Homemade Japanese-Greek azuki bean, pork, and chestnut braise.

Tastes like fall if that makes sense.

Japanese influence :

• emphasis on sweetness and umami (using naturally sweet ingredients like azuki beans, chestnuts, pork, mushroom dashi umami)
• not heavy with added oils, focus on clarity of flavour instead (clarifying the pork with a soak, wash, blanch, and roast first)
• seasonal ingredients and temperature harmony (chestnuts and warming aromatics)

Greek influence :

• φακές style long cooking dish with emphasis on beans as the main
• Use of more Mediterranean/Asia Minor centric whole spices, like bay, cloves, and green cardamom
• bitter enhancement instead of just sweet/umami layering with thyme and black pepper

I’m a Greek American who likes Japanese food and certain aspects of Japanese preparation a lot, so I hope I used the Japanese influences correctly and did justice to the cornerstones of both culinary styles ! Except for, unfortunately, the Japanese desire for more elegant presentation (it looked prettier when you could see the whole chestnuts). It tasted fire, so I must’ve done at least one thing right

Note: there are a lot more chestnuts (whole) than the picture actually shows. Seriously the bulk of this thing is like 1/3 chestnut

Would love comments concerns etc I just want feedback of any sort