Cooking Bamboo Shoots

Now that we've done all that harvesting, it's time to cook the bamboo shoots. The canned or vacuum packed shoots are parboiled and ready to eat. If you purchase or dig fresh bamboo, you must cook them before adding them to your recipe.

Add rice bran (nuka) to the cooking water. If you don't have any, save the milky rinse water from washing rice and use that for cooking the shoots. There is no need to remove the leaves or dirt before cooking. Make a cut along the length of the outer curved portion of the shoot halfway through and trim the point off with a diagonal cut. Add to the pot and cook about half an hour. If they are tender (give them a poke) they are ready to peel, slice and add to your favorite stir fry or other dish. We leave ours in the cooking pot overnight to cool and finish the process in the morning.

Ideas for using bamboo as a side dish:

1. Paper thin slices mixed with su-miso vinegared miso (strained miso, with a touch of mirin, sugar, rice vinegar made into a dressing)

2. Thicker slices boiled with soy sauce, mirin, dried fish flakes.

3. Thin slices mixed with mayonnaise, a touch of mirin, canned tuna.

Harvesting Bamboo

I set out with my aging relatives under the shade of the giant bamboo (variety: moso dake) with heavy hoes (called touga) to seek precious bamboo shoots. Wearing thin-soled boots so we could feel the tips of the shoots poking out of the deep loam, we walked gingerly up and down the forest floor. Once we detect a spiny tip, we carefully dig around the root and give it a hardy whack with a touga at the point where the sprout begins to grow from its underground lateral root. Bamboo roots spread, just like grass, so the shoots will spring up along the network of underground roots. Most are about 8-10 inches below the ground. It is important to cut the shoot cleanly if they are to be sold in the market. A misplaced "whack" means it will go into the family cooking pot - not altogether a bad thing - but a day's work will earn us a couple hundred dollars or more.

I'll show you how we cook them up and prepare them for market in the next day or so! Stay tuned - this is about as much excitement as we have around here.

Easy Pickles

1. Daikon Quick Pickles
   
   This is the two-day pickle making method, for delicious homemade pickles without a lot of fuss.
   
   For 6 kg of unpeeled daikon radish (about 6-8 large), green leaves trimmed off
   800 g (about 4 cups) of white sugar
   2 cups of sea salt
   2 cups of Yuzu (citron) vinegar (substitute with rice vinegar rather than using white or cider vinegar which have higher acidity, the citrus taste is not essential)
   Scant teaspoon of yellow karashi (hot mustard powder) optional
   
   You will need a large tub, a large heavy duty clear plastic bag, a 2 kg weight, a flat lid to place under the weight.

1. Trim the green leaves off the daikon and wash the roots well.
2. Peel the daikon with a vegetable peeler, trimming top and bottom with a knife neatly.
3. Cut the roots lengthwise in half.
4. Place the large plastic bag in a tub and place the peeled, trimmed, halved roots neatly in the bag.
5. When all the daikon are in the bag, sprinkle in the sugar, salt, vinegar and karashi.
6. Twist the top of the bag closed and mix the contents by swishing the bag around.
Replace the bag in the tub, place the flat lid on the twisted bag (no need to tie it with a knot or tie) and place the weight on the lid.
Keep in cool place for two days.
7. On the second day, check your results. The bag should be full of liquid. You can eat the pickle now, but keep it in the liquid in a cool-cold place.

Remove only what you need for a day or two at a time. Slice the portion you remove and store in covered container in the refrigerator.

Okonomiyaki

Today, thanks to a great reader suggestion, we made okonomiyaki, a sort of grilled-anything cabbage pancake. There are about as many variations of this as there are cooks, so I'm just showing my version - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBf194nb6_Q

it gives enough of a guideline for you to adjust it to your tastes. It's basically a pancake batter of flour, broth, egg and cabbage, flavored with shrimp, octopus, squid, pork, chicken and topped off with a special sauce, mayonnaise. What I love about this dish is that there are endless ways to present it and flavor it - so go wild. This is one of the first dishes I ate in Japan and it remains one of my favorites!

Every region has its own variation and I think the best is made with grated mountain yam (yama imo) instead of water, but if that isn't available, my version is an acceptable substitute. Some stores might sell "okonomiyaki mix," which contains some of the flavorings and yam powder. It gives the most authentic taste! If you don't have the mix, then try my way!

To make about 4 pancakes: Stir together a batter of 1 cup regular flour, 1 tsp. baking powder (optional, it lightens the batter), 3/4 c. broth (Japanese flavored broth dashi, consomme cube or plain water), 1 egg. Add 4 cups finely shredded cabbage and 1/4 c. chopped green onion. Stir to blend.

