The Meaning of Rice

by Michael Booth

  Much has been made in the Western media recently about the health benefits of ‘good’ bacteria on everything from our digestion to obesity and even our psychology (our so-called ‘thinking gut’). These ‘good’ bacteria are especially abundant in fermented foods. Had funa zushi’s time come, I wondered? Could it be the next health food fad?

  ‘The lactic bacteria are definitely healthy,’ says Mariko. ‘They are researching it at the universities in Osaka and Nagahama. I do think that when more people learn about how good lactic bacteria are for you, they will realise its health benefits. Some research already says it lowers blood pressure, reduces allergies and helps the intestinal environment, but if you like funa zushi you probably drink sake with it, so that might counter-balance the health benefits,’ she laughs. ‘In this region, when people get a cold or stomach problems, they eat funa zushi as medicine – and locals eat it with rice, not so much with sake.’

  I have run out of questions; I can filibuster no longer. We might as well get this over with. Atsushi offers me the plate, I pick up a slice of funa zushi and put it into my mouth.

  Now, wouldn’t it be wonderful if at this point I can report that funa zushi tastes so much better than I feared, that actually I really enjoyed it and it was nothing like as bad as its smell. But it is awful. The sourness especially takes me by surprise. It is cheek-puckeringly sour, sour to the power of ten lemons, and the sourness is swiftly followed by an unpleasant bitterness which I can feel is actually making my cheeks flush. Then there is the texture – the sliminess of the flesh and the graininess of the roe together make it a colossally challenging mouthful.

  To be fair, it was stupid of me to take a whole slice. As with my fermented tofu misadventure on Okinawa ten years ago, it would have been wiser to begin with a tentative nibble. Also, a rinse of sake helps. Mariko, sensing my distress, offers me a cup, and it instantly softens the acridity of the funa zushi, which sells for ¥8,400 – £63 – per fish. ‘This one is actually less sour than one that is only matured for six months,’ says Mariko.

  Kitashina’s newest product is funa that has been fermented with sake lees – the leftover fermented rice from making sake – instead of plain, cooked rice. Now deeply wary, I taste this new product, which is sweeter and milder. It is really rather good – I might even eat it again.

  ‘For local people, this is the traditional funa zushi,’ says Mariko. ‘But all our customers, from all over Japan, have different memories of funa zushi as a part of their personal and cultural heritage. Our products remind them of all these things.’

  Mariko and Atsushi hope Kitashina will continue its nare zushi traditions for another 400 years. Their son, Masaki, fifteen, is already showing a keen interest. ‘It is up to him but I hope he will take over,’ says Mariko. ‘He is already learning more about fishing and farming the rice. In 2013, he prepared fifty fish in his own barrel, cured only with salt, no rice, so it lasts longer. It will be ready for the 2020 Olympics. I have customers waiting for him. He will be the nineteenth generation, they want to eat his funa zushi while watching the Olympics on TV!’

  Chapter 15

  Osaka

  While my family and I are staying in Kyoto, Amakara Techo, the leading food magazine of western Japan, has invited me to Osaka, a half hour or so away by Shinkansen. The editors have kindly offered to show me around and get me to sample some local delicacies. I need no further invitation. Every time I visit the city I taste something new, surprising, delicious or enjoyably weird. Osakans seem to live for their stomachs. Plus, accompanying us will be my old friend Hiroshi Sakurai, a television writer, musician and legendary bon viveur, and the man who first introduced me to the wonders of Osakan food a decade ago. Like me an unashamed glutton, Hiroshi has an intimate knowledge of the best places to eat in what I have long suspected is the best city in the world in which to do this.

  We begin our tour of Osaka with a visit to the Tsuruhashi market. In the fish section I enjoy a lesson in fish processing from fishmonger Hirohisa Hayakawa, master of ikejime. This is the special Japanese method of preventing lactic acid build-up and blood spoiling the fish’s flesh by first severing its spine and main blood vessel then forcing a stiff metal wire down the unfortunate creature’s neural canal, which runs along the top side of its spine, nullifying its nervous system. This can slow the effects of rigor mortis and keep a fish fresh for ten to fifteen hours, Hayakawa says, adding proudly that it was a Kansai (western Japan) invention. I had only heard of ikejime being used in small to medium-sized fish but he tells me it can be an effective treatment for fish as large as tuna.

  He now moves to a nearby case from which he plucks a live octopus and, as he juggles it expertly, he explains how to sex an octopus: you look at its suckers. On a girl, they will be arranged in two neat rows, with boys they are more randomly distributed (I have yet to find any scientific corroboration for this, but it sounds convincing).

