Indigo Days

Volunteer Arugula & Flowering Tops

Some years we don't have lettuce.  To put this into perspective, salad is my favorite food, so no lettuce is a hardship.  But to fully disclose, a year without lettuce has not happened since the boys were small.  Though there are plenty of times during the year when we do not have lettuce in the field.  Usually it is because we planted late or because we didn’t weed at that one crucial moment in the early fall when the weeds threaten to engulf the fall vegetables.  Weed that one time, and no need to weed again until spring.  You’d think we wouldn’t miss that window, wouldn't you?  But miss it we do. 

It’s a bit like “out of sight, out of mind.”  After the last summer vegetables are harvested, my mind elsewhere, I often forget to go check Tadaaki’s field.

Late fall, I pick the green summer tomatoes that will never turn red and make green tomato relish from Diana Kennedy’s Nothing Fancy.  We valiantly eat the lingering eggplants, cutting away crusty brown patches or hard edges that result as the plant loses vitality.  If we have had a successful year of peppers, I fill my basket one last time, and pop them into Ziplocs for freezing.  Oh, I’ve done escabeche, but now find frozen whole, the best way to “preserve” the peppers fresh taste.  Though in truth, nothing matches that vitamin C blast from home grown, field peppers, bright and crisp in their complex hotness.  Some years we have one or two scraggly little plants that yield up a total of ten jalapeño or serrano chiles for the whole summer.  Some years we have none.  Farming at our house is an imperfect system and we are imperfect people.  But last year was a bumper crop, with six varieties of chiles grown from organic seeds bought at Berkeley Horticulture.  There is no greater pride than knowing the success of growing from seed.  Especially heirlooms.

Some may think this means sprinkling seeds in the ground and hoping they will grow.  Not so, here in Japan.  We don’t irrigate and the weeds grow madly.  We start shoots in planting boxes, otherwise the seedlings would never outpace the weeds.  Radishes are the exception, because they grow faster than weeds and can often be harvested in a month.  When the shoots are ready to be replanted, Tadaaki plows the fields right before the rain comes, and we take the SSU! kids to the field to plant.  This is a fun job because our feet sink into the freshly churned earth and there is a feeling like we are being sucked into the heart of the field.  I love that, and the kids seem to respond without thought, reveling in the tactility of the loamy soil.  They also love the trust I give them as I lay a tender shoot in each of their hands, admonishing them to be gentle with the “baby plant.”  They eagerly await their turn to place the tiny root tendrils straight down into the small holes we have dug out with our fingers.  And they are just as happy to troop down to the field with water bottles in hand, to water the seedlings when the expected rain doesn’t materialize.  Farming, it’s an imperfect art for imperfect people, but when we get it right, it’s right.

Getting it wrong is just as easy, and usually happens because we let an opportunity slide by, missing the perfect time to plant or that last chance to weed.  And in those years, we are lucky to have the volunteer arugula that can be used for salad; or wild mustard greens and reseeded turnips whose roots are not tasty themselves, but produce enough bitter greens for braising, to hold us over in the winter months.  I crave leafy greens, so am deeply grateful for the aliveness of the field.  Like a refrigerator in a well-used kitchen that yields odds and ends to be incorporated into the next meal, so does a field reproduce seeds from past seasons.  Volunteers sprout up in the late summer or early fall, little bonuses, to bridge the gap through less prolific seasons.  I love that the field hands us a present, so selflessly, because the field is our partner.  And we may not tend her perfectly, but she is forgiving if treated  with thoughtful respect and appreciation.

And as winter meanders along, so come spring and the flowering tops.  I call them rapini, but was told recently by Hank Shaw that this is technically incorrect, as rapini is a specific genus.  Hank should know, so I’ll call them flowering tops for now.  In Japanese, na no hana, is the catchall name for any green flowering tops that produce bright yellow flowers and small broccoli-like clusters, though mustard or turnip greens are most common.  Na no hana literally means flowering greens.  Sautéed, steamed or quick boiled, these flowering tops are both mild and bitter at once.  The pleasantly acrid winter leaves have softened by the early spring warmth as they turn from dark to bright green.  And this means spring has arrived.

I love that the field has given us the gift of salad, greens and flowering tops all without effort on our part.  A sort of helping hand in times when we cannot do our best job on the field.  I love that the field forgives us and that makes me want to try harder, because I don't want to let her down.

