A Family (and Friends) Affair: Gochiso at Home with Chef Ema Koeda

Two days before our Gochiso Family and Friends Garden Party last month, the weather was cold, wet, and miserable, quite out of character for the unseasonably mild autumn we’d been enjoying.

Needless to say, Chihiro and I were freaking out. We’d planned the event based on the theme of nodate, a tea-party picnic, and had envisioned our guests sitting on the grass, sipping cups of foamy matcha under the trees. We’d even convinced nagauta shamisen perfomer Gojiro Sakamoto (no small feat) to play for us. None of that would work if the weather didn’t cooperate.

We lucked out big time. The gods blessed us with blue skies and one delicious day of Indian summer.



This time, we worked with chef Ema Koeda, whose offer to let us hold the event in the garden of her family’s home in Kamakura gave us the idea for the theme. Ema graduated from the CIA Greystone in Napa, and her specialty is Japanese-slanted California cuisine. We thought that her simple, elegant cooking style would be perfect for the breezy atmosphere of the event, and we challenged her to create gourmet bento boxes for our guests.


She did more than meet the challenge. Ema stuffed the bento boxes with soy-and-sansho glazed chicken drummettes, zingy ginger and broccoli rice, white miso and macadamia nut chocolate chip cookies, and a delicious apple and Satsumaimo crumble cake. The savory items went nicely with the Shimeharizuru Shiboritate sake we served.


As our guests filed into the garden, we walked around passing out the appetizers of sansho-cured lox and homemade ricotta on rice crackers, and delicate lettuce cups filled with calamari and nashi Asian pear salad, while Gojiro Sakamoto began strumming his shamisen. It was a beautiful day.


I first met Ema while covering the CIA World of Flavors conference last year. She was in charge of coordinating all of the Japanese chefs, so we hardly had a chance to talk (the theme of the event was Japan, and it was the first time so many Japanese chefs had ever gathered together in one place). Every so often, I saw her slender frame whiz by as I negotiated my way through the crowds.

We reconnected this summer when she came to our Gochiso Food Is Art dinner event, and have been getting together to talk food and drink ever since. I’ve even seen her on the job (she’s a freelance restaurant consultant), but I hadn’t sat down with her to talk about her background until just the other day.

Funny what you can discover about a person if you just ask. She was born in Iran (!) and lived between New York and Tokyo for most of her childhood. Although she’s one of the most flawlessly bilingual people I’ve ever met, she didn’t really learn Japanese until she came back to Japan for university.

While getting her business degree at Boston College, she realized that she wanted to work with food.

“English wasn’t the native language for a lot of the students there, so food became a communication tool,” she told me. “It was our main bond.”

When she moved back to Tokyo, she didn’t waste any time getting a job as a restaurant consultant with Suntory. She didn’t have any experience, but she was armed with a natural confidence and the focused determination of a former high-school tennis champ. Suntory put her to work in their restaurants, and during her nearly four years with the company, she learned how to create a restaurant from scratch: everything from developing the concept and menu, to coordinating the interior and finding a chef to match.

But she knew that if she wanted to move forward as a restaurant consultant and really support chefs, she would have to have a better understanding of how a chef works. So she enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America, as one does.


Now, in addition to restaurant consulting, she works with the US Embassy promoting American products in Japan and vice versa. When she’s not doing food coordination for magazines or working on cookbooks, she travels to find inspiration for new recipes.

Her most recent adventure took her down to Kagoshima, with the television program Kitchen ga Hashiru , where she hunted for local ingredients and cooked alongside celebrity chef Hiroyuki Sakai, of Iron Chef fame. As she described the miso chutney she made -- a modern take on a Kyushu recipe of miso sautéed with sugar and bonito flakes -- I couldn’t help drooling a little, especially when she told me that it was used to garnish a kurobuta pork confit (I have a weakness for confit of all kinds).

We’re so glad we had the chance to collaborate with Chef Ema on Family and Friends, and we definitely hope she’ll agree to work with us again.

The Kagoshima episode of Kitchen ga Hashiru will air on NHK on December 30, at 7:30pm. Be sure to check it out!

Thanks to Chihiro Moriyama, Shizuka Wakashita, and Kiyoko Sagane for the images.

Ganbatte Tohoku Sake!

October marked the start of this year’s sake brewing season, and, despite the destruction wrought by the March 11 disasters in northeastern Japan, sake makers in Tohoku are back in business. More than half of the region’s 145 sake producers were affected by the earthquake and tsunami; in a few tragic cases, the breweries were completely razed. But according to sake guru John Gauntner, most are showing encouraging signs of revival.

