It's ludicrous to ask Ed Verner to prepare a dish in 10 minutes because, in the few months his hot new restaurant Pasture has been open, he has shifted the point at which meal prep begins so far back that it could be argued that his closest equivalent in a creational sense is not another chef, but God.
For instance, he makes his own mirin. When I recently told a leading Auckland chef - himself renowned for attention to detail - that Verner makes his own mirin, he looked at me, either dumbstruck or concerned for Verner's long-term wellbeing, and said, "He makes his own mirin?"
To make koji, which is just the precursor to mirin, which is really just a cooking wine, he does the following things: precisely steams some rice - overcooked or undercooked, it won't work - puts it into an incubator he has made out of a polystyrene box and a lightbulb, heats the incubator to an exact temperature, uses a spray bottle to ensure perfect humidity, inoculates the rice with mould spores, then spends two days ensuring heat and moisture content remain constant, which is made difficult by the fact that, as the mould starts to grow, the temperature in the box goes up and opening the box to introduce more moisture makes it drop.
About half the time his attempts fail, and he must turf out the nascent koji and start the whole process again. Once he succeeds, he uses that base to make mirin - which, again, is really just a cooking wine.