  I have been especially looking forward to our lunch appointment in the Tenma district of the city. When I had visited Osaka for the first time years ago while researching Sushi and Beyond, Hiroshi and a friend of his had taken me on a memorable food crawl to some of their favourite places, ending many beers, sakes and shochus later, at an udon restaurant called Tenma. The udon there, and in particular the fresh-made dashi which accompanied it, had made a huge impression on me. The dashi was made with katsuobushi and dried mackerel and was hair-raisingly savoury. At the time, I had described it as the most delicious thing I had ever tasted, and wrote as such in my book.

  Some years later, after Sushi and Beyond had been published in Japanese, I heard through the grapevine that the owners of Tenma had hit hard times. The husband, who ran the kitchen, had fallen seriously ill and been unable to work. His wife was about to close the restaurant when one of her customers told her about my praise for their dashi in my book and – at least this is what I’d heard – this had given her the strength to continue. The book had apparently brought many customers to her door.

  Naturally, I was keen to revisit Tenma to find out whether any of this was true, and get the free bowl of udon that was my due.

  Owner Sachiko Yamasaki welcomes us warmly when we arrive at her noodle restaurant in a side street in a business quarter of the city. She explains that they had indeed experienced a torrid time since I had first visited. Following a long and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle with their landlords who wanted to redevelop the building which housed the restaurant, her husband, Yoshinki, then only in his mid-forties, had had a stroke. He was paralysed down one side of his body and could no longer work in the restaurant. To make things worse, they were evicted from the restaurant at the end of the following year. Sachiko was pregnant with their first child.

  ‘We were going to close the restaurant, that’s what my husband wanted,’ she says quietly. Her parents found an alternative location for the restaurant, still in the Tenma district; her brother volunteered to help out in the kitchen. They reopened just as Sachiko’s husband was discharged from hospital. He struggled on in the kitchen for a year but eventually the work became too tough for him, and he now lives with his mother. For a while, Sachiko’s brother was in charge of the all-important dashi, the basis of the soup that drove me wild all those years ago, but now she takes care of it herself.

  Sachiko, a shy, young-looking forty-eight-year-old with a heavy fringe, seems quietly proud of all she has achieved, but catches herself and adds modestly, ‘When I get into trouble, I call my husband.’

  All of this had clearly happened before my book was published in Japanese, so the story about me ‘saving’ Tenma was not quite true, but the book had at least brought customers from across the country.

  ‘I had seen your book in the bookshops, but I didn’t know our restaurant was in it at all,’ Sachiko tells me. ‘Then a reader came in a couple of years ago. She’d been trying to track our restaurant down through clues in the book. All she had to go on was that it was an udon place in Tenma. I later realised tha
t people from all over Japan had been trying to figure out where the restaurant was. Then the first TV crew came here when Japanese food was given UNESCO [World Heritage] status. I really wanted to meet you, I am so happy to have been in your book. I’ve been awake all night, so nervous about making dashi for you and whether it would meet your expectations.’

  I was also a little worried that I had somehow exaggerated the soup’s deliciousness, but it was everything I remembered: sweet but with a slight bitterness, and a wondrous smoky-savoury flavour that lingered satisfyingly. It was simple, but a testament to top quality ingredients and perfect technique. Firstly, Sachiko steeps the highest grade of Hokkaido konbu in soft, cold water overnight before bringing the water almost to the boil to make the dashi fresh every morning. ‘The soft water helps extract maximum umami,’ she confides. Having heated the water and removed the konbu, she then adds three types of dried fish – sardine, katsuo (bonito) and mackerel – lets them infuse a little, and then strains the liquid to make the primary dashi. To that she adds sugar, soy, sake and mirin.

  ‘No MSG,’ she assures me, wagging an index finger. ‘MSG makes you thirsty, natural dashi doesn’t.’

  I have no doubt that thousands of restaurants across Japan make a dashi as good as this one every day. Tenma is a humble, everyday, local restaurant with no airs or pretensions. The decor is plain; my bowl of udon costs just ¥600 (£4). But I guess you never forget your first time, and Tenma was one of my first experiences of proper, fresh-made dashi. It will always hold a special place in my heart and, I should add, the udon noodles were pretty great too.

  On to our next stop of the day: tako yaki.

  I had eaten Osaka’s most iconic dish many times. This is tako yaki, or ‘octopus balls’: savoury doughnuts with a chunk of octopus in the middle cleverly cooked on a special hob with semi-circular hollows, and served with a super-savoury brown sauce. But I had never tried to make them.

  I got the chance at a small tako yaki stand in one of the city’s wonderfully evocative shotengai, the Japanese covered shopping arcades. I love these places; they are the perfect antidote to the modern retail plague of the shopping mall, and Osaka is particularly famous for them. Mostly free of chain stores, let alone international chains, these covered, ground-level retail corridors typically boast an array of ‘mom and pop’ stores, tiny restaurants and community spaces. As well as proper fishmongers and greengrocers, there is almost always a fresh tofu place, someone selling dried seaweeds, a mochi café, someone grinding coffee beans, a proper old-fashioned ironmongers and low-cost clothing shops selling complex-patterned knitwear and trousers made from highly flammable material.

