Rick Lapointe - The Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Sep 1, 2002

The most common aemono (dressed salads) are: shira-ae, the tofu-based dressing that we looked at last week; goma-ae, a simple sesame dressing; and finally miso-ae, miso dressing. I presented a version of miso-ae — vinegared and with mustard — when I wrote about the little firefly-like hotaru-ika squid this past spring (see The Japan Times, March 24, 2002).

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Aug 25, 2002

Well, for starters, there's the shira-ae

The first course in a Japanese formal meal is often called the tsuki-dashi or the saki-zuke — either word referring to the small dish that comes out automatically when a guest sits down. It corresponds roughly with the idea of amuse bouche, or little mouth-pleasers, in Western cooking. Often these little pre-courses are simple dressed salads called aemono. Aemono are also widely made and eaten in home kitchens in Japan. The line between aemono and a more Western-style composed salad is often crossed and new dishes created.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Aug 18, 2002

Quick kitchen revision before term begins

Washoku is a feeling as much as it is a style of cooking or a way of seasoning. Mastering basic techniques — no matter what the season or the ingredients used — and developing the confidence to adapt recipes will help you to incorporate the style into your own cooking repertoire.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Aug 4, 2002

For a little taste of home that's not from home

There are three smells that I associate with summer in Japan: the scent of katorisenko — the green, spiral-shaped incense that is used to ward off pesky mosquitoes; the sweet-sticky smell of the colored syrup in seasonal kaki-gori shaved-ice shops; and the odors of yatai outdoor food stalls — especially the smell of the sauce burning on the griddles of the okonomi-yaki and yakisoba vendors.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jul 28, 2002

As you like it, and you will

I was an adventurous kid, but that didn't make it easier for me to eat my first cabbage pancake. I encountered the overstuffed okonomi-yaki — a griddle-fried savory pancake — one Saturday afternoon at the temple-cum-community center in Northern California, where I took Japanese-language classes.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jul 21, 2002

Great big balls of octopus — easy on the sauce

I have a love/hate relationship with takoyaki. I really like the little dumplings but I'm opposed to anything being drowned in too much sauce, and the trend, especially at summer festivals, is to slather on too much of that gooey, brown Bulldog sauce.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jul 14, 2002

Fishing around for ready-to-eat street food

Utter silence — Piercing the stone walls, The cicada's cry — Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jul 7, 2002

Rooting for the nutritious fruits of the earth

Fall is the season for the tubers in the taro family, but the stalks of several taro are just coming to their midsummer peak. In Japan, these taro stalks are referred to as zuiki in general, and they feature prominently on the classic summer washoku menu.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jun 30, 2002

Spice it up, with a little or a lot of heat

Globally the most common spice or flavor-enhancing element used today is the chili pepper. Chilies are used raw, cooked or pickled as a vegetable or dried (ground into a powder or reconstituted) as a seasoning in almost every corner of the world. There are thousands of varieties of chili peppers employed in nearly every ethnic cuisine. One can't imagine Indian, Thai or African food without the heat-packing chili — and Japanese cuisine is not without it either.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jun 23, 2002

You too can take the natto challenge

Several years ago NHK broadcast an exhaustive special on natto, containing more than you ever cared to know about that much-maligned sticky, stinky dish of fermented soybeans. One of the exciting pieces of information that NHK's crack investigative journalism revealed was the number of times required to stir natto to a frothy, snotty perfection.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jun 16, 2002

Big world sprouts from tiny grains of rice

When you travel between one small town and another in Japan often the panorama is a vast plain of flooded fields or a towering terraced mountain of rice paddies. In early June, up and down the Japanese archipelago, rice has been planted and the glistening paddies are teeming with life. Along with the young rice plants, a whole world of microflora and fauna thrives here.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jun 9, 2002

Yasai no Yoshino-ni: Now here's some real food for thought . . .

This past week I tagged along with veteran New York Times food writer Elizabeth Andoh to Hakuun'an, a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant and teahouse associated with Manpukuji Temple near Uji City in Kyoto Prefecture. Manpukuji is the head temple of the Obaku sect of Zen Buddhism, Japan's third largest after the Rinzai and Soto sects, and is named after Manpukuji (Wafuszu) Temple in Fujian, China, where the sect's mid-17th-century founder, Ingen, was the abbot.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Jun 2, 2002

In a pinch, these will do just fine

More than 50 families of crab, numbering thousands of species, thrive in practically all parts of the globe. Most crab species are marine and live in salt water or the brackish waters of bays, lagoons and river deltas. A relatively small number have adapted themselves to completely freshwater life-cycles and even fewer varieties have become solely land-dwelling.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

May 26, 2002

You say tomato, we say delicious

As summer starts to roll out its smothering blanket of heat across Japan, the markets begin to fill with some of the best produce of the year. Though tomatoes are now often grown in hothouses and available year-round, they are at their best when raised outdoors during the months when the sun beats down, warming the fields and ripening the fruit.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

May 19, 2002

Time is ripe for the taste of Old World fruit

The flowers of an eggplant, like the wisdom of a parent, will never mislead you. — Japanese proverb

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

May 12, 2002

High fives for the best kind of Japanese food

There are five sets of five rules one must consider when attempting to make traditional Japanese food: the five colors (goshiki); the five methods (goho); the five flavors (gomi); the five senses (gokan); and finally the five viewpoints/considerations (gokan no mon), a Buddhist treatise on the proper way of eating and being grateful for food that has been prepared. Elements and variations on these dictums can be seen in all Asian cuisines that have been influenced by Buddhism. Originally codified in China, these axioms were imported, adapted and refined to fit the Japanese sensibility. They swayed the classically minded washoku chef for centuries.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

May 5, 2002

Now is the season to indulge your shellfish gene

For thousands of years, populations living close to the sea have found shellfish an easily obtainable and convenient source of protein and trace minerals. Shellfish is the general term for crustaceans (shrimp, crab, lobster) and mollusks (clams, oysters, squid and octopuses). All of these shellfish (kokakurui or kai) have been an important part of the Japanese diet for centuries and to this day remain a highly prized component of the national cuisine.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Apr 28, 2002

Japan grows some mean beans

Legumes are a family of flowering plants of more than 18,000 varieties, including peas, beans, lentils and peanuts. They grow on almost every continent except Antarctica and range from dwarf herbs in alpine climes to massive trees in the tropical forest. The species that are rich in fiber, protein, iron and folic acid include chickpeas, soybeans and alfalfa. As a family, legumes or pulses are second only to grasses (cereal grains) in their economic importance in the world — and surpass grains in their nutritional value.

COMMUNITY

Apr 21, 2002

Fine fare from them there hills

In Japan, the woods traditionally have been imagined to be the epitome of all that is unknown and fearsome in nature -- dark, enchanted places inhabited by magical foxes and raccoon dogs that children are made to fear from an early age.

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU

Apr 21, 2002

Let us go fiddlehead foragin', but carefully

A fiddlehead, that small plant that grows in the Saint John River Valley in the spring, and which is said to be symbolic of the sun. — Alfred Bailey

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