Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
It's a pleasure to introduce our next guest, author Eric Gower, and his
interviewer, Scott Ashkenaz.

Eric Gower lived in Japan for 15 years, working for the Prime Minister's
office as an editor and writer on political economy before turning his
interest to food.  He's currently a private chef and cooking instructor, and
writes "The Breakaway Cook" column for Yahoo!

He is the author of three cookbooks: "The Breakaway Cook"
(Morrow/HarperCollins), "The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen" (Kodansha
International), and "Eric's Kitchen" (Kadokawa Shoten, in Japanese). Eric
lives and works in San Francisco, California. His website can be found at
http://www.breakawaycook.com.

Scott Ashkenaz travels to eat, and to browse markets and grocery stores all
over the world in search of new and interesting foods, to add to his hot
sauce and chile collection, and to get new ideas for cooking. While this
plan often works out well (like his recent trip to Spain for two dinners at
El Bulli), it sometimes results in just a story (were those otherwise boring
little sausages in Rabat horse or not?) or worse.

A refugee from the semiconductor industry (which let him live in Austria
(where he met his wife, much to the surprise of both of them), Germany,
Japan, and the SF Bay Area), Scott now spends most of his time throwing out
or editing photographs of travels (always including photos of meals eaten).
Which means that he really needs to get those El Bulli photos up on
http://www.ashkeling.com



Welcome, Eric and Scott, We're delighted to have you here! 
  

    
Thanks, Cynthia. It’s great to be here talking food with one of my
favorite chefs. And Eric, welcome to Inkwell.vue!

I first met Eric when I was living in Japan, as was he (for much
longer than me). We were having a chile-oriented food party (a
“hotluck”), and the other main Tokyo chilehead brought Eric along,
since he is also into chiles. His simple approach to cooking and his
palate really got my attention. When his first cookbook came out in
Japan (“Eric’s Kitchen”), it was frustrating that I could not use it
since it was in Japanese.

Having cooked many recipes out of “The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen,”
I’ve enjoyed the approach. Several, like the Boozy Potatoes and the
Rice Vinegar Chicken Breasts, have become part of the standard rotation
in our house. For the most part, recipes are simple, and the tastes
are always bright. Eric has also gotten me to make use of flavored
salts, and I’ve even made smoked sea salt. It’s great on fresh garden
tomatoes. 

I just got back from a trip, so I’ve not yet had a chance to make
something out of the new book, although I’ve been reading it and
drooling.

So, Eric, what are the first things I should make from "The Breakaway
Cook?" I'm having a hard time deciding - there are too many at #1 on
the list.
  

    
Why not start with the simplest ones first? I'd go with the maccha
salt: half a teaspoon or so of maccha (ceremonial Japanese green tea)
and a quarter cup or so of nice sea salt (I like the gray salt, sel
gris, from Brittany a lot), and pulse it a couple of times in a coffee
grinder. You then come up with this ethereal, almost surreal bright
green salt that's simply amazing on poached eggs. Also great on soft
tofu. On chocolate, too, believe it or not! There's a recipe in the
dessert section called maccha truffles, and they're goooooood.

I keep a little ceramic bowl of it above my stove at all times. You'll
wake up craving poached eggs!

Part of the breakaway approach to is to make a bunch of "breakaway
flavor blasts," and to keep them around as components of incredibly
easy dinners. The maccha salt is one (as are the other flavored salts,
like kaffir lime, smoked paprika, lavendar, and dried tangerine), but
another is the pickled ginger. Once you've made it, it lives in your
fridge, waiting to be chosen and to give its infused goodness into
other dishes in the book, like the edamame salad with pickled ginger. 

So starting with the first recipes gives you "building blocks" to
really start experimenting. Once you've got those, let the fun
begin!But you can of course start anywhere in the book, including
desserts; something tells me Roswitha would like some jasmine biscotti
with her afternoon tea today?
  

    
Well, I already have macha salt, as well as some tangerine salt, and
the aforementioned smoked salt, thanks to your influence. And we do
happen to have a kaffir lime (makrut) tree in our backyard; I never
thought to make a salt with it. The problem with the pickled ginger is
that it keeps disappearing before I actually get to cook with it. But,
yeah, those blasts are great things to grab. Sort of an extension to
the spice cabinet.

Jasmine biscotti - those do look good! I'll give them a try.

Were you into cooking before you moved to Japan, and if so, what was
it like? At what point did you recognize that you were developing a
style?
  

