me how to make Japanese rice and rolled sushi. And so it was that when Dick and I returned to Tokyo to live for three years, I could navigate a market, recognize food labels, and guess what to do with the product.
My transition to formal teaching was gradual. It started with an English lesson in a supermarket for a Japanese mom with two kids back in Boston in the early 1980s. Supermarket English lessons evolved into tutorials on American food ingredients and eventually into American cooking lessons for groups of Japanese women. Along the way I was asked to teach classes on Japanese food and culture to American college students interested in Japan.
One thing always leads to another in life, and so it was with teaching and me. Between five subsequent yearlong stays in Japan that enabled my continuing education in Japanese cuisine (including formal classes in Japanese cooking), I started a catering business that I called “Eats Meets West” (pun intended) because there was now so much of Asia in my repertoire. Meanwhile, there was increasing demand for cooking classes on both Western and Japanese cuisine. In the early 1990s I began working in the Japan Program at the Boston Children’s Museum and offered teacher workshops about Japanese food and culture, often focusing on kids’ bento lunch boxes;
I have subsequently done similar programs in Boston, New York, Washington D.C., and Tokyo. While at the museum, I developed the “Kids Are Cooking” program, which focused on introducing children to a world of cuisines, cooking fundamentals, and nutrition. Writing about food and culture for The Boston Globe was a natural next step in my rather unconventional journey.
Debra Samuels
Thoughts About Japanese Cuisine
I do not have a Japanese mother or mother-in-law and I did not grow up with Japanese food, flavors, or cooking techniques. The only soy sauce I encountered had caramel food coloring and lots of salt. In fact, my dear mother, Rona Greenberg, did not react very well when I told her in 1977 that we would be going to Japan with her first grandchild. “But what will he eat?” she wailed. “Tofu,” I tossed out. This only made her cry harder. Who in suburban New York knew from tofu at that time—or much about Japanese food beyond the theater of knife twirling chefs in Japanese steak houses? Sure, the counter-culture set was dabbling in macrobiotic food with some Japanese roots, but we were still several years away from Japan’s emergence as a global economic power and from the Japanese culinary boom that followed. Thankfully, in the subsequent four decades I have had dozens and dozens of surrogate mothers, sisters, aunties, and certified teachers who took me under their collective wings. (Rona still won’t eat tofu, but she loves yakitori.)
My experience has distilled into a singular, powerful impression of how Japanese cooks—professionals and home cooks alike—respect the process, the product, and the details of a meal. They commit themselves to the highest quality of each and establish an aesthetic that appeals to every sense. Setting a perfect leaf just off center on a plate of sliced persimmon is for your eyes; pressing a hardboiled egg through the tight wire mesh of a ricer (uragoshi) produces a velvety texture for your tongue; twisting a yuzu peel for a burst of citrusy bouquet is for your nose. What may seem like small enhancements actually are the essence of the Japanese table. Each is second nature to the Japanese cook, and now, after decades, to me as well. Hopefully they will appeal to you too.
Like cooks everywhere, Japanese cooks have always been curious and innovative. Although tofu was introduced to Japan through China as early as 600 AD, it was the Buddhist monks and the aristocracy who mainly consumed it. It became part of the commoners’ diet in the 16th century. This was about the time when Portuguese merchants and clergy introduced deep fried pork (tonkatsu), deep fried fish and vegetables (tempura), and sweet pound cake (kasutera). French pastries became Japonaise after the Japanese themselves ventured out in the 19th and 20th centuries. And now, as the world eagerly embraces their cuisine, they are still absorbing new ingredients and adapting to a rapidly globalizing world food market. Take wafu (Japanese style) pasta for example. One version marries shredded seaweed with spaghetti and spicy pollack roe (mentaiko). This is actually a “two-fer”—the pasta is from Italy and the spicy roe is from Korea. The novelty of putting it all together is purely Japanese.
So, what are the elements that make food Japanese? In Italy, one encounters alio (garlic), olio (olive oil), and prezzemolo (parsley) in most dishes. Korean cuisine features pa (scallions), manul (garlic), and chamgirum (sesame oil). Japanese cuisine also has its own distinctive flavor profile found in its seasonings (chomiryo). Sa, shi, su, se, so () is a line of sounds in the Japanese hiragana syllabary that captures many of the essential elements and the order of the seasonings of a Japanese dish. Sato is sugar; Shio is salt; Su is vinegar; Seiyo is an old fashioned word for soy sauce; and Miso is fermented bean paste. But there are five more seasonings: mirin (sweet rice wine), sake (rice wine), kelp (kombu), dried shiitake mushrooms; and dried katsuo (bonito used to make fish stock), and you have a palette of Japanese flavors. Sugars and alcohol (mirin and sake) are added in the beginning to flavor and cook down the alcohol content, and strong seasonings like soy sauce and miso come later to maintain maximum flavor.
These days the word umami, commonly referred to as the savory fifth taste, is on everyone’s tongue. Umami was identified by a Japanese scientist a century ago and occurs naturally in kelp (kombu), mushrooms, and fermented foods like soy sauce, miso, and Dashi (Fish Stock). The chemical base of umami, glutamates, is synthesized in MSG through a fermentation process. Some people have sensitivity to MSG, but in moderate amounts this flavor enhancer has not proven to be harmful.
Japanese cuisine has five important elements: seasonality, presentation, quality, portion size, and balance. Flavors peak and different local foods are available at different times of the year, so the season often dictates restaurant and recipe choices. The first bamboo shoots of the spring are eagerly anticipated for adding to rice (takenoko gohan). Eel (unagi) is fresh and abundant in the summer, when its rejuvenating powers are especially appreciated. This is also the season for cold noodles in refreshing light vinaigrettes. In the autumn, the long, silver-bodied Pacific saury (sanma) are grilled simply with salt (shioyaki) and meals are finished with giant, thick-skinned, purple-blue grapes. Daikon radishes are sweetest in the winter, when hot pots with bubbling stocks are favorite communal dishes. The season not only influences the choice of food, but also the tableware. Earthy fall and winter pottery often give way to decorative porcelain and glass in the spring and summer.
This relationship of vessel and food is captured by the Japanese expression that one eats with one’s eyes (me de taberu). This aesthetic is not reserved just for gift food, like handsomely wrapped Japanese sweets (wagashi) or high-end formal meals, with their multiple, gorgeously arranged dishes. It is also incorporated into the most routine fare: takeout from a convenience store so thoughtfully constructed that you'll forget it was mass produced; bento box lunches that entice you to eat every last bite; even the garnish of contrasting colors on the home dinner plate. The Japanese culinary aesthetic is spare. Odd numbers of dishes are often arranged in asymmetric patterns. A thin green chive blade will set off the flesh of a single plump and perfect scallop. A square of grilled tofu is topped by thinly spread miso with a sprinkling of poppy seeds. Not all Japanese
