Nikkei Cookbook Giveaway + Nikkei Recipe for Prawn Moqueca

This week I am sharing my Nikkei recipe for Prawn Moqueca & Coriander Rice Donburi. This is a super easy and quick recipe to put together, and ideal for any special occasions or as a weekend treat. 

Jacqui Small Publishers are offering 1 copy of my cookbook Nikkei Cuisine: Japanese Food the South American Way to 2 readers of The London Foodie, so 2 copies in total. The prize includes free delivery within the UK. See further details of #NikkeiCookbookCompetition below.

Good luck!

Prawn Moqueca 
& Coriander Rice Donburi

Moqueca is a quintessentially Brazilian dish, with nearly every seaside town having its own variation on the theme. In Bahia, they add an African element to the dish in the form of dendê oil. Derived from the palm tree, this bright orange oil has a very special flavour for which there is no substitute. Moqueca is very easy to prepare, and you can substitute prawns with small fillets of fish or other types of seafood. I love serving this moqueca over Japanese rice flavoured with coriander and lemon rice, as in this donburi recipe.

Ingredients:

Serves 6 

750g large fresh prawns, peeled and deveined (reserve 2 whole prawns for presentation)
2 tbsp light soy sauce
½ tsp black pepper
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 lemon, juice

400g tinned Italian tomatoes including juice
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp paprika
400ml coconut milk
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 tbsp dendê oil (palm oil – available from Brazilian or African food shops)
2 tbsp coriander cress
Maldon sea salt

For the coriander rice:
450g short-grain white rice
600ml water
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp Maldon sea salt
8 tbsp coriander, finely chopped
½ lemon, juice and zest
2 garlic cloves, crushed

Method:

First, prepare the Japanese steamed rice. Wash the rice in a bowl with plenty of fresh water using a circular motion with your hand. Drain the water and repeat three or four times until the water runs clear. Transfer the rice to a sieve and let it drain for 15 minutes. Next, transfer the rice to a bowl and soak it in the water for 30 minutes or up to 4 hours (the longer the soaking, the wetter and stickier the rice will be).

Rice cooker method: when the soaking time is up, add the rice and soaking water to the rice cooker bowl, close the lid and turn it on. It should take approximately 15–20 minutes to cook. Once the rice cooker’s alarm beeps, let the rice rest in the unopened rice cooker for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Pan and stove method: choose a pan with a tightly fitting lid (preferably of glass) and with a small ventilation hole for some of the steam to escape. When the soaking time is up, add the rice and soaking water to the pan, place the lid on and bring to the boil (a glass lid will allow to see when the water comes to a boil). As soon as it boils, turn the heat to its lowest setting and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Do not remove the lid at any stage during cooking or resting. Take off the heat and let the rice rest for a further 15 minutes before serving.

Once the rice is cooked and before fluffing it, make a green coriander salsa by mixing in a bowl the extra virgin olive oil, salt, juice and fine zest of a lemon, crushed garlic cloves and finely chopped coriander. Fold the coriander salsa well into the cooked rice.

In a bowl, add the prawns, the light soy sauce, the lemon juice and garlic, mix well, cover and marinade for 15 minutes.

Blend the tinned tomatoes with their juices in a food processor, pass through a sieve discarding any seeds or skin.

In a medium-sized cast iron pan, fry the chopped onion on a low heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the paprika, 2 teaspoons of Maldon sea salt and the tomato purée and simmer, stirring occasionally, until most liquid has evaporated and the mixture is thick, about 10 minutes. 

Meanwhile, in a separate pan, fry the reserved whole prawns in a little olive oil until pink, about 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and cover the pan to keep the prawns warm.

Now stir in the coconut milk and finely chopped red chilli to the thickened tomato sauce, bring to the boil, then add the prepared prawns and its marinade, and cook until the prawns have gone lightly pink, about 1 minute. Stir in the dendê oil, turn off the heat and check for seasoning.

A classic Japanese donburi is a bowl of steamed rice with a topping of meat, fish or vegetables. For this dish, however, I like serving the moqueca de camarão placed around the rice rather than over it. Lightly grease a rice bowl with a little oil, fill it with rice and press it down so that the rice is lightly compressed. Turn the rice bowl onto the middle of a serving plate and remove the bowl. Spoon the moqueca de camarão around the mound of coriander rice adding plenty of sauce, place the whole prawns on the plate finishing with a scattering of coriander cress. Serve immediately.

