Culinary Development Lab Recipes
Chilled green tea and chicken (Mt. Fuji ice-drawn dashi, green tea, Suruga shamo chicken soup, avocado jade, eggplant wrap)
COOKING INGREDIENTS
Culinary Development Lab Recipes
FREE
Ingredients
- Serves 10
- Cost: ¥350
- Cooking time: 30 min
- Cooks: 1
Shizuoka green tea
25 g
Rock ice (natural Mt. Fuji spring water)
700 g
Shamo chicken carcass (Suruga-produced)
1
Water
1 shō (1.8 L)
Sake
100 ml
Naganegi
10 cm
Ginger
2 slices
Shizuoka green tea
200 ml
Kuzu starch
100 ml
Ground shamo chicken
100 g
Avocado
80 g
Yamato yam
20 g
Egg white
1
Fresh cream
1 tsp
Eggplant
1 piece
Daikon radish
to taste
Yellow carrot
to taste
Carrot
to taste
Method
Method
❶ Put tea leaves into ice cubes (rock ice) and let it steep overnight.
❷ Steam the avocado, soak it overnight in tentsuyu (tempura dipping sauce), then pass it through a fine sieve to make a paste.
❸ Deep-fry the eggplant plain and let it soak overnight in chicken stock.
❹ Strain the green tea that has been ice-brewed (koridashi).
❺ Blanch the chicken carcasses, thoroughly clean off the blood and membranes, then set them over heat with water, sake, leek, and ginger; start over high heat, and slowly draw out the stock over 2 hours.
❻ Season the chicken stock with light soy sauce and salt, let it cool, then combine it with the green tea in a 2:1 ratio to make the combined dashi.
❼ Combine ground chicken with avocado, egg white, and Yamato yam (yamato-imo), shape it into a ball (torigyoku), cook it through, and let it cool.
❽ Cut the eggplant into fine strips, arrange them in a lattice pattern, and wrap it up in a chakin-style cloth wrap.
❾ Combine green tea and Yoshino kuzu in a 2:1 ratio to make a green-tea kuzu preparation, shape it into a ball, drape it over the dish, and plate it.
Want to check the seasoning blend before you cook?
COMMENT
Thinking afresh about dashi in Japanese cuisine, I realized it's created through the synergy between glutamic acid and inosinic acid, the umami compounds in kombu and katsuo, so I focused my attention on umami compounds themselves. Among those, what I picked up on was 'tea.' Tea contains a lot of the same glutamic acid as kombu, so I decided to use the tea we serve at work. The tea is Asatsuyu from Shizuoka Prefecture, which has a stronger flavor than other teas. To draw out more umami, I extracted it over two nights using ice, suppressing bitterness while drawing out the umami compounds and sweetness. Since tea is a field crop, for the dashi ingredient I chose Suruga Shamo chicken, also from Shizuoka, and used natural water from Mt. Fuji as well, combining the tea and the Suruga Shamo stock in a ratio of 2 to 1 to make the soup base. For the soup's main ingredient, I wrapped jade-colored eggplant around a core of ground Suruga Shamo meat and avocado. Since the eggplant is deep-fried in oil, guests can also enjoy the oil itself as part of the umami.