Monthly Memo From Doi's Culinary Philosophy
Original text by Doi Yoshiharu
Translated by Yoshiko Fukuda
March-Yayoi
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In Spring, the Japanese enjoy bitter tastes. From a long ago, people ate edible wild plants from the mountains and young buds of vegetables. Eating bitter flavors probably started out as a necessity and not as a preference. Because by the end of winter, when the stored food became sparse people had to go out and find anything that could be substituted into their food. Hence, the only food they could find was young buds that finally appeared, lured out by the warmth of the sun.
▼Spring Milk
In spring even the cows that stayed inside the cow shed, eating only hay, would come out into the warm sun and munch on the newly grown grass. Because of this sudden change in their daily diet and habit, their nutrition intake is suddenly balanced out and the milk adopts a richer flavor. In a program called NNN documentary, milking cows, that were delightedly chewing on the grass in the fields, were shown appearing to be moderately healthy and happy. In contrast, the milking cows for brand names were cooped up in cow sheds and fed high energy and protein filled forage just to produce the most rich fatty milk that will win the consumers' tastes. More than half of the milking cows in Japan has diseased internal organs. If healthy, milking cows live up to ten years, but the average life span of the milking cows is four years in actuality. It is definitely a scary story. Cows originally only ate grasses and are not meant to eat artificially arranged feeds. The yellow colored milk from a pasture fed cow looks appealing even on the T.V screen, yet I have heard before that the children dislike this kind of milk, because of the strong grassy smell. Hokkaido ranchers were calling out to people that there is nothing wrong with the smell and pleaded that there was no point in doing their work if people would not accept it for no some silly reason.
When people lived within small tribes, there was a special tradition in matrimony where the groom and the bride were given a special diet. Spring milk was one element in their diet, which was supposed to help they receive a healthy and strong baby. By keeping this custom the tribe admitted new sturdy framed members to their society. However, if a mutant were to be received, then the tribe was said to perish. (according to W. A Price, in "Diet and The Degeneration of Human Body")
▼Harshness in Taste is Something to be Enjoyed
Dark green spinach grown in amply fertilized soil will have stiff rigidly leaves. The red fat roots leave a somewhat savage impression. The flavor is much richer when the spinach is grown about 10 cm more than the ones seen at markets. Of course it contains greater harshness and it smells of the fertile soil. That was the kind of spinach that I used to eat when I was young. In those days spinach was despised by most children and characters like the powerful and muscular Popeye were invented to make us eat the nutritious vegetable.
There is a vegetable called salad spinach, grown through hydroponics. The special spinach can be eaten raw since the harshness is taken out. Therefore people can have a easier time taking in vitamin from the long avoided acrid spinach. Nowadays what sells the best at the fresh produce section are the vegetables that can be eaten raw for salads and others that can be eaten all throughout the year like lettuce, tomato, cucumber, soft cabbage, celery, and radish sprouts. If those vegetables are placed where people can easily see them then those take up more than half of the profit in that produce section.▼Whether to Take Out or to Keep The Harsh Flavor
Japanese cuisine values the original flavor of individual ingredients. However, some vegetables are often placed in water to get rid of their unique flavor. Bamboo shoots are placed under running water for whole day to be softened, even after the three hours spend on boiling. Through that long method the displeasing taste from the harshness is taken out along with the natural flavor. All there is left to do is to fill in the lost taste with sake and stock.
Black beans are boiled in a pan and then cooled with water. This process is repeated for two to three days until the beans are completely softened. However, during the process of softening the beans' original flavor is mostly lost. That is why it is placed in sweet liquid to reestablish a similar taste.
A while ago when home cooking was more properly done, these kinds of cooking, in which other flavors replaced the original taste of ingredients, were practiced at restaurants. In order to heighten the value of restaurant food, they tried to maximize the contrast between home cooking and restaurant food. In home cooking, meals revolved around the ingredients' unaffected taste. Therefore, restaurant food had to do the exact opposite and served a more 'refined' menu.
