Generically, the technique of using rotting rice this way is known as ‘nare zushi’. It is said to have originated in Thailand or perhaps Vietnam but also has relatives in China. There are records of it being used in Japan dating back to the eighth century, to preserve not just carp but different types of seafood and also game meat. Funa zushi, ideally made with pregnant female carp with their roe intact, was these days rare but still a speciality of Lake Biwa, fifteen miles east of Kyoto.
Funa zushi is typically left to do its thing for up to three years during which time the fish’s bones soften and the flesh is said to take on a cheesy texture and flavour, but Mizutani casually mentioned that he had in his fridge some ayu – sweet river fish – which had been fermenting in this way for eight years.
‘Eight years?’ I said.
‘Eight years,’ he nodded.
‘That I would love to try,’ I said, not meaning it at all and never thinking for a minute that such a frightening eventuality would ever come to pass. But then, some days later, I received a message that Mizutani had a surprise for me. That’s how it works with him. He never contacts you directly; communications always go through an intermediary. He’s like the Pope. But if you are at all interested in food, an invitation from him is not to be ignored. If he sends word, you come running because you are guaranteed a meal to remember. And so it was that he and I met at Utou, a little wooden cave of a restaurant hidden away on the first floor of a building in Ogikubo, a quiet part of western Tokyo. It belongs to Aomori-born chef, Satoru Kon, who served us from behind a wooden counter dressed in monk-like, brown robes. Muneki had also invited along Chieko Fujita, another prominent food writer who specialises in all things fermented.
We started the evening’s journey into the funky world of fermented Japanese foods with a glass of unfiltered sake the consistency and colour of wallpaper paste, which Chieko had brought along.
‘I was sent to write about a sake brewery about twenty-five years ago,’ Chieko told me when I asked her where her obsession with fermented foods started. ‘And I became fascinated by it. Young people were not interested in sake at that time, but I started to realise that my child, when she gets older, she won’t be drinking sake. I grew more and more worried about Japanese food culture. I saw it changing, with more fast food, mothers working and not cooking for their families. But I realised these [fermented foods] were the real Japanese fast foods. They may take months to make by the artisans, but you can cook with them in seconds and, if they are good quality, then you will make good food.’
After her Damascene visit to the sake brewery, Chieko began to specialise in writing about sake and then moved into other fermented Japanese foods, realising that the two paired so perfectly, and were very healthy. ‘People often talk about Japanese food as being very salty, but the good part about dashi is that, because it is made with fermented products it helps your body get rid of the salt.’
As we talked, in the background I could hear the sound of dripping water and assumed the place had some plumbing issues. It was a while before I realised the dripping water was coming from the speakers; it was a CD called Soundscape of Suikinkutsu, which Chef Satoru clearly felt provided the perfect contemplative ambience for the enjoyment of his fermented offerings.
He passed across the counter a bowl containing what looked like a large marshmallow. ‘This is the most famous hanpen in Japan,’ smiled Mizutani. Hanpen are dumplings made with ground fish and mountain yam, lightened to a cloud-like density with egg white. This soft, gently-flavoured dish lulled me into a false sense of security which, looking back, was probably the intention. The next appetiser was a spoonful of pungent pickled rice with red cabbage, the grains of rice having decomposed into a mushy whole. This jolted my tastebuds awake, and then the heavy weaponry was unleashed. On a gorgeously patterned, rectangular ceramic plate, Satoru offered us the first nare zushi dish, ugui, a freshwater fish from Ishikawa Prefecture, packed in similarly part-liquefied rice with chilli and carrot.
Glistening malevolently, it looked like something half digested then regurgitated by an ailing Labrador. A couple of other friends had joined us by this stage and, of course, everyone was waiting for the guest of honour to try it first. I reached over with my chopsticks, plucked a slice of this fishy mush, sniffed it, instantly regretted having done so and then tasted it.
Actually, it really wasn’t bad, with a sour, yeasty flavour and a pleasant chilli kick. Was it healthy? ‘Oh yes, very,’ said Chieko, her eyes amused behind a long dark fringe. ‘If you were sick, this is the kind of thing your granny would give you because the lactic acid kills the bad bacteria.’
