Simmer

My love affair with mushrooms started when I was a kid, when I would go wild-mushroom hunting with my father in the forests that surrounded my hometown of Mito. I still love their earthy, nutty taste, and the different textures found in different varieties. In fact, when you dine at my restaurant, you’ll see I use them in everything from appetizers to main courses. Mushroom ramen isn’t a dish you’ll typically see in a Japanese ramen shop, but I think the two ingredients work perfectly, especially accented with shungiku, which are tangy chrysanthemum leaves.

Banbanji is a Chinese-inspired spicy sesame sauce that pairs wonderfully with chilled ramen noodles, a perfect summertime dish. Instead of grilling the chicken in this recipe, which is typical for cold dishes, you sear the skin side, then steam in sake. This results in crispy skin but incredibly moist chicken with a hint of sake flavor. With this technique, the chicken will always remain juicy and tender, even after you cool it. You can store the banbanji sauce in your refrigerator or freezer and use it over and over.

This ramen is a wintertime standard in Japan, and no wonder: it hails from the city of Sapporo in the far northern island of Hokkaido (home of the eponymous beer), a part of the country that’s very frigid and snowy in the winter. The hearty pork and miso-flavored broth in this dish is the perfect warm-up for even the chilliest day. Miso ramen is a relative newcomer to the noodle scene, becoming popular only since the mid-sixties. But corn, a surprising ingredient for a Japanese dish, has been grown in Hokkaido since the nineteenth century.

When I was the chef of Tribute, in Farmington Hills, Michigan, I was always hungry by the time my restaurant closed. (Little known fact: chefs never have time to eat!) So I’d usually stop by a local Chinese place on the way home, which is where I discovered this delicious dish. The chef there introduced me to cooking with zarsai, which are salty and pungent Chinese pickles, usually radishes or a kind of bok choy. Eaten on their own, they make you thirst for a beer, but cooked, they mellow and add great flavor to a dish. I love serving these noodles in a clay pot, or donabe. It gives it a warm and comforting touch, especially in wintertime.

When these noodles appear on restaurant menus in Japan, it heralds just one thing: the arrival of summer. This ramen is a classic warm-weather dish, popular from June until September. Chukka means “Chinese,” a reference to the origins of ramen noodles. And it’s not just a restaurant dish—when I was growing up, my mother loved to prepare this for our family.

I still remember the first time I tasted these crispy, Chinese-style noodles, on a high school trip to the southern Japanese port city of Nagasaki. This ramen dish is a hallmark of that part of the country, especially when combined with seafood—the seafood in Nagasaki is unbelievably good. This area is also geographically close to China and Korea, and is influenced by their cultures. Nagasaki, in fact, has the oldest Chinatown in Japan, established in the 1600s. You can try other seafood combinations in this recipe, too. Fish also works great with fried ramen noodles.

This is the base for Shoyu Ramen (page 24) and other ramen recipes in this section.

Use this base for Shio Ramen (page 22) and other recipes. You want this broth to be light colored, which is why I use “white” soy sauce, an almost clear liquid, rather than typical caramel-hued soy sauce.

This is the basic and versatile chicken stock I use for my ramen recipes, and it is flavored with Japanese ingredients. You can prepare a big batch and store any extra in the freezer.

There has seldom been a time in my life when a mason jar of this sauce wasn’t in a corner of my mother or grandmother’s refrigerator. The truth of the matter is, once you have had homemade you will go off the store-bought kind for good.

Meme’s sister, who died long before I was born, was named Julia. She also liked to cook. Meme used to tease me that I was a lot like Julia in that we both would dirty every pot in the kitchen when we cooked. This is hands-down my favorite dessert. Mama makes it almost every time I come home to visit. When I was in culinary school, I took a look at the recipe and was certain with my newly learned techniques I could improve the consistency of the pudding. Wrong. It was a disaster, and the pudding mixture never congealed—which brings to mind the expression, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

What other dessert brings out the kid in us more than chocolate pudding? If you want a pudding that is slightly more grown-up, substitute bittersweet chocolate for the semisweet. The taste of the chocolate is heightened with the addition of vanilla extract. Use only pure vanilla extract, not imitation. To make your own vanilla extract, halve six vanilla beans lengthwise to reveal their seeds. Steep the beans in four cups of best-quality vodka in a dark place at room temperature for one month. After steeping, you’ll have a flavorful extract.

