In the previous issue of California Fly Fisher, I explored spit and rotisserie cooking. The method goes back millennia, probably to when humans first charred meat over fire. Also going back equally far is cooking with skewers, still a major culinary practice in the Middle East, Asia, and Indonesia, well-known examples being yakitori and shish kebab.
My wife and I started married life in the Philippines, where our household included a house girl, a house/yard boy, and a guard. Without a guard, you were assured of problems that originated with the guards themselves. That said, once engaged, a guard became part of one’s domicile.
Our house girl showed us how to shop and bargain in the local outdoor markets, where much of the food was fresher than we could obtain at the Base Exchange commissary, though sometimes it was foreign to us. Our daily meals were a combination of classic American favorites, hybrid Filipino/Cantonese dishes, Filipino classics such as pancit canton (stir-fried noodles), lumpia (fried spring rolls) on special occasions, and large vessels of slow-cooked chicken or pork adobo, the vinegary national dish.
As “Christmas Help” medical officers during the massive 1968–69 Vietnam buildup, we were not eligible for on-base housing, so started our overseas life in a Third World country outside Clark Air Base in a rented home in Angeles City, next to huge plantation sugar cane fields. Power outages were a daily occurrence, especially during evening high-usage periods. We hauled potable water and foraged for furniture and appliances, which were in short supply. The military term for all this was “living on the economy.”
A procurement officer at the base exchange annex, knowing of couples’ plights, bought hundreds of Japanese cast iron hibachis. That small oval barbeque grill and a single-burner hot plate I brought with me when I gave up my room in the bachelor officers quarters served us well for months before we got a stove. Our 19-year-old year multilingual house girl, Pressy, chosen by other house girls and military housewives after meeting me and seeing a picture of Karen, who was yet to arrive, became quite creative in preparing meals using the small, century-old grilling device.
It wasn’t until nearly a year later in Tokyo that Karen and I discovered yakitori stands. We scraped for travel money and saved religiously to have funds to live on upon my discharge and our return to California. Meals and lodging in most of Asia were ridiculously inexpensive, but Tokyo was another matter! Not only was food terribly expensive in Tokyo restaurants, we couldn’t read the menus. Yakitori stands no larger than sun canopies at a picnic or soccer game answered our prayers. In the lobby of the Tokyo officer’s billet, we ran into a colleague from graduate school on R&R from besieged Khe Sanh. He was headed back to Vietnam for the rest of an ugly tour. After quickly catching up, we asked about affordable restaurants. He pointed and said, “A ten-minute walk will take you to a side street lined with yakitori stands.” Each had a longer and narrower version of our cast-iron hibachi, stools close to a shallow counter, Kirin or Sapporo beer at affordable prices, and filled with savory aromas. Sizzling meals on a stick included chicken, pork, or more expensive beef, lamb, or tofu. There was a price for a single skewer, and three were signaled for by raising an equal number of fingers. As in tapas or pinxtos bars in Spain and the Basque Pyrenees, where each glass of wine brings a tapas dish, each beer at the counter came with edamame or pickled vegetables.
Thus started a lifelong affair with this simple cooking method, which evolved using small amounts of fuel and less-expensive meats impaled on skewers and grilled over coals. And although yakitori is street food, it can be taken to gourmet heights. Over the years, Karen and I have learned that in addition to the delightful use of lesser cuts, luxury foods such lobster, fillet mignon, sirloin, and rib eye can raise the bar to a type of fine dining. Game, such as venison, bison, or elk, as well a shrimp, squid, fish, vegetables, and fruit such as pineapple all lend themselves to this type of grilling.
Yakitori before World War II meant chicken. It still does today, but with better quality poultry available, many parts of the bird, each varying in fat content, are used. Possibilities, if you have an adventurous palate, include the skin, the comb, hearts, gizzards, thighs, cartilage, and neck meat, each having unique characteristics. Exotics other than chicken include roasted sparrows, quail eggs, shishito peppers, shitake mushrooms, and thinly sliced pork wrapped around asparagus. Condiments may include peppers, wasabi, watermelon rind, and pickled onions. I mention the exotics, found on menus in higher-end restaurants, as a reminder that your imagination and cooking skills can take you in many directions.
As with ingredient quality, fuel is a variable. Specialty high-end yakitori restaurants use binchon, a high-grade white charcoal to produce uniform heat that is neither too low nor excessively hot and to impart a unique smokiness to the meats. Temperature control is a major factor in grilling anywhere, but even more so here, if you are to maximize your results
Classical yakitori (chicken) and kushiyaki (other meats) use two basic sauce/marinades drizzled on the skewers after five minutes of intense cooking:
Salty, made with soy sauce and ground white pepper, or salty-sweet, as in sauces based on soy sauce, and sweet rice vinegar. A classic is tare, made with soy, mirin, sake, and sugar. Ajinomoto is an Asian brand of meat tenderizer using monosodium glutamate (MSG), which may find its way into the dish, too, as it does in Chinese cuisines. In Asia, an addictive advertising jingle went “Aji, Aji, Ajinomoto” all day long on radio stations. We bought a “watch chicken” in a northern Luzon outdoor market and named it Ajinomoto. It did a good job and terrified neighborhood cats until it was stolen in the night, possibly winding up on skewers between mango cubes. Fruit on our mango tree had a habit of disappearing when it neared ripening, too.
