Photo/Illutration “Nabeshigi” dish (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

Editor’s note: In the Taste of Life series, cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.

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A wide range of family businesses are handed down from parents to children, but Ryuta Kijima, who considers being a cooking expert a “family business,” may be an exceptional case.

He is the third generation in his family to work as a cooking expert, following his grandmother, Akiko Murakami, and his mother, Naomi Kijima.

Murakami, a popular cooking expert who was making TV appearances, was fond of Kijima, her first-born grandchild, and would often invite him into the kitchen.

“I was given a table knife for kids and a piece of carrot and told to ‘play with the knife by cutting the carrot,’” Kijima says of his childhood.

As he watched his grandmother at work, he began to admire the cooking profession.

This week’s “nabeshigi,” a dish featuring eggplant and other ingredients, evokes memories Kijima has of being with Murakami.

Around the time Kijima was attending high school, his parents were busy working and were often absent from home, leaving Kijima mainly with Murakami.

There would be Murakami, who had just turned 70, and there would be Kijima, who had a voracious appetite. The best common ground turned out to be nabeshigi.

Despite the generous serving of vegetables it contained, the dish offered meat to make it more appetizing. He recalls enjoying the dish with his grandmother.

Murakami built her career as a cooking expert in the 1970s when the Japanese lifestyle changed significantly after going through the period of high economic growth.

Amid swiftly Westernized meals, it became difficult to hand down traditional home cooking.

Murakami’s strength in presenting the “good ol’ taste of home” catered to the needs of people who wished to learn home cooking.

In this week’s recipe, the eggplant and green pepper are deep-fried to echo Murakami’s style of “making a little extra effort” when cooking.

She was also particular about using the best-selling brands of seasonings at the time because she thought anyone could achieve the desired flavor.

“I think I have inherited the spirit of my grandmother,” says Kijima.

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Ryuta Kijima: Born in Tokyo in 1981, Kijima entered the cooking profession after working at a clothing company and as an assistant to his mother. He is making his mark by writing for magazines and appearing on TV programs such as NHK’s “Kijima Ryuta no Kobara ga Sukimashita!” (Ryuta Kijima’s ‘I’m a bit hungry!’). He has an official YouTube channel called “Kijima Gohan.”

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Ryuta Kijima (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

BASIC COOKING METHOD

Main Ingredients (Serves 2)

100 grams pork shoulder loin (buta-katarosu) slices, 3 eggplants, 2 green peppers (piman variety), frying oil, Seasoning A (4 Tbsp water, 2 Tbsp miso, 1 Tbsp sugar, 1 Tbsp sweet mirin sake, 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce)

1. Pour oil in a frying pan until it is 2 cm deep and heat to medium temperature. Remove calyx and seeds from green pepper and cut in round slices that are 1 cm wide. Remove calyx from eggplant and slice into 1-cm rounds. Cut pork slices into 5 cm in length.

2. Add eggplant to the oil and deep-fry without doing breading or dipping in batter. While this is cooking, mix Seasoning A.

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Add eggplant to the oil and deep-fry without doing breading or dipping in batter. (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

3. When eggplant is cooked, remove. Fry green pepper briefly as if dipping and remove. Pour out oil remaining in pan.

4. Briefly stir-fry pork in emptied pan and add Seasoning A. Bring to a boil and simmer.

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Briefly stir-fry pork in emptied pan and add Seasoning A. (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

5. Add eggplant, green pepper and simmer so liquid coats the ingredients.

About 390 kcal and 2.9 grams of salt per portion
(Nutrient calculation by the Nutrition Clinic of Kagawa Nutrition University)

SHORT MEMOS

If you mix clean and used frying oil, it is not only economical, but it also allows the ingredients to color more easily. Cooking will proceed smoothly if you keep in mind the image of bringing the meat and the seasonings to a boil, then coating the vegetables with the sauce.

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From The Asahi Shimbun’s Jinsei Reshipi (Life Recipe) column

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