In the summer, we’d sit on the porch shelling the black-eyed peas that Dede had picked that morning. The purple hulls dyed our fingers smoky violet. I’ve used frozen black-eyed peas to prepare this soup, but don’t use canned, as they are too soft. If using frozen peas, reduce the cooking time according to the package instructions or until the peas are tender. Note that the dried peas must soak overnight or have a quick soak. Don’t skip the essential step of simmering the ham hocks in the chicken stock. The flavor and aroma are what makes this soup extraordinary.

Since this soup is the liquid version of a baked potato, calories and all, you can use low-fat milk with no detrimental effect on flavor, if it gives you any comfort. But don’t do anything silly, like use low-fat cheese, which melts poorly and tastes worse. It’s important to add the cheese a little at a time, so it incorporates and doesn’t become an oily mess.

The Savannah River is one of Georgia’s longest and largest rivers and defines most of the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina. I’ve seen photos of my grandfather and his brother with catfish almost as big as a man that they caught in the Savannah River. Wild catfish that live in rivers, lakes, and ponds are bottom dwellers, and the flesh picks up a distinctively earthy flavor. For years, there were catfish in our pond even though the pond was solely stocked with bass and bream. Dede explained to me when I was young that the catfish eggs would be transported on the wings and feet of the water birds. So, it was something special when we would catch them. We’d catch these monsters, and they terrified me, with their flat black mouths and whiskers popping as they flailed on the shore. The whiskers are scary, but they are not what hurts. Dede had a few special tools in his tackle box to deal with catfish. The fish have sharp spines on their fins, and he would fearlessly grab them behind the head and clip off the fins with pliers. Catfish also differ in that they don’t have scales. But their skin is tough and they have to be skinned before they are eaten. He’d hammer a nail through their head into the tree and, using the same pliers, peel the skin off the fish like taking off a sock from your foot. If you are not catching your own, make a point to buy American farm-raised catfish, which are fed a diet of high-protein pellets made from soybean meal, corn, and rice that give the flesh a consistent, sweet, mild flavor. You just don’t know what you are getting if you buy imported fish.

Chowders are thick soups containing fish or shellfish and vegetables such as potatoes and onions in a milk or tomato base. People most often associate these hearty soups with cold New England winters, but the Gulf of Mexico also has a history with them. Poor people living on the coast were able to supplement a diet of salted, preserved meat and inexpensive potatoes with seafood they caught or harvested. Meme would prepare this soup in the fall more often, using fatback for salt and flavor instead of bacon. Both meats produce a smoky, salty layer of flavor that is complemented by the sweet oysters. Use canola oil if you prefer a lighter, healthier version.

Like many recipes of humble country origins, there is no carved-in-stone recipe for minestrone, the iconic Italian vegetable soup. Mamas from both sides of the Atlantic have used fresh seasonal vegetables with a bit of hambone or cheese rind to prepare soulful, satisfying soups. We’ve long known that this combination tastes good. Now we have a name for why it does: umami. The Japanese term umami is now familiar to culinary professionals, chefs, and informed foodies, yet Asian cooks have appreciated the taste for centuries. It is the fifth taste after sour, salty, bitter, and sweet. Scientifically, umami is the distinctive flavor of amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. Think about classic Caesar salad dressing, a combination of egg protein and salted anchovies. Or old-fashioned greens simmered with ham. Or this soup, in which the rind of the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese complements the vegetables in the tomato broth.

This French dish, which translates to “pot on the fire,” consists of meat and vegetables slowly cooked in water or stock. The broth is traditionally served with croutons as a first course, followed by an entrée of the meat and vegetables. The combination of meat and vegetables varies according to the region. It’s traditionally a slow-cooking dish that takes hours. This version makes use of more tender cuts of meat and therefore cooks much more quickly.

Several years ago, my sister was involved in a very serious accident and nearly died. It was perhaps the most pure, absolute fear I had ever felt in my entire life. Mama and I were only allowed to see her twice a day. One morning early on, when our grief and worry were still overriding any desire to eat, a group of ladies came to the hospital and set up lunch. The volunteer explained that several of the local churches provided lunch and supper for the families of patients. It was real food, made with love and care. Pimento cheese sandwiches and individual slices of pound cake were hand-wrapped in waxed paper and homemade yeast rolls were delivered while still warm, shiny with butter. There were hunks of meaty pot roast bathed in dark brown gravy and a comforting combination of tender chicken and dumplings. The food was amazing. It was restorative, as much for the delicious taste as the real caring and kindness. It was without a doubt the most rewarding, healing love I have ever felt from absolute strangers.