HOW TO ENTER - NIKKEI COOKBOOK GIVEAWAY

You can enter the giveaway in three different ways and to increase your chances of winning:

Method 1 – Blog Comment
Leave a comment in this blog post.

Method 2 – Twitter
If you do not follow @thelondonfoodie on Twitter, you must do so before entering this competition. Then tweet the exact sentence (shown in italics) below:

I’d love to win a copy of Nikkei Cuisine: Japanese Food the South American Way from @TheLondonFoodie - #NikkeiCookbookCompetition

Method 3 - Instagram
If you do not follow @thelondonfoodie on Instagram, you must do so before entering this competition. Then post a picture of a Nikkei dish attempted by yourself at home using the hashtag #NikkeiCookbookCompetition. 

You can attempt the Prawn Moqueca recipe in this blog post, or perhaps the Salmon Tiradito with Passion Fruit Leche de Tigre, or if you prefer cooking something else, just google 'Luiz Hara Nikkei Recipes', there are a few other options available by other online publications. 

TERMS & CONDITIONS

The deadline for entries is midnight GMT Saturday 12th December 2015.

The winner will be selected from all valid entries using a random.org.

Each (of two) prizes is a copy of Nikkei Cuisine: Japanese Food the South American Way published by Jacqui Small. The prize includes delivery within in the UK. We cannot guarantee a pre-Christmas delivery date.

The prize cannot be redeemed for a cash value.

The prize is offered and provided by Jacqui Small.

One blog, Twitter and Instagram entry per person only i.e. a maximum of 3 entries per person. You can triple your chances of winning if you enter on all 3 platforms.

For Twitter and Instagram entries, winners must be following @thelondonfoodie at the time of notification. 

Blog comment entries must provide a valid email address for contact.

The winners will be notified by email, Twitter or Instagram so please make sure you check your accounts for the notification message. If no response is received from a winner within 3 days of notification, a new winner will be picked and contacted.

Where prizes are to be provided by a third party, The London Foodie accepts no responsibility for the acts or defaults of that third party.

THE WINNERS OF THIS GIVEAWAY, RANDOMLY SELECTED VIA RANDOM.ORG WERE: @VI_WOO (VIA TWITTER) AND MARTINE CARTER.

Thanks everyone for entering the competition!

Nikkei Recipe - Salmon Tiradito with Passion Fruit and Aji Amarillo Tiger's Milk

My cookbook 'Nikkei Cuisine: Japanese Food the South South American Way' was recently published by Jacqui Small. It was a hectic but incredible time writing this book, which saw me travelling to Peru, Brazil and Europe to research it. I learnt a great deal about Nikkei life and cuisine and some touching stories about my own family I never knew. The book is a personal collection of over 100 recipes ranging from family favourites to contributions by Japanese and Nikkei Michelin-starred restaurants I visited during my research trips.

I will be sharing with you in the coming 12 weeks, 12 recipes from the Nikkei cookbook and I hope they will encourage you try cooking Nikkei at home. If you try one of these recipes I would be keen to hear your thoughts.

Thanks and enjoy!

Salmon and Passion Fruit Tiradito
Crispy Butternut Squash, Espelette Pepper

The world is your oyster when it comes to seasoning Tiradito. Much as I love using lime as a major component for Leche de Tigre, there is a whole range of different fruits to play with. Here, I use passion fruit and aji amarillo (Peruvian yellow chilli) to create a zingy, punchy dressing that works really well with the fatty salmon. Finish the dish with a dusting of fine Espelette pepper for a gentle, fruity hint of chilli.

