Photo/Illutration Bite-size breaded and deep-fried pork (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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The grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans is an endurance sports car race fought among vehicles that speed along the circuit in a suburb of Le Mans in western France.

The team that covers the greatest distance within 24 hours wins. From 1981 to 1991, Masayo Waki took part as the lead chef for the Mazda racing team.

She would arrive at the circuit every Monday each year and spend the next week or so making meals for more than a hundred people, including drivers and staff.

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Masayo Waki (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

To accommodate a multinational team comprising those from Japan, Britain France and other countries, she came up with at least two menus for each meal.

She also prepared light meals for the guests. She racked her brains about serving meals to a large group of people quickly and without fail.

The race starts on a Saturday. As requested by the team manager, who liked to bank on the name of the dishes that reflected the idea of “Teki ni katsu” (Beat the enemy), it was routine to serve “suteki” (steak) for lunch and “tonkatsu” (breaded deep-fried pork) for dinner on Friday.

Since Le Mans boasts a strong pork industry, getting hold of the meat seemed easy. However, “the French were unfamiliar with the concept of pork sliced into a certain thickness and being deep-fried,” Waki said.

She had difficulty getting her order right. For example, one day she would get salted pork, another day she would receive slices that were extremely thick.

When she wanted to serve julienned cabbage on the side, she had to tackle a vegetable delivery that had a hard and coarse texture.

When making tonkatsu, the pork is usually sprinkled with salt and pepper before being breaded. Yet, when the prepared tonkatsu is left to sit for some time this way, the salt draws out the water in the meat, and the coating turns soggy before it can be deep-fried.

She faced this problem when trying to cook for a lot of people.

Thus, Waki decided to add salt and pepper to the egg wash, instead. The meat is dusted with flour, dipped in egg wash, then breaded.

“This is a technique of French cuisine,” says the cooking expert.

The meat is less likely to lose water and the salty taste can be evenly applied. Lumps of egg white become easier to break up through the action of salt, too, and it becomes easier to beat the eggs.

The crispy fried tonkatsu certainly boosted the morale of the team about to face such a challenging endurance test.

In 1991, the last year Waki worked with the team, Mazda finally won. It was the first win by a Japanese manufacturer.

Masayo Waki is a cooking expert who was born in Tokyo in 1955. She introduces a wide range of Japanese, Western and Chinese dishes through the media. In February, she published “Ichiban shinsetsude oishii IH kukkingu reshipi” (The most friendly and tasty recipes for induction cooking) from Sekaibunka Holdings.

BASIC COOKING METHOD

Main Ingredients (Serves four)

4 slices of pork butt (buta-katarosu) (total of 350 grams), 1 egg, 1 Tbsp oil, 1/3 tsp salt, pinch of pepper, some flour, dried breadcrumbs, oil for deep-frying, some cabbage

1.Mix egg, oil, salt and pepper in bowl.

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Add egg, oil, salt and pepper to a bowl and mix. (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

2.Cut pork into bite-size pieces, thinly dust with flour, dip in (1) and bread generously.

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Thinly dust pork with flour. (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)
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Generously bread pork that has been dipped in egg wash. (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura) * * *

3.When breadcrumbs are sitting well on the surface, deep-fry until crispy in oil heated to 170 degrees.

4.Serve with julienned cabbage.

About 445 kcal and 0.8 gram salt per portion
(Nutrient calculation by the Nutrition Clinic of Kagawa Nutrition University)

If you run out of egg wash midway, add a small amount of water to make it last a bit longer.

When breading the meat, try not to dust off the breadcrumbs as much as possible, leave them on and let them absorb the egg wash somewhat. This way, the breadcrumbs will stick to the meat better and the deep-fried tonkatsu will turn out nicer.

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

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