“The roasted sesame seeds are sprinkled on at the end. You get the texture and you get the aroma, and that adds to the flavor too. In Japan sesame figures heavily in this dish.”
“We start out with a traditional ten jan yu sauce, a “rich and sweet soy” as the characters indicate. It’s very thick, but we then mix it with chile pepper, sesame oil, soy sauce, and vinegar. It’s sweet and salty and brings out the chicken even more.”
“Ideally the guest should have a little of each of these, and the mizuna, in each bite. Each has its own aroma, and all are raw and unmarinated. The daikon is one we found here locally, but it’s bitter the way the Japanese daikon is and balances out the sweetness of the dish.”
“We rub the thigh with salt and pepper and boil it briefly with sancho peppers and scallions. Then we debone it and let it sit overnight in a sauce of more sancho peppers, scallion, ginger, rice wine, and white pepper. It comes out salty.”
“We used these leaves because we wanted something Japanese in the dish. It’s a water leaf — very fresh.”