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Scraping The Barrel: Doria
Posted by Chris Lehrer on 11-26-08 in Not All Raw Fish
I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet lately. In part, I’ve just been very busy. But I’ve also had to face a real problem with a column on basic home cooking, Japanese-style: I’ve come quite close to the end of the obvious list.
In part 1, I'm talking in general terms about Japanese food at home; if you have to leap into a recipe right away, jump to part 2.
Here is the more or less classical breakdown of dish styles:
Now I haven’t touched sashimi, nimono, suimono, aemono, agemono, or nabemono yet, and that’s half the categories, so it looks like I’ve got lots yet to do, right? But it’s not as much as it looks:
sashimi: I’m not going to talk about this except in passing. If you can actually get good enough fish to eat this way, and you own and maintain a super-sharp knife for cutting it, you’re all set; everything else is practice. What’s more, essentially nobody here would ever make this at home, except for a couple of super-easy things that you can’t get in the US, like katsuo tataki (you buy a block of bonito that’s been seasoned and seared on the outside but is raw inside, and then you cut it in fat slices).
aemono: I will do this, but I haven’t found enough good examples to make it possible to explain what this is all about. It’s not very common at home except on special occasions, but the main special occasion is New Year’s, so I’ll probably talk about this early next year.
nimono: Again, I will do this, but it’s hard, and I’m just not yet good enough at it. The problem is to cook the stuff so that it’s perfectly done but doesn’t fall apart, and that takes practice. Unfortunately, my son doesn’t like this much, so I don’t practice often. This is the one big at-home dish about which I’m deeply uncertain, technically speaking, so it may be a while.
agemono: I’m not going to do this. I do not like to deep-fry, and I really don’t like it when I have an open kitchen and a toddler — and now the baby is walking too. If I must fry, I want an electric skillet or the like, that has a temperature gauge, not an open flame and a mediocre wok. Besides, these days, very few people do this at home, at least in the cities, because you can get excellent take-out tempura and so forth for cheap.
nabemono: I will do this. But currently I don’t have a decent nabe, which is an earthenware pot, so I make it in a soup pot or a deep skillet. The thing is, I’m not going to write a column about a dish whose entire function in life is to be tabletop cooking when I can’t do it at home. We’ve been worrying about this, because with the kids an open gas flame at the table doesn’t seem like a good idea. But we’ve now found a line on handmade earthenware nabe pots that will actually work on an induction burner, so we’re going to get one of these and then the column will happen. We weren’t all that anxious about it until recently when the weather got cold, but now it’s sort of a necessity.
suimono: What’s the point? Okay, here you go: Put a few just-cooked bits into hot dashi and serve with a lid. Okay, I’m done. If you like, go spend a lot of time looking up weird aesthetic principles for how to decide which things go with which, and how much of each, and how they should balance in the cup. And then recognize that no normal person in Japan knows any of this stuff: if they want this done right, they go out to eat.
So what have we got? Two dishes I won’t do, one I don’t understand yet, one I’m not good at, one I can’t do, and one I just did in one sentence. Hmmm.
Now in all of this you may be wondering, “can it really be that there are only 10 dishes?” Well, no, not precisely. But in a lot of senses, yes.
Think about it. Remember my column on miso soup? That’s not just one dish; it’s a whole range of possibilities, variations on a simple theme. This is even more true with takigomi gohan, rice with stuff in it. Shio yaki: broiled fish. Which fish? Whatever you like. And if you want to broil vegetables too, well, go right ahead. What’s the traditional Japanese way? Um, broil it until it’s done. Maybe dip it in soy sauce or something, or squeeze some acidic seasonal citrus.
Now go look at a menu from a real Japanese restaurant that doesn’t specialize in sushi, i.e. almost any Japanese restaurant in Japan. What will you see? You’ll see exactly the list of dishes I listed above. And when you order your teishoku (set meal), you’re going to get something like this:
shio yaki seasonal fish
shredded cabbage salad with sesame vinaigrette and a cherry tomato (aemono)
a few nimono vegetables
rice
miso soup
pickles
If you ordered a nabe instead of the fish, you won’t usually get the salad and nimono as well, because it gets redundant. If you ordered tempura (agemono), you’ll probably get the salad but not the nimono. And so on.
In other words, yes, this really is the overwhelming majority of traditional Japanese dishes.