Serves 4

200g sushi-graded salmon fillet, skinned
½ butternut squash 
Sunflower oil for deep-frying
a few sprigs of chervil (or coriander)

For the passion fruit Leche de Tigre (Tiger’s Milk):
4 small passion fruit, juice and seeds (around 50g in total)
1 teaspoon of aji amarillo paste
1 lemon, juiced (60ml)
¼ teaspoon of salt
1 clove garlic, cut 
1cm slice of ginger
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp sugar
¼ banana shallot, very finely chopped
2 tbsp of chervil, very finely chopped (or coriander)

A sprinkle of Espelette pepper (can substitute with sichimi pepper)
A sprinkle of Maldon salt flakes

Make the passion fruit leche de tigre by whizzing all the ingredients (except the shallot and chervil, and 1-2 tablespoons of passion fruit seeds to be reserved for the presentation) in a food processor. Pass it through a fine sieve, add the finely chopped shallot and chervil. Refrigerate until needed.

Peel the butternut squash. Using a zester, cut fine strips of squash rather like spaghetti. Line a plate with absorbent paper. Add sunflower oil to a pan and heat to 140°C (note – use a deep pan and do not fill more than 1/3 full as the hot oil will rise to the surface as the squash is added). Fry the butternut squash spaghetti for about 1 minute until lightly browned, transfer to the lined plate. The squash strands will not be crispy at this stage but do not worry – they will crisp up as they cool down. Season with sea salt.

Remove any residual brown flesh from the salmon fillet. Cut the salmon into thin slices and arrange them in a single row over each of the four serving plates. For each plate, spoon 2 to 3 tablespoons of the passion fruit leche de tigre over the salmon, dot with a few passion fruit seeds around the plate, arrange a line of crispy butternut squash spaghetti in the middle of the salmon row, and scatter a few sprigs of chervil (or coriander) over the squash and on the plate. Sprinkle some Maldon sea salt flakes and Espelette pepper. Serve immediately.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this book, it is on sale on Amazon here. Alternatively, if you are visiting my supper club, you can purchase a signed copy here.

Nikkei Cuisine – Japanese Food the South American Way

Chef Tsuyoshi Murakami hands me a small plate – in it are two slivers of salmon sashimi, lightly blow-torched, in an amber-coloured sauce. I am sitting at the sushi counter of this elegant Japanese restaurant taking in the muted chatter of diners and the delicious smells around me.

This might have been one of the many fine-dining establishments in Ginza or perhaps Shinjuku in Tokyo, but as I take the first slice of salmon, the flavours of butter, Tahitian lime and soy sauce linger on my tongue. So wonderful, and yet so un-Japanese, for I am at Kinoshita Restaurant in Vila Nova Conceição, one of the swankiest districts in the city of São Paulo, Brazil.

Chef Murakami is one of millions of Japanese men, women and children who, over the last 100 years, have crossed the oceans to Brazil in search of a new life. Today, Kinoshita is regarded as one of the top restaurants in the country.

Chef Tsuyoshi Murakami at Restaurant Kinoshita, São Paulo, Brazil

On June 18 1908, the first Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil after a 7-week journey from Kobe on board the Kasato Maru. Immigration was encouraged to help solve the farming manpower crisis in the Brazilian coffee plantations caused by the abolition of slavery in 1888. Most of these early Japanese immigrants imagined their trip as a temporary endeavour – a way to achieve prosperity before returning to their native country. However, the advent of the Second World War and the demise of Japan resulted in most of them considering Brazil as their permanent home, including my grandparents.

Fast forward 100 years, and today the Japanese community in Brazil is the largest outside Japan, with most people of Japanese descent (known as Nikkei) living in São Paulo. Peru is home to the second largest Nikkei community in South America, where Japanese immigration started 9 years earlier in 1899.

An old family picture in Brazil, 1930s

I was raised by my Japanese grandmother, who unknown to me or anyone else at the time, was a true pioneer of what has lately become the fashionable Nikkei cuisine. This is the cooking of Japanese emigrants who, out of necessity, adapted local ingredients to the cooking techniques of their homeland.  

My grandmother's passport used when she immigrated to Brazil in 1927

Nikkei cooking is an integral part of the culinary heritage of countries like Brazil and Peru, and more recently in the USA and Europe, it has gained popularity due to the influence of chefs like Nobu Matsuhisa. Several Nikkei restaurants opened in London including Chotto Matte and Sushi Samba. In Barcelona, Albert and Ferran Adria from the late El Bulli opened their own Nikkei restaurant Pakta, earning rave reviews.

