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Tetsu Kariya Quotes

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Famous Tetsu Kariya Quotes

“I rubbed some salt into the turnip and then pickled it in wild grape juice." "Wild grape juice!" "The scent, the sweetness... It surely is wild grapes!" "Once the turnips were pickled, I sliced them... ... and put some ground Japanese walnuts on top." "So the paste on the top is walnuts! " "Hmm, slightly bitter, with a rich taste that's also sweet..." "It's wonderful! " "Its bringing tears to my eyes..." "This flavor makes us recall the things we had long forgotten about... That mountain where I chased after the rabbits... that river where I went fishing for carp... It's the taste of the homeland of all the Japanese people..." "There are three kinds of sweetness in it too! The sweetness of the wild grapes, the walnuts and the turnip..." "The trio of flavors is wonderful... ... but I'm very impressed that you remembered that turnips taste better with fat or oil!!”

“Oysters release their eggs from around August to September. So during this time, they are small and don't taste good. They gradually start to put on weight again after that. And when the snow on the mountains melt and the water flows into the sea from the river, the oysters taste even better. Snow melt is rich in nutrients, and the plankton grows on that. The oysters eat the plankton and grow larger.”

“First I shell the oysters, then coat them with flour... ... and I deep-fry that. I make a sauce with soy sauce, ground sesame, sesame oil, chili pepper and some mirin. And I dip the oysters in the sauce. Here you are. Give it a try. Deep fried oysters and kimchi over rice!" "Ah, this smells great! " "Let's eat!" "Ooh! The oysters have been fried perfectly! They're soft and when you bite into them, the juice comes spurting out... ... and the flavor of the oyster combined with the sourness and spiciness of the kimchi creates a wonderfully complex taste!" "Yeah! The deep-fried oysters go great with the kimchi!" "It would have been a bit heavy with just the fried oysters... ... but the hot and sour flavor of the kimchi makes this very tasty!”

“You're going to make the broth for the ramen with katsuobushi?" "The chicken you used to make the broth for the ramen is a broiler, right? In that case, it's better to make it with katsuobushi." "But the ramen's going to end up smelling like fish." "Don't worry about it. I mince some garlic, chives, shiitake mushrooms, and onion... ... and fry them together with ground pork in sesame oil. Then I add some hatchō miso that's been mixed with sake... ... to make miso-flavored mince meat. I pour the katsuobushi dashi onto the noodles. I've given the dashi a light soy sauce flavor. Then I place the meat on top... ... and sprinkle a lot of chopped green onion on it... ... and you've got Oishinbo-style miso ramen!" "Wow! It really does go well with the katsuobushi! It doesn't smell fishy at all!" "The scents of the sesame oil, garlic and miso... ... complement the scent of the katsuobushi nicely! Ramen broth is usually made from chicken and pork bones. I never thought of using fish!”

“Ah! Green asparagus, my favorite! " "I stir-fried it with crab meat. I quickly stir-fried the green asparagus and mixed the crab guts with dashi and put that in there as well... ... and finally seasoned it with salt and pepper and thickened the sauce slightly with starch." "I love its fresh spring vegetable-like flavor!" "I stir-fried it in a very mild soy oil... ... and I didn't use any Chinese broth made from chicken bones and Chinese ham. I used dashi taken from katsuobushi and konbu.”

“It has such a warm and gentle flavor." "The rice has soaked up the rich flavor of the scallops. Could you teach me how to make it?" "Of course. You mix soy sauce with sake and boil it, then place the scallops in it and cook it for about a minute. After that, you take the scallops out, place them on a different plate, and start cooking the rice. And when cooking the rice, you pour the broth you used to cook the scallop into the rice. You won't get the full flavor if you don't cook the black area called the midgut gland together with the scallop. Once the rice is cooked, you put it on a plate and place the scallops on top. That's when you take the midgut gland off." "Keep the midgut gland on when cooking the scallops, and take it off when mixing them into the rice. That must be the secret.”

