Kyoto Journal Issue 93: Food Sneak Peek

ISBN978-4-87940-641-5 C0072 ¥ 1800E

1920072018002

93

INSIGHTS FROM ASIA

JOURNAL

93

定価＝本体1,800円＋税 発行元 KYOTO JOURNAL 販売元 紫紅社

KYOTO JOUR N A L

9784879406415

2019 FOOD

Food

GEN

Relaxed dining in Higashiyama

ad GEN is a relaxed dining experience in the Higashiyama area, located within Kyoto International Community House (kokoka), where international visitors feel the quality of Japanese hospitality.

We present a course of traditional Japanese foods, including a selection of one bowl of soup and three dishes, a variety of seasonal vegetables, meat and fish. Washoku has at t racted much at tention globally in promoting a healthy diet and contains the recommended balance of ingredients for nutritional health. In developing our menu we believe that a well-balanced meal provides the healthy basis for your mind and body. We cater for guests who would like special lunch courses, group tours, workplace gatherings or parties, an excellent lunch box and other catering services. Come dine at GEN and enjoy the pleasures of washoku kokoka Kyoto International Community House, 2nd Floor 2-1 Torii-cho, Awataguchi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8536 Tel: 075-751-1300 Fax: 075-751-1311 email: higashiyama-gen@worldheritage.co.jp https://www.worldheritage.co.jp/nagomi/higashiyama/ Business hours: 11:30 A.M. – 6:00 P.M. Closed: On Mondays (or the next business day when Monday is a public holiday), at year-end and the New Year holidays

pervades every area of our existence.

It sustains us. It inspires us. It enslaves us.

It educates us. It may kill us.

It allows us to communicate with the Gods.

Your Food is not mine, nor mine yours, but we may share it, and in so doing, what joy.

Few remain silent on Food. And why would one?

What a natural topic for discussion, discourse, eulogy, outrage, comedy, reflection, prayer, ire, poetry, love…

Food is simultaneously universal and particular, literal and metaphoric.

It is edible, incredible fun, a celebration of life itself.

And so many of its greatest exponents and proponents live here in Asia.

2 In the summer of 2015 we published FOOD!, KJ 83, guest-edited by Kyoto resident, writer, photographer and lover of anything edible, John Ashburne. That issue was digital and went largely unnoticed. We decided to reprint the key articles and add some new ones for this issue, now that we are back in print.

COVER: For all its simplicity, the hinomaru bento (named after the Japanese flag), a bed of white rice with a single pickled plum (umeboshi) at its centre, conjures up mixed feelings in the minds of Japanese

people. Present generations, raised with an abundance of food choices, may see it as downright old-fashioned, especially when packed in a quaint, old-style aluminium container. But for those who grew up during and immediately after WWII, this bento is a symbol of austerity, right down to the box (which used to corrode due to acidity of the umeboshi). Certainly the nutritional value of this bento—or the lack of it—is evident.

Reflecting Japan’s later prosperity the phrase “jogaben-kui” emerged, signifying that the days of hiding the contents of one’s school lunchbox, to avoid being the

subject of envy, were over—you could leave your favourite morsels until last. Today, the Mannenya bento shop at Mito Station in Ibaraki Prefecture famously offers a hinomaru bento featuring “award-winning” koshihikari rice and prized locally-grown pickled plums. A symbol, perhaps, of just how far the country has come...

Special thanks to Hiroko Kuwano for providing the rice and umeboshi. The bento box is from the collection of Felicity Greenland and Rono Takagawa.

Food is Brahman because food is what circulates in the universe through bodies which in turn are food made flesh and bone. According to this view, in the organic world there is no other stuff: food is the primal substance; all animate beings are its forms. One may go further and see this cycle as including inorganic matter as well. All forms arise out of food and return to it—which is, after all, one of the descriptions of Brahman, the ground of being. In the transformations of food, inorganic becomes organic, one form is metamorphosed into another; the eater is eaten, big fish eat little fish, and if you wait long enough, little fish eat big fish.