I’m not sure how I would have reacted if, suffering from flu, my grandmother had served this at my bedside, nor some of our next dishes: Pacific mackerel marinated in nuka (the rice bran left over when brown rice is polished into white) and sliced thickly like cold-smoked salmon, and then a small bowl of chopped raw herring aged in koji for three weeks and with a troubling firm-slimy texture.
And then came the dish I had been anticipating with a mix of excitement and terror: Mizutani’s freshwater ayu which had first been salted for six months to extract all its moisture, then packed in steamed rice and left for eight years to age in his fridge. It was presented by Satoru on another exquisite rectangular ceramic dish in seven slightly squashed slices, still coated in its semi-liquefied rice. I nibbled a corner of one slice. It had a fearsome flavour, for sure: powerfully acidic, again yeasty, with astonishing umami and an aftertaste of … what was it exactly. I knew that flavour. It tasted remarkably like an incredibly tangy, aged parmesan. And, simply by telling myself that was what it was, I was able to happily nibble away at several pieces.
I suspect had I eaten it a decade ago I would have gagged on nare zushi but one’s tastes change and, just as I acquired a serious blue cheese habit some years back, I had by now begun to understand the appeal of Japan’s long-fermented fish dishes. Seeing my facial expression change from raw fear to wary curiosity and then bemused pleasure, Mizutani said: ‘That’s nothing. I know someone who aged some nare zushi for thirty years. It was almost like a liquid.’
It was an astonishingly generous act for him to have shared this with me: who’d have imagined one could be so touched by a gesture involving rotten fish? But then the evening took a turn for the worse as Chef Satoru presented us with some fermented fugu milt, made in Ishikawa. Bluntly, this is the rotten sperm of the infamous poisonous fish, another gift from Chieko-san.
‘Two hundred years ago they fermented fugu in rice and rice bran,’ explained Chieko. ‘They would leave it for three years and the rice would extract all the poison. These days they breed the fugu so they aren’t so poisonous any more.’ Putting aside thoughts of the presumably high rate of attrition involved in the research phase of this, I examined the plate of ‘matter’ before me. The rice bran had turned the fugu milt from white to muddy brown. It looked like a flattened piece of clay, smelled like an abandoned caravan and had a texture like overcooked liver. Instead of the moreish, lactic-umami savour of the fermented ayu, this was sour and bitter. It really was a fearful substance.
All of which makes it inexplicable that, some months later, having left my family for a day in Kyoto, I find myself on the train to Lake Biwa, spiritual home of funa zushi, the mother not just of fermented fish of the kind Mizutani had subjected me to, but of all the broad – now truly global – culinary category we think of as ‘sushi’.
I had never tried funa zushi before myself, but my cartoon had. I found it a little discombobulating to be turned into a cartoon character for the NHK TV series based on my book: it was how I imagine a dog might feel when it looks in a mirror. Whenever I saw my avatar there would be some kind of vague recognition but only enough to create confusion: an unsettling cognitive dissonance. Sometimes it was all I could do to stop myself barking confusedly at the screen. (I should add, cartoon Michael is a neurotic, pig-headed, irrational idiot, prone to hysterical outbursts and a gre
at deal of pompous pontificating. He drinks too much, and eats to grotesque excess. He is obese and wears a green polo shirt. This is clearly ridiculous. I have never owned a green polo shirt.)
I don’t imagine it is easy to turn real people into anime, so some fictional licence was required. We did not meet a ghostly okonomiyaki cook on our travels those years ago, for instance, nor a twenty-foot-high gothic Lolita. At no time have I communicated telepathically with a sexy cow either, but all of these things occur in the cartoons. And there was also an entire episode of the NHK series in which I was challenged to try funa zushi and, though terrified, I finally did and pronounced it ‘delicious’. That never happened. We never visited Lake Biwa where funa zushi is made. If I am honest, I deliberately avoided it, but now it was more than a little embarrassing that my cartoon avatar had tasted it and pronounced himself a fan on my behalf without me ever having tried it. Clearly, it was time for a trip to Lake Biwa, time to taste proper funa zushi at source. Lissen and the kids are less than enthusiastic about a trip on a dark and rainy winter’s day to taste some rotten fish, so I head off alone from the machiya in Kyoto to Omi-Takashima Station on the western bank of Biwa.