Photo by Kenji Miura:

Flowering Tops with Dashi:  Grasp flowering tops in the middle of the bunch and dip stems into a pot of boiling water.  Count to 10, then let go and cook for a total of 1-3 minutes, depending on thickness of stems.  Scoop tops out from boiling water, and refresh in a large bowl of cold water.  Once cool, remove from cold water, squeeze, cut into 5 cm (2") lengths, and stack attractively in a medium-sized bowl.  Julienne konbu from dashi and strew on top of flowering greens.  Ladle in one scoop of dashi (100 ml) and drizzle with organic soy sauce to taste (1-1.5 tbsp).

Dashi Method:  prepare 2 cups cold water in a medium saucepan.  Add a couple 6-inch pieces of konbu.  Bring to almost a boil, pluck out konbu and throw in a handful of katsuobushi shavings.  Turn flame to low and simmer 6-7 minutes.  Turn off flame and let sit 20 minutes before straining out katsuobushi.  

 

Pork Belly & Flowering Tops:  Sauté thinly sliced pork belly in a small amount of organic rapeseed oil with a few dried red peppers and some chopped ginger until the fat sizzles, and there is some minimal browning, but don't over do it.

Cut rapini or flowering tops into 2-inch lengths and place in a mesh strainer with a handle.  Lower into a pot of boiling water and cook for about 30 seconds, or until no longer raw.  Keep the strainer at the top of the water surface in order to scoop the rapini out in one fell swoop.  Shake off the hot water and toss into the cooked pork belly.  Toss a few minutes more over high heat and season with salt.  Cook for about 30 seconds more, then serve.

 

The Japanese Farmer

I’m not genetically hardwired for Japanese farm life.  But my husband, Tadaaki, is.  Day in and day out, he jumps out of bed before 6 am and doesn’t finish work until after 7.  And he whistles when he cooks dinner, even after a 13-hour workday.  Whistles.

Me, I drag myself out of bed around 8 am (maybe) and finish with dinner prep around 7 or 8pm (maybe).  And I swear a lot and snap at the kids when I cook.  No whistling.  My day consists of multiple visits to Sunny-Side Up!, cooking, writing and maybe going to the field.  No tea breaks are on my schedule, but writing offers the slow solace needed away from others.

Tadaaki grabs his granny glasses and book several times a day for a quick respite, while Baachan oversees serving tea and snacks to the egg workers.  And if Tadaaki is around, he’ll pull up a chair as well, for 10 o’clock and 3 o’clock are written in stone as the time that workers stop and chat around the teapot.  Baachan tries to get me to come, but making conversation is not a break for me.  I look for a quiet place where I can write (like the dressing room floor outside the bath area).

But occasionally, I feel that crushing force of everything around me:  issues at Sunny-Side Up!, keeping up our boys’ bilingual education, publishing my work, cooking new food, keeping the house clean (or at least in some semblance of order) and oh yes, the school garden (not forgetting Tadaaki’s fields).  Sometimes the exhaustion of small business and farm life overwhelm me and I long for my bed—that dark haven with billowing down comforters that engulf me and soothe my overwrought spirit.

Baachan looks at me askance as I pass through the breakfast room from the kitchen carrying a tray of food to my room.  Who is this strange oyome who doesn’t act like a Japanese wife?  Christopher asks, “don’t you want to eat with us?”  It’s not about want, it’s about need.  Sometimes I need to be alone.  And that’s hard to do in a house with paper doors and open ceilings.  The air and the voices waft throughout the house in a seamless way, great for circulation, but not as good for privacy.

I grew up in a family of six and we each had our own room with a lock on the door.  My husband grew up in a family of 3, and an extended family of 10 or more.  He lived with his parents, brothers and grandparents, but his 5 aunts and their children were constant fixtures in the family home.  Privacy is not built in to Japanese life, hence the politeness that is.  Confrontation is the end of a relationship and not the beginning of the next phase (like in America).

The funny thing is that my husband has become more confrontational, and me, less.  I suppose that is what we call compromise.

Japanese farmers though, have a strength of character and ability to work selflessly that way exceeds what I learned growing up in the suburbs of San Francisco.  And maybe that is what draws young Japanese people to the farm, or Westerners to Japan—this desire for a deeper sense of what it means to be unfettered by all the trappings and complications of modern urban life.  And maybe getting one’s hands dirty, and being part of mind-numbing work, quiets the soul.  Maybe that is what people need. 

While I do thrive on the simplicity of our life, for me, farming will always be about playing a role, and not a very good one at that.  I’ll never be a real farmer, because in the end, I don't have that requisite strength of character and in the end, I’ll slack off when I don’t feel like doing the work.  I’m selfish like that.  Well, I ‘m a town girl.  What else is there to say?