    

(Note: offsite readers with questions or comments may send them to the
inkwell hosts <inkwell@well.com> to have them added to this thread)
  

    
Eric, I love your ideas.  I first met Eric when he was living at charles' 
and debbie's place in SF!  I bet he doesn't remember me.

I like the idea of flavor blasts at the ready.  I just bought my first 
batch of black smoked salt. Sprinkled over half an avocado with a slice of 
lemon squeezed over it, it is very, very good.  rowr.
  

    
Thanks hex! Of course I remember you. 

Yes I liked to cook in college. I was a vegetarian in those days; I
had a concoction that I simply couldn't get enough of (until, of
course, one day, when I could): I cooked brown rice, white rice, and
lentils together in one giant pot, which sat in the fridge til it
approached empty. Every day I'd scoop out a bunch and throw it in a
frying pan with ghee, tons of ground coriander seed, cumin, black
pepper, and salt. It would then get stuffed into a big tortilla and
then stuffed into my mouth. This went on for months at a time. Does
anyone else ever fall head-over-heels in love with a dish, make it
incessantly, then simply OD on it and never make it again? I don't that
much anymore but boy I used to.

I cooked a little as a kid/teen, simple things like omelets/eggs,
spaghetti (it wasn't "pasta" back then) with bottled sauce that I
"doctored,"  which made me believe I was actually making sauce, steaks,
pancakes from a mix, stuff like that. 

I think everything changed when I tasted the food at the Mt. Baldy Zen
Center, east of LA. It was my first taste of Japanese food, and man
was it good. In some ways that led me to study Japanese and eventually
to go there and live. 

I think the breakaway style was born in the farmhouse in Yamakita; it
was a hassle to get down the mountain, so I'd go to the store
occasionally and just buy everything in sight, cause that's all there
was! But I didn't want to just replicate classical Japanese cuisine,
because a) it was too easy to get the real thing by just leaving the
house and going just about anywhere, and b) I was tired of eating
classical/canonical Japanese food. So that's when the serious
experimentation started, and that's where the first cookbook (in
Japanese, written for home cooks in Japan looking to do new things with
their ingredients) was written. 
  

    
Was the book well-received by the Japanese?  
  

    
I just got the book and started cooking from it.  Score so far: one
recipe tried, one winner.  One challenge I have is that while there is
a huge Asian population in Northern VA, it's overwhelmingly Chinese and
Korean, so finding distinctively Japanese ingredients will take me
outside my usual shopping radius (there's a small Japanese community
which supports a couple of stores across the river in Maryland).

So, a question... one thing I noticed in a number of recipes,
including the one I made last night is that the amount of fat called
for is much smaller than I'm used to seeing in the European or Indian
recipes I cook.  Last night, I blithely tossed a tablespoon of butter
into the skillet and was getting ready to add a tablespoon of olive oil
until I read more closely and realized it said *teaspoon* for both. 

Is this a characteristic of Japanese cooking, or your own preference?
(And FWIW even as a "fat equals flavor" cook, I thought the amount of
fat in the finished dish was perfect.)
  

    
Do the Japanese use olive oil?
  

    
Not as part of Japanese cuisine. Olive trees are not grown there. It
is, of course, imported for use in other things, like Italian and
French cuisine, which Japan has embraced. And reinterpreted.

Eric, how do you define Breakaway cuisine, and how is it different
from good fusion cuisine?
  

    
The book in Japanese was indeed well received, but I got tired of the
constant "ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh you-can't-do-that with ingredient x" schtick
I heard over and over. At a booksigning event at the Big Buddha in
Kamakura, one elderly man got VERY upset with the book, and accused me
of all kinds of things, destroying Japanese culture among them! But in
general people really liked it, especially people who actually tasted
the food. But the hurdles to breakaway food in Japan are significant,
because classic Japanese food is such a big part of many identities
there. 

I think the low fat content of much of the food (but not all of it)
isn't really influenced by Japanese cooking; I just found that larger
amounts of fat just aren't necessary in dishes that already have plenty
of flavor. It's not consciously "healthy" cooking, but it somehow
turns out that way. I don't feel like I'm missing out or find myself
craving additional fat, though I must say it depends on the fat! There
are some awfully tasty olive oils out there, and I do like my infused
butters. 

