Japan

There’s an elegant simplicity to Japanese food that sets it apart from any other. Over thousands of years, the Japanese have honed their cooking techniques, and correct knife practice and cooking skills are regarded as an art form.

Influences

Sushi chefs alone will train for decades to learn proper knife-wielding skills as they feel it is fundamental to great taste. The essence of Japanese food is focused on the purity and quality of ingredients, all celebrated in their most natural state and presented as a work of art to be eaten with one’s eyes as well as stomachs.

Jammed full of flavour.

When it comes to iconic dishes in Japan, many celebrate local fruits of the sea. No other cuisine celebrates seafood quite like the Japanese – from seaweed to urchins to grilled, dried, poached or even raw fish, seafood is a staple in this elegantly simple cuisine. Sushi is a work of art in itself and celebrates the natural flavour of seafood like no other. Traditionally consisting of nori seaweed sheets, sticky rice, and seafood, meat or veg in the centre then rolled in a bamboo mat to create a cylinder shape, many incarnations of this iconic dish have been created throughout the centuries.

History & influences

A derivative of sushi is also sashimi – pods of sticky rice topped with strips of raw fish and dipped delicately into soy and wasabi. Sushi is eaten every day and as a celebratory feast in the form of a Kaiseki. A Kaiseki is a banquet of seasonal dishes that accompanies saki and starts with miso soup, sashimi and sushi, and is followed by grilled chicken or fish, salad and rice.

Sushi chefs train for decades to perfect the craft of preparing fish; however, one of the more complicated culinary arts of Japan is noodle making. Soba noodles made from buckwheat are the most popular throughout, and mixing, rolling and hand-cutting them takes many years to master. Using these noodles are dishes like yakisoba (stir-fried noodles) and ramen - a rich and flavourful broth loaded with noodles and either meat, seafood or tofu and adorned with things like pickled radish or soft-boiled eggs and nori.

Japan

Iconic Dishes

Drag and drop block options like heading, text, buttons, dividers, and more.The Japanese word for curry is Kare, and their take on curry is a golden sauce for chicken, veg, or beef flavoured with spices and sweetened with apples. A popular version is the Katsu Curry, in which they crumb the chicken cutlets or tofu steaks and then cover them with rich curry gravy.

Japan

Spiceology

When preparing the hot main dishes of Japanese cuisine like grilled meats and fish, one of the most popular flavourings is Saikyo Yaki – a 100-year-old recipe for an all-purpose marinade of sweet miso, sake, mirin, ginger, garlic that infuses the meat with a perfectly balanced flavour and chars and caramelises on the outside when grilled.