Last Saturday I cooked behind the counter of my friend Kiyomi's small restaurant on the outskirts of Kyoto City. One of his good customers was having a birthday gathering and Kiyomi's mother, who typically helps out on days like this, was in the hospital with pneumonia.

I really respect the kind of restaurant Kiyomi runs, particularly for the rapport the owner has with his patrons. Whether sitting as a customer or standing as a cook on either side of the counter at Kiyomi's restaurant, I have studied the way my friend interacts with his customers.

When the restaurant moved a year ago, long-time customers, who had become friends, showed up to help pack boxes and empty refrigerators in the old place, and paint, paper and stock the shiny new premises just two blocks away. My own task was to smooth ebony-colored washi paper onto that long counter, before coating it with lacquer. After the kanpai toast at the end of each of the several moving days, Kiyomi would pull out a gas burner and make a nabe or some other simple, satisfying dish to show his appreciation for everyone's help. It's that kind of restaurant.

On Saturday morning, Kiyomi, three of the younger customers and I went foraging in our usual secret spots in the hills straddling Kyoto, Osaka and Nara prefectures. While the weather was still cool on this first springlike day, with the cherry trees straining to open their blossoms, we hiked up and down the slopes of empty rice fields into the woods beyond.

In the spaces between the dark woods and the open farmland — ground that is blessed with light and warmth from the sun, but which lingers in shadow for the hottest part of the afternoon — grows a bounty of buds and shoots, leaves and roots that are there for the harvesting. And then there are the riverbanks, the preferred spot for succulent edible plants that like keeping their feet wet.

After a productive morning of gathering we rested for a hot bowl of kake soba noodles, served in a tiny teahouse by the kiln of a chef/potter who owns a quiet space across from Joryu-ji Temple, near Tono in Kyoto Prefecture.

We always sweep through Tono on the way home from foraging to pick up vegetables pulled from the earth that morning and to buy tsukemono (pickles) made by the older women and hung on pegs outside their homes to sell (take one bag of tsukemono and put 100 yen or 200 yen in the rusty coffee tin).

One of the seasonal treats we found on sale in Tono was excellent strawberries, at their peak here in Japan despite the chilly March air. Japanese farmers and fruit sellers have joined hands to create this false strawberry season. Rice farmers build hothouses in the empty rice fields and raise one or two crops of fruit to make use of the land before they flood it in preparation for the summer rice crop. Fruit sellers now count on strawberries to help them through the slump between the mikan season and the summer melons.

Back at the restaurant, Kiyomi and I whipped up the starters for that night's party: a shira-ae of fresh, plump shiitake and handmade konnyaku dressed in white miso and pureed tofu; little tsukushi buds — they look rather like arrows — simmered in a dark soy broth; late bamboo shoots (a variety local to the nearby hills), cooked in a katsuo dashi, then drained and tossed with freshly shaved katsuo flakes; yabukanzo, a wild lily harvested before the flower appears, quickly boiled and coated in a vinegared sweet miso sumiso-ae.

Next, we served the 25 smiling guests some simmered vegetables and main courses of raw sashimi.

One more great thing about Kiyomi's place is the wine. He keeps an array of bottles: obscure Italian whites, French reds from the underrated bin, late-harvest Germans, unknown Eastern European vintages, and established leaders from the New World and southern hemisphere vineyards. Kiyomi not only pairs a particular wine to a dish, he also caters to each customer's taste, for in this temple of simple food and good drink there is neither a menu nor a wine list.

So I guess it was simply that I forgot myself when the lubricated celebrants asked me to break out a Western dish for the next course. I wasn't thinking — or I was thinking too hard — but what I came up with was a tempura of those delicious strawberries served with a black pepper and Gorgonzola sauce painted on the plate.

Sure, some of you foodies out there are thinking, that sounds very good. Obviously I was thinking the same. I have served a similar dish in the past, to rave reviews, frying small sweet fruit tomatoes in a light batter.

I made the strawberry dish and everyone had a great time watching the process. But then came the moment of truth.

Everyone there had eaten enough of my food (earlier that evening I'd served a variation on Italian panzanella with foraged greens) and so I felt comfortable enough to ask them what they really thought: thumbs down. Such honesty can be very important in this line of work, but nonetheless it was not an Iron Chef moment.

It reminded me, however, that cooking is not a contest with 45 minutes on the clock in which to show your culinary prowess. Rather, cooking is about taking the time to make something solid, something honest, something real, and then making it over and over again until you get it right.

As Edward Espe Brown wrote, while a young Zen student in the enlightened California of the late '60s, cooking is a meditation, it is a practice, something we might need to do even when we don't know why. I will continue to make bad dishes as often as I make good ones. Hopefully, the dishes I get right will outshine the trashcan liners.

I partially redeemed myself Saturday night by offering some perfectly cooked tempura of foraged fukinoto buds. It was merely the combination of the strawberries and heat that was wrong, it was decided; the skill of the chef was not in doubt.

Looking over and winking so only I could see, Kiyomi said, "Win some, lose some."