“Almost everybody has managed to get up and running this season, and they’re back on their feet to a certain extent,” he says.

For some of these breweries, recovery has been nothing short of miraculous. In the hard-hit city of Ishinomaki, on the coast of Miyagi prefecture, the brewing facility of Hitakami Shuzo was inundated, toppling a dozen fermentation tanks and spilling a liquid carpet of sake across the floor. Fortunately, they were able to salvage a fraction of the sake and the brewery has made great efforts to pick up where they left off.

“I wasn’t sure that Hitakami was going to make it, but they’ve done a really good job,” Gauntner remarks.

In the months that have passed since the earthquake, breweries have shown formidable resolve and resourcefulness. Niizawa Shuzo, located in Osaki City, was spared flooding by the tsunami, but the impact of the earthquake rattled all five of the brewery’s buildings and caused irreparable damage to their foundations. This fall, Iwao Niizawa, the brewery’s fifth-generation president, was able to relocate the business to a new facility about an hour away, and production has resumed.

The tragedy has engendered an unprecedented spirit of cooperation among producers. Although nothing remains on the original site of Suisen Shuzo in Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture, president Yasuhiko Konno has found a way to keep brewing. After the 67-year-old brewery was swept away in the tsunami, Suisen turned to rival brewer Iwate Meijo Corp for help. Konno and Iwate Meijo head Yorihiko Oikawa agreed that Suisen could borrow the brewery’s facilities in Ichinoseki for a period of three years.

Distributors and retailers have also come together to show support for the affected brewers and communities in Tohoku. Across the nation and internationally, charity events and campaigns have been held to raise money and awareness for the disaster victims. Sake exporting company and retailer Hasegawa-sakaten collaborated with 12 breweries for its fund-raising project, “Kanpa+i,” a play on the words kanpai (cheers) and ai (love). A portion of the profits generated from the sale of sake bearing the Kanpa+i label will be donated to relief and rebuilding efforts.

“The program will run for a year,” says president Koichi Hasegawa. “We are thinking of new ideas to ensure that the events of March 11 are not forgotten.”

Although many have feared that fallout from the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima might pose further problems for Tohoku’s brewers, the threat of radiation contamination has proven to be low. The Japanese government has been testing rice all over the country, and no contamination has been detected in sake rice. “The rice has all come up clean, and some brewers will check it again,” Gauntner adds.

In September, the National Tax Agency announced plans to check all of the water used to make sake (as well as wine and beer) within a 150km radius of the nuclear facility, while random tests would be performed on water from other prefectures. The tax agency will also be screening the finished products for radiation.

So far, radiation concerns have not put a damper on consumption. In fact, sales of Tohoku sake have risen slightly, and some industry professionals speculate that the disaster may have sparked a renewed interest in the national drink among Japanese. No one knows whether the positive trends will continue, but one thing is clear: Tohoku’s sake makers are determined to keep brewing.

** A version of this article originally appeared in the Japan Times earlier this month.

Alright, folks, I've got a plane to catch but I'll be back soon. Onward, ho, Shanghai!

Born This Way

Sake, as the saying goes, has the power of a hundred medicines. But Atsuhide Kato, the 11th generation head of Kato Kichibee Shoten, whose brewery produces Born sake in Fukui prefecture, maintains that his brews can do a lot more than take the edge off a case of the sniffles.

“I always tell people that drinking Born will bring you visions of the future,” Kato-san declares, conveying the brewery’s philosophy first in English before switching to Japanese. “I really believe that. The name of our sake means ‘striking truth’ in Sanskrit, and also ‘birth to the future.’”

Kato speaks from personal experience. When he took the reigns at Kato Kichibee Shoten, he dreamed of turning their line of artisanal sake into a global sensation. The brewery, located in the tiny town of Sabae, has a history that goes back to the 1860s, and making sake for the local community had been its original focus. But, from the start of his tenure as president, Kato sought to expand their audience and worked to cultivate an international image for Born.

“Even in the early days, I pushed to participate in events all over the world. We’ve done events throughout Asia, the US, Europe, South Africa, and Dubai,” he tells me, as I furiously scramble to jot down notes.

Since then, Born has been exported to around 30 countries and has garnered accolades both domestically and abroad. Their award-winning Nihon no Tsubasa Junmai Daiginjo is the official sake served on board the Japanese government aircraft used by the Emperor and the Prime Minister. To celebrate the election of Barack Obama in 2008, former Prime Minister Yukio Hatayama presented the US President with a bottle of Yume wa Masayume Junmai Daiginjo, an elegant brew matured for five years.

