Pantry Raid XII: Turning Japanese - Recap

Alton sits, composing haiku in a vaguely Japanese setting. His poetry extols the virtues of miso, a popular soup. Learning to make this will prove instructive, since the chef will learn how the Japanese pantry elevates humble ingredients to... Good Eats!

Many Americans, Alton reveals, think of Japanese cuisine as exclusively built around fresh foods. While fresh foods are important, some the real work horses of the Japanese kitchen are pantry ingredients. Most are inexpensive, and in the modern world, readily available. Many American supermarkets sell these ingredients in an ethnic foods section, and there are dedicated Japanese groceries as well. And if both of those fail to yield what's needed, almost anything may be had on the Internet.

Alton starts by making dashi. In Japan, what isn't raw, fried or grilled is generally cooking in dashi, a kind of stock. dashi is also an ingredient in most of the sauces served alongside the raw, fried or grilled foods. To make dashi, Alton needs two things, and to get them, he visits a local Japanese grocer, staffed by a somewhat familiar looking character...

First is kombu, a variety of kelp harvested from cold water and packaged as sheets. Kombo naturally contains a good deal of MSG, and is also rich in iron, potassium, B-vitamins and carotene (a form of Vitamin A). It is oishi – delicious – and very nutritious. Besides its use in dashi, kombu is pickled, shredded and fried.

Dashi's second ingredient is dried bonito. This starts as a fish called skipjack tuna. To prepare bonito, one first fillets the fish. The fillet is simmered for twenty minutes and deboned. And that's just the beginning of its journey to bonito. The makers next smoke the fillet over cherry wood for six hours/day for two weeks, and then sun dry it. They place the dried fillet in a cave with a special sort of mold for two weeks. They alternate between more sun drying and more time in the cave until the fillet hardens, and shave off flakes for use. There is a special tool, the kezuriki, for this purpose which is similar to a mandoline (or a block plane). At the counter of Alton's Japanese grocery, the “samurai grocer” tries without much luck to shave a block of bonito. Most folks do what Alton plans to – they purchase bonito already shaved into flakes.

Eurpoean stocks depends on bones and connective tissue for flavor. It takes time and heat to break these substances down into the gel-like chemicals that lend stock its richness. Dashi is different. It cooks very quickly, and its ingredients give up their flavors at different temperatures, so Alton warns that technique matters most, here. He starts by extracting two 4” pieces of kombu and cuts these into smaller pieces. He seals the left over kombu in a zipper top bag; it will keep indefinitely. These pieces must rehydrate, so Alton drops them into a four quart pan just over half full for thirty minutes at medium high heat (around 150° - 160°) - the point at which the bubbles just start to break from the sides of the pan. At the end of this time, he removes the kombu – but he doesn't throw it away because he can make a second stock from it. He measures half an ounce of the bonito, also called katsuobushi. Then he brings the water to high temperature (near boiling) and sprinkles the bonito onto it before dropping the water to low temperature and allowing the bonito to contribute flavor for ten minutes. He strains out the fish pieces using a muslin cloth, saving them for use later.

Having prepared the dashi, Alton moves on to the tofu. Tofu, he explains, comes from soybeans. Tofu makers extract the beans from the pods, dry the beans, crush them and finally cook them in water. This yields a semisolid and a liquid. They coagulate the sold with calcium sulfate or magnesium chloride (which the Japanese call nagari) to produce a solid the approximate consistency of cheese curd. For firm tofu, producers squeeze much of the liquid from this. For silky tofu they leave more of the liquid in. Squeezed into an aseptic (sanitized) container, tofu will keep for months or even years.

Silken tofu is a little too soft for cutting, so Alton plans to firm it up. To do this, he wraps some in a paper towel and puts a plate on top, and then some weight on top of that. Twenty minutes later, enough moisture will be squeezed out to produce a usable form.

While that goes on, Alton returns to the grocer for miso. Miso, he explains, is another soybean preparation. Manufacturers grind the beans with rice and inoculate them with a mold-based fermenting agents called koji. This yields a paste sometimes called Japanese peanut butter, because it looks, feels and even somewhat tastes like American peanut butter – and is as widespread in Japan. Indeed, Alton's grocery features a full case containing a wide variety. White miso is somewhat sweet, and suitable for desserts. Alton uses the red sort of miso for braising beef and pork. Wasi miso is the most convenient and versatile variety; if one keeps just one kind, wasi is that kind. Alton selects miso without chemicals and preservatives. But when he declines to purchase one of each, the grocer removes his small sword and threatens seppuku, forcing Alton to quickly change his mind and purchase one of each sort...

Alton is finally ready to make his soup. He puts a plenty of his dashi into a four quart pan over medium high heat. At one hundred degrees, he ladles a small quantity into a bowl and whisks in some red miso and some white miso – the exact ratios are somewhat a matter of taste (Alton's choices, as with all of his recipes, may be found at the Food network site). He next retrieves the tofu, now firmer for the loss of a portion of its liquid, and slowly, carefully cuts it into ½” cubes using a very sharp knife. He whisks the miso mixture (previously moistened by some dashi) back into the remaining broth (which, he cautions, must not boil), and adds the tofu and some scallions. He kills the heat and allows this to sit for a few minutes before serving.

Not only does this miso soup contain protein, iron, vitamins and minerals, it is chock full of umami, the savory flavor. For many years, Alton recalls, there were four basic flavors for which scientists knew of taste bud receptors. In 1908, a man named Kikunae Ikeda isolated glutamate from brown crystals left behind by the evaporation of a large quantity of kombu broth. He patented a sodium salt of this compound as the source of a “savory” flavor he called umami, and soon enough monosodium glutamate (MSG) was a worldwide hit. But in the 1960s, a number of symptoms – heart palpitations, numbness of the fingers, and others – were laid at the door of MSG and its popularity declined. Evolution probably selected special receptors for sweet, salty and even sour because of the wide array of nutritious compounds that have these flavors. Creatures that can properly detect what will nourish them surely have an advantage. And bitter? Many poisons, especially alkaloids found in plants, are very bitter. So this taste may have evolved as a protection. Within this context, Alton concludes, receptors for umami make sense, since many amino acids have this basic flavor. The body requires these acids to make proteins (and while it can make most of them, there are a few essential acids it cannot make – they must be ingested). Foods like red wine, aged cheese, and a lot of Japanese cuisine favor the umami flavor.

Just as Alton dislikes unitasking tools, he dislikes unitasking ingredients. So he finds another use for his bonito. He chops the leftover flakes very finely and then cooks them until they are nearly dry. He adds mirin, some soy sauce and some sugar and cooks, again, until nearly dry. He adds a few white sesame seeds and serves this over rice.

Silken tofu goes in a blender carafe with buttermilk, lemon, dijon mustard, ketchup, kosher salt and a little black pepper. He spins that a bit before adding some pickle relish. A final spin later, he has a “special sauce” suitable for hamburgers or as a salad dressing.

White miso and a little honey, mixed, form a nice baste for halibut. After coating some fish, Alton bakes them in a hot oven for around 20 minutes.

Dashi, mirin, and soy sauce shaken together are good on noodles, like soba (often available at any food store). After cooking these noodles, Alton tosses them with this sauce to soak the, and serves them in the Japanese style – cold, perhaps garnished with onions or even a little shredded seaweed.

The basics of the Japanese pantry yield a popular soup and a few other useful sauces and seasonings. Alton assures us that this just scratches the surface of what's possible with a well-equipped Japanese pantry.

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