Nowadays the vegetables and other ingredients have also changed. Many of them lost the harshness in taste that they did not need to be placed in water and therefore retains the genuine taste. In addition they probably contain more nutrients than before. The best way to enjoy recent 'feeble' vegetable is to pick out the ones that can be eaten right away. In another words choose vegetables that do no require any boiling. Then the vegetable that does not contain rich flavor will not lose even more nutrients from boiling.
Nowadays, I enjoy eating imported vegetables. Endives' bitter sweet taste, rocket with its sesame scent are some examples that I truly love. There is a Tunisian herb that has the scent of mint mixed with celery that is also a great addition to the list of ingredients. Many exhibits their own spring vegetable-like uniqueness. In France, there are very particular vegetables like dandelions and cardoon that are still not widely known in Japan.
In French cuisine, strong scented aromas in forms of herbs and curry powders are more frequently used in dishes. Because of these strong scents, soups in individual dishes become unnecessary, making it possible to make low calorie and less salty cooking that is in demand.
▼Dashi Shoyu --- Stock soy sauce
Nowadays even the soy sauce produced by specialized soy sauce company and mirin manufactured by popular name brand mirin company do not sell well anymore. I was asked to use one of their product, dashi shoyu, from a soy sauce company but I had to refuse the offer. Soy sauce is supposed to be delicious by itself and as itself. It does not need to borrow special flavor and depend on something else. In addition soy sauce does not have to be something beyond a soy sauce; soy sauce just needs to be simply soy sauce. Delicious flavor is something balanced out. Condiments should not be so distinct a flavor that they void the ingredients taste. Even if I hope that the vegetables' individual tastes be savored, by pouring dashi shouyu average vegetables will taste as delicious as the better ones.
Soy sauce is truly delicious. If one is a shoyu lover, then even without tasting, he will know if the shoyu has gone bad or not. But of course, others never notice. The tip in making delicious food, as I always say, is to use good condiments. The result is always marvelous.
Japan will not be Japan if it can no longer make its original soy sauce. It is not the company's fault that soy sauce company manufactures untraditional soy sauce, but it is the consumers fault. It is also our fault, people who are seriously concerned about the dietary culture, to not be able to say that dashi shoyu cannot be considered to be delicious shoyu.▼Organic vegetables
In markets, the share held by vegetables grown without pesticides and harmful chemical fertilizer is increasing. This is because many consumers avoid foods that contain additives and chemical seasoning in order to put a stop to the ill effects the inorganic vegetables have on their body. People are all trying to remain healthy as possible these days.
Unfortunately since vegetables with the mark organic sells better, there are some inorganic products sold with a misleading label.
In reality it seems like we do not know who to trust, and we have to put our complete trust on the farmers and the merchants.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing has established standards for organic products. In order for the product to be labeled, organic several rules must be followed;
1) Products must be grown on a field that has not used pesticides and chemical fertilizers for more than 8 years.
2) Seed of recombinant DNA technique must not be used.
3) Must obtain a third party's consent, and etc.At a closer look, vegetables grown without any pesticides have little holes in the leaves left by snails and caterpillars. There are mothers who are puzzled at doctors' words that 'vegetables must be washed and made sure that they are cleaned'. The reason for this is that the mothers are so used to seeing "clean" looking vegetables that they do not realize they have to wash them. Like the old days more children are getting infected by round worms.
But the question is, who would approve of organic vegetables. Can mothers used badly eaten up vegetables that looks unattractive just by washing it clean with water?▼Home cooking
A survey was taken by Kantou agricultural society on favorite food of children of different age with different back grounds. 62.8% said home cooking made by their parents. 15.7% favored restaurants, and 13.2% placed their preference on fast food menus like hamburger. Food from convenient stores only gained 2% of the children's votes.
The survey concluded with an analysis that the children demands more of home cooking tastes, because women's participation in society is rising, and the family is forced to eat outside. I was very glad to hear this yet when I told a friend he told me some disappointing news. In a book that many high school students read before college interviews clearly stated that a model answer for questions that asked for their favorite kind of food was "home cooking" made by their parents.
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