borrowing from britain: japanese niku jaga

“In coming to Japan, I was really looking forward to catching up with my friend Kyle (he moved here from Toronto years ago). I had little expectations for learning opportunities, as it was very difficult to get anything organized in advance. But now that I’m here, everything has changed. After meeting me face to face, the same people who were apprehensive about planning things online are proud to take me into their homes and restaurants to share their cooking and culture! Each day has been full of lessons and learning, scurrying from one city to another. I’ve even had to turn people’s offers down after being double and triple-booked! It’s been more than three weeks here, and I’m wishing that I had more time. Here are a few of the highlights from my stay:

“First up: Nara Café Youan, about an hour by train from Kyle’s place (my home base) in Itami. Mayumi’s created a homey setting to serve lunch, and she shared all of her delicious recipes with me. It’s interesting to see things like niku jaga, which taste very similar to meat and potato stews back home. I’m told a number of dishes in Japan were incorporated into the cuisine by adventurous travellers, who enjoyed foreign flavours abroad and adapted them upon their return to use locally available products.” (p.18)

The first thing many people associate with Japanese food is sushi, but if you’ve been lucky enough to stay with a Japanese family, you’d know that it’s on rare occasions that people will go out and eat it, mainly due to its expensive price tag (in all the time I spent in Japan, I think we only went out for sushi two or three times). Home style comfort food is much more common, and in the places I lived, it would usually consist of a lot of rice or noodles, soups, salads, and small amounts of meat or fish.

Japan has incorporated a lot of foreign foods into their culture, and most of them have somehow been ‘Japanized’ during the adaptation. For example, it’s very common to find pasta restaurants all over the country, but the ingredients in Japanese style pasta would almost certainly make an Italian cringe.

Something I’m curious to know is how long it takes for a Japanese dish adapted from foreign food to be written as a ‘Japanese’ recipe; hiragana and katakana are two different Japanese alphabets that are pronounced the same, but the former is used to write Japanese words, and the latter typically used for foreign words.

Anyway, I personally love Japanese food, but when I’m in Japan, I do notice that almost everything tends to have that same underlying Japanese taste. Part of the reason is the fact that they use the same basic flavouring agents for most dishes. It’s even believed that the order they’re added to a dish (in addition to the often used dashi stock) affects their ability to work their magic (I’ve had scientific conversations about the size of the molecules affecting the flavours’ ability to saturate the ingredients!).

The five vowels associated with the Japanese ‘s’ sound, when pronounced in alphabetical order, tell cooks what to add next (it was one of the first ‘tricks’ shared with me, and I’ve often heard friends rhyming them off as they cooked away):

sa – sato = sugar (bigger particles cannot penetrate foods well when obstructed by smaller particles like salt)
shi – shio = salt
su = vinegar (will evaporate when heated and lose flavour, don’t add too early)
se – seuyu (an old name for shoyu) = soya sauce (can also lose flavour if added too early, add near end or as a dip)
so – miso = fermented soybean paste (for additional flavour)

I didn’t ask where additional flavourings like mirin and sesame oil fit into this hierarchy, but if anyone wants to add their knowledge to this post, I’d be happy to hear it!

Niku jaga (literally meaning meat-potato) is a very popular dish, and as mentioned above, is similar to western stews, except that there is little liquid left in the end (the vegetables absorb most of what’s put in). Many of the cooks I learned from were quick to refer to a cookbook for these types of dishes, ensuring that they got the exact proportions of shoyu to sesame oil to sake, but when Mayumi taught me, she was less strict, so I’ll leave you to play with the flavours that are sure to add a welcome change to a classic dish.

Red meat in Japanese (and other Asian) cuisine is usually cut super thin, so if you are going to use bigger pieces of meat, you’ll need to let them cook a bit longer before adding the other ingredients. But I’d recommend cutting the meat as thin as you possibly can, so that everything has the chance to cook together in minimal liquid.

niku jaga (beef and potato) from mayumi, nara cafe

potatoes cut large, yellow onions cut chinese-style, carrots cut large diagonally, beef slices, corn or white sesame oil, sugar, dark shoyu, sake

– heat oil, satay beef, add onion, carrots, then potatoes, then sugar, shoyu, sake
– cover and heat until cooked, adding flavour (shoyu, sake) to taste

Serve with rice and enjoy!