I hope you had a wonderful July 4th celebration yesterday with family and friends. My family had a great time celebrating at a friend’s house with a delicious barbecue followed by fireworks nearby. Our friend is a master of smoking the most delicious baby back ribs and I’ll be featuring him and his smoked rib recipe later on. Today I’m guest posting at an extraordinary cook and photographer – Lori Lynn’s blog, The Taste With The Eyes. As the blog name suggests, the recipes featured on the website are simply eye candy for anyone into exquisitely prepared food and gorgeous photos. When I look at the food pictures in Lori Lynn’s posts, they are not ordinary food that I can imagine myself cooking. In fact, it almost feels like I am at an art gallery that’s exhibiting food photography. Her creations are so beautiful that you easily taste with your eyes first (unfortunately it’s a blog so you can’t taste it too. How sad!). It’s a cliche but I have to say it here. If you haven’t visited her blog before, you must stop by. Among her posts, some of my favorites are Summer’s Chilled Soup and Meyer Lemon and Pink Rose Risotto. I’ve known Lori Lynn and her blog for about a year and she’s now celebrating her 5th blog anniversary this month. I am honored that she has invited me to participate on her site, where she displays outstanding food that I truly admire. If you are a food blogger, you’ll understand what I mean. I cherish her culinary talent and friendship and hope to continue learning from her. I won’t continue babbling on and it’s much easier for me to explain if you just pop over and take a look at her creations. For the guest post, I cooked something exotic as per her request. Please check the recipe as well as detailed information about gyutan by clicking HERE. Gyutan is grilled sliced beef tongue and the Japanese word gyutan is a combination of the Japanese word for cow (gyu) and the English word tongue (tan). The region in Japan that first started to cook gyutan was Sendai and it was initially considered a rather unusual dish, but gradually gained popularity throughout Japan around the 1950s. Gyutan is one of the popular items to order at yakiniku (Japanese barbecue) restaurants. We usually grill these thinly sliced beef tongues and flavor them with salt. However, the way my husband and I like to eat gyutan is with yuzu juice and yuzu kosho (citrus pepper). Yuzu is a citrus fruit fondly used for many Japanese dishes and desserts. We use the aromatic zest for garnishing and its juice for seasoning. It’s quite hard to find fresh yuzu fruit, so I got this yuzu juice bottle from a Japanese supermarket. Yuzu kosho is a fermented paste made from chili peppers, yuzu peel, and salt. We use it for flavoring yakitori (Japanese grilled chicken), udon soup, tempura, sashimi, and Japanese hot pot. Yuzu kosho may come in a jar or in a small tube container. Both yuzu juice and Yuzu kosho give a nice tart and spicy kick to the gyutan and it adds a level of sophisticated flavor that is difficult to replicate with other spices. Another favorite to enjoy sliced gyutan is to just simply sprinkle it with a bit of salt and pepper, barbeque, and dip it in lemon sauce. Gyutan burns and catches fire very easily when you barbeque so be careful while you cook. Wish to learn more about Japanese cooking? Sign up for our free newsletter to receive cooking tips & recipe updates! And stay in touch with me on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram.
