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Famous Matt Goulding Quotes

“There are succulent loins of fatty pork fried in scales of thin bread crumbs and served with bowls of thickened Worcestershire and dabs of fiery mustard. Giant pots of curry, dark and brooding as a sudden summer storm, where apples and onions and huge hunks of meat are simmered into submission over hours. Or days. There is okonomiyaki, the great geologic mass of carbs and cabbage and pork fat that would feel more at home on a stoner's coffee table than a Japanese tatami mat.”

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Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“We start with a next-generation miso soup: Kyoto's famous sweet white miso whisked with dashi made from lobster shells, with large chunks of tender claw meat and wilted spinach bobbing on the soup's surface. The son takes a cube of topflight Wagyu off the grill, charred on the outside, rare in the center, and swaddles it with green onions and a scoop of melting sea urchin- a surf-and-turf to end all others. The father lays down a gorgeous ceramic plate with a poem painted on its surface. "From the sixteenth century," he tells us, then goes about constructing the dish with his son, piece by piece: First, a chunk of tilefish wrapped around a grilled matsutake mushroom stem. Then a thick triangle of grilled mushroom cap, plus another grilled stem the size of a D-sized battery, topped with mushroom miso. A pickled ginger shoot, a few tender soybeans, and the crowning touch, the tilefish skin, separated from its body and fried into a ripple wave of crunch. The rice course arrives in a small bamboo steamer. The young chef works quickly. He slices curtains of tuna belly from a massive, fat-streaked block, dips it briefly in house-made soy sauce, then lays it on the rice. Over the top he spoons a sauce of seaweed and crushed sesame seeds just as the tuna fat begins to melt into the grains below. A round of tempura comes next: a harvest moon of creamy pumpkin, a gold nugget of blowfish capped with a translucent daikon sauce, and finally a soft, custardy chunk of salmon liver, intensely fatty with a bitter edge, a flavor that I've never tasted before. The last savory course comes in a large ice block carved into the shape of a bowl. Inside, a nest of soba noodles tinted green with powdered matcha floating in a dashi charged with citrus and topped with a false quail egg, the white fashioned from grated daikon.”

CoursesSeafoodMushroomsFather And SonKyotoSurf And TurfJapanese CookingTempuraMiso SoupWagyu Beef
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“First, a sizzling stone, the same one Toshio introduced to Ducasse years back. Today it's filled with rice and ginger juice and baby firefly squid, which crackle wildly as he tosses it all like a scalding salad and pushes it over to me. The squid guts coat the rice like an ocean risotto, give it body and funk, while the heat from the stone crisps the grains like a perfect bibimbap.”

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Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“Next comes chawan mushi, a delicate egg custard studded with wild mountain vegetables and surrounded by flowers from the bamboo forest. A dish as old as Kyoto itself. Toshio plucks two sacs of cod milt from the grill, slides them off the skewer into a squat clay box filled with bubbling miso. He comes back a second later with a scoop of konawata, pickled sea cucumber organs. A dish as new as the spring flowers blooming just outside the window. One by one, the market stars reappear on the plate. A black-and-gold lacquered bowl: Toshio pulls off the top to reveal thin slices of three-year-old virgin wild boar braised into sweet, savory submission with Kyoto white miso and chunks of root vegetables. Uni- Hokkaido and Kansai- the first atop a wedge of taro root dusted with rice flour and lightly fried, the other resting gently on a fried shiso leaf. Two bites, two urchins, an echo of the lesson in the market this morning.”

