The Essence of Japanese Cuisine

An Essay on Food and Culture

Michael Ashkenazi, Jeanne Jacob

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136815560
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études ethniques

The past few years have shown a growing interest in cooking and food, as a result of international food issues such as BSE, world trade and mass foreign travel, and at the same time there has been growing interest in Japanese Studies since the 1970s. This volume brings together the two interests of Japan and food, examining both from a number of perspectives. The book reflects on the social and cultural side of Japanese food, and at the same time reflects also on the ways in which Japanese culture has been affected by food, a basic human institution. Providing the reader with the historical and social bases to understand how Japanese cuisine has been and is being shaped, this book assumes minimal familiarity with Japanese society, but instead explores the country through the topic of its cuisine.

1

Redefining Japanese Food

ANYONE WITH AN appreciation of fine cooking can recount memorable meals. Most of ours had been set in Japan, and we started to wonder what it was that set apart these meals from others. What elements contribute to a diner’s enjoyable experience of Japanese food? Are these different for non-Japanese food, and why? Without a clear idea of what a Japanese fine dining experience is like, it is impossible to analyse it. Here is a recreation of one of those meals.

We met Yukiko at the entrance to Shinjuku station, from which it was a short walk to the restaurant she had chosen. Yukiko was an interior coordinator for a major home construction company and her excellent taste naturally extended to food. Several years before she had introduced Jeanne to an innovative restaurant, and the fusion of Mediterranean techniques with Japanese ingredients and condiments served on handcrafted stoneware plates was impressive. Prepared as we were, our expectations fell short of reality.

It was the end of August, and summer’s oppressive humidity had abated somewhat, and even in the confines of Shinjuku’s monstrous forest of buildings, tepid breezes, if not precisely cool, were a relief. Shinjuku -one of Japan’s, if not the world’s, greatest entertainment quarters – is all excitement. Kilometres of fluorescent lights, enough to light a medium-sized city, millions of people, hundreds of smells, shops and bars and entertainment places announcing their wares with pictures, photos, wax models of food, beckoning touts.

We followed Yukiko into the entrance of an inconspicuous five-storey building sandwiched between two others whose glass fronts reflected a garishly lit pachinko parlour on the other side of the street. As the door closed behind us, we also left the raucous atmosphere behind us and entered a completely different setting. From the awesome Teshigahara-style flower arrangement whose size (and spotlights) dominated the marble foyer, through the muted grey and pink kimono of the maitre d’ who welcomed us, all signalled contemporary and vibrant elegance.

The restaurant, Tsunohazu, occupied the entire building, and we were ushered to a lift that whisked us to our floor. Our room, narrow and long, had a long bar of highly polished black wood running the length of one wall. Lining the other wall were low enclosures that framed booths for parties of four. There was a small flower arrangement and a scroll in a tokonoma (decorative niche). Most Japanese restaurants with Western-style chairs rarely feature decorative niches in addition to the main floral arrangement at the entrance. Exclusive gourmet establishments (ryōtei) do. Tsunohazu was far from a traditional tatami-matted ryōtei – its furnishings echoed the latest in chic furniture design from Milan and other European capitals. Shown to our places, still talking among ourselves, we had time to talk and drink while waiting for the luncheon that Yukiko ordered.

The first course, labelled a lemon nabe (pot), exemplified the eclecticism and seasonal fit of Japanese cuisine. A medium-sized lemon had been hollowed out and filled with a slightly tart granité of Japanese pears (nashi mizore ae) which served as a sauce for a colourful melange of shellfish meats, soft seaweed bits, diced cucumber, and red radish.

After this mouth-refreshing sorbet came the appetiser. Each of us received a gleaming black lacquered board, about 20 x 30 cm, on which small objects had been artfully arranged, seemingly haphazardly: small white fish-balls (tsukimi dango) representing the (forthcoming) autumn moon; deep golden fried slices of fish (sanma kenchin-yaki); slices of tiny purple aubergine, sweet and tender, adorned with a chestnut puree (kurumi tofu yaki nasu); small shrimp, parboiled and mounded with roe (seou ebi); and seasoned roasted chestnut meats that had been restuffed into fresh green-spined shells.

The arrangement on the black lacquer suggested the scattering of leaves and fruit as summer melds into autumn, to which of course the chestnuts, seasonal fish, fish-balls, as well as the nabe (stewing pot) of the previous dish also hinted.

Some of the qualities of taste and texture were surprising, as were the numerous allusions to autumn interwoven with those to the season we both thought we were still very definitely in. Our seasonal savvy was out of synch obviously: the occasional comforting breezes signalled the cusp of autumn, which we had ignored. Or rather, we had not been attuned to the subtlety of the season’s turning. Our attention had been directed by the reiteration of autumnal offerings in the menu.