—A.K. Ramanujan, “Food for Thought,” The Eternal Food Tai sea breem, photograph by John F. Ashburne

06 From Beyond the Bridge of Dreams Kaori O’Connor 12 Once to Feast in the Northern Capital Douglas Penick 18 Bringing the Taste of Zen to Berlin Lucinda Cowing 25 Flipping Veganism: Zen and Now Marie Thorsten 56 The Tandoori Bread Shop Robert Van Koesveld BEYOND THE CUTTING BOARD Innovative Chefs on the Meaning of Food 62 Narisawa Yoshihiro 66 Hajime Yoneda 68 Yoshida Kaori 70 Murata Yoshihiro 74 Escoffier in Kimono 76 The Kochi Fire Dance Eric Johnston 77 Tsukiji: Memories of a Market Joel Fong 81 An Edible Alphabet FAMILY STORIES 98 Chinese Dumplings Karen Ma 101 Soma’s Light-as-lace String Hoppers Suvendrini Kikuchi 102 Tedhi-Medhi Prerna Bakshi 102 Rosti Allen Koshewa 105 Making Samosas Chitra Divakaruni 106 Meld Alexandra Ting 108 My Grandma’s Miyeokguk Jane Kang 110 Free Lunch Robert Brady

CONVERSATION 30 The Tears of a Princess: Jainism and Food Satish Kumar with John F. Ashburne IN TRANSLATION 38 Days of Eating Earth: My Twelve Months of Devotion Minakami Tsutomu POETRY 37 Elegy With Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Wablers, Crows, Ants, And Worms Hayan Charara 49 Villagers Visiting Jodhpur Enjoy Iced Sweets Chitra Divakaruni 55 Yamanote Line Aaron Hames 60 Avocado Margaret Chula OUR KYOTO 44 Kyogashi—The Epitome of Japanese Confectionery Aesthetics Claire Liu 80 If These Walls Could Talk Peter Jonathan Mallett STORY 50 Consequential Legacies Siddharth Dasgupta REVIEWS 112 RAMBLE 128 Simple Vegetarian Recipes Robert Brady

Opposite: John F. Ashburne Next pages: Shangu River, Chittagong, Bangladesh. The river is widely used for the transportation of agricultural products and other items essential to the people of this remote community. By Mohammed Shajahan, Finalist Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2018 www.pinkladyfoodphotographeroftheyear.com

bringing the taste of

Zen to Berlin

LUCINDA COWING PH OTOG RA P H S BY MI TS UE N AGAS E

M

y mind spins as Bernd Schellhorn leads me through some of the many twists and turns of his career, starting with a stint as an apprentice to an old master of Setoyaki* pottery while in his early 20s (—ah, but before that he was a furniture maker in his native Germany, he adds). Indeed I have encountered few who are quite as comfortable in the fluidity of their • Seto ware originates from central Japan and constitutes one of the Six Old Kilns.

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existence as Bernd, now a consultant of contemporary art. But what is clear throughout his tale is that some 30 years of passionate engagement with Japanese culture has informed much of his approach.

I had wanted to speak to Bernd specifically about his latest endeavour, events featuring shojin ryori, the special vegetarian cuisine originally associated with Japanese Buddhist temples. A glimpse of some very elegant photos of his creations by Kyoto Journal friend Mitsue Nagase (featured here)

on social media piqued my interest, above all because they were locationtagged: “Berlin.” Needless to say, in our highly globalized world countless food traditions have been transplanted outside of their original context (albeit in varying degrees of intactness), but the idea that a Westerner was trying to recreate this highly layered cuisine, so deeply rooted in Buddhist precepts, over in the German capital, was irresistible to me.

The best kind of interviews are those that meander in unexpected

“Your body is happy” when eating this food, “and so is your mind,” he insists. “The balance is just right.”

ways, and the same could be said of my chat with Bernd one September evening over Skype. Being acquainted with many expats in Japan—the founders and many contributors at Kyoto Journal included—who arrived in the 70s and 80s, deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism, I wondered whether Bernd perhaps had been a life-long admirer of Dogen, or had spent considerable time in a temple setting. What it was about shojin that captivated him 10 years ago? In fact, the impetus turns out to have been simply “the taste,” and

Bernd does not shy away from using expletives to stress how ridiculously delicious shojin is.

A lifelong love of eating and cooking brought Bernd in touch first with Japan’s refined kaiseki ryori hautecuisine—as you guessed, Bernd is no vegetarian—which led to him taking a few months of the year away from Berlin to chef at prestigious ryokan inns and restaurants, including Kyoto’s Tsujitome and Hiiragiya Ryokan.

Indeed, if Bernd is not organizing tours for the trustees of fine European art kyoto journal 93 | 91

tsukiji memories of a market Tsukiji — literally meaning “reclaimed land”— was the original site of Tsukiji Market (itself more commonly known as just ‘Tsukiji’). 480 varieties of seafood from 60 countries with a combined weight of 1800 tons passed through Tsukiji Market each day, along with over 270 varieties of fruit and vegetables. 42,000 people worked at or used the market (14,000 workers + 28,000 outside buyers) and 19,000 vehicles entered the market each day, generating 1.18 billion yen in daily sales through 535 wholesale vendors.

