yuzu. Sugar equal to 80% of the peel's weight is added in three rounds, and shaking the pot instead of pressing the peel keeps the pieces whole. Water is only a small top-up to prevent scorching, which is why almost no syrup is left at the end.
A dried magnolia leaf serves as the plate: Hida-style miso is spread on it with sliced leek and shiitake and warmed over low heat until it bubbles. The leeks lose their sharpness and the mushrooms soften in the salty miso, which is eaten a little at a time over rice or alongside drinks. The leaf itself is only a cooking surface and stays on the plate.
With its thick, reddish broth, chobo-jiru looks at first like sweet red bean soup, yet one spoonful says otherwise: miso and bonito flakes make it fully savory. On Awaji Island in Hyogo, families have cooked big pots of it since the Edo period to celebrate a birth or a child's first shrine visit, sharing bowls with relatives and neighbors. The small sticky-rice dumplings were sometimes shaped round, pointed or dimpled as wishes for the child.
In this Kansai style, cabbage and batter go in at close to equal amounts. The mixture is piled thick, the top is never pressed, and pork belly is simply laid across it. Pressing would squeeze out the air and moisture between the cabbage strands that keep the center soft. If the flip feels risky, cover it with a plate and turn it over in one go.
Fukushima's winter side dish steeps dried squid and carrot, cut into matching fine strips, in sake, soy sauce, and coarse sugar for 12 hours, until the squid softens and the carrot soaks up the soy while keeping its crunch. The boiled marinade has to cool to room temperature first; poured hot, it cooks the carrot limp.
Neat blocks of pink fish soboro, green scallion, and orange mandarin peel cover the white shirataki noodles, putting four colors on one plate. It is a celebration dish from Uwajima in Ehime, and the noodles underneath are simmered in dashi, mirin, and light soy sauce until no liquid remains.
Soft rehydrated wakame and lightly salted cucumber slices sit in a cold, sweet-sour dressing of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and sesame oil. The recipe is built around plain dried cut wakame that only needs soaking, so there is no blanching step. Salted wakame or a ready-made seaweed salad from the chiller case will not give the same result, since their texture and seasoning differ.
Raw peanuts in their thin skins and thick arame seaweed simmer in plain water for about an hour, and the sugar, soy sauce, and mirin are added only after a peanut splits easily under a finger, since soy sauce reduces faster than a firm center softens. This keeping side dish from the Atsumi Peninsula in Aichi finishes with almost no loose sauce, just a glossy coat on the peanuts and seaweed.
White chocolate melted with butter, rather than dark chocolate or cocoa, makes up the base, and matcha turns the whole pan bright green. The cocoa butter in white chocolate is what gives these a dense, fudgy chew instead of a cakey crumb. Chips stirred into the batter only half melt, leaving small pockets of concentrated sweetness.
Cooked rice simmered in strongly brewed hojicha gives a pale, loose porridge with a nutty roasted aroma and a gentle bitterness, the grains soft but still distinct. A quick rinse of the cooked rice in cold water removes surface stickiness so the broth stays clear and light.
Flour whisked into miso turns this eggplant and green pepper stir-fry into something closer to a thick, clinging coating than a sauce. Small dried sardines fry in the oil with the eggplant for a salty, savory note, and the finished pan should have no loose water beneath the vegetables.
Each chestnut keeps its brown inner skin and sits glossy in syrup. Makers in Saitama picked large nuts from growing areas such as Hidaka, and this autumn sweet once appeared only at festivals and celebrations. The outer shell comes off shallowly from the base, because even a small nick in the inner skin opens up over the repeated boils.
Whole sea bream, turban shells, squid and shrimp are salted and roasted under a tight lid in a horaku, an earthenware pot lined with heat-proof gravel and pine needles, with no water added. An Imabari specialty in Ehime, it is tied by tradition to the victory feasts of the Murakami naval forces of the Muromachi period and is also called pirate cuisine. Hard-boiled eggs, sweet potato and ginkgo nuts are tucked around the fish, and the whole pot comes to the table for five. If the pine scent turns burnt or the smoke thickens, the heat comes down at once. To keep the cold pot from cracking, it starts on low heat before the covered roast.
Takasaki zakuni looks like kenchin-jiru, but the vegetables are never fried; soaked dried squid and its soaking liquid supply the savory depth instead. In Gunma it appears at New Year, Setsubun, Ebisu-ko, and household festivals, and one story says oil was left out of wedding versions so the couple would not separate like oil and water.
Thick rounds of salted turnip are slit into pockets, stuffed with commercially salted yellowtail from a licensed seller and buried in layers of sweet rice koji, where turnip and fish ferment together in the fridge for 7 to 10 days. Because the fish is never cooked, pregnant people, older adults, children and anyone immunocompromised should avoid home-fermented versions. Any spoiled smell, mold or unusual gas means the whole batch is thrown out untasted.
Butter-browned button mushrooms and soy sauce bubbled briefly at the edge of the pan coat thick udon in a salty, nutty glaze. The blanched udon needs a thorough drain, because any water clinging to it thins that sauce. The mushrooms cook until dry and browned at the edges for the same reason, adding meaty depth without leaving liquid in the pan. Hitting the hot metal lets the soy reduce almost instantly, and it has to be stirred into the mushrooms before it scorches. Most of the butter is used for frying; a small piece melted in after the heat is off brings back its aroma and gives the noodles a final gloss.
Mayonnaise thinned with rice vinegar and lemon juice gives this Japanese imitation-crab salad a creamy coating that does not feel heavy. Crab stick pulled into thin shreds along the grain mixes with matchsticks of cucumber and carrot and takes the dressing evenly, and with no cooking involved it comes together in minutes.
Cut one lengthwise and you get rings: the yolk at the center, a pale red edge on the white, and a layer of white-fish surimi around it all. This fried fish cake from Hirado in Nagasaki Prefecture is a whole peeled egg wrapped in fish paste, so it is served halved or quartered with the cut side up.
Bite into one and the sugared cookie shell cracks first, then the milk bread underneath gives way like a cloud. Despite the name, there is no melon in it; the crosshatch scored into the cookie layer is meant to look like a melon's rind. A rather low oven sets that shell without letting it brown much, while the bread keeps rising underneath into a dome. Eat them the day they are baked, within a few hours, while the crust still crackles.
Like Japanese home curry, this one gets its body from a block of curry roux, with chicken thighs as the meat and enough in one pot for four plates. Only the potato is cut a little larger than the other vegetables, so it still has its shape after simmering.
The small potatoes cook whole in their skins, and in a mixed batch the little ones split while the big ones stay raw inside. Matching them by diameter is where it starts. Once the miso, sugar and mirin go in, the pot is shaken rather than stirred, glazing the soft potatoes without breaking them.
With 1000ml of water to 500g of smooth bean paste, this yokan sets soft and moist, and a knife slides through easily. It is a winter sweet from northern Settsu in Osaka, remembered as a cheap treat tied to shop apprentices back when sugar was expensive. Unlike firm yokan that keeps at room temperature, it lives in the fridge and is served cold.