Dashi

If you've read the dining out toolkit or the combini shopping section, you will be familiar with katsuodashi, a vegetarian's biggest obstacle to eating in Japan.  The use of katsuodashi is extremely widespread, but lucky for us, katsuo is not the only dashi in town.  Combudashi and shitake dashi are two other traditional Japanese stocks, and are safe for vegetarians and vegans.

Before we get too far into the specific dashis, I want to back up a bit.  I have a question for you.  When you think of the basic tastes, what comes to mind?  If you are from a western country, you will most likely have answered sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and perhaps spicy.  If you ask a Japanese person, they will tell you that there are 5 tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami.

Umami is the taste of nucleotides or glutamates hitting your tongue.  The body needs these building blocks of protein to survive, so we are hard wired to enjoy this taste.  But what exactly does umami taste like?  The closest word we have in English is probably savory, but that doen't quite do it justice.  Umami rich foods include meat, seafood, including combu and other seaweed, and vegetables like ripe tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, as well as other items like parmesan cheese and soy sauce.  When mutiple umami rich foods are combined, some kind of magical umami multiplication effect occurs and the total taste becomes far greater than the sum of the ingredients.  Because of this, a mix of fish and combu dashis forms the flavor base of many Japanese dishes.

Now to the specific dashis.  Katsuodashi  (かつおだし,  カツオだし,  鰹 だし) made from dried bonito fish, and is the most widely used.  Similar, but less widely used is nibodashi (にぼしだし,  ニボシダシ,  煮干出し), which is made from dried anchovies.  If you are vegetarian or vegan, you should make friends with kombudashi (昆布だし), made from dried kelp, and shiitakedashi (椎茸だし), made from dried shiitake.  


Dashi is considered an essential base to all kinds of Japanese dishes, including pretty much every kind of soup (miso, soba, udon... ), nimono and more less anything cooked in a broth.  As katsuodashi, or some combonation including katsuodashi is generally used, be very careful when eating in a restaurant or buying prepared food from a combini or grocery store.  When you cook at home, you can use combudashi, shiitakedashi or a both to create a rich base flavor for your dishes.  When buying dashi in a grocery store you have two basic options.  You can buy actual dried combu or shiitake, and make the dashi yourself, or buy powdered dashi, which includes individually wrapped portions in little paper packs.  These days, most Japanese people buy the powdered version, as they require no work, but the traditional version is healthier (the powdered version also contains salt, sugar, and other additives) and unambiguously vegetarian and vegan friendly.  If you are buying the powdered version, check to make sure that the your combu or shiitake dashi doesn't also contain katsuo.  Also, the instant version will usually contain amino (アミの酸), amino acids from which source (animal vegetable or mineral?) they don't bother to write.  

This brand is vegetarian, other than containing the ambiguous amino.

How to prepare combudashi and shiitakedashi


Using dried combu or shiitake to make your own dashi is really quite easy.  The standard way to make combudashi is to wipe a piece of combu with a damp cloth, then soak in a pot of water for at least 20 minutes.  Turn on the heat on low and remove the combu from the pot just when the water comes to a boil. You can save the combu you used for your stock to use in other dishes.   


When I make miso soup, I just throw a piece of combu in before the vegetables, not bothering to presoak cause I'm a lazy cook.  You can remove the combu before serving, but it's quite nutritious, so I like to eat it along with my soup.   

 

 This combu is cut into convenient dashi making strips.

For shiitakedashi, the recipes I've seen really vary.  Start by rinsing a handful of dried shiitake.  You can get a fair amount of flavor by simply soaking the mushrooms in water (for a half hour, a few hours or overnight), or for a stronger flavor, simmer the shiitake for about 20 minutes.   You can then use those mushrooms in other dishes.  Shiitake dashi is often made with both shiitake and combu for a richer flavor.   

Okarakonnyaku- giving new life to soymilk refuse!

Marketed as a dieter's food, okarakonnyaku (おからこんにゃく) is a relatively new product made from the fusion of two traditional Japanese foods.  It can be found in the refrigerated section, likely near the tofu, of some supermarkets, and also at health food stores.

Okara (おから) is a biproduct of soymilk production.  When soybeans are pureed and the liquid is strained out, the pulp that remains in the filter in okara.  Most okara ends up going into animal feed, as consumers buy a lot more soymilk than they do okara, but it is also a great food for humans, being low in fat, high in fiber, and a source of protein, calcium, iron, and vitamin B2.  (Thanks wikipedia!)  You'll find it used in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese cuisine, and more recently in vegetarian products in the west.  It doesn't have much of a taste by itself, but can be made into delicious dishes like unohana.

Konnyaku (蒟蒻,  こんにゃく）is a jelly made from the root of a tuber (potato-like plant).  It has all kinds of crazy English names that are relatively unknown: have you ever heard of devil's tonge, voodoo lilly, or snake palm?  I certainly hadn't!  In Japan, konnyaku is made from a mix of konnyaku flour, water, and limewater.  As it contains almost no calories, and is high in fiber, it is known as a great food for those trying to lose weight.  Fresh konnyaku has a somewhat stinky fishy smell, though I can assure you it is vegetarian, and the smell disappears once cooked.  I'm not crazy about the taste of konnyakku itself, but it's not bad with a yummy sauce, or tucked into flavorful dishes.