Negi no Karashi Miso                                                                         Japanese leeks with Mustard Miso

Cut ½-inch thick negi into 2-inch lengths.  Separate green tops from white bottoms and place bottoms in bamboo steaming basket, set over a pot of boiling water.  Cover and steam for 4 minutes, then add the green tops and steam 4 minutes more.  Remove steaming basket cover and rest the basket over a large bowl to cool (and catch any drips).  Muddle Edmond Fallot mustard, organic miso and organic rice vinegar (1:3:3).  Transfer leeks to a suitably beautiful bowl, fold dressing gently into leeks and serve with salt broiled herring.   Nishin no Shioyaki :  Lay fresh herring on a foil sheet set over a grate.  Place top oven rack in third slot from the top.  Sprinkle the herring with salt and broil for 15 minutes.  Flip carefully and salt the other side.  Broil 10 more minutes.  

Nishin no Shioyaki                                                                                                                                             Salt Broiled Herring

Japanese Tofu

The first time I tried a tofu burger was the last.  We were sitting in best friend Melissa Keating’s kitchen.  Father Ed, had started Ramparts, so a rather eclectic mix of characters strolled through their doors, ranging from black panthers to anti-war activists.  It was the late 60’s.  The Keating household became known as the place kids could go and crash.  They had an open door policy, thanks to their rambling house and open-hearted mother, Helen.  By the time of the tofu burger, the family had downsized to a smaller lot, but similarly rambling old house in Menlo Park.  John Gerkensmeyer was one of the strays that hung around as part of their “extended family.”  John, was poetically gentle, with shoulder-length wispy blond hair.  And of course, he was a vegetarian.  Hence the tofu burger.

One bite made me wonder, why bother?  What was the point of eating a meat substitute?  I just didn’t get it.  It looked like a dry hamburger and tasted worse.  Sawdust comes to mind.  But hey, I suppose they’ve gotten better.  Maybe.

But then, I like tofu as is.  I live in Japan and tofu in Japan is a whole other thing, not to be confused with most tofu in the U.S..

Japanese tofu is like silky custard, with a back taste of fragrantly musky soy.  To truly appreciate the nuance of tofu, one should taste it without salt or soy sauce.  But if you just want to gobble it down, go for the works.  I like tofu with some freshly grated ginger, chopped scallions, shaved katsuobushi and organic soy sauce.

When I first came to Japan 22 years ago, apartment deposits and non-refundable key money payments had depleted my reserves.  After buying rice, my dinner budget stretched just enough to buy one piece of tofu everyday from the local shop, a few vegetables and one can of beer.  I ate rice crackers with tea for “lunch” at the English school where I worked, one reason why I hate rice crackers (besides their prerequisite ingredient, MSG).  Not unlike now, dinner was the highpoint of my day.  The bus dropped me off near my apartment at around 9:30 pm, so my dinnertime was close to 10.   Once again keeping restaurant hours, I’d watch cooking shows in Japanese while I ate my dinner.  I didn’t know what they were saying, but I got ideas from their methods.  And that was my entrée into Japanese cooking.

The tofu shop down the street, quickly became my special stop.  The family was unusually friendly and interested in the foreign girl.  We bumbled along in a mixture of Japanese and English, but in the end they developed into my closest friends in Japan and were my “family” at my Japanese wedding.  Fate is a funny thing.  This family’s last name was identical to Tadaaki’s:  八須．Same kanji characters and same reading:  Hachisu.  The last name is unusual and the characters even more so, just a little piece of fate putting me together with two different 八須 families.

A couple months after Tadaaki and I became engaged, my older sister Pam arrived for a visit, a response to my pleas to come vet the situation.  Tadaaki had I were building a house together and a feeling of “there is no going back” had settled upon me, causing me to feel a certain measure of panic.  My mother had died a few months before coming to Japan, and I had uprooted myself to a totally foreign culture.  This is not a good time to make life-changing decisions like marriage.

While Pam was visiting, we had any number of dinners out with friends.  Pam (a slightly squeamish eater), still remembers the sea snails with visceral disgust.  But not so the tofu.  Perched on floor cushions in the cluttered tatami room adjoining the Hachisu family's tofu-making operation, we were served freshly made tofu and a few deep-fried pressed tofu pieces (atsuage).  Topped with chopped green onion, grated ginger and bonito flakes, even Pam could not resist being seduced by the tofu.