Located in Tokyo, Japan, it was one of the largest wholesale food markets of any kind, as well as the biggest fish and seafood market in the world. The Tsukiji site closed in October 2018, after most of its vendors had relocated to a new site at Toyosu.

TEXT AND PHOTOS: JOEL FONG

Special thanks to Naoto Nakamura for his insights into Tsukiji and also his assistance, and to James Koh for copy-editing.

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O

fficially opened in 1935, Tsukiji had more than 80 years of history and traditions. Nowhere else in the world would you have found so many people so knowledgeable about fish and seafood.

Stalls were often family-run and its workers spent decades specialising in just a few varieties of produce. Skills were passed down through generations of experience. And despite that, there existed a genuine desire to improve and hone their skills even more. They knew the best season to purchase certain fish and the ideal method to prepare them while maintaining their freshness. The knowledge and skills of these workers were what made Tsukiji a highly reputable location for fish and seafood.

There was a real sense of community and trust within the market: Everyone knew everyone else. The atmosphere was light-hearted despite many stalls competing with each other. To prevent owners from monopolising good areas, a lottery system was used to reallocate

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store locations every 4-5 years. Buyers and sellers had often known one other for decades and willingly helped each other out. Buyers might purchase fish that were not selling well on a slow day and in return, sellers might provide good fish for free or sell it at discounted rates. Price was a measure of trust, familiarity and loyalty, often codified and never explicitly displayed.

Tsukiji also changed over the years, most evidently in its auction system. In the beginning, almost all products were centrally auctioned off to wholesalers who would then process and portion the fish for sale. However, due to a decline in fish consumption and the growth of supermarkets in Japan during the late 1970s, it was no longer profitable for cheap fish to be auctioned off. Low-end fish such as sardines, salmon and mackerel ended up being sold outside the auction system or directly to supermarkets. As such, only auctions of expensive fish such as tuna and sea urchin survived. Some fresh fish along with certain varieties of

fruit and vegetables continued to have auctions, but prices hardly fluctuated and the auctions were maintained primarily because of a desire to retain part of this culture.

Due to Tsukiji’s aging and crowded infrastructure and the need to build new highway connections for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, a new facility for the market was built nearby at Toyosu. This modern site offers benefits such as state-of-the-art refrigeration and a layout optimised for vehicle transport (compared to the Tsukiji site, which was originally built with rail transportation in mind). Toyosu is also fully enclosed, allowing for better temperature control and resulting in more consistent quality and freshness. However, the relocation of Tsukiji Market may yet cause another huge shift in terms of how fish and produce are sold in the market.
Although the market was initially supposed to have been relocated in November 2016, surveys of the site revealed dangerously high

BEYOND THE CUTTING BOARD innovative chefs ponder the meaning of food NARISAWA YOSHIHIRO YONEDA HAJIME YOSHIDA KAORI MURATA YOSHIHIRO

Cutting board at a fish shop in Kure, Shikoku, photograph by John Einarsen

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BEYOND THE CUTTING BOARD JOHN F. ASHBURNE

narisawa yoshihiro the man dubbed “best chef” in Asia talks edible earth and the art of culinary exploration Narisawa Yoshihiro is to Japanese cuisine what his good friend René Redzepi is to that of Scandinavia, a creative wizard who blends avantgarde risk-taking with technological brilliance and old-school wisdom, a maverick who is just as happy foraging through virgin forests as cooking up a storm at his Michelin 2-star restaurant in the chic urban jungle of Aoyama.

Voted the “best Chef in Asia” in the San Pellegrino/Restaurant Magazine awards, the Nagoya-born master chef studied under Robuchon and Girardet, before branching away from ‘pure’ French cuisine to create his own unique dishes, combining techniques and ingredients taken from French, Chinese, Japanese and Okinawan culinary traditions. His fabulous culinary imaginings include such items as “Essence of the Forest,” Luxury Essence,” “Hida Beef in Charcoal,” “edible twigs” and, most dramatically, “Soil Soup.”

“I am completely fascinated by nature and our relationship to it.

Through my cuisine I want to transport people back through time, to where they can enjoy the communion that we once felt with the natural world, with the forests and the crystal-clear mountain streams, and the bounteous oceans.”

Above: Luxury Essence; Right: Moss Butter

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Through my cuisine I want to transport people back through time, to where they can enjoy the communion that we once felt with the natural world,

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F A M I LY S T O R I E S

“OYAKO,” ‘parent and child’ in Japanese, is the title of a series I started in 1982. A magazine assignment on punk musicians led to the idea of photographing them with their parents, as an amusing way to bring out differences in lifestyles and fashions between the two generations, but what came back revealed infinitely more about family relations. I’ve gone on to photograph thousands of Japanese parents and children. Recently I published OYAKO An Ode to Parents and Children,which covers families with occupations from sushi chefs, surfers, and kabuki actors to firemen, tattoo artists, and sumo wrestlers—even Hello Kitty and her mother Mary.”

