Shuko Oda – Food for Thought
It’s hard to believe that only a decade ago “eating Japanese” likely meant a trip to YO! Sushi for some avocado maki rolls, or to Wagamama for their signature chicken katsu curry. Back then, even Japanese ingredients like miso, matcha, yuzu and edamame were scarce. Nowadays, they are a kitchen staple. Innovative chefs have created a host of pop-ups and restaurants that offer the chance to try a taste of Japan in the UK. One of these chefs is Shuko Oda, co-founder of the popular London restaurant Koya.
Sat in the heart of Soho, Koya is a restaurant built around two Japanese staples – freshly made udon noodles and dashi, along with seasonal blackboard specials. It has always been a dream of Shuko Oda’s to spotlight Japanese cuisine. As a child, she noticed that whilst most of her friends were candying their teeth with sweets, she was begging her mother to make her miso soup and rice balls. Eventually, her mother grew tired of her asking and taught her how to cook it herself, beginning her culinary journey.
Oda was born in the UK but in her formative years, she moved frequently between London, Tokyo and Los Angeles due to her father’s business. “Whenever I wasn’t in Japan, I found myself missing and craving the food and the culture,” Oda explains. “I would relish the chance to cook Japanese for my family and would make my signature dish of spare ribs and pickled plums to remind me of Japan.”
Before she pursued a career in food, Oda completed a BA in Japan and an MA in interactive media at Goldsmiths University in London, but soon found her desire to be back in the kitchen eclipsed her desire to be stuck in a library. She flew back to Japan to work at Hotel Claska in Tokyo and learnt the importance of a macrobiotic diet – a diet based on ideas drawn from Zen Buddhism and supposed to balance the yin and the yang by reducing animal products, and eating locally-grown and seasonal food. “It was a great but challenging experience,” she says, “I got to work alongside the woman who spread the word about “macrobiotic” in Tokyo. I learned a lot of things there that stayed with me throughout my career.”
Oda then returned to the UK and after only a week of being back, was introduced to her future business partner John. The pair started talking about creating an udon restaurant in London. “It sounded like a really exciting project because, at that point in London, there weren’t many restaurants that specialised in one particular aspect of Japanese cuisine,” she says. “There were sushi restaurants and Japanese pancake restaurants but I felt something was missing in the food scene that people needed to try.” After learning the tips-and-tricks of the udon trade at Kunitoraya in Paris, Koya was born in 2010 and after a decade, is a firm favourite for many epicureans.
According to Oda, Koya’s modus operandi comes down to two formulas; “We make our noodles fresh every day as well as the dashi soup. These two formulas underpin everything we do. Whatever creativity or seasonal produce we have, we will put it on top so it has space to breathe and express itself.”
Each dish on the Koya menu is influenced by what is available from the Japanese producers they work with in the UK, including Namayasai Farm in East Sussex. Her seasonally-led and localised approach is a homage to her time working and training in the macrobiotic kitchen back in Tokyo. “A list of produce will come in each week and I’ll stare at it for a while as it’s really important for me to imagine a recipe or a dish from the produce as it’s the most natural way to cook,” Oda says. “The farm will harvest at 2 am on delivery days and when it arrives, you can tell it was picked only a few hours ago. It’s an amazing thing to cook with that and then serve it to your customers. It’s the most direct way of eating.”
The menu at Koya is effortlessly simple, offering five different types of udon, from beef, tofu, pork, duck or saba fish. You can then order each type of udon hot with hot soup (atsu-atsu), or cold with hot sauce (hiya-atsu) or cold with cold sauce on the side (hiya-hiya). Koya also offers more experimental dishes like kombu-cured brill with rhubarb and yuzu oil, agedashi tofu with sprouting broccoli and grilled venison saddle with grilled and pickled radicchio.
When asking Oda her favourite thing on the menu, “breakfast” is her first port of call. “Serving Japanese breakfast is always something I wanted to do,” she says, “and so I would have to pick our pickled oyster forage. We pickle the oyster in olive oil and soy so it is lightly cooked but it still retains the softness and flavour of the sea. We then serve it on plain rice porridge with this herb called Mexican marigold leaves.” Leaves that, according to Oda, are a unique herb to cook with, with a smell that is indescribable. Koya also serves their take on an English fry-up; fried egg, bacon and shitake mushrooms, with either udon noodles or rice.
For Oda’s last ever supper, she picks a starter of “a freshly-cooked rice bowl with nori seaweed wrapped around along with some pickles.” For her main course, “Ayu”, which is a Japanese river fish not found outside of Asia, and she decides to have it “barbequed on a skewer” for it would bring back memories of her childhood with every salty bite. For her dessert, “a large and juicy peach” and to drink, “a Japanese lager and maybe some sake.”
Shuko Oda’s Runner Beans, Peas and Prawn ‘Kakiage’ Tempura Udon
Ingredients:
Serves 2
50-60g Runner beans
40-50g Fresh peas (podded)
4 Fresh prawns
200g Tempura flour
350ml water
400ml vegetable oil (preferably corn or peanut oil)
2 servings* Dashi
2 servings* Udon
Garnishes of choice: spring onion, grated ginger, shichimi spice
Method:
Before frying the tempura, make sure your udon, dashi and garnish is ready
*If you’re using dried udon, I recommend cooking them according to the package, then rinsing thoroughly in cold water. Place the cold udon in each of your serving bowls, and prepare a kettle of boiling water. When you’re ready to eat, pour in the boiling water in each bowl and leave them to heat up for 1-2 minutes, then drain, and your noodles are ready for the dashi
Heat the oil to reach 160-170℃
Top and tail the runner beans, then slice them at a sharp angle to make thin matchsticks
Peel the prawns (take head and tail off), then devein the back of prawn using a small sharp knife. Then cut the prawns into 1cm pieces
To make the batter, mix 150g tempura flour with 350ml cold water using a whisk
When you are mixing, start by going around the sides and bottom a couple of times, then rather than ‘whisking’ try to ‘stomp’ into the mixture as we are aiming for lumpy pancake type of batter
Place equal amounts of runner beans, peas and prawns in two separate small bowls, and sprinkle tempura flour as you shake them until they are all coated in thin layer of flour
Pour in about a couple ladles (80-100ml) of batter into each bowl and give it a quick mix
Once the oil has reached170℃ pour half of the bowl into the oil (this recipe makes 4 kakiage tempura so you have 2 per bowl) Remember to gently and gradually pour into the oil, rather than ‘dropping’ them in one go. With a chopstick you can gently shake them once in the oil to loosen some of the lumpy bits too
Let one side fry for a minute, then flip to fry the other side for a further minute
Continue to fry all 4 kakiage tempura
Place udon and dashi in two serving bowls, top with 2 kakiage tempura each and garnish of your liking.
*Koya’s handmade dashi and udon can be purchased with nationwide delivery from koyamail.co.uk