Kitchen Culture Cooking Club
EXPLORE and PRACTICE Japanese cooking in your own kitchenAbout Kitchen Culture Cooking Club
Welcome to the Kitchen Culture Cooking Club, a community space providing encouragement to those who want to EXPLORE and PRACTICE Japan’s washoku wisdom in their own kitchens.
To facilitate this, themed projects will be posted to this page periodically. Project Assignments and links to relevant reference material stored on this site will be posted to this page. Anyone, anywhere in the world, with a sincere interest in Japanese food culture is welcome to browse the contents of this page and then replicate the themed project in their own kitchen.
For those who wish to display-and-discuss their projects with like-minded people, I invite you to join the KITCHEN CULTURE Cooking Club Facebook Group (formerly the TSUDOI Project), an interactive community space.
PROJECT Kayaku Gohan
Vegetables cooked into Rice
Kayaku (Takikomi) Gohan
加薬 (炊き込み) ご飯
In different parts of Japan, rice that is cooked in a flavored liquid with a variety of ingredients (that went to flavoring that liquid) goes by various names. The most generic is takikomi because it describes the general method by which the dish has been prepared: TAKI (炊き a verb used to describe rice cooking) and KOMI (込みmeaning “include”). But… when I first encountered the dish in Shikoku nearly sixty years ago (!!!) it was called KAYAKU GOHAN… and so that is how I know it. Scroll to the bottom of this post to discover other names… and to download a recipe fo making it in your own home kitchen.
Takikomi gohan is a two-stage method of preparing rice. First, ingredients such as mushrooms, carrots, and gobō are briefly cooked to create a flavorful broth. The broth is then used in lieu of water to cook the rice. The ingredients that contributed to flavoring the broth (mushrooms and vegetables) are returned to the pot in the final stages of cooking and folded-and-tossed into the rice just before serving.
Takikomi dishes often create a dark crust called okogé at the bottom of the cooking vessel. When that happens, these crusty, coveted bits are divvied up among individual servings.
I chose to feature KAYAKU GOHAN, rice cooked with bits of vegetables in a flavorful broth, as this month’s recipe because it exemplifies the spirit of culinary kansha (gratitude) embodied in so many thanksgiving rituals worldwide.
DOWNLOAD a RECIPE for
KAYAKU GOHAN
What’s in a name?
In different parts of Japan, rice that has been cooked in a flavored liquid with a variety of ingredients (that went to flavoring that liquid) goes by different names:
In KANAGAWA Prefecture, the descriptive TAKIKOMI GOHAN 炊き込みごはん (literally “cooked along with rice”) is used, as is MAZÉ GOHAN 混ぜごはん (literally “mixed with rice”). The same dish in SHIZUOKA Prefecture, however, is typically called GOMOKU GOHAN 五目ごはん (literally “assorted-item rice”). In NAGANO (and adjacent Aichi and Mie Prefectures as well as Kyushu’s Fukuoka Prefecture), the name TAKIKOMI GOHAN is used along with AJI GOHAN (literally “flavored rice”– the green bubble in the map).
In KYOTO and other parts of the KANSAI Area (orange area in the map), you’ll find such a dish referred to either as TAKIKOMI GOHAN or KAYAKU GOHAN. In OKAYAMA Prefecture, TAKIKOMI GOHAN is most commonly used.
Perhaps the most unusual name for such a dish is OKINAWA Prefecture’s JU-SHI- (the pink area on the map). The probable origin of that is the word ZOSUI 雑炊 meaning a “miscellany of simmered/boiled” items.
THANKSGIVING RITUALS in JAPAN:
See the KITCHEN CULTURE blog post
Read my NOVEMBER 2024 newsletter
Recipes and Resources
Stock (Dashi)
Dashi stock is essential to making soups and simmered or stewed dishes. Dashi is also used when making many egg dishes and all sorts of sauces, dips and dressings. Using good dashi will make a noticeable difference in the outcome of so many dishes you prepare.
Click to download recipes for (vegan) Kelp Alone Stock or Standard Sea Stock + Smoky Sea Stock
How to Cook Rice
In Japanese, the word for cooked rice, ご飯 GOHAN, is the same as the word for a meal, ご飯 GOHAN. Indeed rice is central to the meal. Download the Rice with Mixed Grains recipe.
How to Prepare Sushi Rice
Sushi dishes are made with rice that has been seasoned (with sweetened vinegar) AFTER being cooked. Download the Classic Sushi Rice recipe.
Quick Pickles
The Japanese enjoy a wide variety of tsukémono pickles, many can be assembled quickly and are ready to eat within a short time.
Download a recipe for Quick-Fix Hakusai Cabbage.
Kumquats
Kumquats are called kinkan 金柑 in Japanese, meaning "golden citrus." The fruit is native to south-east China where they have been cultivated for hundreds of years, though the scientific name is Citrus japonica. There are dozens of varities of kumquats but the round...
PROJECT Osechi-Making
December is a busy time… The Japanese aptly call the final month of the year shiwasu, written with calligraphy for "professor" 師 and "running about in a tizzy" 走. In Japan shiwasu is a time of frenzied activity that culminates with Oshogatsu (New Years) when families...
PROJECT Potato
Most white-fleshed potatoes generally fall into either of two categories: fluffy OR waxy. Fluffy potatoes are high-starch and tend to crumble when simmered; they are perfect for mashing, and when making korokke (croquettes). The Japanese often describe these dishes as...
TONBURI: Caviar of the Fields
The Japanese eat a number of "unusual" foods, and TONBURI (とんぶり) surely qualifies as one of them. Tonburi are the seeds of Kochia scoparia/Bassia scoparia, also known as 箒草 hōki-gusa. Branches of the mature kochia plant are crafted into hōki brooms (yes, brooms that...