Whodunnit Dinners podcast #16 Season 2 Ep 6: Shizuko Natsuki: magnificent mountains, interesting outsiders and game-changing gratin

Hello from the Whodunnnit Dinners team and welcome to our latest blog post, which complements the most recent episode of the Whodunnit Dinners podcast. Podcast episode #6 of the second season focuses on the Japanese murder mystery classic: Murder at Mount Fuji, recently republished in the UK. In the book, a key plot point revolves around a dish that has been ordered from a local restaurant, called ‘gratin’ and in this blog post, we help you make your very own gratin - ideally without the accompanying dead body. 

Murder at Mount Fuji

In the latest podcast, Katie introduces us to the Japanese novel ‘Murder at Mount Fuji’ by Shizuko Natsuki, in which a timid young Japanese lady announces to her family that she has murdered her elderly uncle. The book is a classic Japanese crime novel set against the imposing presence of the iconic Mount Fuji. The story follows a carefully constructed investigation in which social expectation, secrecy and restraint guide the actions of the characters and the plot development. From the outset, the tone is one of calm and deliberate observation rather than sentiment and spectacle, true to Japanese traditional culture.

Having chatted in the podcast about the plot and themes, we moved on to the important matter of the dinner inspired by the book. Often the link to the food discussed on the podcast ia nod to a point in history or a regional dish. However, this time, the dish was actually a very specific plot point in the story: the timing of the arrival of a home-delivered gratin supper whilst the victim was supposedly still alive, providing the assembled family with their collective alibis. 

What is Yoshoku (Yoh-shoku)?

Gratin is a classic example of what is called yokshoku in Japan, that is, western or non-Japanese dishes that have been imported and adapted to Japanese tastes. (Traditional Japanese cuisine is known in Japan as ‘washoku’.) The so-called ‘father of yoshoku’ was a Swiss chef called Saly Weil, who worked in a grand hotel in Yokohama near Tokyo in the 1930s. The French version of a gratin - a macaroni-style creamy baked meal including prawns and sometimes chicken - was popular at the time and remains a firm favourite today. Weil, however tweaked the recipe to make the dish specifically Japanese, a recipe which he chose to call a ‘doria’. A doria is very similar to a gratin, but uses rice instead of pasta as its base. Rice is traditionally consumed in most meals in Japan, so this had a comforting familiarity for his Japanese diners. So although it is not a classic gratin, a doria is one type of gratin, and that’s the dish Helen chose to share on the podcast. 

How to Make Doria 

In fact, the recipe Helen shared on the podcast received very poor reviews from Katie. There was something around the herb and spice mix of cumin, turmeric, cinnamon and ketchup that Katie found inexplicably offensive. Helen has shared that recipe in a link below, but for Katie, and for those of you who share her delicate palate, she has also returned to the tried and tested Japanese cookbook ‘Japaneasy’ where she found her recipe for teriyaki chicken for the very first podcast. 

The funky recipe that Katie didn’t fancy the sound of can be found here on a Japanese home cooking blog called Sudachi.

A slightly less quirky take on a doria can be found in Tim Anderson’s Japaneasy cookbook:

The ingredients are: 

• 45 g butter, plus extra for greasing

• 1 onion, finely diced

• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped

• 4½ tablespoons plain flour

• 480 ml full-fat (whole) milk

• 100 ml double cream

• 3 tablespoons white wine

• 50 g miso

• A pinch of ground nutmeg

• freshly ground black pepper

• 100g 50–50 mixture of white and dark crab meat

• 150–200 g king prawns 

• 150–200 g scallops

• bunch of chives, thinly sliced

• 50 g Parmesan or pecorino cheese, grated

• 50 g mature Cheddar cheese, grated

•  100 g Gruyère, Emmental or Comté cheese, grated

• 40–50 g panko breadcrumbs 

• 4 hot portions of cooked rice (300 g uncooked).

Pre-heat the oven to 180c. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the onion. Cook until soft and translucent then add the garlic and cook until soft. Whisk in the flour to form a roux, then add the milk in a slow, steady stream while whisking constantly to prevent lumps forming. Once the milk has all been incorporated, add the cream, wine, miso, nutmeg and pepper to taste and whisk thoroughly to break up the miso. Bring to the boil, add the crab, prawns and scallops and cook for about 5 minutes until the shellfish are cooked through, then remove from the heat and stir in the chives, reserving a few to garnish. 

Mix together the grated cheese and panko. Grease a baking tin or casserole with butter and scoop the rice into an even layer on the bottom. Pour over the shellfish mixture, then cover with the cheese-panko mixture. Cook in the oven (or under the grill) until the surface is browned and bubbly. Garnish with the reserved chives. 

Listen to the podcast

If you’ve found these recipe ideas suitably tantalising, you should take a listen to the full Whodunnit Dinners podcast, which will take you through the plot and themes of ‘Murder at Mount Fuji’ and give you more background intel on the importance of Western food to Japanese culture. To hear the full Whodunnit Dinners podcast, go here.