What's Cooking?
A great YouTube chef and some other thoughts
There’s a cooking channel on YouTube I really like watching: Sushi By Kunihiro. It’s a simple, informative channel run by a Japanese chef who explains familiar, and some less familiar, Japanese dishes with very useful, clear instructions.
This is probably the recipe I make the most often: tonkatsu, a Japanese cutlet, typically pork (but it can be chicken, beef, shrimp, or even oyster!)
Sounds easy enough. But these videos are helpful. They’re a good guide for anyone trying to explain a process, in fact. He doesn’t gloss over the details of how, exactly, to get the dish to come out just right. For example: cut the edges of the cutlet a little bit to stop it from curling up in the deep fryer. Mix a little bit of cooking oil in with the egg to give it an extra stickiness. Use a fork to handle the cutlets so your fingers don’t leave impressions in them where the breading won’t adhere as well.
All his videos are like this. No flashy nonsense, no cringey jokes, no pretending that some all-day recipe with fancy ingredients is “super simple to make” or whatever (none of these are that complicated anyway). You can see that this is someone who cares about conveying a piece of his culture, and not relying on entertainment value. I like that—it’s a general attitude that’s too rare in all sorts of media today.
Here’s another one, for a dish that’s on every sushi restaurant menu but which I’ve never actually had before! The first time I’ll have it will be my own attempt:
I also love the music in his videos. There’s something comforting about a years-old channel using the same soundtrack the whole time. It subtly gives you a feeling that this thing is solid, going to be there. It makes me want to wake up early, work in the kitchen or in the house, plan meals. Elevate housework.
We got the first proper snow in quite awhile the other day, and there’s something about looking out the window of a warm home and seeing the quiet snowy weather out there. Even better if there’s something in the oven. I love the idea of making a home, for my wife now, and our kids in the future. One thing I look forward to when we have kids is reproducing these things for them. Things that make the world feel bigger but cozier at the same time. I imagine all of that watching one of these videos.
I felt the same way making our Christmas prime rib (for which we used this recipe, from another chef with a great YouTube channel). Believe it or not, our prime rib was a year old—we got it deeply discounted in January of 2023, and kept it in our vertical garage freezer. All year we’d see it, and when we sat down to have it for Christmas dinner, we were amazed how good it was! A great dinner and a fun story. (Salt and season it at least 24 hours before roasting—it bakes better and tastes better!)
One day this chef will stop producing videos. Maybe for some reason he’ll delete his channel. The whole internet makes fleeting things feel solid, or maybe the other way around, or maybe both. The fact that you can conjure things up with a few clicks or flicks obscures the physicality of real life. The internet can really suck you in.
I like watching things that don’t lean into that, and then going and trying to make the recipe. Here’s one—in fact, I made this the evening I wrote this piece. It was supposed to be a simple weeknight meal, but somehow they always get fancier.
I won’t always have the time for this kind of thing on a work night. I don’t always have time for it now. Kids will mean perfecting true quick weeknight meals (which I’m sure I can do much better than the Savory magazine from Giant/Stop & Shop—hey, that might be another piece!). Work might not always permit this kind of time. But while it does, I enjoy it, and think of it as a gift.
Related Reading:
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I really enjoyed this piece, Addison! When I lived in New Mexico I had time to cook these elaborate Japanese washoku meals and it made life feel exactly as you say--bigger, cozier, more intentional. Time due to the pandemic but also more mental space to think about and plan for meals like this, and then many delicious leftovers. Your piece reminds me that much of the structure of daily life is founded on intention, and habit. And that it’s within our power to shape our days, even with the simple intention of making our homes more homelike... in space but also in time.
If you’re interested, a really excellent cookbook that explains ingredients and offers a lot of great traditional Japanese home-cooked dishes (versus more elaborate restaurant dishes like ramen, sushi, or tempura) is Elizabeth Andoh’s “Washoku”. She also has a cookbook based on Buddhist monastic food called “Kansha.” I found these great introductions and reference books as a Westerner. They help contextualize a lot of the underlying meaning and intention in Japanese cuisine, which to my mind enriches the experience further.
As I teach my kids to cook, this is something I am learning all over again: Recipes are only “easy” if you have all the prerequisite skills and knowledge.
Even a salad is laborious and time-consuming if you aren’t practiced at chopping veggies. And most cooks and recipe-writers don’t realize how many little bits of knowledge they leave out.