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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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Marie Chiba is a leading expert on pairing Japanese sake with dishes. She has been spreading the appeal of sake not only in Japan but also around the world.

Chiba, 39, was born and raised in Iwate Prefecture where she often visited on holidays her grandparents’ home that was about an hour’s drive.

She enjoyed picking mushrooms in the woodlands near the town and harvesting home-grown seasonal vegetables such as tomatoes and pumpkins.

Each time Chiba visited, she begged her grandmother to cook her special deep-fried chicken with sauce containing chopped vegetables. She loved the salty-sweet sauce that she had never tasted elsewhere.

When she was in high school, she became fascinated by organic chemistry that “is fun because it can be solved like a puzzle.”

She was also interested in the study of food and went on to study at Yamagata University’s faculty of engineering. Her grandmother would send the fried chicken to Chiba who began living on her own.

Around that time, she began working part time at a Japanese-style pub in Yamagata city that stocked about 50 brands of sake. Although she did not know much about alcohol, she enjoyed talking directly with the customers and hearing them say how good the sake tasted.

After class and work, she would eat her grandmother’s fried chicken and think about her fondly.

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After graduation, she began working as a system engineer at a company in Tokyo. Although life was fulfilling, she missed “the joy of working with people and seeing them having a good time” and quit after three years and decided to work in the food industry.

Chiba says her experiences at her grandparents’ home where she tasted the fresh ingredients and smelled the scent of plants in a natural setting help her senses of taste and smell when she conducts sake tasting.

Her grandmother who sent her fried chicken even after she began working has reached old age. Chiba and her mother carry on her flavor.

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Born in Iwate Prefecture, Marie Chiba is an owner of a shop specializing in sake. After working as a system engineer, she began to work at a sake bar in Tokyo’s Shinjuku and visited breweries nationwide to learn about sake. To spread the pairing of sake and dishes, she opened Gem by moto in Ebisu in 2015. The restaurant is now closed. She opened Eureka! in Nishiazabu in 2022.

BASIC COOKING METHOD

Main Ingredients (Serves 2)

300 grams chicken thigh, some katakuriko starch, some oil, for chicken marinade (1 Tbsp each of soy sauce and sake, 1 tsp ginger juice to taste), for sauce (1/2 green onion [naganegi type], 20 grams ginger to taste, 1 chili pepper pod, 70 ml vinegar, 1 Tbsp each of soy sauce and sugar, 1/3 tsp salt, 50 ml dashi stock)

1. Cut chicken into bite-size pieces.

2. Mix soy sauce, sake and ginger juice if preferred in bowl to make marinade. Marinate chicken for 2 hours.

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3. To make sauce, chop green onion and ginger if preferred. Remove seeds from chili pepper pod and slice in rounds.

4. Add (3), vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, salt and dashi stock in pot and heat. Turn off heat when content comes to a boil.

5. Pat chicken dry lightly with kitchen paper, dust thoroughly with katakuriko starch.

6. Deep-fry chicken in oil heated to 180 degrees until golden.

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7. Serve fried chicken on plate and pour sauce from (4).

About 425 kcal and 2.8 grams salt per portion
(Nutrient calculation by the Nutrition Clinic of Kagawa Nutrition University)

[Photo Captions]

Grandmother’s fried chicken (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

Marie Chiba (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

Dust chicken thoroughly with katakuriko starch. (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

Deep-fry until golden. (Photo by Atsuko Shimamura)

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

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