Emiko Davies’ Japanese Breakfast is Simple, but Comforting and Nostalgic
Emiko Davies’ Japanese Breakfast is Simple, but Comforting and Nostalgic
Steaming rice and a bowl of soup, with a multitude of possibilities ...
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Happy Wednesday, everybody! Hope all is well. I'm really stoked because I’m heading to Tokyo next spring! I haven’t been in well over 10 years, and my friends and I are excited to witness the cherry blossoms in full bloom for the first time. Being the Type A traveler that I am, I already have a running list of saved places on Google Maps. That said, any recommendations on places to eat, beautiful places to sketch, things to see, etc. please do send them my way! I’m admittedly not always great about responding to everyone, but I do, in fact, see all of your email responses.
Now, onto your regularly-scheduled programming!
A while back, Smith Street Books sent me a copy of Emiko Davies’ beautiful new book, “Gohan.” Though this is Emiko’s sixth cookbook, this is the first of her line-up that focuses exclusively on the home cooking that informed her childhood growing up Australian-Japanese. “It’s an ode to the everyday meals you find in the homes of Japan,” she says. After having written five cookbooks about different regions of Italy (where her husband’s from), “Gohan” is Emiko’s tribute to her own family and heritage—a way of reconnecting with both through food. The book contains chapters on noodle dishes, sweets, and vegetables, but the one that stuck out the most to me was one dedicated solely to Japanese breakfast.
“It was really the highlight of all my trips to Japan,” Emiko recalled to me over the phone. “I already knew instantly that I wanted to have a Japanese breakfast chapter in this book. Eating it immediately transports me to my grandmother’s table. When you show someone how to make a Japanese breakfast, you're really showing them how to make the foundations of any Japanese meal.” And a prominent concept that informs said foundation is ichiju sansai.
“It means ‘one soup, three dishes,’” Emiko explained. “You always have miso soup and a bowl of steamed rice—and the ‘three dishes’ could really be anything. Some sort of grilled fish or seafood. Or tamagoyaki, which is a rolled egg omelet. My grandmother would always have fresh tofu served with soy sauce and grated ginger, and that was one of my favorite things in the world. And pickles. Pickles are a must. You serve it with green tea and that’s it, that’s your perfect meal.” (Might I add here that rice doesn’t count as one of the three dishes, as it’s a given that it’ll always be there …)
Japanese home cooking can be quick and remarkably simple—at least, when fresh, high-quality, seasonal food is at the forefront. And while the dishes that go into a Japanese breakfast may seem pretty elaborate, in reality much of what’s served requires little cooking time and minimal ingredients. Not to mention, these meals can also be dictated by what you already have on-hand in your kitchen—leaving much to the cook’s flexibility and ability to improvise. Don’t feel like rolling up an omelet to make tamagoyaki? Scramble the eggs with some soy sauce and garlic chives and serve that instead. A block of chilled tofu can be dressed with just about anything you have in your pantry—and if it’s not sliced scallions and a splash of soy sauce, it can be thin strips of nori and toasted sesame seeds, or perhaps quartered cherry tomatoes with a bit of ponzu sauce. All that to say: there will always be rice and a bowl of soup—but what else accompanies them to the table is totally up to you.
“It’s so simple, but it’s so good,” Emiko concludes. “And I feel like it’s really complete. When you’ve had a Japanese breakfast, I feel really satisfied—like I’ve had a really nourishing meal. To me, that’s my soul food.”
Below I’ll be sharing a small collection of recipes from the “Japanese Breakfast” chapter of “Gohan” for you to make at home. 💗 Enjoy—and have a great rest of the week, everybody.
Steamed Rice
Serves 3-4
1 cup Japanese short-grain rice
1½ cups cool water
Place the rice in a small, deep, heavy-bottomed pan with a tight-fitting lid. Fill with cool water and wash the rice, swirling it with your hand several times. Drain, then repeat the washing 2-3 more times. Ideally, let it soak for 30 minutes at this point if you can.
Drain the rice and re-fill the saucepan with the measured cool, fresh water. Set over low–medium heat, bring to a simmer, then turn the heat down to the lowest setting. Cover with the lid and cook for about 10–12 minutes. Lifting the lid for a peek will let out much of the desired steam so it is best to avoid this (a well-trained ear can hear when the water has been almost completely absorbed). That said, do keep an eye on it if it is your first time trying this method, as individual stove heats and pan materials do indeed make a difference to cooking rice—at the slightest hint of the rice burning or the water evaporating too quickly, take it off the heat and let it finish cooking by steaming. If you taste the rice at this point it should be just very slightly al dente, still quite moist but not mushy. Turn off the heat, keep the lid on and leave to steam for 10 minutes.
Fluff the warm rice with a rice paddle and serve immediately.