Japanese don't normally finish a meal with dessert. The fancy
restaurants, and even the not-so-fancy ones, always end a meal the same
way: with rice, soup, and pickles! Oddly, I didn't miss desserts when
I was there; they just weren't around, or at least the ones that were
around didn't interest me much. I find that that's changed after moving
back here though, and I've reverted into not feeling wholly satisfied
with a meal unless I get a bit of something sweet and fatty at the end!

Japanese do use olive oil, but not in classic/canonical Japanese
cooking. 
  

    
Scott slipped in with a way better answer.

breakaway cooking: great home cooking that's packed with flavors from
around the globe, yet made without excessive fuss – it’s all about
keeping things very simple and accessible. I don't like to call it
fusion food, which often muddies the waters with needless and excessive
complexity. The flavors are bright and fresh, and the ideas are simple
yet some find them kind of sweeping.

It's not cutting-edge restaurant food; it's homier. Breakaway cooks
are just average joes who like to cook, and they usually don't get a
lot of help--they typically work in small, unWilliams Sonoma kitchens
with nonmatching cookware picked up willy nilly, don't have large
budgets, and don't have a lot of time to cook.

Breakaway cook also delight in taking little culinary leaps by
combining everyday foods like common veggies, chicken, eggs, pasta,
rice, meat—with an international bazaar of readily available
ingredients: miso, green tea, tamarind, chutney, star anise,
pomegranate molasses, lemongrass, galangal, preserved lemons . . . the
list seems to grow everyday. I try to show how to take these "global
flavor blasts" down from the shelf and use them in new, time-saving
ways. These intense flavors then get combined with the freshest of
local organic produce, and are woken up even more with the liberal use
of excellent salts, citrus, fresh herbs, and good olive oils and
vinegars. 

I made a little schema/chart that pretty accurately describes it: 

http://breakawaycook.com/documents/schematacolor_000.pdf
  

    
So what home grown vegetable oil do they use ?
  

    
"sarada" oil (salad oil, i.e. vegetable) and sesame oil are the two
main ones.
  

    

hi, gower.


i read the book from start to finish, but haven't cooked from it yet. (i
read it in bed, so skimmed the ends of sections when i was getting sleepy.)


the breakaway japanese one i have used plenty of times, and feel sure that
this one will similarly inspire.


i notice you create your own vocabulary to some degree. certainly
"breakaway" is a big term, but there are others that pop up and seem to take
on new meanings.

one i noticed a few times while reading was "Blasted". at first i assumed
this would mean applying a hot heat. (hot grill, blowtorch, hot skillet) but
you seem to use it a lot to refer to the application of flavor. (something
gets "blasted" with a <flavor component>)


so, what DOES blasting mean to you? and do you think the vocabulary informs
the cooking, or does the cooking inspire the change in vocabulary?
  

    
Chiming in here.  I read the book in bed, too.  What's up with that.  I was
looking for a recipe for which I had all the ingredients, but I couldn't
find a one.  I'll be heading to the Asian grocery story with a small list.
  

    
Hmmm... I did my first pass through the book in the garden; the photos
really pop in the sun. I'm doing the next read in the kitchen.

Eric, do you buy your sea salt in bulk? Have you found a reasonably
priced source for it?
  

    
Hi Eric. I'm In India, cooking over what is primitive by US standards, but
is probably palatial by japanese standards. Just a two burner "range" no
oven, no grill, no broiler. Any suggestions on local flavor blasts to try on
the local food? Tons of great produce, good seasonal fruit, but meat is
uncommon and low quality with the exception of chicken (and fish! amazingly
we get great seafood) I suspect the first thing you'd try would be each of
the interesting fruits - any other thigns you'd be dying to try if you were
here?
  

    
Welcome back, gower.

As with several of the others here, we haven't cooked from the book yet, but
we laid in some pomegranate concentrate yesterday, and I see some breakaway
potatoes in our near future. That looks like a great treatment for the
salmon, too, very different from what we typically do chez bumbaugh, and I
can't wait to make the turkey (but probably just plated in a mound rather
than as a sandwich), and several other things.

Your *Breakaway Japanese Kitchen* book was, like this one, stunningly
beautiful, and that aesthetic really contributes to the impact the books
make. That book influenced my approach in the kitchen more than any cookbook
in years and years and years. Thanks.

(And the big danger in participating in this conversation: I'm fast becoming
*ravenously* hungry!)
  

