Hosting Chef Fumio Yonezawa

In April 2019, in collaboration with the Danon Culinary School, we hosted Japanese chef Fumio Yonezawa, who taught a fascinating 3-day course. During the course, he demonstrated his interpretation of Japanese soul food. Real soul food has to combine street food and home flavors, and succeeds when it contains an entire spectrum of memories and flavors in one bite.

Chef Yonezawa, former chef of star-studded Jean-Georges Tokyo, is considered one of the most prominent young chefs in the Tokyo culinary scene. In this workshop, he focused on Japanese home cuisine, which has recently been the focus of contemporary adaptations around the world. Chef Yonezawa used Japanese raw ingredients available from Diplomat Culinary, including bonito and kombu seaweed, to make dashi, a basic fish stock used extensively in Japanese cuisine.

Together, we prepared nishiki rice and paired it with a beef stew. We also used sake in the preparation. In addition, we made a wonderful tempura, served with both shiro, a white soy sauce, and Kikoman soy sauce.

Cold Sapporo beer was the perfect accompaniment for the workshop and the meal. Kampai!