BRUCE OSBORN has been based in Tokyo for the past three decades. His work can be found in publications and advertising in Japan and overseas. Complementing his photo series OYAKO, in 2003 Bruce and his wife created the Oyako Day social action. See www.oyako.org and www.bruceosborn.com

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F A M I LY S T O R I E S

ALEXANDRA TING

G

ALEXANDRA TING helped KJ with marketing and events when she lived in Kyoto between 2015-2017. Now based in the U.K., she continues to love and support the magazine in whatever way she can.

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rowing up in a rural New England suburb, the only thing different about our family was that we ate rice every night and that our ancient Taiwanese grandfather would practice tai chi on the lawn.

Though five years apart in age, my brother Chris and I both attended the same small college where we met our partners Megan and Amir. For many years now, despite moves to Vermont, Michigan, Japan and England, the four of us have reunited in our Concord home for holiday breaks. As we introduced Megan and Amir to our family’s habits, Chris and I became more aware of our own particular Asian-ness. We taught them terms like “lao yi lao,” referring to the act of fishing around a hot pot for your preferred morsel and “dok dok,” which means to smash a bunch of ingredients together for something like a wonton filling. Together we discovered Asian Gourmet, a mediocre Chinese restaurant near our house, where we always order fried turnip cakes, steamed buns and spicy beef tendon; and at least one morning, we’ll have rice porridge with a variety of pickles and fermented bits before going out into the woods for a brisk walk.

Returning to Concord as adults, we had recognised and expanded upon our Asian-ness in our own ways. But last October, when forty relatives from Taiwan, Singapore and Los Angeles moved in to our little town for a week-long celebration of Chris and Megan’s wedding, we wondered how our lives would hold a much higher concentration of Asian culture…

It began with the arrival of my mom’s cousin Wei Ci from Taiwan,

The bride-to-be serves tea to each member of the family, bowing before them and thanking them, and when she returns to collect the cup, they present her with a red envelope and a blessing.

who was tasked with cooking feast after feast for our entire extended family. We hastily cleared the long dining room table to unpack four bulging suitcases. Out came jars of homemade chili sauce and XO paste, sacks of dried goods, packets of tea and freshly ground white pepper, candied fruits, pineapple cakes and even a knife, handtowels, and a rice scooper.

Jet-lagged but fuelled with purpose and a stop at Five Guys burger and fries on the way from the airport, Wei Ci was like a tornado. She whipped around the kitchen grabbing ingredients and pots and pans and any person walking by (my dad literally hid in his office to avoid being pulled in) and together we churned out dish after dish: wooden steamer baskets of rice studded with umami goodies like tiny dried shrimps, shitake mushroom and pork, cauldrons of soul-warming soups with fish balls bobbing up and down within, three dozen marbled tea eggs, and a variety of colourful vegetable stir-fries—each simple but nuanced with a splash of vinegar or cooking wine here, a hint of sesame oil or a roughly chopped pepper there.

It was surreal in a way—a gluttonous week-long holiday in the middle of October when everyone else was still going about their normal lives.

Mornings were dedicated to overdue dentist appointments, haircuts and last-minute wedding preparations until the afternoon rolled around and

it was time to prepare for another dinner. And even late into the evenings, when the festivities were in full swing, Wei Ci was cooking for the next one.

One night, as my dad’s family (all very large and loud) sat around the kitchen table talking, Wei Ci began replacing the drinks and fruit with freshlymade dumpling skins and filling. The conversation didn’t skip a beat—hands just started reaching and scooping and dipping and folding and shaping.

Within 15 minutes, they had wrapped over 200 dumplings.

On Friday morning, we were to host a traditional wedding tea ceremony.

The way my mom described it, and the fact that she got emotional every time, painted a scene in my head that it would be a beautifully somber experience of filial piety and reconnecting with our roots. The bride-to-be serves tea to each member of the family, bowing before them and thanking them, and when she returns to collect the cup, they present her with a red envelope and a blessing.

We woke early that morning to fill vases with twelve dozen orange roses and help Megan pin elaborate jewels into her hair. Her family sat politely, smiling at the new experience and marvelling at how lovely she looked.

They wished her luck and told her they loved her. Thankfully Megan and her family couldn’t understand Chinese, because the entire time, every single one of our family members was

mumbling under their breath what Megan should be doing or saying. And when it came time for the blessings, they smiled and told her to have as many children as she could, as soon as possible.

