Chris and Hiroko’s wedding was lovely and a lot of fun. We had the pleasure of spending a bunch of time with them and a group of their close friends. It was a quick but excellent trip. We arrived in Vancouver on Thursday and spent Friday and Saturday afternoon prepping for the reception meal.

Ton Toro! It makes excellent rocket fuel when cooked over an open flame.

We planned the BBQ around three different meats: flanken or korean cut ribs (1/4 inch thick), pork belly, and chicken thigh. Hiroko brought some amazing ingredients from Japan, Windsor meats (at Main and King Edward in Vancouver) did not disappoint with the quality of their meat, and we did manage to find a hibachi which we used along with a gas grill for some of the meats.

We put a lot of effort into the sauces. Japanese BBQ is all about the quality of the meat and dipping sauces. I took the opportunity to dig into a bit of history and bunch of different flavours. The array of Japanese sauces, up to this point, had been a bit of a mystery to me. I always love a good ponzu or sweet miso sauce but, other than a number of early experiments, I’ve not sat down to really work through the flavors in any systematic way to be able to taste my way through them from scratch.

To the internet! “yakiniku+sauce” Mr. Google-san. I found a lot of stuff: some history, some more history that contradicts the other history (yah!), some good pictures, and some recipes that looked pretty good along with some that looked awful (I will leave these to the imagination). Looking at the research, it really does turn out that the tasty and ubiquitous Teriyaki is just one flavour among many that one can pair up with the grilled meats.

I started with two apparently traditional Yakuniku sauce recipes that I found. I certainly make no pretense of doing a traditional Yakiniku, but I did want to try to start with something that would be at least recognizable as a Yakiniku flavour. I’m not sure if it was because I was using a dark soy sauce and too much salt, but I found that the sauces were very very salty so made some adjustments to taste by adding more mirin, fruit and white wine. We used pear in the soy sauce based sauce for the rib marinade and a salt, onion, lemon, sesame marinade for the pork belly. Now I know that this is by no means a traditional Yakiniku marinade, but I though that a sweet apple/miso sauce would be nice for the chicken. Again I thought that it was way too salty so in the end I winged it. Check out the Yakiniku marinade recipes posting for an approximation of the sauces that I made. Sheree, as always, upped the game with clear feedback, a sense of direction and talked me off the edge of the cliff more than a few times.

A couple afternoon's worth of sauce making.

The plan was to use these sauces for marinade and dipping but I also wanted to make a few more sauces for variation. I ended up settling on ponzu, mustard/wasabi soy, chili vinegar/soy, and ginger soy sauces. This would give guests a range of flavors to experiment with for the various meats and vegetables we were going to be grilling up. The marinade, by the way, was used for a short amount of time, about 45 minutes, as I did not want to overpower the meat.

One of the best Japanese food websites I came across was justhungry.com . In it, Makiko, has put together a very clear survey of Japanese ingredients and cooking techniques from the perspective of personal favorite dishes and family recipes.  She provides a brief and charming overview of the essential flavours used in soy based Japanese dipping sauces and where they are used. As Makiko encourages, these are the basics and one can modulate the proportions of the ingredients to personal taste. This is what I’m always looking for when learning something new – the cornerstone elements, structures and permission to mess about. For your reference, I’ve posted a little summary. If you’re interested in Japanese cooking, I would encourage you to check out Makiko’s site.

Dashi turned out to be a crucial ingredient for thinning some of these sauces out a touch. Rather than using wine, mirin or vinegar to cut the salt of the soysauce, I used dashi which is a broth made from various flavour packed ingredients. I made what is called Kombu (a seaweed) and Katsuobushi (bonito flake) dashi. This is a light but very robust broth that is packed with umami. You can, infact, see natural glutamate crystals on the surface of the kombu, and the bonito has a fabulously meaty aroma.

Chris and Hirko near Kits Beach after the wedding.