“The first one is red bean rice ball. Red beans and sticky rice were often steamed together to create red bean rice on celebratory occasions. It was considered to be a feast in the olden days. Many areas in Japan still carry on the tradition of making red bean rice whenever there is something to celebrate. In that sense, I think you can say red bean rice is deeply rooted in the Japanese soul." "That's right. I made red bean rice along with other foods when the framework of my house was completed." "It feels very festive for some reason." "I like the salt and sesame seasoning on it." "The next is a hijiki rice ball. You cook the rice together with the hijiki, thin fried tofu and carrots... ...flavor it with soy sauce and make a rice ball with it. The hijiki rice is the typical Japanese commoners' food that mixes riches from the sea and the soil together. A rice ball made of hijiki rice is one of the original Japanese foods with a long continuing history." "Aaah. This brings back memories." "It makes us realize that we're Japanese. It's a flavor we must not lose." "The last rice ball of the past is dried seaweed. Dried seaweed is one of the most familiar seaweeds to the Japanese, apart from konbu, wakame and hijiki. And the way to fully enjoy the taste of the dried seaweed... ... is to make seaweed tsukudani and use that as the filling for the rice ball. For the tsukudani, you simmer top-quality dried seaweed in sake and soy sauce. Once you learn its taste, you will never be satisfied with eating the dried seaweed tsukudani that's commercially available." "It tastes nothing like that one we can buy at the market." "It's refreshing, yet has a very strong scent of seaweed." "It's interesting to see the difference in flavor of the tsukudani filling and the seaweed wrapping the rice ball." "Red bean rice, hijiki rice and dried seaweed tsukudani rice balls... These are flavors that will never fade away as long as the Japanese are around.”

“There's caviar inside the prawn dumpling!" "I used fresh live Japanese tiger prawns and minced the meat, then mixed it with an egg. I wrapped the caviar with it and fried it in peanut oil." "The sweetness of the prawn and the rich taste of the caviar complement each other! Nice work, Yuichi!" "Ah, no..." "There are various kinds of fried prawn dumpling dishes, but it was Yuichi's idea to wrap caviar in it. He got all the ingredients and made it himself on his day off." "Tayama senpai created this?" "Yuichi, make something else for us." "Please let me off the hook now." "Yuichi, make the scallop rice." "Master!" "Just do it." "The rice has been steamed and lightly flavored with dashi and soy sauce. I basted the scallop with a mop sauce made from sake and soy sauce, and grilled the outside but left the meat half-cooked. Then I placed the scallop onto the rice just before it finished steaming--- steam it for a moment, and it's done." "Aah! The flavor of the scallop has seeped into the rice, but the scallop itself still retains its flavor too. This only works if you perfectly calculate how long to grill the scallop and how long to steam it on the rice." "He saw me making steamed clam rice... ... and that's where he got the idea to place the teriyaki scallop instead of the clams on top of the rice." "The fact that you made the scallop into a teriyaki was a nice touch." "This is great ." "One more dish, Yuichi!" "Oh, please..." "Yuichi, I've got some engawa. You want me to help?" "No way. I'll do it myself! I wrapped young spring onions with the engawa of a left-eyed flounder, brushed on a mop sauce made from soy sauce and sake, and grilled it lightly. Please sprinkle some powdered Chinese pepper or shichimi onto this, if you want to." "Yum! The scent of the grilled spring onion and engawa draws out my appetite." "I took Yuichi to a restaurant that cooked garlic chives wrapped with eel dorsal fins... ...and Yuichi said he wanted to try it with left-eyed flounder engawa and young spring onions." "I thought it would be a waste to grill the engawa, but it turned out surprisingly good when he made it that way.”