The version of nare zushi made using a special type of crucian carp (Nigoro buna) evolved on the shores of Biwa simply because the region had the carp from the lake, salt from Wakasa Bay not far north (the road which passes from there to Kyoto, at the time the capital, was once known as the Salt Highway) and good rice. For centuries funa zushi from the shores of Biwa was a highly prized gift, rather like the posh Hokkaido melons are today, and though those days are long gone, funa zushi is still presented by the region to the Emperor each year as a gift.
Even among the Japanese, funa zushi always seemed to be talked about as one of those ‘dare you?’ foodstuffs. I imagined it to be a little like surströmming, the Swedish herring fermented in a can, or Icelandic hakarl, pieces of shark buried underground for two years or so, both of which I have had the misfortune to taste and whose rancid-acrid flavours I will never quite forget. So I approach the premises of Kitashina warily. The company was founded in 1619 and is now the last shop in Japan which specialises exclusively in making funa zushi. It is on a charming flagstoned street lined with traditional, mostly wooden houses and isn’t difficult to find: I just follow my nose which detects a haunting odour, acidic, like soured cream, but with a cloying sweetness.
Inside Kitashina’s shop and café I am welcomed by the owners, Mariko and Atsushi Kitamura, a shy but friendly married couple in their thirties. Atsushi is wearing immaculate grey overalls and cap. He presents me with my own disposable smock and paper hat which I must put on before I can enter the fermenting chamber.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mariko says, sensing my apprehension as we move closer to the source of that ungodly smell. At this stage I am genuinely concerned at my ability to master my gag reflex. ‘We don’t mind if you don’t like it, we know it is a special smell. The process of making funa zushi derives from home cooking, so we like to leave it to natural temperatures and humidity and light.’
Takashima is one of the great fermentation capitals of Japan. As well as the funa zushi, some of Japan’s best miso, sake and vinegar are all also produced here. The climate by the lake remains relatively humid even in winter with lots of snow and rain, both of which are good for fermentation. I imagine things must get pretty funky round here in the summer but there are always some who can’t stomach funa zushi. The folks at Kitashina are used to wrinkled noses, Mariko says.
We leave the café at the front of the premises and move towards the source of the smell out back. I am now getting overripe Camembert, horse manure and drains. Frankly, I am regretting my curiosity in the matter of funa zushi. Also, I am keenly aware that after my tour of their fermenting room I am going to have to taste some while under the gaze of those who have dedicated their lives to making it.
Why, I wonder aloud, do we need hygiene clothing to look at a product that is by definition rotting? (I don’t put it so rudely.)
‘Only family members are usually allowed in here,’ says Mariko as she opens the door to a cold, half-timbered, barn-like room. ‘That has been the rule, passed down from generation to generation because we value the movement of each bacteria in here and are careful not to destabilise the balance of the bacterial ecosystem, not only the bacteria in the barrels but the ones that are alive in the rafters and walls too.’ I am suddenly keenly aware of my bacteria. I hope they behave themselves.
The floor of the fermenting room is almost completely covered with gnarly old cedar barrels, some bucket-sized, others like wine barrels. All have wooden lids weighed down with circular granite stones, like mini-millstones. Seeping up over the lids is a cloudy, reddish-grey liquid with mould growing on its surface. Mariko asks that any photos I take are for my own use; she is concerned that the barrels look unappetising. She is not wrong.
Atsushi explains how they make funa zushi. The carp are scaled and cleaned, then their guts are pulled out via a small hole in their belly using a chopstick, a process which requires great skill to avoid splitting the fish’s skin. This happens in April and May when the females are pregnant because funa zushi with its roe still intact looks prettier when sliced, and fetches a higher price. The fish are then layered in salt in the barrels where they are left for two years to enable the salt to kill any dangerous bacteria.
