Teriyaki

Berkeley, April 6, 2012—

TO THE HOME of new friends tonight for dinner, just the four of us, celebrating new friendship and old memories. If you've been visiting this blog regularly you'll have guessed by now that non-European cuisines are not a frequent area of investigation here, and it's true that while we do make occasional visits to Japanese or Thai or Indian tables I myself eschew Chinese cuisine — one of the great glories of human civilization — as being simply to big, complex, and unknown for me to attempt at this late date.

But our hosts tonight are Japanese, or one of them is, and served a teriyaki, or something very like teriyaki, cooked at table. And it was memorably delicious.

The last Japanese "meal" I ate was a few years ago, in London, when an expat friend of mine (you know who you are) took me to a demonstration of Japanese cuisine presented by a Great Chef. Standing behind a long table, flanked by a couple of outrageously pretty young assistants, GC discussed in incomprehensible English the many glories of his country's cuisine, all the while preparing examples, which were then passed around among the rather large audience. I was surprised at the saltiness but otherwise uninteresting flavors, and shocked — shocked, I tell you — at the great many boxes, cans, bottles, and envelopes of liquids, pastes, and powders that contributed to his work. Japanese cuisine, I thought, had evolved to an extraordinary dependence on manufactured items.

Kenji begins to cook

Tonight's dinner was nothing at all like that; it was more like our lunch at Lulu's or, for that matter, eating at the Café Chez Panisse; or, better yet, at one of the Panisse parties on the farm. Every ingredient seemed utterly fresh, and the cooking was both expert and relaxed — and, of course, right at the moment, on the table.

Kenji began by grilling the thin slices of beef; then poured in the sauce and stirred things up, adding the gelatinous devil's tongue — shabu-shabu, said the steaming result, as he stirred it about with his chopsticks. Next the mushrooms, sliced up — three kinds, he said — and then big bunches of greens: chrysanthemum leaves and the more familiar (to me, anyway) mizuma. At that point Lindsey took the photo you see at the head of this post.

We sipped more sake while waiting for the dish to cook down, and talked about old times — I'd been in this house once before, decades ago, to interview Kenji, who is a remarkable painter. The meal smelled heavenly. We began with a "soup course," a beautifully textured egg-custard with mushrooms and chicken, thick and delicate. And then it was time to dig into the teriyaki, and I could suddenly imagine spending a month in Japan, rambling from one kitchen to the next…

Dessert: an enormous lime mousse on a graham-cracker crumb crust: I'm afraid I had two servings. What a meal; what a meal.

Sake; Moulin de Beausejour, 2009 (a fine match for the food); green Chartreuse