Of the entire week, the actual wedding on Saturday may be the thing that I remember the least (though this could be because we drank far too much bubbly and were busy dancing like maniacs). Looking back though, it seems that this was the end of an era. Now that Amir and I are based in England, and due to the intense stress that plagued my mom for months before the occasion, it’s likely that our extended family will never gather in our Concord home like that again.

The morning after the wedding, Chris and Megan visited my grandfather’s grave, around the corner from Author’s Ridge where Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and other great literary figures are buried. It’s fitting in a way—our grandfather was a poet and spent his final decade in Concord writing about both the peace and isolation of the deep woods.

Chris said to him in halting Chinese “Grandfather, I want to update you.

Megan and I are married now.”

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food and the jain tradition SATISH KUMAR, INTERVIEWED BY JOHN ASHBURNE

SATISH KUMAR, author of many thoughtprovoking books, editor of the prominent UK magazine Resurgence & Ecologist, and founder of the Schumacher College in Devon, is a dedicated proponent of holistic learning, and “reverential ecology” (see KJ 43). In the early 1960s, he and E.P. Menon undertook an unprecedented peace pilgrimage to Moscow, Paris, London and Washington to advocate nuclear disarmament, travelling more than 8,000 miles on foot as penniless vegetarians. (As chronicled in his book, No Destination). Born in Rajastan, India, Satish was a Jain monk from the age of 9 to 18. This interview, at Impact HUB, Kyoto, in March 2015, began with the question,

“

“

WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL JAIN BELIEFS, IN RELATION TO FOOD?

Jain practice is as far as you could go, the practice of non-violence—the least disturbing of the soil, least disturbing of the plant—so the only food Jains will eat is fruit. Even beans and peas are fruit, they are not the plant themselves. They believe the plant is producing fruit to feed others, including humans as well as other creatures—insects, animals, wasps, bees—and if you don’t eat, then there is no life, it will drop on the ground, and will feed the soil as compost. Therefore, Jains will take the fruit.

Jains also say they will not eat fruit which has many seeds, like aubergine, or even tomatoes. The plant wants to feed you with that, but you are somehow taking too many lives of potential plants, and therefore those fruits should be saved for the seeds.

19th century Jain map depicting the two and a half continents that humans can inhabit: Jambudvipa (centered on Mt. Meru), Dhatatikhanda Dvipa, and the inner half of Pushkara Dvipa.

VEGETARIANISM Of course there is no question of eating anything that is meat. No eggs, no fish, no meat. And the reason that Jains for 2,600 years have practiced vegetarianism, is that this idea that you need animal protein is a kind of commercial propagation of ideas. People want to sell meat, so they say you need it, but with experience, you can see that you can live without such protein, perfectly happily.

Once a girl in a school asked me, “What is your favourite animal?” I said, “An elephant.” She asked me why, I said

“An elephant is vegetarian, it doesn’t eat protein, but it gets very large.” Then the child asked me, “What is your secondfavorite animal?” and I said “A horse”—again, a horse is so powerful that we measure energy in horsepower, and yet, a horse does not eat any animal protein.

Animal protein is not necessary for the human body, unless you live in the North Pole, or high up in the Himalayas, where nothing else grows.

Animals feel pain, and inflicting pain on others who feel

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INTRANSLATION

MINAKAMI TSUTOMU translated by NAITO YUKIKO

days of eating earth my twelve months of devotion

Minakami Tsutomu (1919–2004) depicted life as “a troublesome event in which we must eat two or three times a day.”

His culinary ethic anticipated “farm-to-table” FLOSS—fresh, local, organic, sustainable, seasonal—decades before the term was invented or became trendy. Minakami uses the term shojin (devotion) not only to refer to shojin ryori but also to his willingness to consider each ingredient earnestly, extract its best qualities, and rigorously dedicate himself to improving the dishes that have been traditional mainstays of shojin cuisine.

Sincerity, for him, was the essence of devotion. This excerpt, from his classic book Days of Eating Earth: My Twelve Months of Devotion (土を喰う日々―わが精進十二ヵ月), was translated by Naito Yukiko. Some consider this meditative discourse on food to be the culinary equivalent of Tanizaki Junichiro’s quintessential exposition of Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows.

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Photos by John Einarsen

J A N U A R Y

S

hould you ask me how I’ve benefitted from living in the priest’s quarters and working in the temple kitchen, I would respond that, among other things, I learned shojin ryori ( 精進料理 , devotion cuisine)— Buddhist cuisine.

From age sixteen through eighteen, it was my great good fortune to serve at the Rinzai Tenryu sect’s Toji-in temple as inji—chief assistant to Honko Ozeki Roshi, Zen patriarch. He was formerly chief abbot of Tofuku-ji, head temple of Tofukuji School of the Rinzai sect.