After our marriage, I moved to my husband’s home town, Kamikawa (god river), and in Kamiizumi, the mountain town nearby, we found local organic tofu that defied description.  The Hachisu tofu, though made from imported non-organic soy beans, had nonetheless been made from the heart.  Loyalty is a strong bond, but distance made the decision uncomplicated.  Tofu is perishable and best eaten the same day made.  So the Touan tofu produced at Yamaki became our local favorite.  And now, I bring that tofu with me as omiyage for the cooks and staff at Chez Panisse.  In thanks for all the local meals they make for us when we’re away from the farm.

Besides that bite of (frozen) tofu burger in the early ‘70’s, I didn’t try American tofu again until a visit to legendary vegetarian restaurant, Greens, in the early ‘90’s.  By then, I had been in Japan for a few years.  In the ‘80’s, my friends and I often ate at Greens (if we could get a table), but I had never ordered the grilled tofu sandwich.  After eating tofu in Japan, I was curious to try American tofu.  The tofu has been pressed to exude water and firm up the “flesh.”  In those days, Greens marinated the pressed tofu in a combination of aromatics, tamari soy sauce, sherry vinegar and red wine for a couple days, then grilled it on the fire.  The sandwich was tasty because of the homemade mayonnaise slathered Tassajara wheat bread layered with juicy onions and Green Gulch lettuce.  But the tofu wasn’t much to write home about, and I could have been just as happy without it.  The texture was somehow strange.  Chalky or maybe mealy.

I suspect here lies the problem when it comes to American tofu.  Often described as bland, American tofu is primarily a meat substitute for vegetarian cooking.  It is not typically celebrated on its own.  Glorious, in its cool elegance.   Slippery cool as it slides down your throat, there is no comparing Japanese tofu.  And well worth the plane ticket to Japan.

Usuage:  Tofu blocks are sliced horizontally into thin slabs (¼^th maybe), weighted to press out liquid, then deep fried to puff up.  Usuage (thin fried) is also known as aburaage (oil fried).  Heat a small amount of mild oil (canola, rapeseed, peanut) in a hot frying pan and re-crisp usuage.  Cut into halves, then again diagonally into triangles.  Arrange on a plate, top with little dabs of freshly grated ginger, chopped scallions, shaved katsuobushi and a sprinkling of organic soy sauce.  Feel free to eliminate any ingredient, though I wouldn’t skip the soy sauce.  Positively addicting with drinks before dinner.

Usuage, once crisped can be julienned and sprinkled on steamed & squeezed greens seasoned with soy sauce or dashi.  It also can be julienned as is (no re-crisp necessary) and added to sautéed greens, miso soup or kenchinjiru as a protein component (yes, a meat substitute, I take back the snarky comments I wrote earlier).  Daishi-simmered usuage is also stuffed with sushi rice for inarizushi.

Atsuage & Gamodoki  Tofu blocks are weighted to express water, then deep fried to produce atsuage.  Gamodoki is formed into patties from mashed and squeezed tofu, mixed with hand grated yamaimo (mountain yam) as a binder and seasoned with diced carrot & mushroom, julienned konbu (kelp), then deep fried.  Atsuage & gamodoki are nice crisped up over a slow wood burning fire or in a covered frying pan in a bit of mild oil, on medium low flame.  They are both tasty before dinner snacks, served with soy sauce and any of the usual tofu accoutrements.  Traditionally they were used to add a depth of flavor to dashi & soy sauce flavored simmered root vegetables (niimono) or hot pots.  And yes, this was a meat substitute, as farmers did not really eat much meat or fish after the war.  

Kanchan’s Gamodoki & Deep Fried Sweet Potatoes in Dashi                                                    Photo by Sam Seager

 

 
Tofu Composée  Not really a Japanese meal, but one of my creations and a popular school lunch.  Natto provides another protein source (if you like it).  Be sure to really whip it up to promote that characteristic creamy slime. The mountain mitsuba salad is dressed with organic miso: organic rice vinegar: and organic rapeseed oil (1:1:2).  During the summer, I like to use tomatoes wedges or cherry tomatoes as the fresh vegetable and in that case, serve it with a little homemade mayonnaise made from organic rapeseed oil.  Not-so-hard-boiled eggs are also a nice addition.  Boil eggs for 7-8 minutes (depending on size) and cool with cold running water.  Slice in half and scoop out if you have fresh eggs (hard to peel).  Equally nice with homemade mayonnaise.