The crisp-looking tsukimi dango were surprisingly quite frothy on the tongue. The chestnuts, far from being mealy as expected, were crunchy. And above all, the visual qualities of the ingredients, the blazing colours of autumn in shiny browns, mellow yellows, and dark reds, set against the background of black lacquer, which itself was on a polished white pine table, heightened our sensory experience.

The next course was labelled o-wan: bowl. A bowl can contain rice, of course, or soup, but in this case, as expected (and greatly appreciated) it contained a steamed soup-custard: matsutake dobin mushi. The chef was being doubly playful. Chowan mushi is a steamed savoury custard, much appreciated in the colder months. It is normally served in a tea bowl hence the name (cha = tea; wan = bowl), but here the custard had been made and steamed in individual small teapots, evoking the original name without actually mentioning it, and, by inserting the highly valued (and priced) autumnal matsutake pine mushrooms, the chef unequivocally set the meal more solidly into its seasonal context (if by chance the previous elements had failed to convince us). One of the great charms of chawan mushi is that the custard hides various treasures, much like raisins in an English custard, to add interest to its fairly bland texture. In this case slices of fragrant brown matsutake were the main attraction. There were chunks of savoury grilled hamo (pike conger, or pike eel), old ivory-coloured gingko nuts and, for visual, textural and taste contrast, mandarin segments, peeled and lightly marinated in rice vinegar.

It being autumn also meant the start of the shun or proper season for katsuo, a small relative of the tuna that swarms through the Black Current that kisses the Pacific coast of Japan at that time. In November, particularly, its flesh is considered at its peak. The next dish – katsuo tataki – featured succulent triangles of flash-seared and then ice-dipped katsuo fillet, the smoky flavour of its charred outer surfaces a foil to the tenderness of the garnet-coloured, glistening rare centre. Accompaniments were chopped green onions and a sauce of mildly sour ponzu (citron) and soy sauce.

This piscean steak tartare was contrasted with a yakimono (“cooked thing”) - a morsel of sea bass wrapped in filo pastry to form a Japanese flavoured Western-style “pie” (suzuki hosho pai tsutsumi), a marvelous blend of Japanese and Western techniques. This was served with two minuscule mounds of lightly cooked vegetables – aromatic gobo (burdock root, a characteristic element in stews and other cold-weather dishes) and juicy-sweet Japanese spinach leaves, stems and pink-tinged root tops.

A stew – nimono – followed. In a rich stock, yuba (dried sheets of tofu, that most versatile of foods) had been gently simmered and now floated like folded scrolls of creamy velum. Some soft, spongy Daitokuji-fu (Daitoku-temple style fried gluten) had been added, as a French chef would croutons. In the broth as well were hand-rolled noodles of newly-harvested soba (buckwheat). These dark-flecked noodles with their robust wholemeal-like colour and taste and al dente texture were ideally partnered with the mountain vegetables (sansai) - lily bulbs and wild greens – in Yoshino-style, that is battered and stewed in kuzu (arrowroot) flour. The stew, perhaps more than anything else, reflected Japanese preferences for a subtle variety of textures – crisp, soft, slick, smooth within the same dish. The mainstays of frugal stews and ascetic diets – dried tofu, gluten, wild vegetables, coarse buckwheat – embody the warmth, flavour, and comfort of the countryside (inaka) and home cooking (haha no aji, “mother’s taste”), and serve as reminders of simpler, albeit harsher, times when wild vegetables and fungi, painstakingly harvested in the mountains throughout the milder seasons, as well as persimmons, sweet potatoes, radishes, pounded rice cakes (mochi), and tofu were dried (the latter, “freeze-dried” in the Snow Country) and stored for the colder months. Here in a sophisticated setting and more refined method of cooking and serving, these simple ingredients merely serve as harbingers of the forthcoming cold.

The contrast of the stew in texture, provenance, and freshness with the next dish could not have been sharper: shun no tempura, a selection of seasonal vegetables and small pieces of fish tempura-style. Small portions of the freshest ingredients dipped in a chilled, light batter, and immediately fried in sesame-scented oil. The result – unsurprising, since Tsunohazu’s origins were in a tempura shop – were golden clouds, crunchy on the outside, preserving the perfect fresh flavour of the seasonal offerings. Miniature aubergines, sweet and soft, a slice of orange-fleshed sweet potato, another of Japanese squash, its malachite-green peel peeking through its crisp batter gilding, were served with a traditional sauce of soy, fish stock, grated ginger and radish. With its broad visual and textural similarity to beignets, fritto misto, camarron rebozado and other Western batter-fried dishes, tempura is one dish which non-Japanese take to with great ease. It is sociolinguistically amusing that while the origin of the word tempura is ascribed by Japanese lexicography to Spanish tempora (“fasting day meals”) or Portuguese tempero (“cooking, preparation”), modern Portuguese or Spanish cookbooks call batter-fried dishes “rebozado” or “frito”.