Now there are a bunch of things that don’t quite fit the usual systems, such as donburi, which is stuff mounded on top of rice — but the only one of those that is remotely tricky or complicated is oyako donburi, and that was the first column. How about tekka don? Well, cut some raw tuna in coarse shreds or slices, dump on hot rice, and sprinkle with strips of nori seaweed. Una-don? Buy a premade seasoned and broiled eel strip and drop it on rice (nobody but nobody would start with a raw eel). And so on.
Then there are all these nice dishes you that nobody but nobody would ever make at home: eel anything, ramen, sushi, and so on. I mean, yes, I could go on a tear about how to make ramen at home, as a sort of replacement for what I can get dirt-cheap here, but I must say this isn’t very appealing. I’d rather go out and eat great ramen for $7.50 than drop $20 or more to make mediocre ramen at home. At some point I will talk about soba, but I’m waiting until I’ve taken some soba classes and know what I’m talking about.
Then there are the oddities, mostly Western dishes that have been imported (Chinese and Korean dishes nobody makes at home, except from prepackaged stuff). But even here, one’s ingenuity is seriously challenged for a column:
Omuraisu (read, “om[elet] rice”): make very simple fried rice and put it in a plain rolled omelet. Garnish with ketchup.
Kareiraisu (“curry rice”): buy a pack of curry roux, mix according to directions, cook some veggies and meat in it, serve over rice. No, nobody makes curry from scratch that I've ever heard of.
So how can I do a column?
And who is “Doria” in the column title anyway?
Ah. Yes. Well, there is always doria. This is sufficiently popular and peculiar to warrant a column. It’s one of those Western dishes that has been taken over wholesale by the Japanese, to the point that I only have guesses about its actual origin.
So in the next section of the column, I will tell you what it is, how to make it, and so on. But I must warn you: if you are into “authentic Japanese food,” and get het up about high traditional aesthetics in sushi, you’re not going to like this. It’s as authentic as sushi, and almost as old, and... well, just trust me, if you’re one of those people who gets wound up about authenticity and sushi, you’re going to hate this.
Ready for part 2?
In part 1, I'm talking in general terms about Japanese food at home; if you have to leap into a recipe right away, jump to part 2.
Here is the more or less classical breakdown of dish styles:
- sashimi (sliced raw or semi-raw seafood)
- nimono (simmered things)
- suimono (clear soup with things)
- yakimono (broiled things, esp. fish)
- aemono (sauced things)
- agemono (fried things)
- nabemono (things cooked in a hot pot)
- tsukemono (pickled things)
- misoshiru (miso soup)
- gohan (rice)
Now I haven’t touched sashimi, nimono, suimono, aemono, agemono, or nabemono yet, and that’s half the categories, so it looks like I’ve got lots yet to do, right? But it’s not as much as it looks:
sashimi: I’m not going to talk about this except in passing. If you can actually get good enough fish to eat this way, and you own and maintain a super-sharp knife for cutting it, you’re all set; everything else is practice. What’s more, essentially nobody here would ever make this at home, except for a couple of super-easy things that you can’t get in the US, like katsuo tataki (you buy a block of bonito that’s been seasoned and seared on the outside but is raw inside, and then you cut it in fat slices).
aemono: I will do this, but I haven’t found enough good examples to make it possible to explain what this is all about. It’s not very common at home except on special occasions, but the main special occasion is New Year’s, so I’ll probably talk about this early next year.
nimono: Again, I will do this, but it’s hard, and I’m just not yet good enough at it. The problem is to cook the stuff so that it’s perfectly done but doesn’t fall apart, and that takes practice. Unfortunately, my son doesn’t like this much, so I don’t practice often. This is the one big at-home dish about which I’m deeply uncertain, technically speaking, so it may be a while.
agemono: I’m not going to do this. I do not like to deep-fry, and I really don’t like it when I have an open kitchen and a toddler — and now the baby is walking too. If I must fry, I want an electric skillet or the like, that has a temperature gauge, not an open flame and a mediocre wok. Besides, these days, very few people do this at home, at least in the cities, because you can get excellent take-out tempura and so forth for cheap.
