Just as I do in my restaurants, when I cook at home I enjoy bringing together locally sourced ingredients and Japanese flavours and techniques.
I call this a Cork chowder, because I have sourced my ingredients from the local area. In the challenging times we are all facing, I think it is important to support local producers as much as possible.
You can, of course, find all the ingredients in a food store, or online, but I prefer to source locally.
Takashi Miyazaki is chef proprietor at Miyazaki and Ichigo Ichie, both in Cork
Cork chowder
Serves four
Ingredients
For the dashi:
1 ltr water
15g kombu (from Asian stores, online, or larger supermarkets)
15g katsobushi (bonito flakes)
For the chowder:
4 Castletownbere scallops (or 24 clams, or some fresh cod)
4 dry cured streaky rashers
2 medium new potatoes
1 onion
1 medium carrot
20g butter
2 tbsp plain flour
600ml full-fat milk
600ml dashi (made from ingredients above)
10g dried nori
To season: sea salt and soy sauce
Method
1. Make the dashi first. Soak the kombu in one litre of water overnight.
2. Heat the kombu and water and bring to the boil. Take the kombu out just before it starts to boil. Continue to boil for a few minutes and skim off any impurities that rise to the surface.
3. Take the pot off the heat and add the bonito flakes. Leave them in the dashi for three minutes, then strain them out. Now you have katsuo dashi.
4. To make the chowder: Slice the scallops into three layers and sprinkle salt over them. Leave for 30 minutes, then use kitchen paper to pat them dry and take the moisture out from the salted scallops.
5. Dice the potato, onion and carrot. Place the veg in a saucepan and fry gently with the butter.
6. When the vegetables are cooked, add the flour, stir it through and keep frying on a low heat for five minutes .
7. Pour the dashi into the saucepan with the vegetables and heat it up. When it is hot, put the streaky rashers into the stock. Continue to simmer the dashi for five minutes, then remove the rashers.
8. Add the milk to the vegetable and dashi pot and season with salt and soy sauce. Bring to the boil and immediately take it off from the heat. Make sure you do not keep boiling as the milk may separate.
9. Place a steaky rasher, scallop and vegetables into each bowl. Pour the dashi chowder into the bowls and garnish with nori seaweed.
Kitchen Cabinet is a series of recipes from chefs who are members of Euro-toques Ireland who have come together during the coronavirus outbreak to share some of the easy, tasty things that they like to cook and eat at home #ChefsAtHome
