Kaiseki at Home

While there are lots of special japanese citrus fruit, I am going to introduce the 2 most used in Kaiseki called YUZU und SUDACHI. Considering how they are used in Japanese Cuisine I would categorize them more as spices than as fruits.

The small green fruit is called Sudachi, it is mostely used as a decorative (and tasty) element for Sashimi. It is similarly sour to limes, but doesn’t have that super distinct flavour. It gets cut in half, the seeds are removed and in fancy restaurants it usually gets shaped nicely. You squeeze it over white fish Sashimi or sometimes grilled or deep fried dishes. One famous example is pufferfish sashimi, which usually comes with scallions, grated radish and Sudachi citrus.

This is an example of Sashimi that I made. It has Sudachi, Wasabi, benitade sprouts and carrot cut into cherry blossom petals.

You might have actually heard about Yuzu before. It is a quite popular taste for sweets, drinks, candy and sorbets recently! It is one of my favourite tastes and I always miss it when I’m not in Japan. For Kaiseki Cuisine it gets used frequently, because for one it is super tasty but it also shows the changes of the seasons beautifully! It can be used in every stage: in early summer it gets used while it is still green and it has a wonderful refreshing taste and in winter it gets used as the fully ripe yellow fruit that I took a picture of today. Let me show you two examples how it gets used in soup:

I hope you get the chance to try yuzu for yourself one day! As it has become more popular some supermarkets and even farmers markets have begun to stock it, so take it home when you get the chance!

If you are interested in more typical citrus fruit: MIKAN (mandarin orange), PONKAN (ponkan orange/tangerine), AMANATSU (sweet pomelo), KINKAN (kumqat), DAIDAI (bitter orange) and many more – all of these get eaten as they are and are not typically part of Kaiseki Cuisine. But they still are very delicious! I personally really love Ponkan, because it has a good balance of sweetness and sourness and is super juicy 🙂