An inji plays the role of right hand man to a roshi. Honko Roshi was probably sixty-six or sixty-seven years old at that time. Previously, he had mysteriously disappeared and abandoned his post as chief abbot of Tofuku-ji. This incident gave him notoriety as a reclusive abbot. He was found with Tofukuji’s former chief abbot while on a preaching tour to the Shikoku Hachijuhakkasho—eighty-eight sacred places on the island of Shikoku—and then invited to become the chief priest of Toji-in. Later on, he moved to Jiko-in in Nara and passed away there.

During his term as the chief priest of Toji-in, which lasted only a few years, I served as his inji. He was high-spirited and exuberant. He lived his life at his inryo—Roshi’s residence— as vigorously as when he had been a young Zen monk. In those days I was not yet an unsui (novice), but still just a high school student. When I returned from school, I hurried to the inryo to perform chores for Honko Roshi, including cooking his meals, laundering, and cleaning his residence. Thanks to those tasks I was then assigned to, which included that of tenzo—cook or kitchen manager, I can prepare and serve traditional shojin ryori.

bokuseki—Zen calligraphy, as well. Not a day passed without him receiving visitors. Newspaper journalists and lay Buddhists sought his audience. Artists and musicians dropped by the temple too. Evenings called for sake— Japanese rice wine. Roshi would come to me and suggest a dinner menu to serve his guests. I would then run to the kitchen to prepare the dishes he requested.

During that wartime era, Toji-in temple was in extreme poverty, despite its status as a bodaiji (a burial temple) for Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358), first shogun of the Ashikaga dynasty.

Pursuing political objectives, the Meiji government branded long-deceased Takauji a public enemy. Meanwhile, Takauj’s rival Kusunoki Masashige was elevated to the epitome of samurai loyalty and later became the patron saint of WWII kamikaze. In this milieu, no pilgrims would visit the tutelary temple of a pariah.

So, when I ran to the kitchen, I Toji-in Temple, John Einarsen knew that I’d never find abundant amounts or an ample selection of food. How-ever, an inji must be resourceful and creative enough to make dishes out of even a diminished pantry. At Toji-in, it is more accurate that we eked out dishes, rather than made them. Extracting some-thing from virtually nothing was the very foundation of the cuisine Roshi taught me.

Whenever Roshi had time to spare, he worked in the enzu— the temple’s vegetable garden. For at least an hour a day, he labored in the field weeding or hauling manure. The benign Kyoto climate fostered many varieties of vegetables, including mustard greens, eggplant, kidney beans, and beach lettuce— though only seasonally, not year-round.

Winter blanketed the enzu with deep snow, bringing a cook significant inconvenience. Initially, some leafy vegetables, spinaches and white turnips, might be found in the furrows covered by straw mats. But by the deep of winter just koimo (baby taro potatoes), jinenjo (wild Japanese yams, kuwai (arrowhead tubers), and yurine (lily bulbs), all born within onko Roshi was a drinker. He also wrote for the the earth, survived. When the frozen ground was covered Chugai-Nippo newspaper, regularly publishing essays with snow, preventing me from harvesting vegetables, I recounting his Shikoku pilgrimage. He actively practiced would turn to the basket of dry foodstuffs and looked for dried

H

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At the temple, a meal’s menu was determined by consulting with the vegetable field.

This was why I realized the essence of shojin ryori was eating earth.