‘In Peru, Japanese immigrants must have been shocked by the enormous difference between the diets they were so used to and the new products they were consuming. They were forced to adapt in a thousand different ways’, explained chef Mitsuharu Tsumura. We were chatting over one of the signature dishes at his restaurant in the upmarket district of Miraflores in Lima –Maido is currently number 7 on San Pelligrino’s 50 Best Restaurants of Latin America, and is also considered the best of its kind in the city.

Chef Mitsuharu Tsumura at Maido Restaurant, Lima, Peru

To many Peruvian Japanese, Chef Mitsuharu Tsumura’s Nikkei ceviche is possibly the dish that best conjures up the marriage of these two culinary traditions. He says ‘It has Japanese ponzu and dashi to counter the intensity of the lime and the aji [Peruvian chilli]. Two attitudes meet and complement each other here: serenity and spice’. And indeed they did - it was a delectable and well-judged dish.

Chef Mitsuharu Tsumura's Nikkei Cebiche

Japanese Chef Toshiro Konishi, regarded by many as the father of Peruvian Nikkei cuisine, is a national treasure. Arriving in Lima in the 1970s to work alongside Nobu Matsuhisa at Matsuei, Konishi-san fell in love with the Peruvian people and the wonderful native ingredients of the land and sea, never returning to live in Japan.

Chef Toshiro Konishi handing me a plate of tiradito at his restaurant Toshiro's, Lima, Peru

I met him at Toshiro’s in San Isidro, Lima, to talk about Nikkei cuisine and try one of his creations – tiradito. Today, one of the national dishes of Peru, this is the Nikkei answer to another local favourite, ceviche. Tiradito was invented by Chef Konishi who decided to slice the fish thinly, sashimi style rather than cubed, and serve it raw with leche de tigre, not marinated in lime or with red onions and corn. Much as I love a well-made ceviche, Toshiro’s tiradito was truly sensational –lighter, more delicate and the excellent quality of the local Peruvian fish really shone through.

Chef Toshiro Konishi's Tiradito (Peruvian-Nikkei Sashimi)

Back in São Paulo, at Momotaro restaurant, third generation Japanese descendent chef Adriano Kanashiro served me his most popular Nikkei dish – a sushi of tuna, foie gras and figs that is one of the finest I have tasted. Perhaps the most avant-garde of Nikkei chefs in Brazil, Kanashiro explores the fruits of the Amazon for culinary inspiration.

Japanese immigration, although in smaller numbers, still takes place in South America. In São Paulo, I was charmed to meet chef Shin Koike at his restaurant Sakagura A1 and learnt of his arrival in the country as early as 20 years ago. “Brazil is my adopted home; I embraced its culture, people and food wholeheartedly” he said. His kids were born there and as their parents, are truly integrated in Brazilian society – “I will never live in Japan again” he concluded.

Chef Shin Koike at Sakagura A1 Restaurant, São Paulo, Brazil

We shared a splendid Nikkei meal at Sakagura A1 ending it on a high note with his Rapadura ice cream with Cachaça and coffee jelly for dessert. Here, Chef Koike pays homage to two of the most popular of Brazilian flavours. Rapadura is Brazilian unrefined sugar cane in solid form, much akin to his native kokutō (Japanese muscovado sugar) it was the perfect base for his Nikkei creation together with Cachaça, the national spirit of Brazil, enjoyed in many Caipirinhas across that nation and beyond.

My grandmother was no Nobu, but she used what she could find in Brazil to create the most delicious Nikkei dishes. I was lucky enough to grow up in her house eating this style of cooking, and am pleased to see it reaching out beyond South America. Until now, Brazil and Peru were perhaps the most unlikely places you would visit for top-quality Japanese food. But if you would like to try Nikkei cooking, Japanese food the South American way, head down to São Paulo or Lima and check out some of these dazzling restaurants for yourself.

A day in São Paulo zoo with my o-baachan (grandmother)

Alternatively, why not experiment cooking Nikkei dishes at your own home? My cookbook ‘Nikkei Cuisine – Japanese Food the South American Way’ will be published on the 22nd October 2015, it can be pre-ordered on Amazon here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nikkei-Cuisine-Japanese-South-American/dp/1910254207