Japanese Tableware Meets Basque Cooking

Wherever you go in Japan, you’ll find pieces of tableware with a character all their own. They reflect the country’s cultural diversity and the vision of the artists who made them. Their presence enriches our daily lives.

Here we feature tableware by artist Ito Kan paired with cuisine prepared by chef Muto Yasuyuki. This collaboration was arranged with the assistance of Eto Aya, proprietor of the gallery Natsutsubaki.

Bringing out the versatility of a single bowl

On this particular day, the gallery Natsutsubaki had visitor: Chef Muto Yasuyuki, who studied culinary arts in Paris, Burgundy, and the Basque region, then honed his skills at a historic French restaurant in Tokyo. We had a special request for him. We wanted him to take a single bowl and showcase it in different ways by serving different foods in it.

The tableware that Yasuyuki selected in advance was by artist Ito Kan, a name generally associated with Western-style ceramics combining tenderness with a stately delicacy. For this occasion, however, he had made a wide variety of works on a Japanese theme to show at a special exhibition. Yasuyuki selected one of these, known playfully as the “contact lens bowl,” as the centerpiece of the day’s meal. This beautiful deep green bowl has the same sleek, curved profile as a contact lens. With its enamel-like sheen and deep, complex green color, it might leave you wondering at first. What type of cuisine can you serve in it? How can you use to present food attractively? Yasuyuki set to work in the kitchen as our anticipation mounted. In what ways would he showcase the bowl?

The first item he made was shrimp salad with Tasmanian mustard dressing. He carefully arranged radishes, karashina mustard greens, and shrimp in the bowl, then garnished them with chips made from deep-fried spring roll wrappers. The sight of purple, orange, and other colors being added layer by layer to the green bowl was breathtakingly beautiful to behold. By the time the salad was ready, the bowl had assumed a completely different character from when it stood empty.

“The first thing that came to mind was a salad,” Yasuyuki explains. “I figured that some brightly colored vegetables would look eye-catching in this bowl. A dish like this that’s not too deep and has a raised rim looks beautiful with some vegetables nonchalantly tossed in on top of each other. Starting the salad small and piling it high creates a particularly attractive effect.”

A salad consisting of vegetables cut out in perfect circles like contact lenses, a nod to the concept behind the bowl. This is the kind of nice playful touch typical of Muto Yasuyuki.

The second item on the menu was piperade, a traditional family dish of the Basque region. Piperade consists of green peppers stewed in tomato sauce à la ratatouille and combined with beaten eggs. On this occasion, it was served on a slice of bread with dry-cured ham.

“The way this dish gleams reminded me of French earthenware with a shiny glaze. I also figured the dish would go well with the color of bread. So I combined a slice of bread with piperade, which the Basques eat daily.”

“Green and red are a color combination beloved of the Basque people, being the colors of the Basque flag,” Yasuyuki explains. “In that sense, I think this dish succeeds in capturing the essence of Basqueness, the hallmark of my culinary journey.”

The third dish was an apple dessert, tarte Tatin.

“When I first saw this bowl, I has this urge to combine it with white. Then I thought of using it to serve tarte Tatin with a sauce made from fromage blanc, a type of French cheese. I’ve added an accent of red in the form of apple confiture.”

The bowl and dessert made a stunning pairing. The green contrasted with the white, the lustrous glaze with the frozen ice cream.

Tarte Tatin. A long bake in the oven intensified the sweetness of the Jonathan apples. While it looks plain enough, this traditional French dessert takes considerable effort to make.

“Basque dishes with a deeper flavor such as stewed beans, for example, might be better complemented by tableware with a matte texture that retains more of its earthiness,” Yasuyuki notes. He prepared us a triad of foods that went perfectly with the deep color, lustrous texture, and gently curving contours of Ito Kan’s bowl. The result was a lesson in how a single piece of tableware can assume different characters depending on what you serve in it.

“When selecting tableware, I’m attracted by pieces that give a sense of the artist’s handiwork and humanity,” Yasuyuki says. “To me, features like the angle of the bowl’s rim testified to Ito-san’s dedication and commitment. Because of the bowl’s luster and complex coloration, it strikes you very differently depending on the angle and direction you view it from. That’s part of its charm. It’s a dish that goes well with both Japanese and Western food. It fits in with a wide mix of styles and genres.”