Cooking with Etsuko

Last weekend, I embarked upon a survey of Japanese ingredients at Mitsuwa Marketplace. Today, I learned about the uses for those ingredients at Etsuko Kizawa's Basic Japanese Home Cooking class. Etsuko, owner of Soy NYC, teaches a variety of classes in Soy's shoebox kitchen, and the students get to eat the delicious results.

Our lesson covered the preparation of miso soup, rice, oshitashi (a spinach dish) and sake-simmered cod. While expertly preparing the meal, Etsuko took the time to give us a primer on miso (dark red goes with clams, red is Tokyo-style and white is more common in Osaka). She spoke of adding different vegetable combinations to a simple miso soup: daikon and watercress, or potato and mushroom.

As she gathered the ingredients for the oshitashi sauce, she talked a bit about cooking implements. She mentioned the importance of her prized miso scoop and special tweezers for removing small fish bones. A giant pair of chopsticks was used to plunge the oshitashi spinach into ice-cold water.

We learned how to make the fluffiest short-grain rice (Etsuko prefers the pot to the rice cooker). We were also told of the affinity that soy sauce has for citrus, ginger's amazing ability to mask a particularly fishy flavor, and the use of sugar in Japanese cuisine. The aromas of delicious home cooking began to fill the kitchen, and my stomach started to growl. Etsuko covered the simmering cod with wax paper and showed us how the sweet sauce was bubbling underneath.

Not a moment too soon, it was time to eat. Soup was placed on the right, rice on our left (this was traditional, we found) with the fish and vegetables farthest from us.
As we ate with gusto, Etsuko recounted some of her latest experiments. Apparently her green tea Rice Krispie treats have become quite a hit, with customers bringing them to Japan by the batch. I can personally vouch for these treats!

Soy NYC: 102 Suffolk St., (212) 253-1158.