When a friend named Tomoko visited New York last week I quickly invited her over for dinner. The catch: She had to do all the cooking (Some bargain!). I heard that Tomoko was a great cook, schooled by her grandmother -- still going strong at age 97 -- when she was a girl. While Tomoko grew up in bustling Tokyo, her family hails from the rural Niigata Prefecture, an area of northern Japan known for its top-notch artisanal sake and Koshihikari rice (no surprise the two go together).
With a pink Ivy cap covering her pigtailed hair, Tomoko walked into my kitchen, hung a hand towel from the front pocket of her jeans, popped open a beer and got busy. She cooked a half dozen dishes, from tofu ohitashi with pickled daikon (a kind of salad) to steamed chives with a ponzu dipping sauce. I wanted to share one of them with you: Japanese mixed rice. I've been fascinated by this particular dish, which is so astonishingly versatile and seasonal. Tomoko prepared hers with dried shiitake mushrooms, soy sauce and abura age, thin deep friend sliced tofu. And she also added another ingredient -- sake. "My grandmother taught me to add sake to the rice," Tomoko explained. "It helps bring out the rice's natural flavors." Wisdom from the far north. Here's the recipe:
