Translation: 2010.02 Myojo: Kamenashi Kazuya
I loved this photo shoot of Kame and Koki cooking. Bossy, stressed Kame and trying to be helpful Koki.
A quick and not betaed translation. Excuse my English.
2010.02 Myojo: Kamenashi Kazuya
Cooking is an experiment!
Since a long time ago, I like cooking. Probably, because since I was very young I watched my mother while she cooked, and helped. Because my large family is full of men, my parent’s cooking is also exciting, and maybe because of that I don’t look into books and do not measure the ingredients. It’s all a product of my imagination, it’s creative cuisine. Well, one can call it also an experiment (*laughs*). The katsu-don [breaded pork on rice] I make with Koki today is also like that. I am making it for the first time, while imaging the finished form, I am somehow making it. The point is to coat the cutlet 3 times. The coating is fluffily crispy and like the cutlets from a shop! When the seasoning is only mentsuyu [a seasoning sauce] + water, it really only tasted like mentsuyu, so I added salt and sake, but I thought it was somehow unsatisfying so I tried adding sugar. Then it was perfect!
Then I tried to make miso soup, here too, when I added a little butter, a stronger taste appeared and it became delicious…. It’s so delicious, right?
Well, when I cook, it’s good that I can become calm. Even when there are troublesome things, when I concentrate on cooking I can forget about them. For me it becomes some kind of stress reduction, my head becomes clear.
But recently I rarely cook. Though it’s a stress relief, isn’t it more enjoyable to cook for someone else than for oneself? Making it oneself and eating it alone, isn’t this somehow sad? Wanting to make someone glad… when this in not the case, I can’t bring myself to cook.
Looking at the fridge in Kamenashi’s home!
I have two fridges. One only for drinks, the other only for food. I always have a reserve of frozen gyōza. When I return late at night, and am a little hungry, just a few of them are exactly right... I occasionally grill them and eat them.
Then seasoning is of course „sa-shi-su-se-so“ [1], there are various ways to put them together. Especially dashi [a soup stock] with bonito, scallop etc., various ones are in my fridge. Yes, the deciding factor of cooking is probably dashi!
[1] „sa-shi-su-se-so“ refers to sugar (satō), salt (shio), vinegar (su), soy sauce (seuyu [shōyu]) and miso (miso).
The food boom
In winter it’s nabe [Japanese hot pots]! The one I am addicted to now is mizutaki [more or less chicken cooked in water], since I was taken to a delicious shop, when I want to eat nabe, I unconsciously go to this shop…. once when I have fallen for one shop, I visit it regularly. Recently when I was in Ōsaka, I went to the same shop to eat takoyaki [octopus dumplings] every day. I am the type who can’t try other shops, can’t be unfaithful.