KyotoSurf And TurfJapanese CookingBoar
Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“He's on to sashimi now, fanning and curling slices of snapper and fugu into white roses on his cutting board. Before Toshio can plate the slices, Shunichi reaches over and calmly replaces the serving plate his son has chosen with an Edo-era ceramic rectangle more to his liking. Three pieces of tempura- shrimp, eggplant, new onion- emerge hissing and golden from the black iron pot in the corner, and Toshio arranges them on small plates with wedges of Japanese lime. Before the tempura goes out, Shunichi sneaks in a few extra granules of salt while Toshio's not looking. By now Dad is shadowing his son's every move. As Toshio waves a thin plank of sea cucumber eggs over the charcoal fire, his dad leans gently over his shoulder. "Be careful. You don't want to cook it. You just want to release its aroma." Toshio places a fried silverfish spine on a craggy ceramic plate, tucks grated yuzu and sansho flowers into its ribs, then lays a sliver of the dried eggs over the top. The bones shatter like a potato chip, and the sea cucumber detonates in my mouth.”

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Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“It starts with a thwack, the sharp crack of hard plastic against a hot metal surface. When the ladle rolls over, it deposits a pale-yellow puddle of batter onto the griddle. A gentle sizzle, as the back of the ladle sparkles a mixture of eggs, flour, water, and milk across the silver surface. A crepe takes shape. Next comes cabbage, chopped thin- but not too thin- and stacked six inches high, lightly packed so hot air can flow freely and wilt the mountain down to a molehill. Crowning the cabbage comes a flurry of tastes and textures: ivory bean sprouts, golden pebbles of fried tempura batter, a few shakes of salt, and, for an extra umami punch, a drift of dried bonito powder. Finally, three strips of streaky pork belly, just enough to umbrella the cabbage in fat, plus a bit more batter to hold the whole thing together. With two metal spatulas and a gentle rocking of the wrists, the mass is inverted. The pork fat melts on contact, and the cabbage shrinks in the steam trapped under the crepe. Then things get serious. Thin wheat soba noodles, still dripping with hot water, hit the teppan, dancing like garden hoses across its hot surface, absorbing the heat of the griddle until they crisp into a bird's nest to house the cabbage and crepe. An egg with two orange yolks sizzles beside the soba, waiting for its place on top of this magnificent heap. Everything comes together: cabbage and crepe at the base, bean sprouts and pork belly in the center, soba and fried egg parked on top, a geologic construction of carbs and crunch, protein and chew, all framed with the black and white of thickened Worcestershire and a zigzag of mayonnaise. This is okonomiyaki, the second most famous thing that ever happened to Hiroshima.”

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Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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“I can tell right away by looking at you what you want to eat," he says. "I can tell how many brothers and sisters you have." After divining my favorite color (blue) and my astrological sign (Aquarius), Nakamura pulls out an ivory stalk of takenoko, fresh young bamboo ubiquitous in Japan during the spring. "This came in this morning from Kagumi. It's so sweet that you can eat it raw." He peels off the outer layer, cuts a thin slice, and passes it across the counter. First, he scores an inch-thick bamboo steak with a ferocious santoku blade. Then he sears it in a dry sauté pan until the flesh softens and the natural sugars form a dark crust on the surface. While the bamboo cooks, he places two sacks of shirako, cod milt, under the broiler. ("Milt," by the way, is a euphemism for sperm. Cod sperm is everywhere in Japan in the winter and early spring, and despite the challenges its name might create for some, it's one of the most delicious things you can eat.) Nakamura brings it all together on a Meiji-era ceramic plate: caramelized bamboo brushed with soy, broiled cod milt topped with miso made from foraged mountain vegetables, and, for good measure, two lightly boiled fava beans. An edible postcard of spring. I take a bite, drop my chopsticks, and look up to find Nakamura staring right at me. "See, I told you I know what you want to eat." The rest of the dinner unfolds in a similar fashion: a little counter banter, a little product display, then back to transform my tastes and his ingredients into a cohesive unit. The hits keep coming: a staggering plate of sashimi filled with charbroiled tuna, surgically scored squid, thick circles of scallop, and tiny white shrimp blanketed in sea urchin: a lesson in the power of perfect product. A sparkling crab dashi topped with yuzu flowers: a meditation on the power of restraint. Warm mochi infused with cherry blossoms and topped with a crispy plank of broiled eel: a seasonal invention so delicious it defies explanation.”

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Book:Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture
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