Bringing Japanese umami to India

Ditch the spice box and indulge in the delicate flavours of dashi, soy, sake and mirin. This Japanese pop-up organised by The Omakase Kitchen will be serving some of the most popular delicacies from Japan. Curated by chefs Ronak Nanda and Jahan Bloch, you are sure to get an authentic taste of the Japanese cuisine.

A self-taught baker, Jahan was introduced to the cuisine on her many travels to foreign lands. She says, “Whenever I travelled, I ate a lot of Japanese food and now we do have Japanese restaurants over here in India. And since Ronak and me started working together, we both realised that Japanese could be our forte because we really liked Asian flavours.” And that’s how the journey of The Omakase Kitchen began. Served in a community style meal, the menu consists of dishes like onigiri, okonomiyaki and many more dishes that might sound like tongue twisters phonetically, but are really tongue tantalisers on the taste buds. Talking about these exotic dishes Jahan throws light on the traditional contents that go into these preparations, “Starting off with Onigiri, which is basically a snack in Japan, is a type of sushi made with sticky rice, filled with fish and wrapped with nori (edible seaweed or Japanese sea vegetable). Then we have the Okonomiyaki, which is a seaweed pancake that is loaded with vegetables and seafood. We also have Takoyaki that originated from Osaka in Japan and is also a street food snack,” she says. The word Takoyak,i when split into two halves simply means Octopus rice. “Tako means octopus and Yaki means rice, so it’s dough balls with octopus, but we serve it with prawns instead,” informs Jahan.

The flavours are simple, but some of the ingredients cannot be locally sourced in India or these are ingredients that you may not find easily in a traditional Indian kitchen. “So some things like miso, which you can’t really make over here, we obviously source but most of the things we buy locally. Like we make our own noodles from scratch, we make it with ragi or nachni (finger millet) and for the Katsu curry we use the northeastern black sticky rice. So we try and be truthful to the flavours from Japan but we also use local stuff because these are fresh and India has a lot of good stuff to offer,” says the chef.  

Being an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands, Japan offers an abundance of seafood, but vegetarians need not worry assures Jahan. “India has huge vegetarian population so we always have to cater to the vegetarian crowd. Whatever the dishes, we always make a vegetarian version of it. So we replace meat with tofu, the ramen has a miso soup with tofu, katsu curry will have fried aubergines in it, the Okonomiyaki will be loaded with vegetables, and the onigiri will have avocados.”

The duo has already run a micro restaurant in Bandra and has tried and tested all the recipes. Quiz Jahan about keeping up with the numerous Asian and Japanese restaurants popping up in the city, and the chef is quick to say, “Our USP is that we serve dishes that are not available in the city. We’ve kept a few of the old dishes—Ramen, Katsu Curry and Takoyaki — which were the best sellers at our kitchen. But we have also added a few new dishes such as the Imagawayaki and the Okonomiyaki that are not easily available in the city.”

Onigiri (rice triangles)

Ingredients
1 cup cooked Sushi rice
½ cup water with 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
 Wasabi to taste
 2 nori sheets
 1 small Cucumber
 1 small Carrots
 ½ of the Avocado
 2 teaspoon Togarashi spice
 ½ teaspoon Soy sauce
 1 tablespoon Mayonnaise
 Sesame seeds for garnish

Equipment
 Cutting board
 Sharp knife
 Bowl

Method
 Dice the vegetables in small pieces. Mix all vegetables with 1 tablespoon mayonnaise and 1/2 teaspoon soya sauce.
In a bowl add the cooked sticky rice and sprinkle 2 tsp togarashi spice and mix thoroughly.
 Divide into 3 equal portions.
 Divide a single sheet of Nori in two strips and cut. Continue the process with the other sheet as well.
 Take 1 portion of the rice in the palm and make a hole in the center. Fill the hole with the mayo veg mix and shape into a ball, while hiding the filling inside. Now slowly turn the ball into a triangle shape and wrap with the nori strip.
Sprinkle sesame seeds on top.
Chef tips
 To avoid the Sticky Rice sticking to your hand, keep coating your hand with water and rice vinegar mixture for hassle-free shaping.