Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cuisine

By JULIETTE ROSSANT What can you learn from Masaharu Morimoto? Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking (DK 2007) is a stunning, complex, and sometimes confusing book about how Morimoto's thinking has evolved and where the future of Japanese cuisine lies. It may not teach you how to make all his restaurant food -- this is not a book for the home cook who wants to cook Japanese dishes -- but it will teach you some of the ways he has broken out of the rigid confines of Japanese cuisine. It is a masterful book by photographer Quentin Bacon, who has a strong sense of what matters to Morimoto – short of actually tasting the food. His photos not only capture the beauty of the food and ingredients, but also the surprise involved in Morimoto's cuisine. He captures streaming ribbons of color from photos of sushi as if to offer an alternate way to appreciate the sensuousness of ingredients. Morimoto and Bacon seem to have loosed Empire Design Studio, which has executed food and other book designs very handsomely, from all restraints with their food and colors and lines. A background of fine color bands, often extending right out of the food, can make foreground text hard to read. As with many other format-focused cookbooks, the print is so small as to be unreadable, ergardless of background. J. J. Goode penned the introduction tracing Morimoto's career from Hiroshima to The Sony Club under Barry Wine, to executive chef of Nobu restaurant, his triumph as Iron Chef Japan, and his restaurants in Philadelphia and New York. Sporting a diamond stud in his ear and swigging from a Coca-Cola bottle as he cooked, Morimoto cut an unusual figure in Kitchen Stadium. His food was equally distinctive. For one of his dishes, Morimoto perched tai (red snapper) on top of homemade potato chips spread with a sauce that combines miso and caviar (an outrageous act in the minds of traditionalists. If you think that took guts, he also served the fish on a bagel. The judges were taken aback but impressed. When they handed down the verdict, Morimoto's cuisine reigned supreme. (p. 13) What is not entirely clear is how much of his experimentation with non-Japanese ingredients came from Nobu Matsuhisa and how much from himself. The first chapter on Sashimi and Sushi includes a stunning box of assorted fish and several pages of photographs showing Morimoto expertly cutting various fish that form the display. The photos are enough to study his Art but not enough to actually copy him (unless you were already well versed in preparing sashimi). Morimoto demonstrates how he cuts raw vegetables into paper-thin sheets (Katsuramuki) (pp. 32-33). A photograph shows him in profile holding a ribbon of translucent carrot. In another, he holds a daikon ribbon in front of his face as if it were a piece of silk. The recipes that follow are often complex requiring either specialized equipment, expensive ingredients assembled in separate recipes. Buri Bop (p. 55) is a fanciful soup served in a stone bowl in which it is cooked. It contains pickled daikon and carrot, marinated royal fern and sesame oil-marinated spinach and finely sliced yellowtail. Morimoto draws on Korean ingredients and technique, but the dish is entirely his. The inventiveness, breath, and playfulness of Morimoto's cuisine are displayed in Squid Ink-Salmon Gnocchi (pp. 67-69). The potato-based gnocchi are stuffed with fresh salmon mousse and served with smoked salmon salad with yuzu vinaigrette. He doesn't use a technique Lidia Bastianich would recognize. These gnocchi are formed on a bamboo sushi mat as if Morimoto was making a sushi roll. The results in the photograph are stunning and worth trying to make at home. There are informative short essays on Dashi (pp. 75-7), Plating and Presentation (pp. 105-106), Japanese knives and Special Equipment (pp. 149-151) but the marvel of this book is the recipes that never rest on the merely traditional. From Daikon Fettuccine with Tomato-Basil Sauce (pp. 170-171) to Crispy Duck with Port Wine Reduction and Red Miso Sauce (pp. 131-133), Morimoto surprises. He will tempt you to make some of his dishes, and make your mouth water or just smile at the rest. Radio interview: Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking Other reviews: WNYC Leonard Lopate Show, San Jose Mercury, Chicago Sun Times, New York Daily News, Daily Herald Previous articles: [Cookebook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, Morimoto, Japanese Cuisine --> back to superchefblog