« Initiation of Japanese Cookery –Rice and Dashi »
Workshop at the Maison de la Culture du Japon
AJINOMOTO EUROPE S.A.S. was very pleased to organize the first public culinary workshop of the Maison de Culture du Japan in its newly opened cooking atelier.
Ms. Noa Shioda, a very popular cuisine host in Japan and Ms. Yumiko Aihara, Food journalist based in Paris, have chosen to talk about “Rice and Dashi”, the main pillars of Japanese cuisine for this first cooking class.
 |
 |
| Mr. A. Vrillon, vice-president of AJINOMOTO EUROPE S.A.S, welcoming the participants |
Ms. N. Sihoda |
Before the practical lessons, Ms. Tomoko Murakami, PR Manager of AJINOMOTO EUROPE S.A.S. briefly explained how Japanese cuisine is all about a bowl of rice and a cup of soup, a dashi based soup and how all other dishes were just seen in the beginning as accessories to complete and better appreciate the rice. Ms Murakami went on explaining that the traditional dashi is animal fat free and is used as a tasty ingredient in many Japanese dishes and that recent studies have shown that some of the amino acids contained in the dashi soup contributed in recovering for tiredness, coordinated digestion and triggered the satisfactory sensation in our brain. Ms. Murakami underlined that, in order to claim that you were an expert in Japanese cuisine you had to know how to prepare dashi and rice.
Familial, cheap and conscious of the environmental protection
 |
 |
| Ms. Y. Aihara , Ms. N. Shioda |
“Today, for the beginners, I’ll introduce you very basic dishes as appreciate in many Japanese households. Japanese people do not eat Sushi everyday, just once per week and even less. Most of time they eat same kind of the meal as you will learn today”, said Ms. Shioda. “It’s simple, less expensive and also very ecological, as in these recipes very little goes to waste”.
She first showed how to prepare the Japanese rice. Round, supple, and slightly sticky, Japanese rice is very different from other rice types. To preserve its characteristics, it should be cooked and steamed at the same time without wasting the boiling water. This technique needs delicate control of the cooking temperature. In Japan today, almost all the Japanese families have a rice cooker. Many young people in Japan nowadays do not know how to cook rice without their rice cookers. The participants were very lucky to learn the traditional rice cooking techniques.
The dashi, a soup stock made with Konbu (seaweed) or Shiitake (mushroom) or Katsuo-bushi (smoked and dried Bonito fish) is the very taste of Japanese cuisine. It is well known among Japanese cuisine specialists that it’s the combination of the Konbu and Bonito that creates a higher impact of “Umami”, the 6th taste and one of the main characteristic flavour of Japanese cuisine. Unfortunately Katsuo-bushi, traditionally smoked and dried bonito, is rare in Europe. Ms. Shioda proposed to replace it by chicken wings, an easy to find and cheap ingredient. Thus she showed the participants how to make dashi soup from Konbu and Chicken. Once the stock was done, she took the ingredients she had just used to make another dish to accompany the rice. The used seaweed was transformed into a tasty mijotee and chicken wings into crispy marinated chicken wings.
Ajinomoto’s “Hondashi
It takes a lot to make good rice and it takes even more to make a good dashi!
Nowadays in Japan most people use Ajinomoto’s Hondashi, a pre-cooked dashi powder as their dashi base. Many Japanese restaurants and expatriates abroad, having great difficulties to find Katsuo-bushi, appreciate Ajinomoto’s hondashi, as it is made with the Bonito of the famous Makura-zaki port in Japan. At this seminar the participants learned how to make Dashi with chicken and Konbu. For those who were not present at this workshop but wish to try the dashi at home, the Ajinomoto Hondashi, is available in the main Japanese Food shops in Europe.
Please visit the Hondashi web-site to find a large variety of dishes you can prepare using it!
 Back |