With all this talk of Yakiniku, we can’t forget about the reason that we were there in Vancouver – Chris and Hiroko’s wedding! It was quite simply gorgeous. The weather did not really co-operate – we had a bit of a Vancouver fall day (um…rainy and chilly) so instead the planned beach wedding, we all met at the wedding commissioner’s home in Kitsilano. It turned out to be a lovely character home a stone’s throw from Kits beach. Chris and Hiroko looked dashing and the ceremony was to the point and elegant – growing together and taking care of each other was the message. It was touching seeing the two of them tie the knot.

After the wedding Sheree and I went to Chris’s best friend, Colin’s, place to prepare for the reception. It was three hours of mad sauce making, meat, and veg prep. We ended up enlisting the help of a few guests to finish up some of the skewering for the vegetables and the most excellent Ton Toro (pork belly).

Chris’s friend Rachel brought a tremendous set of appetizers including steamed wheat/spelt chinese style buns filled with veg, tofu and some chilies, an amazing artichoke dip with baguette and a lovely vegetable platter. We had a few moments to sample her good work and to pause and mill about as everyone arrived…and then it was go-time.

The cooking arrangement for the evening was an extraordinarily large gas grill – you could easily fit a lamb on this thing – and a little hibachi. I wanted to get some decent coals going on the hibachi for a good wood-cooked flavour, so I loaded it up with natural charcoal and added a half dozen 3″ chunks of oak wood for flavour. I figured that this would be a great place to do the ribs. I thought I would use the gas grill for the veg and the pork belly – being bit concerned that the pork belly would light on fire over the coals.

Just before the pork-belly-rocket experiment.

It was dark outside and there was no patio light so Colin was good enough to lend me his headlamp. It was a perfect BBQ nerd moment: fabulous meat, coals, gas grill, lots of guests, a giant beer, leather jacket, headlamp. Check and check.

I started with a quick run of ribs and chicken and they received good feedback from the party floor which was encouraging to say the least. I started up some of the pork belly on the gas grill, closed the lid and then tended to the ribs on the hibachi. Within a couple of minutes, flames were shooting out of the BBQ like a rocket – kind of a rookie mistake I realize. It was just a touch entertaining as I quietly moved the BBQ away from the outside wall and quietly asked for the fire extinguisher -  just in case. Pork belly would make an excellent rocket fuel. After about 10 minutes they had burnt themselves out. When I opened up the bbq, there was one tiny, sad little black pork nugget the size of a quarter and hard as a rock. Next round, I resolved to leave the cover open and to move the slices of pork belly around a bunch to avoid another bacon-jet experience. These ones, with the revised cooking method, turned out great and were exceptional with the mustard soysauce and the ponzu.

An array of tasty treats. Veg, Chicken and Ton Toro in the foreground. Flanken cut ribs on the hibachi in the background.

Vegetable-wise, we did up a bunch of grilled peppers, shitake mushrooms, some roasted garlic, and a corn/shitake mushroom mix in a foil pouch. All of these we splashed on a simple combo of soy sauce, rice vinegar, vegetable oil, and a touch of sesame oil – super simple but a really magic combo of flavours that supported the veg well.

It took about an hour and a half to get everything grilled up. Sheree kept things moving into the party and also brought back some nibbles to share. The feedback from the guests was really great – they were experimenting with different meat/sauce combos and sending back reports of their favorites. This is what I was hoping for. The Japanese contingent were especially digging the apple miso sauce. One of Hirko’s friends said it reminded her of that sauce at a restaurant at home. She asked for the recipe which was the best compliment I could have received.

The evening continued: a few speeches, a stellar slideshow by Colin telling the history of Chris and Hirko’s relationship, some emailed words from our mom who could not attend, and a hilarious party game conducted by Akiko in which we all drew out the answer to a series of questions about Chris and Hiroko’s favorite body parts. The evening then moved on to dancing (Colin actually did the worm), drinking beer poured directly from from a minikeg on high, and – finally- a traditional cocktail fueled shoulder punching match between Chris and I which got a little out of hand and ended up with Colin receiving an accidental jab to the mouth (sorry Colin).

It was a great night and the Yakiniku was the perfect meal. It was casual, easy to eat, tasty and a just the right amount of special. I hope that it helped make the evening a memorable one for Chris, Hiroko and all the guests. It was certainly a real pleasure to prepare and, based on this evening, I think that I will definitely make it again.