Zawazawa Kitchen

Beerzuke

Yoshie and I have been working a lot over the past few weeks. On work days we often have a beer instead of wine (depends in part on what we are cooking) and some nights we fall asleep before we even finish our beers. Sigh. This leaves the question of what to do with the stale beer the next morning. Our dear friend Susan has come to the rescue with a simple way of making pickles, a rather Japanese style pickle, but quite delicious.

• Beer, one bottle, stale is fine
• 1 cup miso (experiment with red or white)
• 1/3 cup salt
• 1/3 cup sugar (again, try different types)
• Various vegetables, inlcuding eggplant (Japanese or Italian), carrots, cabage, daikon ...)

Mix the sugar and salt, add other ingredients, add vegetables. They are quite good after 48 hours and will improve for several days. These are surprizingly good and similar to conventional Japanese pickles. And they go well with more beer!

Chicken Stock - Brown and White

Our approach to stocks has changed over the years, mainly under the influence of Susan, and perhaps from a better understanding of how to layer flavours and a desire for simpler, deeper tastes. The stock is like the undercoat of a painting, you don't often see it directly, but it binds the rest of the colours/flavours together.

Like making your own salad dressings, making stocks is easy and is one thing anyone can do to take their cooking to a new level. A little bit of stock added at the right point can add depth to almost any recipe. We like to add a bit to vegetables when we are braising, to a pan when we are roasting, in a pasta sauce, to the pan scrapings ... Lots of good things to do with a stock.

We try to keep two kinds of chicken stock around, brown and white. They are basically the same thing but for the brown stock the chicken parts are fried up first.

Simple rules for good stock,

• Use lots of water
• Use fresh chicken (if you wouldn't eat it don't put it into your stalk)
• Simmer the chicken by itself first, and skim, skim, skim, skim the impurities off
• Use some salt
• Do not use garlic, or oils with a lot of flavour, or pepper or herbs

In other words, keep it really simple and take your time.

• A chicken, whacked into about eight parts
• Mirepoix (sautéed for the brown stock, raw for the white stock)
• Salt

Mirepoix is one of the basics of French cooking. Our version is about half various types of onions, including leeks and shallots, one-quarter carrots and/or parsnips and one quarter celery (sometimes it is fun to add a bit of celeriac). All ingredients in the mirepoix should be minced fine.

White Stock

Put the chicken parts in the largest pot available. Fill with cold water. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer. Skim the impurities off as they come out. This can take as much as an hour. Skim every five minutes or so. This is a good time to do some reading, chat with friends and drink wine (but then almost any time is a good time to do these things). When the impurities are out add shot of salt and the mirepoix. Boil another hour or more. Let cool. Pass through a strainer then again through a cheese cloth. Let cool then put in small containers (even an ice cube tray) and freeze. Good for about three months.

Brown Stock

Heat some grapeseed oil or other neutral oil. Brown chicken turning pieces several times until they are a nice dark brown. While you are simmering the chicken and removing the impurities, sautée the mirepoix in a bit of butter with salt. Proceed as for white stock.

Use the white stock when you want a simple clean taste - good with vegetables and simple pasta sauces. Use the brown stock when you want a deeper layer of taste - in other chicken dishes or when deglazing a pan with stock (deglazing is when you put some liquid into a pan, scrape off of the good bits stuck to the pan's bottom, reduce and use as a sauce - we tend to deglaze with wine more often than stock).

Three Simple Baked Salmon Recipies

Salmon is a Vancouver staple. There seems to be almost an arc of cultures, from the northern Japanese Island of Hokkaido, up through Sakhalin and across the Aleutian Islands, then down past the Haida Gwai and Vancouver Island as far south as Oregon, that are founded on an abundance of salmon and cedar. One could almost call them the Black Current cultures (after the name of the warm current, sometimes called the Japan current, that rises in warm seas east of the Philipines and flows north past Japan, blending into the North Pacific Current). Vancouver is at an important point on this arc, culturally becuase of the diversity of its people, that draw on all of the Black Current cultures, and because it is located on the northern bank of the Fraser River delta, and the Fraser, despite all of its industrial stress, is one of the world's great salmon rivers.

On our first trip to Vancouver in the fall of 1981, just after our wedding in Ottawa, we made a side trip up to Chilliwack, and to Aunt Marie-Lou's (Steven's mother's younger sister) restaurant on Chilliwack Lake Road. Out back of the restaurant (OK, more of a truck stop, but the food was good) was a salmon stream. It was near the end of the run, and the water was filled with dead and dying salmon, hundreds of them, mostly, I think Coho. It was a sad beautiful site, and we wandered the bank for an hour or so, the Coast Mountains in the background, the first taste of winter in the air, and the water very cold. Every few minutes, a large salmon would thrash a few meters further upstream.