The first time I encountered Born sake was long ago, through my good friends Etsuko and Ted of Tokyofoodcast. They had brought a bottle of Born Tokusen Junmai Daiginjo and suggested that we try it warmed. At that time, I was skeptical. I had never had a Daiginjo served warm and, whether or not I admitted it to myself, was still holding onto the notion that all premium sake should be served chilled.

How wrong I'd been. The Born Tokusen Junmai Daiginjo was delicious chilled -- with hints of perky citrus and round melon. But warmed, it really came into its own. Full-flavored yet mellow, with a velvety texture and generous umami depth, the sake reminded me of finding a warm, fuzzy blanket on a chilly evening.

Talking to Kato-san, it comes as no surprise that his brewery would produce sakes so bold and so visceral. While speaking on the phone, we are frequently disconnected as he races through highway tunnels (once, he hangs up when he sees a police vehicle). He is loquacious and charming and tells me things that sometimes surprise me.

Earlier this autumn, Kato Kichibee Shoten completed construction of a sparkling new brewing facility with enough space to store up to 20,000 koku (3,600 KL) of sake at temperatures below freezing.

“We usually age the sake for one to two years at around minus 5 degrees Celsius,” he explains. “Doing this gives Born a deep yet clean and smooth character.”

The new brewery was also designed to withstand a magnitude-8.5 earthquake and is equipped with extra fireproofing features. Although Fukui prefecture was unaffected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, Kato was moved by the plight of brewers and disaster victims in the northeast, and he worried what might happen if a similar calamity struck closer to home.

Taking swift action, Kato ordered several changes to the reconstruction plans, which had been drafted eighteen months before. An extensive third floor was added, along with stairs on the outside of the building, so that the brewery could be used as an evacuation shelter in the case of an emergency.

“We are a brewery that values the community,” Kato concludes. “We also want our brewery to be important for the community. In this way, we will go forward into the future together.”

Of Love Lost and Found: A Salty (Fish) Tale

My father’s face wore a look of cautious concern. “Let me just ask you this: Are you sure that he can handle it?”

I knew what this was about. My mother was making my favorite childhood dish — rice steamed with a pungent filet of salted, dried fish and Chinese sausages — and I’d invited my high school boyfriend over for dinner. After three years, my parents had finally gotten used to Shawn, had started to like him, even, but they never dreamed that I’d ask him to join us for hom-ngoy.

I folded my arms defensively across my chest. “Of course he can, Dad. Shawn loves Chinese food.”

“But we’re not talking about Chinese food here,” he protested. “Quite frankly, it stinks.” His head sprang up suddenly, and he looked around with his right hand extended, palm upturned, addressing an invisible audience in the kitchen. “You can’t ask the man to eat that.”

We’d ventured into a racial stereotype long held by my Chinese-American parents: the belief that white people can’t eat our food.

“That’s totally racist.”

“That’s not racist, that’s a fact,” he nodded sagely.

In truth, I could understand how my parents came to this idea. Having grown up in Mississippi and Louisiana respectively, my mother and father had encountered their fair share of Caucasians with unadventurous palates and narrow-minded attitudes toward Chinese culture in general. Living in Louisiana, we were still surrounded by such people, but I had tried to convince them that white people were not genetically predisposed to hating foreign foods. Besides, Shawn was different. Hadn't we just spent three weeks together studying Mandarin in Minnesota (he was much better at it than me)? Didn’t he extol, vociferously and repeatedly, the virtues of vegetarian Buddhist cuisine (I was an incurable carnivore)? Wasn’t he planning to travel to mainland China next summer to visit his Chinese pen pal (she’d even given him a Chinese name, Cheung Wei-han)?

“Look, he can handle it,” I snapped.

My dad shrugged and walked away. We would have to agree to disagree.

Cantonese salty fish has a highly idiosyncratic odor. It’s virtually synonymous with the word “stinky.” Countless stories have been told about neighbors who have called the police because families in a nearby apartment were cooking salty fish. My parents used to joke that I’d have no choice but to marry a Chinese guy because no one else would be able to stand the stench.

“I know that at least one of my daughters is going to marry a Chinese,” my dad would chuckle, drizzling a spoonful of oil over his rice and salty fish.

This comment invariably elicited laughs from the table while I remained uncomfortably silent. Little did they know that Shawn and I had already talked about marriage. We’d have a private ceremony in Greece, on a cliff overlooking the Aegean. I’d wear a simple white cotton shift; he’d cut his hair. All we had to do was wait until we finished university.

