Japanese potato salad, but make it spring green

Yoshoku — the category of Japanese versions of American and European dishes — has its roots in 19th century Tokyo, when internationalism was the cultural currency of the Meiji era. By 1900, tonkatsu pork cutlet (progenitor of the katsu sando) had been invented at a restaurant called Rengatei in the ultra-modern Ginza district, which also gave rise to omurice (a phonetic portmanteau of omelet and rice).

Nearly 150 years (and millions of convenience-store egg salad sandwiches) later, yoshoku is indelibly part of Japanese cuisine, bolstered by craft-driven tradition and steeped in comfort-food nostalgia: curry rice, croquettes and hambagu steak forever.

At Café 2001 — the back-door cafe attached to Japanese restaurant Yess in downtown’s Arts District — chef Giles Clark puts his own spin on his yoshoku-esque specials, inspired by what’s at L.A.’s farmers markets and in his refrigerator.

His versions of a quintessential yoshoku icon, the Japanese potato salad, include kabocha pumpkin and puntarelle with blood orange and fermented chiles and more recently a verdant pea and potato salad with lemon-y pea tendrils. It’s a springtime explosion of flavors and textures in a monochromatic hue of vibrant green.

Clark, who moved from London to Los Angeles several years ago to help Junya Yamasaki open Yess, says he arrived at his pea-and-potato salad by happenstance. “Oh, crumbs. It’s no different from anyone making a salad at home,” he says. “You have a quick rummage around the fridge and throw something together under time pressure.

“One thing I’d say, at the end of the time I lived in Japan, I kind of accidentally went to an old-fashioned yoshoku restaurant. … It sort of caught me off guard a bit. It was fun to see. That’s been on my mind a lot.”

Japanese potato salad is itself a reinvention of a reinvention, based on the Olivier salad named after a French Belgian chef, Lucien Olivier, who ran a restaurant called Hermitage that was all the rage in 1860s Moscow. It morphed into what’s known as Russian salad (a zakuski staple) with diced potatoes, carrots, pickles and sometimes meat or vegetables or fruit such as ham, peas, onions or apples.

Japanese potato salad’s most important and unique distinction is its texture: The potatoes are mashed, so that the salad is almost creamy (and the potatoes and dressing almost meld), studded with the crunch of fresh or pickled vegetables.

Clark’s pea-and-potato salad does right by the texture, a mix of chunky sauteed-pea-and-onion puree the consistency of pesto, smashed yellow potatoes, and fresh (raw) peas and white onion too. It’s just creamy enough — “it’s nice for using chopsticks,” Clark notes.

The salad gets its gentle seasoning partially from kombu, which is added to the water for boiling potatoes. “In England there’s a seasonal spring potato called Jersey Royals,” Clark says. “They’re grown near the sea and actually fertilized with seaweed.” He also mentions saving the peels and roasting them in parchment with kombu.

One note about Clark’s potato salad is he doesn’t use mayonnaise — the peas and onions sauteed in olive oil are pureed enough to act as the binder. The effect is a light, refreshing potato salad that gets some pop from a grating of fresh horseradish — and from its color. You won’t miss the mayo.

Here’s Clark’s recipe for potato-pea salad, plus a few more spring pea recipes.

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Café 2001’s Green Pea and Potato Salad

Potato salad has become an essential dish in Japanese home cooking. It’s also a regular izakaya and yoshoku restaurant dish, notes chef Giles Clark, from cheap and cheerful to high end. Clark says potato salad can also be used as a satisfying way to celebrate the season. To keep this light, he eschews the mayonnaise at his downtown restaurant Café 2001. “Good mayo is divine but also envelopes all. This salad should be vibrant like the color and the moment of early spring.” This also can be used to make fried croquettes. It’s also great on toast (in that case, the bread smeared with a little Kewpie mayo).
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 45 minutes, plus 30 minutes cooling time. Serves 4 to 8.

Spring Pea Carbonara

Wide tagliatelle noodles replace spaghetti in this spring-y version of carbonara. The creamy, silky sauce made with eggs and Parmigiano-Reggiano blankets noodles, peas and prosciutto. Former L.A. Times cooking editor Genevieve Ko says you could use shelled fresh peas from the farmers market but recounts this maxim from Fergus Henderson, the chef of the legendary St. John restaurant in London: “A wise old chef once told me: Wait till peas are in season, then use frozen.”
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 20 minutes. Serves 2 to 4.

Spiced Rice and Fish With Minty Peas

You can use pretty much any kind of fish — skinless salmon, cod, halibut or other white fish fillets or even high-quality canned fish — in this easy weeknight dinner recipe. Curry powder is a great substitute if you don’t have coriander and cumin. No mint? Try any soft herb — cilantro or flat-leaf parsley or dill — for the peas.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 50 minutes. Serves 4.

Fresh Pea and Umeboshi Onigiri

Cookbook author Sonoko Sakai folds blanched peas into cooked short-grain rice for these fun, simple onigiri rice balls. Once the rice balls are formed, they’re wrapped in sheets of nori. When it comes to onigiri fillings, you can go traditional — umeboshi (pickled plum), seasoned bonito flakes or grilled salmon — or experimental.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 10 minutes. Makes 4 onigiri.