[/floatr]Reuters: Japanese chef Yamamoto takes tradition to new limits
Internationally acclaimed Japanese chef Seiji Yamamoto, who has had CT scans performed on sea eels to study their bone structure, is determined to take traditional cuisine to new limits. Yamamoto has wowed international cooking forums with techniques such as silk-screening a barcode for mobile phones onto a plate using squid ink. A signature dessert dish includes powdery ice cream made with liquid nitrogen. But his restaurant "Ryugin" in Tokyo also boasts classic Japanese "kaiseki" dishes -- charcoal-grilled sweetfish in the summer and soups with fragrant matsutake mushrooms in the autumn. The soups include pieces of sea eel, whose small bones must be chopped finely. Thanks to the CT scan, Yamamoto now chops the bones at precise angles to give the eel a smoother texture. Yamamoto, 38, spoke to Reuters in Tokyo on the sidelines of a recent gastronomy summit...
Q: You've talked about the evolution of Japanese cuisine. How do you see Japanese food going forward?
A: There are three aspects. First, with ingredients becoming more and more available and our surroundings improving, cooking will evolve just by using what's available with the technology at hand. Another is taking a Japanese dish to another direction. For example, I've replaced yuzu (an Asian citrus fruit) with orange peel when combining it with stock mixed with soy sauce. Thirdly, there is the incorporation of something that didn't exist before in the basics of cooking, for example, using liquid nitrogen. Ten years from now, there will probably be many new discoveries. In Japan, we are not taught to be unique. We are taught to be harmonious. But in cooking, that shouldn't matter, because cooking is about creativity. As long as you can express something that tastes good, you have freedom beyond that...more...
Yamamoto doesn't like the term but his approach is known as molecular gastronomy. There's a review of his restaurant here.