Shojin comes to life when dishes are prepared and served using the very vegetables that transformed soil into nutrition and have become ripe to eat. mushrooms, dried strips of daikon radish, serving them together as one dish. dried hijiki seaweed, and so on. Were I My own particular way of cooking to hurry over by bicycle to a grocer as a is to wash the kuwai very carefully, and stopgap measure, at most I could buy tofu. grill them whole over the grid of a hida Were I not to economize or had I bought konro—charcoal-fired, portable clay cook sumptuous food, my senior disciples stove. I patiently grill kuwai, which were would have chastised me at length. still in the soil just a short while ago, until As I have indicated, shojin creates their skins start to crack and a slightly meals from within a kitchen without food, bitter, fragrant steam, unique to kuwai, an environment so totally unlike present wafts up. As I am not roasting but grilling, day Japan, where shops effortlessly yield I take my time and grill them carefully. up plenty at any time and any season. At It goes without saying the kuwai are the temple, a meal’s menu was determined unpeeled. At the right time, I flip the by consulting with the vegetable field. This kuwai over. Their cooked skins are was why I realized the essence of shojin brown and crispy, with the cracks partly ryori was eating earth. Eating seasonal exposing blue-tinted yellow flesh. Kuwai food is similar to eating earth. Shojin look like chestnut. I serve a single large comes to life when dishes are prepared one cut in two, or smaller ones, two to a and served using the very vegetables that portion, with a pinch of salt on the side. transformed soil into nutrition and have This authentically prepared dish became become ripe to eat. one of Roshi’s favorites when having a Roshi taught that the kitchen was drink at supper. directly connected to the earth via the Although I rarely watch cooking work of the tenzo. Actually, Roshi didn’t programs on television, when I do, to say such things directly. “Now, Shoben. I my surprise, root vegetables, including Photos by Stewart Wachs and Ken Rodgers have a guest again today. They may all be kuwai, are peeled with a kitchen knife sleeping on a cold day like this, but could you go down to the or peeler prior to cooking, rather than scrubbed using a vegetable garden and ask them to come up with a couple of tawashi—a hemp fiber vegetable brush. And this is not all. dishes?” Shoben used to be my Buddhist name. As sake would They are peeled so deeply as if stripping off a child’s bulky, be served first, I would set up and serve a bottle of warmed traditional Japanese snow suit, both the kimono and padded sake with some snacks of fried kombu—kelp, and then wrack over-jacket. Each kuwai metamorphoses into a tiny remnant my brains over what to prepare over in the kitchen. of its former self. This style might be considered sophisticated, and I understand these kuwai are prepared as takiawase, but you can’t tell whether they are kuwai or potatoes. What’s more, it would be a waste to throw away the part nearest the skin, which is both the bitterest yet sweetest area of kuwai. aked kuwai became part of my repertoire around this Peeling of koimo is similar to a kuwai. When you scour time. In my later years, after returning to secular life, koimo to remove dirt with a tawashi, brownish-red, vertical I would shed tears to see a mountain of shriveled kuwai striped skins are revealed. At the temple, we used to clean remaindered on a shelf at the front of a greengrocer’s shop, koimo in a unique way to preserve a decent amount their attesting to the loss of interest by city dwellers in cooking skin. We put the dirt-encrusted koimo in a 54-liter sake or eating them. There are only a few ways of preparing barrel, filled it with water, and swirled the koimo together kuwai, including nikorogashi—simmering until the broth vigorously with a paddle. After twenty minutes of jostling, boiled away and then rolling the kuwai about in the hot, dry koimo revealed their beautiful skin. We stored them for use cooking pan to keep them from scorching, and takiawase— when the occasion called. We never peeled these koimo with simmering each ingredient to al dente individually, but a usuba bocho—vegetable knife—prior to cooking. However,

B

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A hardy volunteer band of present-day hunters & gatherers, foraging for tasty “food-for-thought� morsels, created this unique potluck A-Z directory expressly for your delectation.

is for Annapoorna

The sweetest of the Goddesses Her name slips from the tongue Like a lover’s whisper Feeding Lord Shiva Feeding the World So good You’d name A mountain after her —C. P. CHADHA

A K Mudhra

is for Bento

Matsuura Miki documents her bento creations on Instagram at @nancychannel

The bento box lunch began more than a millennium ago with poor farmers toting to the fields a small container of rice. Over time, this evolved into a meal of fish or meat, some cooked and/ or pickled vegetables, rice, and a multicoloured array of other delicacies. Bento can be eaten from a lidded laquerware box—or a compartmentalized plastic container—during the interlude of a Kabuki play, while still being the meal that homemakers prepare with affection and artistic flair for their spouses’ and children’s lunches. The kyaraben portrays pop-culture characters crafted from foods. And while konbini bento can be lacklustre, in a pinch they’re a lifesaver. Train station ekiben are more like moveable feasts!

—MARC JONATHAN MICHEL

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is for Chahan Chahan, also called yakimeshi, but best known in English by its simple descriptive Western name, fried rice, is a staple made from the staple. Its Chinese origin is plain in the original name: Chaofan. A comfort-food combination of rice fried with bits of meats and shrimp, eggs and vegetables, chahan is a home-cooked favorite and a restaurant foundation. The steamy dish with its satisfying savory smell is even a standard in Japanese-American kitchens, though Americanized with bacon and SPAM, and whatever leftover vegetables are around.

Rice on.

—GIL ASAKAWA Gil Asakawa

Japanese friends call me dashi hakase: the Dashi Professor. Maybe that’s because my living room features large Paulonia boxes where rare Class A Hokkaido kelp—rausu and rishiri — ­ ‘sleeps’ for dashi use in 12 moths’ time. Maybe it’s the fridge full of fermented katsuobushi bonito flakes, dried ago flying fish and iiriko baby sardines. The latter I painstakingly gut with a toothpick. Maybe it’s the jars of dried mushrooms: shiitake, maitake, yanagi matsutake. Perhaps it’s because I am continuing a 1,100 year-old tradition that most Japanese have forgotten. Maybe it’s because I exude subtle perfumes of mold, seaweed, and fish.