It’s not that I was philosophically opposed to marrying a Chinese man. It’s just that there were so few of them in Shreveport. The Yip brothers, Howard and Tommy, were hardly exciting choices. Perhaps for this reason, my parents had reluctantly agreed to send me to UC Berkeley.

“Dad, I really don’t think that salty fish and interracial marriage are mutually exclusive prospects,” I’d say with a sigh.

“Honey, you’re an optimist, but listen to me,” he’d say, waving away my comment and giving me a father-knows-best look. “No gwai-lo is ever going to be able to share his house with the smell of hom-ngoy.”


The funny thing is that I’d never thought of salty fish as stinky. In fact, when I catch a whiff of it cooking, I immediately get hungry and rub my hands together in anticipation.When steamed with plain white rice, the fish infuses the grains with an intoxicating base note of umami. It’s joltingly, mouth-wateringly salty, a thousand times more savory than Parmesan cheese, several factors saltier than anchovies. Unsurprisingly, you don’t need much to make an impact. My mother typically uses a modest rectangle about the size of a business card to feed our family of four.

The most common way to cook salty fish is to steam it with ground pork, slivers of ginger and chilies, perhaps with a few cubes of tofu. My Aunt Dorothy used to make this dish when I visited her, but it had never really grown on me. The flavors were muddled, the texture ambiguous.

I preferred my mom’s plain salty fish. First, she soaked the fish in a couple of changes of cold water to soften the flesh and tone down the salty bite. Then, she nestled the filet between a few links of sweet Chinese sausage, on top of the raw rice, and steamed everything together in the rice cooker. Once it was done, she’d slice up the sausages, plop the salty fish into a metal dish of hot oil, and set it over a candle to keep warm.

When I went away to college, I discovered the classic Cantonese dish of fried rice with salty fish, shredded chicken, and scallions. It was good, a treat I’d order when I went to dinner with Chinese friends, but it never came close to my mom’s salty fish.

As the evening wore on, I started to hear the bubble and hiss of the rice cooker, and the first heady puffs of fish-scented steam came curling out of the pot. I salivated; Shawn began to fidget.

“What’s that smell?” he asked, swiveling to look behind him.

“The salty fish,” I replied, and gave him a reassuring smile.

“The… fish?” he asked, incredulously. “That’s the fish?”

His face was ashen. He stood up and excused himself.

My mother poked her head into the living room. “Where’s Shawn?” she asked.

“Um, bathroom,” I muttered.

Five minutes later, he was back, with a towel covering his nose. “Oh, god,” he gasped. “It’s everywhere. You can’t escape the smell.”

My eyes widened in a mixture of disbelief and fear. “I cannot believe this is happening — I can’t believe that my father was right!” my mind screamed, as my 17-year-old worldview crumbled quietly around me.

“Oh, no,” he was squirming in earnest now, frantically reaching for his jacket and packing his bag. “I’m sorry, but I think I’m gonna be sick.”

After a quick apology to my parents, he rushed out the door. My father remained diplomatically silent, and we refrained from discussing the incident over dinner.

I was stunned. A couple of months later, Shawn and I broke up for the first time. A year after that, our relationship was officially over.


My father and I repeated our little kitchen conference a few years ago, when I brought my Canadian boyfriend JP home to introduce him to my parents. My mother had asked me what we’d wanted to eat, and I replied, “Salty fish.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, full of uncertainty. My dad gave me a look that said, “We’ve been through this before.”

“Mom, trust me,” I said.

A tremor of anxiousness hovered in the air as my mother began to prepare the fish. She looked at me one more time before turning on the rice cooker.

Before long, the familiar aroma began to waft through the kitchen and into the other rooms of the house. JP had been watching TV when he turned to me and asked, “What’s that smell?”

My father leapt from his chair, as if ready to put out a fire. I felt a flutter of incipient nausea.

“What’s that delicious smell?” JP asked again. My dad and I both froze.

“Isn’t it the most delicious thing you’ve ever smelled?” I asked, a smile spreading involuntarily across my face.

“It kind of is,” he replied. He sounded almost surprised at his answer.

JP and I will celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary in April. We devour salty fish with relish whenever we visit my parents in Louisiana, or when we travel to places like Hong Kong. If we could find it in Japan, though, we'd happily make it at home. Who cares what the neighbors think?

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A version of this story originally appeared in the magazine Nomad Editions Real Eats. JP and I recently returned from a long trip to visit his family in Canada and mine in Louisiana, where we feasted on salty fish and Chinese sausages, among (many) other things.