If you are into Japanese knives and cuisine, you are going to enjoy Chef Hiromitsu Nozaki’s new book called Japanese Kitchen Knives. Filled with everything you want to know about how Japanese knives are made, how they are to be used and how to use them plus delicious recipes showing you how to make dishes using the techniques including this recipe for Deep Fried Fluke.

Chef Nozaki starts by providing the important basics to Japanese knives including cutting posture, knife anatomy and knife control. He then looks at the three main knives used in Japanese cooking - the usuba, the deba and the yanagiba. Each knife is used for different cuts and he explains in detail with gorgeous photos of how they should be accomplished.

He shows you how to make paper thin cuts with Usuba by using a rotary peeling technique as well as filleting a flute into five pieces with the Deba knive as he does in this recipe. At the end of the book he explains sharpening, maintenance, how to purchase and movement of the blade.

Deep Fried Hirame Nuggets
Serves 2

This recipe calls for the fluke to already be filleted and that’s most likely how you will find it in your supermarket or fish market. But let’s say you are down at the beach and you catch some fluke or you have the opportunity to buy whole fish rather than already filleted.  Chef Nozaki’s book, Japanese Kitchen Knives will show you in detail exactly how to remove the head, scales and organs, remove the fillets and then the belly bones.

Ingredients:

2 medium fluke fillets
4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon grated ginger
Potato starch or corn starch
Vegetable oil for deep frying
4 asparagus spears

How to Prepare at Home

Preheat the vegetable oil to 340℉ in a deep fryer or big pot.

Cut the fillets into 1 ounce pieces. Combine the soy sauce and grated ginger in a small bowl and place the fish pieces into the bowl and douse with the soy-ginger mixture.

Dredge the fish nuggets in the potato starch and deep fry for about 4 minutes until crisp and golden brown. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels to drain any excess oil.

Deep fry the asparagus without flouring for 30 seconds and drain.

Serve immediately.

Related Topics

Novice2Pro Interview with Chef Hiromitsu Nozaki

One of the dishes I had the privilege of sampling at The Great Chefs Event was this one from Chef Joseph Manzare, chef & owner of a slew of restaurants in San Francisco including Zuppa, Globe, Tres Agaves, and Joey & Eddies. If you have not read my posts about this incredible event to raise money for Alex’s Lemonade Stand, I recommend you check them out.

The Great Chefs Event

The Great Chefs Event - A Huge Success

Chef Manzare started in the restaurant business at age 14 and later trained under Chef Jean-Francois Mettigner and Chef Wolfgang Puck before going to Italy and working at San Domenico in Imola. He was nominated “Rising Star Chef of the United States” for the James Bear Awards while working as executive chef at the Royalton in New York.

Maryland Blue Crab Chipachole

Chipachole is a traditional Mexican spicy soup made with crab meat. Chef Manzare’s recipe calls for fresh Maryland Blue Crab meat but I’m sure you can substitute pasteurized crab meat from companies like Phillips when fresh crab isn’t available but you will have to come up with some shellfish stock as a substitute.

This recipe uses Guajillo   [gwah-HEE-yoh]  chilies that are thick, reddish brown chiles that can be mild to moderately hot.  The guajillo is popular in Mexico and one of the most commonly grown. The Guajillo chili requires a longer soaking period than most due to its leathery skin.

Chef Manzare’s recipe makes 6 portions

Ingredients

2 pounds Maryland Blue Crabs
1 large onion
3 cloves of minced garlic
5 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 pounds tomatoes
5 Guajillo chilies, lightly toasted
2 tablespoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 bunch of green onions, diced

How to Prepare

Bring 1 1/2 gallons of water plus 1 tablespoon of salt to boil in a large pot. Add the crabs and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the crabs (saving the cooking liquid) and give them an ice bath.

Clean the crabs of their meat, saving all the bones (I’m guessing he means shells because crabs are invertebrates and do not have bones) and innards but discard the lungs. Mix the crab meat with the green onions and set aside.

In a low, wide pot, add 3 tablespoons of canola oil and saute onion, Guajillo chiles, garlic, thyme, black pepper, salt, tomatoes, bones (I think he means shells) and innards from the crab, for ten minutes at high heat. Add the cooking liquid from the crab and bring to a low boil. Cook for 15 minutes.

Puree everything in a blender or food processor and strain through a medium strainer. (I’m not sure I would puree the shells but I will try to find out.)

To serve, pour the soup into bowls and add crab meat with the green onions. Top with cilantro (optional), and serve with Tequila.

Kids Can Cook Fettuccine with Simple Lobster Sauce

My nine year old helped me throw this one together. We had some cooked Maine lobsters leftover from the weekend and  wanted to use them in a dish everyone would eat. I was thinking Lobster Fra Diablo but wasn’t sure my girls would enjoy it so I came up with this simple alternative.

My nine year old Maddie has Cerebral Palsy so I try to find jobs she can handle safely and still feel like she is contributing. It’s not difficult at all. She helped me get ingredients from the refrigerator, grab the necessary cookware from the cabinets, cut herbs from the herb garden, pick lobster meat from the shells, stir the pasta and set the table. All I had to do was cut and cook.

If you want to read more about how teaching your kids to cook is a good thing, check out my blog series starting with Kids Can Cook. I also built a Squidoo lens on the same topic called Teaching Your Kids To Cook.

Fettuccine with Simple Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

3/4 pounds of fettuccine
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups lobster stock*
2 cooked lobsters, meat from tail and legs removed and chopped into bite sized pieces
2 tablespoons fresh basil, finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper, to taste

How to Make Fettuccine with Lobster Sauce

Start by bringing a big pot of water to boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.

Heat a medium sized saute (frying) pan until hot. Add oil and when it begins to shimmer, just before the smoking point, add the onions and cook for 3 minutes over medium high heat. Add the garlic and continue cooking until the onions become translucent. Do not let the garlic burn.

Add a quarter cup of the lobster stock to deglaze the pan. Add the lobster and the rest of the lobster stock. Continue cooking until the lobster stock is reduced by half or to your desired thickness.

Add the chopped basil and parsley. Mount the butter in pieces. Mounting is where you add butter to a sauce at the end to give it texture, flavor and a sheen. It is better to cut it up into smaller pieces and add one at a time while continuously stirring. You don’t want to add all the butter at once.

Taste the sauce and season with salt and pepper.

When the pasta is done, drain it and add it to the sauce, mix all together and serve.

*Lobster Stock - Not the easiest thing to find commercially and when in a hurry, not something you want to make. It is easy enough to make some decent stock with the shells and bodies of the lobster you are not using and here is a link to a lobster stock recipe but I used a product called Glace de Fruits de Mer Gold which is a fancy name for seafood stock but this stuff is more of a shellfish stock.  You can read more about it here at Lobster Stock.