This is my final column standing in for Tommi, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. To mark the occasion, here are a couple of heavyweight dishes.

Teriyaki is now as well known outside Japan as sushi or ramen, and it’s one of my favourite ways to cook. The key ingredients, as with so many Japanese dishes, are soy, sake and mirin, and they combine here to make a sauce that goes as well with meat and veg as with fish. I always make a big bottle and keep it in the fridge, because that way it’s easy to knock up a fab supper in minutes.

Teriyaki sauce

Double or even triple the amount of sauce, and keep what you don’t use in the fridge, ready for the next time a teriyaki craving hits you. It gets me at least once a week, so I get through pints of the stuff. It’s dead easy to make, too. Makes about 325ml.

10g fresh ginger, peeled and cut into 2mm-thick slices (I use a mandoline)
100ml soy sauce
100ml mirin
100ml sake
80g sugar
15cm x 15cm sheet kombu (optional)

Put everything in a pan and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Turn off the heat, leave to cool, then pour into a clean, sterilised glass bottle. (If you use kombu, make sure to squeeze this into the bottle, too.) It will keep in the fridge for about a month.

Cod teriyaki

The quantities given are per person, so just multiply them up, depending on how many you’re feeding.

1 tsp cooking oil
150g piece skin-on cod fillet
30ml sake
50ml teriyaki sauce (see previous recipe)

To garnish
100g spring onions, just the green part
20g cress (any you can get hold of, though I like pink-stem radish cress)

First prepare the garnish. Finely chop the onion tops (keep the white parts for another use), wash and drain. Mix with the cress and refrigerate.

Heat a nonstick frying pan on a medium heat, add a teaspoon of oil and lay in the cod skin side down. Do not even think about touching it for the first two minutes, so the skin gets a chance to crisp up. After two minutes, gently lift the fish to check that the skin isn’t burning, then carry on cooking until you notice it taking on a golden brown colour. Leaving the fillet skin side down, pour the sake over the fish and cover the pan. After another two minutes, once the sake has all but evaporated, pour in the teriyaki sauce, cover again and leave for three minutes.

Transfer the fish skin side up to a serving plate. On a medium heat, reduce the sauce in the pan until it thickens and starts to bubble, then pour over the fish, top with a heap of the salad garnish and serve.

Chilli miso lamb cutlets

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Miso is another central ingredient in Japanese cooking. It’s made by fermenting soybeans with salt and koji (a fungus), along with various other ingredients that differ from one region of Japan to another. The enzymes and bacteria in miso act as brilliant tenderisers of meat or fish. Gochujang is a fiery, fermented soybean paste from Korea: buy it in large supermarkets or Asian stores. Please don’t trim the meat off the lamb bones – it goes all crisp when cooked, and is the best bit. If you can brave the cold, barbecue your lamb over charcoal: there’s something gloriously decadent about setting light to a barbecue in winter, though you may get odd looks from the neighbours. Serves two.

For the chilli miso marinade
40ml mirin
15g sugar
100g miso
15g gochujang chilli paste

For the chilli miso sauce
80g chilli miso marinade (see above)
20ml sake

For the lamb
4 lamb cutlets
1 tbsp chilli miso sauce (see above)

First make the marinade. Heat the mirin and sugar in a small saucepan until the sugar dissolves, take off the heat, and mix in the miso and chilli paste. Rub 80g of the marinade (the rest will go into the sauce) into the lamb, and refrigerate overnight.

Now make the sauce: gently heat the sake in a small saucepan until the alcohol has evaporated, leaving only the liquid behind, then stir in the rest of the marinade and leave to cool.

The next day, heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Lay the cutlets on a rack, so the hot air in the oven can circulate all around them, and roast for eight minutes for medium rare with nicely charred edges (cook for longer if you prefer your lamb more well done). Serve with a big dollop of the miso sauce and a mound of the following pickle.

Namasu salad

We Japanese love our pickles, and this very simple one is a delicious introduction to how we make them. Makes enough to fill a small jam jar, and it will keep for up to a month.

100ml rice vinegar
10g salt
30g sugar
200g daikon (aka mooli or white radish)
200g carrots
1 red chilli, deseeded and cut into very thin slices

Gently stir the vinegar, salt and sugar in a small saucepan until the salt and sugar dissolve, then turn off the heat and leave to cool.

Peel the daikon and cut it first into 8cm chunks and then into 1cm-thick slices. Peel the carrots and cut into 8cm-long pieces. Set a mandoline to its thinnest setting (ie, about 0.5mm), and cut both into long, thin strips.

Put all the sliced daikon, carrots and chilli into a sterilised jar or Tupperware pot, pour over the cold vinegar mix, seal and leave to cure at least overnight. Serve cold.

• Ken Yamada is executive chef/co-owner of Tonkotsu, Tsuru and Anzu.