Like Asian skewer cooking, Middle Eastern shish kebab cuisine uses a variety of meats and vegetables. It supposedly originated in Turkey, and a major difference is in spicing and the use of lemon, olive oil, and garlic in marinades originating in Greece and Italy. In Turkey, turmeric, often used as a saffron adulterant, and cayenne and paprika are applied as spices. Farther east, yogurt or milk marinades with onions, garlic, paprika, tomato paste, black pepper, and salt predominate. Pork may be avoided for religious reasons.
Kebabs are also popular in parts of India and its colonizer, Great Britain. Favorite meats include lamb, goat, beef, chicken, and seafood. But beef in India is rarely available, because cows for many in that country are sacred. Vegetables include tomatoes, eggplant, colored peppers, onions, squash, and mushrooms.
As served in our country, shish kebab mixes lamb or beef cubes with onion and red and green bell pepper. I prefer the lemon, olive oil, and garlic marinades, particularly if I have high-grade lamb. Throw some rosemary sprigs on the coals or use the sprigs themselves as a skewer to create a marriage of flavors that are downright heavenly.
Don’t forget seafood as an ingredient. Our favorites include ahi tuna cubes, shell-on and shell-off shrimp, scallops and freshly caught salmon fillet cubes. You may want to use two skewers to prevent unwanted rotation over the fire.
Both yakitori chefs and their Middle Eastern counterparts have found that it is best to use bite-sized pieces of meat evenly spaced on skewers for cooking evenness. The skewer method using uniformly sized small bits also stretches precious protein. Vegetables on a single skewer also benefit from uniformity in size to so they cook evenly, whether on a kebab skewer or yakitori impaled on Japanese cypress, bamboo, or metal. Metal skewers get quite hot, but don’t burn. Thin bamboo burns easily. Bamboo and cypress need to be soaked in water for a least half an hour, as do wooden chopsticks for heavier meat portions. That’s why the small hibachi grills work better than huge barbeques — you can keep the skewer handle out of the hottest part. The same can be true when cooking over a small campfire. Commercial kitchens specializing in skewered dishes have specialty grills. I turn off the side gas burners on a gas barbeque at home so my skewer handles aren’t over direct flame when I’m not using charcoal.
For presentation visuals, it’s still hard to beat a skewer right off the grill, with sizzling meat and roasted vegetables. Marbled, better-quality meat cuts cook faster, retaining succulent flavors. Skirt steak is high on the list and well worth trying.
Argentina is populated with a blend of indigenous peoples and European immigrants. Their meat consumption is the highest per capita in the world. Much cooking there is done on skewers, even on swords, at the great steakhouses in Buenos Aires or in traditional outdoor Sunday asados, meat indulgences requiring foraging excursions the day or morning before. We might grill spare ribs and possibly chicken at a Fourth of July celebration, but Argentinians grill a variety of sausage, goat, lamb, and beef and don’t need to wait for a holiday — it’s usually an all-day affair. The grilled meant is served with a green chimichurri sauce based on parsley, garlic, and olive oil. Chimichurri sauce makes all good food better, even vegetables.
Companion starch dishes? For my wife and me, it would be saffron rice, couscous, or farro and finely diced onions simmered with small dried mushrooms in chicken or beef stock.
Marinades for many of the meats that are used in skewer cooking may need up to 24 hours of contact. Prep at home the day before or in the morning in camp for that evening’s meal and put it in a tight zip-lock bag. Fish flesh needs only a few minutes in contact with a marinade, lest the acids make the flesh mushy. You will find that smaller bits pick up marinade and spicing flavors much faster, too. Marinated meat grills best if dried and blotted before going on the skewer and subsequently the clean and hot grill surface, so it caramelizes and doesn’t steam. Skewer cooking is fun, a break from traditional methods, and quick if you have help with the preparation. The possibilities for new aromas, flavors, and textures with both traditional and unusual ingredients, along with enticing visuals, are infinite.
Restaurant Reports
Sadly, the covid pandemic has resulted in many permanent restaurant closures, above and beyond normal recreation-area off-season restaurant mortality. We reviewed the Ol’ Republic Road House on Highway 20 out of Nevada City (formerly the Five Mile House), close to Scotts Flat Reservoir and its smallmouth and trout, a year and a half ago. It and several sister establishments in the flatlands have closed. Add Scallywags on Highway 20, up from the lower Yuba, and the Rainbow Tavern on the Yuba near Big Bend. The unique Washington Hotel, in Washington, California, an adventure in itself, off of Highway 20 on the south Yuba is still open as I write, except on Tuesdays and Wednesday. Call ahead and don’t trust websites that may be outdated.
Amid the carnage, Yakitori Yuchan in Davis remains open, but for takeout only. If you live in the area or are passing by on Interstate 80 (say, on your way to the Sierra), it is a good place to learn what yakitori is all about. My wife and I dined there four times before the pandemic shut things down. This tastefully decorated modern restaurant features the izakaya-style small plates characteristic of Japanese informal drinking and dining establishments, including yakitori samplers and appetizers such as a shishito tempura, which are not seen in most American Japanese restaurants, as well as fabulous beers on tap that were made for these one-of-a-kind dishes. Karen doesn’t care for beer and sneered at “wine in a can,” but quickly changed her mind, because it proved to be as good as or better than many pricey wine-by-the glass offerings elsewhere and paired with Asian spicing quite well. This pleasant, fun, but unpretentious restaurant features attention to detail and is high on our list. When, as we devoutly hope, the world returns to something like normal, it will be worth a detour for a sit-down meal.
Yakitori Yuchan, 109 E St., Davis, California 95616; (530) 753-3196; http://www.yakitoriyuchan.com. Takeout and delivery only as of mid August.