nabemono: I will do this. But currently I don’t have a decent nabe, which is an earthenware pot, so I make it in a soup pot or a deep skillet. The thing is, I’m not going to write a column about a dish whose entire function in life is to be tabletop cooking when I can’t do it at home. We’ve been worrying about this, because with the kids an open gas flame at the table doesn’t seem like a good idea. But we’ve now found a line on handmade earthenware nabe pots that will actually work on an induction burner, so we’re going to get one of these and then the column will happen. We weren’t all that anxious about it until recently when the weather got cold, but now it’s sort of a necessity.
suimono: What’s the point? Okay, here you go: Put a few just-cooked bits into hot dashi and serve with a lid. Okay, I’m done. If you like, go spend a lot of time looking up weird aesthetic principles for how to decide which things go with which, and how much of each, and how they should balance in the cup. And then recognize that no normal person in Japan knows any of this stuff: if they want this done right, they go out to eat.
So what have we got? Two dishes I won’t do, one I don’t understand yet, one I’m not good at, one I can’t do, and one I just did in one sentence. Hmmm.
Now in all of this you may be wondering, “can it really be that there are only 10 dishes?” Well, no, not precisely. But in a lot of senses, yes.
Think about it. Remember my column on miso soup? That’s not just one dish; it’s a whole range of possibilities, variations on a simple theme. This is even more true with takigomi gohan, rice with stuff in it. Shio yaki: broiled fish. Which fish? Whatever you like. And if you want to broil vegetables too, well, go right ahead. What’s the traditional Japanese way? Um, broil it until it’s done. Maybe dip it in soy sauce or something, or squeeze some acidic seasonal citrus.
Now go look at a menu from a real Japanese restaurant that doesn’t specialize in sushi, i.e. almost any Japanese restaurant in Japan. What will you see? You’ll see exactly the list of dishes I listed above. And when you order your teishoku (set meal), you’re going to get something like this:
shio yaki seasonal fish
shredded cabbage salad with sesame vinaigrette and a cherry tomato (aemono)
a few nimono vegetables
rice
miso soup
pickles
If you ordered a nabe instead of the fish, you won’t usually get the salad and nimono as well, because it gets redundant. If you ordered tempura (agemono), you’ll probably get the salad but not the nimono. And so on.
In other words, yes, this really is the overwhelming majority of traditional Japanese dishes.
Now there are a bunch of things that don’t quite fit the usual systems, such as donburi, which is stuff mounded on top of rice — but the only one of those that is remotely tricky or complicated is oyako donburi, and that was the first column. How about tekka don? Well, cut some raw tuna in coarse shreds or slices, dump on hot rice, and sprinkle with strips of nori seaweed. Una-don? Buy a premade seasoned and broiled eel strip and drop it on rice (nobody but nobody would start with a raw eel). And so on.
Then there are all these nice dishes you that nobody but nobody would ever make at home: eel anything, ramen, sushi, and so on. I mean, yes, I could go on a tear about how to make ramen at home, as a sort of replacement for what I can get dirt-cheap here, but I must say this isn’t very appealing. I’d rather go out and eat great ramen for $7.50 than drop $20 or more to make mediocre ramen at home. At some point I will talk about soba, but I’m waiting until I’ve taken some soba classes and know what I’m talking about.
Then there are the oddities, mostly Western dishes that have been imported (Chinese and Korean dishes nobody makes at home, except from prepackaged stuff). But even here, one’s ingenuity is seriously challenged for a column:
Omuraisu (read, “om[elet] rice”): make very simple fried rice and put it in a plain rolled omelet. Garnish with ketchup.
Kareiraisu (“curry rice”): buy a pack of curry roux, mix according to directions, cook some veggies and meat in it, serve over rice. No, nobody makes curry from scratch that I've ever heard of.
So how can I do a column?
And who is “Doria” in the column title anyway?
Ah. Yes. Well, there is always doria. This is sufficiently popular and peculiar to warrant a column. It’s one of those Western dishes that has been taken over wholesale by the Japanese, to the point that I only have guesses about its actual origin.
So in the next section of the column, I will tell you what it is, how to make it, and so on. But I must warn you: if you are into “authentic Japanese food,” and get het up about high traditional aesthetics in sushi, you’re not going to like this. It’s as authentic as sushi, and almost as old, and... well, just trust me, if you’re one of those people who gets wound up about authenticity and sushi, you’re going to hate this.
Ready for part 2?