“These rice balls represent the responsibilities we have for the future." "The responsibilities we have for the future?!" "Let's start off with the stewed hard clams. In the past, they could be found anywhere. But nowadays, most of the hard clams are being imported because they can no longer be caught due to land reclamation and pollution. Hard clams from the sea nearby have now become a rarity. Stewed hard clams are an important cultural asset that has been passed down to us since the Edo Period. But at this rate, the hard clams will be lost, and the stewed hard clams will disappear from the menu of the future. The same with matsutake. The production of matsutake is going down every year because the mountains are not looked after with care. People hardly go to the mountains to take care of them because of the decrease in population in the mountainous regions, as well as the decrease of people who use wood as fuel. At this rate, domestic matsutake will also disappear from our tables. And then there's the katsuobushi. How many households have their own katsuobushi shaver these days? MSG and ready-made easy seasonings have become the mainstream of cooking. The most basic Japanese tradition of using katsuobushi and konbu to make dashi is starting to disappear. Even when you use katsuobushi, you use something that has already been shaved and packed." "He's right. Young people who have experienced shaving a katsuobushi are a minority nowadays." "In the old days, shaving the katsuobushi was the children's job." "The current Japanese culinary culture is one of the richest in the world. But at the same time, we are continuing to lose something we are not meant to lose. And that is not right . It is our responsibility to pass on the important cultural elements from our ancestors down to the future.”

“This is the skin and fat of the salmon's stomach!" "The skin is crisp, and when you bite on it the sweet fat comes seeping out..." "A long time ago, there was a lord of a large clan in the Hokuriku area who just loved to eat salmon. That lord especially liked to eat salmon skin, but salmon skin is very thin. Even if you had all the skin of a salmon, it still didn't satisfy him. So one day he said, if there was a salmon with a skin that was one foot thick, he'd be willing to exchange it with ten square miles of land... That is how good the skin of a salmon is. And the meat of a salmon with a lot of fat in it is exceptionally good too. This dish has grilled just those two best parts of it. First, you cut off the dark meat from the belly meat. Then you sprinkle salt onto the skin and the meat and refrigerate for two to three hours. After that, you grill it over charcoal. Being careful not to tear the skin, you roll the skin around the belly meat and pin it with a toothpick; this one is the salted one. On the other hand, this one hasn't been salted; instead, it's been marinated in soy sauce and sake overnight." "Hmm... he used the best part of a salmon and grilled it with salt or with teriyaki sauce." "You can't really call this a proper dish at first glance, but its flavor is definitely supreme!”

“Ooh! The firm, moist texture and flavor of the yuba... ... suits the gratin's white sauce made with lots of milk and butter!" "Yuba, a traditional Japanese food... ...perfectly matches the sauce in the gratin, which is a Western dish!" "I made the white sauce with flour, butter and milk... ... and added chopped onions, sliced mushrooms and yuba cut into bite-sized pieces. I brought the white sauce to a boil after seasoning it with salt and pepper. Then I placed that inside a gratin dish, covered it with grated cheese and baked it in the oven until it turned golden brown." "Wow. I don't believe it." "I never thought yuba and white sauce would taste good together. But come to think of it, yuba is basically soy protein." "It has a rich yet simple taste... ...so I guess it goes well with any kind of dish." "I know I'm contradicting myself... ...but this is light and heavy at the same time! Yuba is made from soy milk, and white sauce is made from regular milk. Both beverages are very good for the human body. So it's no surprise that they come together to make such a delicious flavor in yuba gratin.”

