Japanese, Jewish Recipes
3 recipes found
Miso Matzo Ball Soup
This is a delightful, comforting soup to start your Passover Seder (see Tip) or to serve any time of year. The matzo balls add a festive crosscultural touch to miso soup, a dish so beloved in Japan it’s consumed at almost every meal. Vary the vegetables and tofu as you wish, adding potatoes, onion, carrots, cabbage or really any thinly cut vegetable that you fancy. Fresh ginger and a bit of ichimi togarashi give the matzo balls some punch. Finish the soup with a sprinkle of Japanese shiso leaves, a member of the mint family. For a large crowd, you can prepare both the soup and the matzo balls ahead of time and heat them up separately, combining them just before serving.
Shalom Japan’s Lox Bowl
The lox bowl at Shalom Japan, a Brooklyn restaurant created by chef-owners Sawako Okochi and Aaron Israel, shows how the combination of ingredients can tell a story. Lox, a Jewish-American staple, is set over a bed of sushi rice, inspired by Japanese chirashi bowls, in a meal that marries the cultures of both chefs. The dish combines lox, avocado and spicy mayo with crunchy cucumber, tangy pickles, sweetened kombu and fresh herbs, in a pile of salty, sweet and acidic umami. It takes some prep and quite a few ingredients, but you can pick and choose toppings to taste: “There aren’t too many rules, other than doing fish over rice,” Mr. Israel said. They cure their own salmon with parsley and dill, coriander and bonito flakes at Shalom Japan, but you can top your rice with store-bought gravlax, or even cooked salmon, tuna or scallops, before piling on your desired garnishes.
Okonomi-Latke
This hybrid of the Japanese okonomiyaki pancake and the traditional Jewish latke is from Sawako Okochi and Aaron Israel, the chefs and owners of Shalom Japan in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It works beautifully in any setting where you might ordinarily serve latkes and is a fine base for caviars of any hue.