Atsushi has kindly readied a barrel which was prepared two years earlier. He is going to show me the second stage of the process. Wearing blue rubber gloves he opens a barrel, scrapes the salt layer away from the top and pulls a fish from the reeking, oozing liquid. It looks more like something archaeological than culinary. I can feel my body engaging fight or flight mode. My pulse begins to race. Buttocks clamp.
‘Now we rinse the fish, and hang them in the sun to dry. We replace the salt with steamed rice and put them back in the barrel for another year,’ he says. It is special rice, of course, grown here in Shiga Prefecture, hand-harvested and sun-dried. Usually when making sake, soy sauce and miso, koji is used at this stage to start fermentation but with funa zushi the rice itself takes care of that as lactic acid bacteria begin to flourish, converting the protein in the fish into the amino acids responsible for its ‘special’ aroma and sour flavour, as well as softening the bones.
Mariko is the eighteenth-generation owner of this 400-year-old company, which was originally founded as a ryotei. She grew up surrounded by stinky fish; when she was a baby her mother would work packing the funa in the barrels with her daughter on her back. Mariko’s husband, on the other hand, comes from Nagoya which has its own famous fermented product, hatcho miso, a dark and pungent miso paste, traditionally fermented in cedar barrels the size of grain silos weighed down with large stones. Atsushi had never encountered funa zushi until he met his future wife, which happened while the two were working in the kitchen and front of house respectively at the fabled Kyoto kaiseki restaurant, Kitcho.
‘I never really knew about it before, I certainly did not know what it smelled like,’ smiled Atsushi. ‘But once I was allowed to join the company, I learned a lot, then I understood the smell.’
‘I remember him having his first taste of funa zushi,’ recalls Mariko. ‘It was like electricity ran through his body, he was thrilled.’ Her husband nods bashfully. The couple had intended to spend their working lives learning about the endless complexities of kaiseki ryori in Kyoto, but in 2000 Mariko’s father became ill and the two moved back to her home town to take over the company.
Kitashina has faced existential challenges in recent years due to the familiar story of declining demand and ever more scarce natural resources. In its heyday in the 1930s, the company had branches in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nagoya but, as with so many traditional Japanese food products, tastes changed, particularly after World War II and the influx of Western foods. Then came the environmental pressures.
‘My father almost closed down the company because it became more and more difficult to get
the fish,’ explains Mariko. In recent decades the southern part of Lake Biwa has become more heavily industrialised and populated; elsewhere the shores have been concreted over and the carp’s reed habitat has been lost. The fish used to migrate to paddy fields via rivers to lay their eggs and then return to the lake but now numerous man-made obstacles block their path.
‘Compared with their heyday, the numbers are down and the fish are smaller, but ten years ago the local government made a big effort to recover the population, which has helped,’ says Mariko.
At one point not a single carp was caught in Biwa for an entire year but the local authority started a campaign to increase the fish population and once again they have a steady supply. Mariko explains all this as we move back in to the café. The moment of truth is fast approaching.
‘People have this mindset that funa zushi is smelly,’ says Mariko. ‘But we change the rice after six months for new rice, so it’s not so bad. If you keep it in the same rice, then it’s really bad.’ By this stage I hear Mariko’s voice only as a distant muffled noise. My world has crash-zoomed onto the glistening, part-decomposed fish in front of us, its flesh sunken and wet, the year-old rice now a homogenous, off-white paste.
‘Some people around here still make this at home,’ Mariko continues as her husband scrapes the part-liquefied rice from the fish. ‘Each one tastes different depending on the bacteria that live in their homes and whether they rinse their hands in sake when they are packing them, or in mirin, like we do.’ I am watching Atsushi intently as he now begins to slice the funa zushi with well-practised precision, fanning out the pieces in a perfect spiral around the plate. The cross section of bright orange roe in the fish’s belly contrasts prettily with silver skin and the gleaming white rice. It looks like some kind of weird, avant-garde necklace.
The Meaning of Rice Page 12