Heat griddle. Grease generously. Place meats on griddle and top with a quarter of the cabbage mixture. Allow about 1/2 c of meats per serving, which can be any mixture of chicken, pork, octopus, squid, shrimp, bacon, ham or a raw egg. Cook on both sides.

Toppings: We use okonomi sauce (or you can use tonkatsu sauce), mayonnaise, dried bonito fish flakes katsuo, powdered nori seaweed and red pickled ginger. If you cannot buy okonomi sauce, you can make a similar quick sauce by mixing 3 Tb. ketchup, 1 Tb. Worcestershire sauce and 1 tsp. soy sauce. Visit http://okonomiyakirecipes.nthmost.com/quick-okonomi-sauce-recipe/ for some other ideas.

How to Prepare Hoshigaki - Dried Persimmon

I mentioned kaki fruit a while back, those wonderful orange sweet round fruits that ripened at the end of October. Now, the variety in season is the Hachiya persimmon, slightly oval shaped with a pointed bottom. They are also beautifully orange in color but the firm ones are too astringent to eat. These, we peel, dip in hot water (to counteract the tannin), string up and hang to dry. By the New Year, they will have a thick coat of sugary residue on them and a leathery texture. Bits can be eaten as a treat. So today, I prepared hoshigaki or dried persimmons. For string, we used the fronds from a palm type plant growing in the garden - most palm-like trees have very strong leaves that are a great substitute for string. The challenge now is to keep the hanging fruit from molding and already it has started to rain. The kaki that are too soft to peel are almost jelly-like. I scoop out the fruit and use this is cakes or bars. When Hachiya are this ripe, they are sweet. Some of the general recipes I use are similar to those found at http://www.epersimmons.com/recipes.htm

The end of the gingko nuts

A few weeks ago I put those yellow grape-sized fruits in water and I waited patiently for it to become foul and black. Mine just seemed to soak but I guess the water bath helps remove some of the toxicity of the fruit, so I was able to remove the fruit easily and out came these nice little nuts. Obachan said to soak theses in salt water and then when you are ready to eat them, remove the hard shell and the brown skin coating and you are left with a kind of pale green shiny bean, sort of like a soybean that you can boil and add to rice or Japanese savory custard chawan mushi (an egg custard made with soup stock rather than milk and chicken, shrimp, mushroom and this bean and other vegetables). I'm disappointed that I didn't have black slimy goo for Halloween but it's nice to understand the process in case we are ever left to fend for ourselves in the wild.

Autumn Beans

Azuki Beans- the main ingredient in sweet bean paste, the essence of so many Japanese desserts and snacks. Azuki beans are used for sekihan as well, a kind of sticky steamed rice and beans prepared for celebrations flavored lightly with salt, sake and a dash of sugar. The are easy enough to grow but harvesting is tricky. The little pods are ready at different times, so we hand pick them over the course of about 2 weeks, only harvesting the ones that are ready. We lay the pods out on a blue plastic sheet, walk over them or hit them with whatever is handy and let them dry in the sun until we store them in jars. Obachan favors old sake bottles because they measure 1-sho (1.8 liters).

Azuki aren't the only beans ready to pop out of their pods. The picture on

the right shows the field of daizu or soybeans. No more edamame here, the leaves are turning golden and brown, withering on the stem leaving the drying pods of soybeans. This isn't our field - we only planted a few plants in the garden - but we would cut these with the

weed cutter, set them stems up in clusters to dry a bit, then feed the clusters of plants into a machine to remove the beans. The co-op has a bigger machine that is like a combine just for soybeans. The stems are very woody and tough so our regular harvester can't handle it. These soybeans are used for local natto (fermented soybeans) and local dishes and they get a good price because they are locally grown. More than 80% of the soybeans used in Japan are imported.

Miso Making

My mother-in-law decided she had better come along after all and just risk getting the flu so she could supervise the miso making operation. She always has lots of advice, like how to mix the ingredients properly or how to clean the iron cooking pot (with a pumice stone). After all the bickering over ingredients, we still aren't sure how much rice and wheat was added or exactly how my aunt innoculates the grains but I suspect she buys the powder from the farmer's union store. I asked how many kg of rice we use for each batch and she shows me a bowl, her special miso-making-measuring bowl that she always uses and she knows just how many scoops to use. It's not a real precise recipe. Hygiene, well, that's another thing. I don't want to tell you about the flies that got mashed in or the twigs or dirty hands - let's just hope that there is enough salt in this stuff to kill most anything. The miso will continue to ferment for 4-6 months before we eat it. As it ages, it gets darker and darker with soy liquid (really thick soy sauce) forming on top. The video shows the process....then you'll know why people just go to the store and buy it.