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Miso Soup
Serves 4
1 (1 ¾ oz) small potato
2 cups dashi (recipe below), cold
½ small onion, thinly sliced
3-4 tablespoons brown miso paste
Peel and slice the potato into bite-sized pieces (⅛-inch slices, cut into quarters). Thin, small pieces will cook fairly quickly. Place these in a bowl of cold water for a few minutes to rinse off the extra starch, then drain them and add to the dashi.
Place the cold dashi in a saucepan, add the potato pieces and bring to a simmer over a medium heat. Cook for about 5 minutes, then add the onion and continue cooking until the vegetables are tender but not falling apart, a further 3–5 minutes should do it, depending on the vegetables. Turn off the heat and stir in the miso paste. (As miso paste is so thick, it is usually first stirred with some of the dashi to help loosen it in a special kind of strainer, similar to a tea strainer but deeper. You can use a ladle too, but the strainer actually works very nicely to capture the barley residue inside brown miso, for a completely smooth miso. If you don’t have one of these, it’s not a problem if the residue ends up in the soup—you can still eat it). Taste—if it is too strong for your liking, dilute it with a little more dashi or water, or add a tiny bit more miso if you find it too shy, then serve immediately.
VARIATIONS: Try some of these combinations instead: diced tofu and wakame seaweed; daikon batons and sliced aburaage (twice-fried tofu); clams and scallions; diced tofu and mushrooms like shimeji or shiitake; pumpkin (winter squash) and onion; Chinese (napa) cabbage or carrot; sliced long eggplant, boiled in the dashi until silky soft, pairs nicely with aburaage or gobo (burdock root) cut into matchsticks, or scallions; clams
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Dashi
Makes 4 cups
1 piece of kombu (dried kelp), about 4-6 inches long or ¼ ounces
1 packed cup katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)
Wipe the kombu with a clean cloth and place in a saucepan with 4 cups of cold water. Leave to steep, if you can, for at least 30 minutes (or overnight).
Set the pan over low heat and warm until the kombu softens and the water is about to start boiling, about 10 minutes. Remove the kombu at this point.
Turn up the heat to medium and add the katsuobushi to the kombu-infused water. Watch carefully—just as it looks as if it is about to boil, turn off the heat, skim off any scum that rises to the top of the stock, and let it steep for 5-10 minutes.
Strain the dashi through a fine-mesh sieve and it is ready to use. Store in a jar in the fridge for up to a week.
Lemon-Pickled Daikon
1 (4-inch, 5 ½ ounce) piece of daikon
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup rice vinegar
1½ tablespoons sugar, or to taste
½ lemon, cut into thin slices, then quarters
Peel and slice the daikon into ⅛-inch slices and then cut the slices into halves or quarters, depending on how large the daikon’s circumference is. Place them in a bowl and sprinkle over the salt, rubbing it through so that it is well-distributed. Leave for 5-10 minutes. This will help draw out extra moisture. Rinse and pat dry really well with a clean dish towel.
Combine the rice vinegar and sugar in a jar and shake or stir the mixture until the sugar is dissolved. Add the daikon and lemon pieces to the jar and let marinate for a couple of hours before eating.
Keep leftovers in their jar in the fridge; these last really well, if you don’t eat them all at once.
Grilled Fish
Serves 4 (as part of a Japanese breakfast)
4 (7-ounce, 1-inch thick) wild-caught salmon or mackerel fillets, skin on
¾ teaspoon salt
A splash of sake, if you have it
Vegetable oil, for greasing
Lemon wedges or grated daikon, to serve
Rinse and pat the fish dry. With a sharp knife, lightly score the skin side of the fillets several times on the diagonal. Season the fillets with a generous pinch of salt on all sides, then sprinkle over some sake if you have it too—this is to take away any fishy smell. Place them on a baking tray lined with kitchen paper and let sit for 30 minutes in the fridge. When ready to cook, rinse the fish of any excess salt, then pat the fish dry very well.
Heat up a skillet over a medium–high heat. If using mackerel fillets, cover the pan with a round of parchment paper so the skin does not stick to the pan; it will still brown and crisp beautifully. Add a dash of vegetable oil to grease the skillet (or the parchment paper, if using) and wipe away any excess with a paper towel particularly if using salmon, as it is quite oily already. Place the fish skin-side down in the pan and cook for 3½–5 minutes, uncovered, or until you can see the flesh become opaque and turn from pink to brown. The skin should be browned and totally crisp. If using salmon, turn it over and continue cooking until just cooked (note that for wild salmon the cooking time is quicker than for farmed salmon, which tends to be plumper; 5–6 minutes in total will be fine for wild salmon, about 10 minutes for the latter). If using mackerel, you do not need to turn the fish, just cook it on one side—you will avoid overcooking it this way. The skin should be crisp and the flesh juicy.
Serve the fish skin-side up with a wedge of lemon or some grated daikon (squeeze out any excess liquid) on the side.
Recipes adapted from “Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking: Memories and Stories from My Family’s Kitchen” by Emiko Davies. Copyright © 2023. Used with permission of the publisher, Smith Street Books. All rights reserved.