No Japanese meal would be complete without cooked rice, which for many Asian cultures defines a proper meal. Here the chef teases the customer: the next dish was labelled oshokuji (meal) on the menu. A meal within a meal, as it were, the defining moment of the event and a witticism on gohan – cooked rice – which is the common word for food. In this case rice, in the form of mushroom gruel (kinoko zosui), was simmered till soft but not mushy in light stock and garnished with half-opened parasols of beige-grey shimeji mushrooms, aromatic trefoil leaves (mitsuba) and a minuscule mound of the restaurant’s original salt pickles. Called by the courtly word kono-mono (perfumed things), these homely salt-cured vegetables almost inevitably accompany rice. Steaming hot, glistening white rice, home-cured pickles, and miso soup (miso shim) constitute the most basic yet complete module of a Japanese meal (ichijū issai, “one soup, one vegetable” [rice is tacit]), and are evocative of rurality, home foods, and personal comfort.

Finally, we had mizugashi (“water sweets”), a classic reference to fresh fruits and nuts, and now used for a final sweet course. Doubtless in concession to the old and new waves of culinary imports, we had cream cheesecake with arrowroot sauce (kurīmu chīzu honkatsuyose), a delicate cube of exquisite melting creaminess, lapped with a translucent slightly tart sauce, and teamed with a mini-scoop of freshly made white peach sherbet. The plate was scattered with a few ruby-red grains of pomegranate, and three enormous Kyōhō grapes, each the size of a small plum, the peel half-bared to reveal and contrast with the juicy translucent flesh. Coffee, which by now has become one of the national drinks of Japan, concluded the meal, which, though considerably hastened at our request, still lasted almost three hours.

It was a most exquisite repast, a veritable feast of the senses. It was a multi-layered experience that involved the seasons, manifold textures and tastes, novel combinations of ingredients and cooking techniques, and aroused aesthetic enjoyment in the colours, presentation, and choice eating and serving implements used throughout. Moreover the service was neither obsequious nor lacking in attention. To say that we were euphoric at the end would not seem an exaggeration of how the three of us felt. However, had we not had some knowledge and previous experience of similar feasts, our appreciation would not have been as keen. Looking back on it and trying to objectify the experience highlights several stark issues. How does one translate the personal, intensely individual experience of this meal to another? What is the relationship between what anthropologists call the “emic” – the realm of personal experience, personal evaluation, personal emotional response – and the “etic” – those parts that can be described “objectively” or at least materially?

Clearly we could describe this late summer-early autumn meal in one of several ways. We could simply give the menu, provide a list of recipes, describe what we saw, or, with some difficulty, what we tasted and felt. But it is very clear that none of those would encompass the totality of the experience, nor, perhaps, would it make clear to any reader, how these discrete elements came together to make a memorable meal, nor why. To make sense of this, or any other meal, we therefore decide, in a sense, to start at the beginning: to introduce the reader to Japanese food as we ourselves were introduced, and to unfold, in clear stages inasmuch as is possible, how this meal, as a sort of prototype for any Japanese meal, comes about. In a way, what we are about to embark upon is something like unfolding a complicated origami paper folding: taking a miniaturised whole, and disassembling it, unfolding it to see the marvellous structure it enfolds.

The discovery of any food system starts with the shock of the unknown as it crosses one’s sensory faculties. Until the point at which ‘strangeness’ is recognised by one’s palate or nose or eye, the diner is still in the land of the familiar. Attempting to characterise the strangeness is something that is often hard to do because the experience is totally subjective. “This is salty’ or “that is sweet’ are statements that are, at best, rough approximations of sensations that have, at their base, levels of individual memory and experience tagged on to them. It is when you want to identify a specific “taste point”, as it were, along the continuum of sweetness or saltiness – ‘not salty enough’ or ‘too sweet’ – that you get into the complexity of individually and culturally learned thresholds of acceptable or appropriate taste or balance of tastes. The elaborate devices invented by oenologists to describe the taste of wine are at best poor analogies (what, after all, does ‘flinty’ mean to most of us?) and at worse appear to be a source of disbelief and amusement to the layperson.

All this is to say that trying to interpret a food system to those unfamiliar with it is fraught with some unusual difficulties. To start with, therefore, we look at a plain Japanese meal from the vantage point of the outsider, the newcomer, the novice:

The first Japanese meal I ate was a teishoku (set-menu) of yakiniku, rice, miso shiru, and pickles. It was memorable not because good – on thinking back, it was eaten in a dingy and cheap students’ eatery but because of its strange sensory qualities.

Yakiniku consists of thin slices of meat (usually pork) sautéed with soy sauce and salt and slices of onion. Served on a plate decorated with parsley, it was familiar enough not to invite comment (by my unconscious mind or my taste buds). As with all teishoku, or complete meals, it came with a bowl of white steamed rice (which I expected) and a bowl of unfamiliar soup.

The physical properties of miso shim soup are such that the clear broth (the dashi) is obscured by a cloud of miso bean paste. There are characteristic tiny “whirlpools”: wells of clear stock that penetrate through the tiny clo...