Mitsue Nagase

—JOHN F. ASHBURNE

is for Dashi kyoto journal 93 | 93

Xenobromic Assimilation, from Xeno ‘outside’ and Bromos ‘ of Food,’ a cod-scientific phrase coined by desperate alphabetists saddled with the accursed 24th letter to describe the cross-border cross-pollination of foodstuffs.

The Japanese are grand masters of the art, witness meatball sushi, baby bamboo pizza, the fruit natto sandwich and, ye Gods almighty, strawberry curry.

—VERITY NGUYEN

xenobromic assimilation Seared Bonito Parfait, John F. Ashburne

Yam, not the boring tuber, but scrumptious Thai salads. There are endless varieties of yam, meaning “mix” in the Thai language, like yam som-o (pomelo salad) and my fave, yam tua plu (winged-bean salad).

When we moved from China to Thailand (twice), one major concern was finding as varied cuisine. Thai salads use everything from smoked pork to fermented bamboo, with herbs, spices and ample chili.

Amazingly, this is but one school of salad—Thailand also has phla (usually with lemongrass and mint), Larb (minced meat) and tam (pounded sour salads, like the infamous som tam papaya). You could eat a salad a day for years.

Yum!!!!

—RON GLUCKMAN

is for Yam

Kono Setsuko

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is for zymophila Zymophila, fermentation, a greater discovery than fire.

Infants separate it not from rot, but grand gourmands rush lovestruck into its fetid, eye-watering embrace. Fermentation brings intoxication, joy, and freedom.

Escape the tyranny of food industry lowest common denominator factory food by making your own miso, kimchee and natto. It will be as unique as your own DNA. — C. P. CHADHA

Heikki Leis

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STORY SIDDHARTH DASGUPTA

co

I

ial q u t en e n s c le g ie a

I have come to believe that she is channeling Toscanini with her hands.

Equally, I’m firm in the conviction that she is channeling a fabled Persian songstress with her soul.

don’t know why I’ve come to fall in love with this address. It’s non-descript, in the decidedly nondescript way that non-descript often is. And yet, these frequent instances of flair, shy at first, more persuasive as we’ve begun to discern each other…

There’s the crackle as the front door swings open, a sound buried in nostalgia and the aural inquisitions that memory tends to instigate. There’s the gramophone atop the counter, kept to one side, a silent spectator as old Persian classics emanate softly from a somewhat mismatched modern radio. The sun’s rays are another element in this strange affair, filtering through the large glass windows of the café with an elegance that soon has everything—patrons, furniture, upholstery, ruminations— dappled in that orange flood afterglow of burn and bloom.

And at the heart of it all, there she is, chief rabble-rouser in this opera of mysteries.

I have come to believe that she is channeling Toscanini with her hands. Equally, I’m firm in the conviction that she is channeling a fabled Persian songstress with her soul. Her hands, a riotous melee of ebb and flow, are tempered by an assured cadence that I can only think of as meditative. And surely this is as much a concerto as anything ever put to score and the legibility of music sheets, this early morning conjuring of dough, this circadian dispersal of orders and

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s

commendations to her two trusty lieutenants, this daily repartee between flour, wheat, yeast, and rise. Then there’s the riddle, the one aspect to this saga that continues to confound me. Old Ms. Nargess, make no mistake, has everything and everyone wired to a string.

At the start of each working day, the pattern remains the same, yet is no less mesmerizing for it: paper-thin nan-lavash, the Persian flatbread of Armenian origin, is birthed and thereafter summoned at recurrent intervals. The breakfast regulars tear into it with the fervor of schoolchildren; they know well how the delicate creature dries out quickly and takes on the brittleness of a storied schoolmaster in no time.

The black pepper and sesame-flecked earthiness of eggs made to order, the preponderance of yoghurt bearing thick Persian accents, and the café’s assortment of fresh dips ripe with the fragrances of strawberry and pomegranate orchards form worthy confidantes to the lavash’s rather fragile moods.

Whether being molded to encompass a sandwich wrap filling or being baked for that instant longer so that hummus, goat cheese, and olive oil can all reside peacefully on its hardened avatar, the lavash is the focal point of life at this early hour.

While bakeries in Iran stick to baking just the one specialty bread, Ms. Nargess and her eponymous café have no such qualms; they happily wade into another crowd favorite.

The whole-wheat flatbread made from sourdough—sangak—

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