The wonders of Japanese food technology have fused these two healthy, traditional foods into something rather meatlike in texture, and seemingly healthy.  To be honest, after reading in Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (which, along with The Omnivore's Dilemma, I highly recommend to any thoughtful eater), I've become rather suspicious of wondrous modern food technology, but from my limited research, okarakonnyaku seems pretty decent.  For one, this product contains a fairly short list of recognizable ingredients, the opposite of which (long list, unfamiliar, scientific sounding ingredients), Pollan believes we should try to avoid.

In Japan, okarakonnyaku's target market is dieters and health conscious eaters, but this is also a great product for vegetarians as it makes a great mock meat to throw into a stir fry.  Which is precisely what I did tonight.

"Soon he started to develop a new food with his positive thinking. The wish to eat a tasty food is common all over the world. He held out!"

This quote is from a cute description of the birth of okarakonnyaku found here. 

Natto vending machine!

Japan is famous for its ubiquitous jihanki (vending machines).  Drinks are of course the most common (with both hot and cold beverages available), with cigarette machines holding firm at second.  When I first came to Japan, I was amused to see alcohol jihanki, which, unlike the cigarette machines, require no proof of age.  You can occasionally find machines offering oden, ramen, bread and onigiri, and apparently there is a banana vending machine somewhere in Shibuya station!  You've probably heard of the worn ladies' underwear machine- this is one I haven't seen myself, but as I have seen other racy items sold in vending machines, I don't doubt that it exists.

Some months back, while strolling the streets of lively Shimokitazawa, we came across vending machine that exclusively sells natto and related products.  Even my koibito (sweetheart) was surprised to see it, so apparently the natto jihanki is a rarity.

For newbies, and those of you that don't live in Japan, I should probably explain what natto is, as I don't think I was acquainted with it before living here myself.  Natto is basically fermented soybeans. It's usually eaten on rice, especially on a breakfast food, and sometimes can be found rolled up in sushi.  Natto is inexpensive (about 40¥ per serving) and fantastically healthy, being high in protein and probiotics, but low in fat.  To those familiar with natto, it has a lovely savory, beany, nutty flavor.  To the uninitiated, however, natto's particular taste, strong (stinky cheese or stinky foot-ish) aroma, and slimy texture can be rather off-putting.  I think it may be the texture that is the most challenging for westerners: in North America there aren't really any popular foods that have this texture.  We associate sliminess with rotting garbage, pond scum, or mucous, not with something you'd want to eat.  In Japan, however, neba-neba is a food texture category (like, say, chewy or crunchy) that includes yama-emo, okura, and nama-tamago (raw egg!).  Though I'll admit that natto is an aquired taste (it took me a year of living in Japan before I started to like it), I think it's worth the effort and not-so-pleasant first tastes.

Natto is an excellent food for vegetarians in Japan (and elsewhere if you can find it!), with only one small drawback.  Most packages of natto come with little packages of sauce that contain katsuodashi (bonito fish stock).  If you are a pescatarian, or someone who is ok just discarding the sauce pack, this will pose no problem.  If you're not cool with buying something with fish sauce in the first place, there are several specialty types of natto you should look for.  They're not available at every grocery store, but if you check a few places you can probably find them!  The first (and my favourite) is 黒豆 (black bean) natto, which comes with vegetarian friendly sauce.  (Other brands may not be veg friendly, so scan the ingredients for かつお or カツオ or 鰹) You only get 2 little styrofoam packs for the price of the usual 3, but it's still quite reasonable.  The second option is to buy sauce free natto, which is packed in a thin, rectangular paper container, wrapped again in plastic, rather than the little styrofoam squares.

Natto is most delicious with a little sauce mixed in (try the one in the black bean natto or throw in some shoyu / soy sauce), and lots of people like to sprinkle on some chopped green onions too. Make sure to mix up your natto until it is good and slimy too!

Mugicha

When you think of summer drinks, what pops into your mind?  In Japan, most people would probably answer mugicha.  This summer will be my 4th in Japan, and it's hard for me to imagine a summer without a jug of mugicha chilling in my fridge!

Mugicha (麦茶) is a tea to made from roasted barley.  As it doesn't contain leaves from the tea plant, it's technically a tisane, and contains no caffeine.  I'm not sure about bachelors, cause I used to teach adult students who told me they literally had nothing in their fridges but beer (they ate all meals at restaurants or bought them from convenience stores), but I'm pretty sure just about all families always have a jug of mugicha going.  Being caffeine free, it's a staple drink for kids in this country.  Japanese people don't seem to drink a lot of water, but they are big on their teas!

This cooling summer drink is tasty in kind of an earthy way, and fantastically cheap.  A pack of 54 large teabags (each makes a kettle full of tea) costs about 300¥ (less than $4).

Another great thing about mugicha is that it is calorie free.  I think that liquid calorie overconsumption is one of the things that the North American diet typically does wrong, and the lack thereof in the traditional Japanese diet is one of the things that they got right over here.  So you can drink all the mugicha you want, and save your calories for the things you really want to be savoring, like scones.

I'm sure you can buy yourself some mugicha in a Japanese grocery store like Fujiya in Vancouver, but how  about a regular grocery store?  Take a peek for me next time you are shopping.  So go hunt for some, brew up a pot, serve over ice, and let me know what you think!