Closer to home, when the children were young we would go up to the Capilano River in North Vancouver several times a season to walk and to visit the Capilano Fish Hatchery. We would park just above the suspension bridge and walk up beside the river, watching for salmon jumping, to the hatchery, and from there climb further up into an old forest with massive Douglas firs. On the way home, we would often pass by Granville Island and pick up some salmon for dinner.

Kasumi is the real salmon fan, so here is her favourite way to have baked salmon.

• Salmon fillets, about a quarter of a mid-sized fish
  (usually Coho, sometimes Pink)
• Mayonnaise (preferably Q-P)
• Soy Sauce
• Brown Sugar (and sometimes a splash of maple syrup)
• Lemon

Layout the salmon fillets on aluminum foil, pick out some of the bones with tweezers if a few bones bother you, an season lightly with salt. In a bowl, mix two big spoons of mayonnaise, a spoon of brown sugar, a half spoon of soy sauce and squeeze in a quarter of a lemon. Mix then spread on the salmon. Wrap in the foil and bake for about fifteen minutes at 325 degrees, try not to over cook, salmon is best just tender (well, it is best raw with salt and lemon, or cured, but if you have to cook it do it gently).

We find the above dish a bit rich, especially as we get older, so a simpler approach follows.

• Salmon fillets, about a quarter of a mid-sized fish
  (usually Coho, sometimes Pink)
• Negi (Japanese green onions)
• Herbs from the garden
• Soy sauce
• Lemon

Follow the same steps as above, but add a twist of pepper to the seasoning. Slice the negi thin, including lots of the green, sprinkle on with a selection of herbs (you can take this a number of directions, parsley based, or basil, or a bit rougher with rosemary), squeeze on some lemon with a sprinkle of soy sauce, seal and bake. This should also be kept as tender as possible.

The simplest way to bake salmon was taught us by Susan Philips, our neighbour down the street.

• Salmon fillets, about a half to a quarter of a mid-sized fish
  (usually Coho, sometimes Pink)
• Bacon
• Cedar plank

This is simple. Soak the cedar plank, put on the fish, season with a bit of salt, layer the bacon over top, bake at about 350 to 375 till the bacon is crispy. it will keep the salmon moist. You could discard the bacon, which at this point is a mix of pig and salmon fat with crispy strings of meat, but why would you want to do that? The salmon done this way is a revelation. You can add a touch of soy sauce and lemon if you like, but this is about as good and simple as baked salmon gets.

Halibut Cheeks West Third

There are many fine cooks in Kitsilano and along our street of West Third Avenue. The one that has shaped our cooking the most is Susan Philips. We met Susan and her husband writer, editor, lawyer and wine expert Bennett Lee soon after moving to Vancouver from Tokyo. At that time Susan was working at the Asia Pacific Foundation managing their media programs. Later on she would work with us producing the English versions of NHK television programs and still later she would seek professional training as a chef. But she has always been an excellent cook, bringing her lover of different cultures to the plate.

This recipie was developed by all three of us (Yoshie, Steven and Susan) during a spring and summer of the mid 1990s, I forget the exact year.

The cheek is one of the best parts of most fish. In smaller fish you usually eat it as part of the jaw (or 'kama' in Japanese), but the halibut is a big fish, the foundation of the world some say, and the cheek alone is a good meal.

For this recipie you will need the following:

• Fresh halibut cheeks - one or two per person dependnig on size of the cheeks and the appetite of the people
• Fresh ginger
• Lemon grass
• Cooking sake
• Rice vinegar
• Chilli oil (Japanese 'rayu')
• Sesame oil (Japanese 'goma abura')
• Soya sauce (Japanese 'shoyu')
• Green onions (Japanese 'negi')

Season the fish very lightly with a bit of salt and pepper. Using a steamer, make a bed on which to steam the halibut cheeks: fresh ginger sliced into thin disks and above this a lattice of peeled lemon grass on which to rest the cheeks. Mix about two parts water and one part cooking sake in the steamer, bring to a gentle boil, then steam the cheeks until tender. Be careful not to overcook. While they are cooking take the green onion (negi), peel off the outer layer, and slice into very thin strips. When the fish is just tender all the way through take it off the steamer and put it on the serving plate to rest. Scatter the negi strips on it. Take a bit less than a tablespoon of sesame oil (the exact amount depends on the number and size of the cheeks) and heat until just smoking. Splash this over the cheeks and negi, there should be a nice sharp sizzle. Add a few drops of rayu, a splash of soya sauce and it is ready to serve.

This goes best with rice and a few simple vegetables. Some Japanese pickles are also a nice condiment.