    
After I agreed to participate in this discussion, but before I got the
book, I had some worries of the "but what if I don't like the book?"
variety, but the minute I scanned the first few recipes, I knew that
would not be a problem.

One of my least-loved food trends of the last few decades was
"fusion," which was kinda sorta like the "breakaway" concept, but
involved using exotic ingredients almost at random -- perhaps for sheer
novelty or appearance rather than taste.  What I like about the Eric's
recipes are that the choice of "blast" ingredients makes sense
(although ok, I haven't found any umeboshi at my local Safeway yet --
or Whole Foods, for that matter).

Eric, did you begin developing your breakaway cooking as a conscious
reaction to fusion?
  

    
Blast, blasts, blasting -- refers to intense application of flavor. I
love this word! Global flavor blasts are just that: intensely flavored
ingredients found in the aisles of ethnic markets that add huge flavor
to dishes with virtually no work at all on the cook's part (these
blasts, like miso, mole, tamarind, pom molasses, tend to take a long
time to make from scratch, but we don't need to make them from
scratch!). 

Blasts are about two things mainly: intense flavors effortlessly
achieved, and saving time. That's what makes them desirable for home
cooks (like me, and you) today.


Yep, I buy my sel gris/sea salt in one-pound bags from the SF Herb Co,
on 14th, between Mission and South Van Ness. An incredible store with
a wildly entertaining manager, great products and dirt-cheap prices.
The salt costs $2.50 there, and well over $10 everyplace else.
  

    
Charles, that two-burner "range" is exactly what I had in Japan. They
work though! Kind of a change from your Wolf.....

Yes, I'd be all over the fruits, and the photos of I've seen of cashew
fruits with their nuts intact look incredible -- have you tried those?
I would buy every spice I found and more or less blind-taste them all.
Sorry you can't get good meats, but at least you have good
seafood--amazingly enough--and plenty of good chicken. It's actually an
ideal scenario for breakaway Indian cooking, because you probably
don't want to replicate all the Indian classics, which you can get 24-7
by just walking out your door. I'd also experiment with all the
legumes there. Did you bring your spice grinder? :^)
  

    
Thanks for the kind words, bumbaugh.....

mcdee, I'm glad you don't have to fake liking the book....   :^)
You've nailed what's wrong with fusion--excessive complexity, with an
almost randomness to it. But I think we had to go through that period
of excess to get where we are now; it's now rarer (though not
impossible) to find fusion mishmashes and expect to be taken seriously.


The breakaway style wasn't  a conscious reaction to fusion -- it was
more like extreme boredom with "canonical" cooking while I lived in
Japan. I was tired of eating the same things cooked the same way all
the time, and knew that more could be done with the ingredients. Fresh
herbs aren't normally used in classic Japanese cooking, but I love them
and grew them, so began using them, along with a lot of citrus,
ginger, good olive oils, yogurt, good honeys and maple syrups, and
unusual vinegars -- the "pillars" of breakaway cooking. So I use these
"pillars" no matter culinary tradition I'm playing with.
  

    
Right, having lived in New England for many years, the idea of cooking
with maple syrup wasn't odd to me, but I tended to think of it as a
flavoring ingredient for sweet dishes, which is its most obvious use. 
Making your spicy corn salad was a revelation -- a bit of maple syrup
to balance the acidity of champagne vinegar, lime juice, and lime zest,
plus habanero, red onions, peppers... really an explosion of flavor,
but the maple syrup was in there doing its bit.

Also appreciated the kitchen hint re: using the microplane grater for
zesting -- DOH! I've had one for years, but persisted in using my
regular zester (which is, as you point out, the preferred tool for long
strips of zest).  The microplane-grated zest gave flavor without
giving any noticeable texture, which was just right for this dish.

I also liked your hint re: slicing habaneros, although I figured out a
simpler way not to touch the thing.  Rather than pinning it down with
an implement (I can't remember the exact details of your advice), I was
just careful always to touch only the skin side of the pepper.  As
long as you have a really sharp knife and can cut out the seeds and
veins without a lot of tugging and pulling, this isn't too hard.
  

    
Eric, ever since I interviewed you for the first book, I've been
wondering why no restaurant has taken this inspiration and run with it.
You're there in the foodie-est city in America, and this is now your
second book; the concept seems pretty well developed, the food seems to
be a hit everywhere it's served (even over here!)...so why hasn't a
savvy restaureteur looking for a new gimmick seized on this one? 

Or...has one?