“The refreshing scent of the turnip, the succulent, natural sweetness of the flesh... The fine aftertaste of its slight bitterness... And the thing adding richness to its flavor... ...is the brown paste in the middle of it!" "Kaibara-san, what is this?!" "It's braised turnip with white mushroom paste. The important part is the dashi... or the "fond de veau," as it's called. You make an elegant and savory broth which is like an Ichiban-dashi in Japanese cooking by using the bones of a fine calf and quality beef." "I see! The mushroom paste inside gives it its punch!" "It's mashed mushroom mixed with butter and cream." "That is the importance of finesse in cooking... A mediocre cook is likely to make a mistake when getting ahold of such a fine turnip. For example, he'll do something like making some nice dashi and quickly simmering the turnip in it. But that is a mistake . Turnips have a muddy scent. And it is that scent that poses a problem! Now, the muddiness of a turnip is something to be savored... but when placed together with something that goes well with it, it becomes far more flavorful . For example, you can't expect the turnip to do much good when it is placed inside a clear soup. But when it's used inside a miso soup made with hatcho miso, the flavor of the turnip becomes lucid... As you can see from this example, it's important what you put with it. And for this dish, I decided to use white mushrooms. The white mushroom itself is an interesting kind of mushroom that can't draw out its best on its own, but will prove its worth when it is mixed with oil or dairy products and heated. Its color will turn dark when heated, but the texture turns smooth and gentle, and the fragrance hidden inside it becomes apparent, giving birth to a deep, rich flavor. When that mushroom paste combines with the flavor of the turnip... they will multiply each other's taste upon your taste buds.”

“Sake is the best when it comes to pairing with seafood. It's often said that Chablis and raw oysters go well together, but I've got my doubts about that. I find a strong off taste lingers after I eat raw oysters and drink Chablis." "Why is that?" "Wine has a lot more sodium in it compared to sake. The sodium compounds are part of what gives wine its fine flavor. But at the same time, I think one of those compounds brings out the fishiness of the seafood.”

“Main ingredients: rice, distilled alcohol, brewing saccharides...' what's that all mean?" "During the second World War, something called sanbaizōshu was created as a way to make sake from a small very small amount of rice." "'Sanbaizōshu'?" "Essentially, you take sake made the proper way but then dilute it until it's three times its original volume. Besides water, the main additive is distilled grain alcohol, followed by malt syrup, glucose, and MSG to fix the flavor." "What? You add a completely different alcohol that wasn't created during the brewing?!" "Monosodium glutamate? I can't believe they'd add such a thing to a drink!" "You're right. This isn't real sake. Although we now have an abundant supply of rice, the big beverage companies still make sanbaizōshu since it's an easy way for them to make a profit." "But I trusted them because they're popular brands..." "It's the other way around. Most of the large companies with huge advertising campaigns on TV and whatnot use this method." "Then what about this bottle with "Junmaishu" on it?" "It's from a small brewery in the countryside, a sake made from nothing but rice, kōji, and water. This is the kind of sake that should have an ingredient label so that people can see that it's truly pure. It's a tragedy that we have it the other way around here in Japan. Is there any other country in the world that's degraded their traditional drink like this?It's an important part of our culture and it's almost been destroyed.”

“In France, caviar, truffles and foie gras are considered to be the three major delicacies. And when the French eat caviar, they don't drink wine with it. The French aren't stupid. They're more than aware that no wine goes well with caviar. That's why they drink vodka with it. But they don't know about sake." "You're right. Vodka's usually served with caviar." "But vodka really isn't a drink to have during a meal." "It's not just caviar--- I don't think wine goes well with any kind of seafood. It doesn't matter whether the fish is grilled, simmered, raw or in a bouillabaisse. And it's completely out of the question for things like raw oysters, karasumi and sea urchin. Wine contains far more sodium than sake. And some of those sodium compounds do not mix well with the fats in the fish, so that distinctive seafood flavor ends up being emphasized even more. On the other hand, sake has hardly any sodium, so it doesn't bring out the fishiness. And the sugars from the rice starch enhance the flavor of the food." "Hmm." "Come to think of it, shiokara tastes a lot better when you eat it with rice than when you eat it on its own. I guess this is the same thing. It's the power of rice.”

“If you draw the full length of the blade through the fish in one gentle sweep, the resulting cross section is smooth and the cells are cleanly cut. But if you force the blade down on the fish to cut it, the cross section becomes ragged and the cells are squashed. If the surface of the slice is rough, more of the fish is exposed to air, and so it oxidizes faster and its flavor deteriorates. This becomes even more apparent with water-chilled sashimi. The ragged surface of the slices allows the water to penetrate the fish and leech out its flavor." "That's why the sashimi becomes watery and tasteless.”