  The shotengai my Osakan friends have brought me to has an exceptional tako yaki place, Umaiya. We watch chef Taizo Kita pouring the batter into the semi-spherical indentations in his hot plate, then deftly turning the dough once it has set, gravity ensuring that the still-liquid uncooked portion of the dough forms the other half of the ‘yaki’ ball. I appreciate his skill all the more after I am invited to try my hand at making my own tako yaki. The resulting doughnuts I make look decidedly ragged but still taste terrific.

  In the taxi afterwards we talk about the amazing quality of Kita-san’s tako yaki but a thought, perhaps slightly sacrilegious, has struck me: why did no one ever try to put something else inside tako yaki? I realised you would have to lose the ‘tako’ (it means ‘octopus’), but what about a nice chunk of pork belly, slow-simmered in sake and mirin? Or some lightly pickled mackerel, something sour to cut through the doughy exterior? Or what about a sweet tako yaki with a chunk of fruit inside or some chocolate?fn1

  This set me off on a chain of thought. Was this perhaps the great weakness of Japanese food? For all the beauty and seasonality, the glorious regionality and refreshing simplicity, did it not rather lack innovation? Was that why the younger generation of Japanese chefs and their diners were so attracted to Italian cuisine, or Western fast food, or ramen, with its Chinese origins? Perhaps they felt freer to experiment with foreign forms of cooking. There do appear to be quite a few other genres of Japanese food which seemed immune to change or reinvention, untouchable even. The rules for everything from the kaiseki meal, to the few accepted ways to serve soba, or yakitori and okonomiyaki, all seemed to be written in stone, immutable, simply not up for discussion. All the innovation was happening in ramen shops, or burger restaurants with their squid ink buns, or with freaky pizza toppings at Italian places, uni sauce on spaghetti, or whatever. As we have heard, there are always plenty of Japanese chefs who strive to perfect a particular form of cooking, to source better ingredients and hone their technique to make a better bowl of udon or piece of nigiri than anyone else and, of course, that was one of the things that I loved about Japan’s traditional food culture, but I was curious – where were the Ferran Adriàs or Heston Blumenthals of Japan? Where were the revolutionaries who were prepared to play with traditional forms and reinvent classic dishes, or for that matter the René Redzepis who were searching for new and original indigenous ingredients to reinterpret in a modern form?

  Kozue Chizo, one of the journalists from Amakara Techo, has a kind of answer. I blurt out my frustrations about tako yaki to her in the taxi on our way to the station to catch the train back to my family in Kyoto. Why must it always have octopus in the middle, why not a bit of eel? I say. She turns to me on the back seat of the cab.

  ‘We don’t change the way we make tako yaki,’ she smiles, mildly. ‘Because we have found the ultimate way, the best way to do it. And when you’ve found the best way, why would you change it?’

  She has a point, and I do think Chizo-san’s views reflect those of many, many Japanese, but another whirlwind food crawl in Osaka showed me that there is plenty of innovation left in Japanese cuisine, if only you know where to look for it.

  Chapter 16

  Osaka Take Two

  There was once a small, local restaurant in the old garment district of Osaka. Since 1935, through four generations of the same family, it had served homely, affordable yoshoku dishes – Japanese interpretations of Western food – ‘omurice’ (rice and omelette), hamburgers and suchlike, to a loyal clientele who were fond of what they liked.

  Ten years ago, after a lifetime of serving this simple home cooking, the elderly owner handed the restaurant over to his then twenty-nine-year-old son, assuming he would continue in the same vein, but the son had spent time working as a chef in Europe, falling under the spell of the mysterious multi-sensory ‘neuro-gastronomer’ Dr Miguel Sánchez Romera, a neuroscientist turned autodidact chef infamous for trying to serve flavoured waters to New Yorkers (unsuccessfully, as it turned out). Under the tutelage of the enigmatic Romera, the son’s approach to cooking had been irrevocably enlightened. The son had plans, grand plans, and once he had taken the reins in his father’s kitchen, he began to implement them. The problem was, no one had asked the regulars whether they wanted things to change and they were less than impressed with the son’s new, avante garde, contemporary European cuisine. Father and son quarrelled. In the end, the father was forced to return to the stove, and opened a new restaurant around the corner serving the same old dishes to keep his established clientele happy. Meanwhile, the son continued doggedly with his vision and gradually word spread that here was a chef worth watching. Eventually, he won a new clientele and international acclaim. A decade later, his restaurant was awarded its third Michelin star.

  That’s the story of chef Tetsuya Fujiwara, current owner of Fujiya 1935, one of the most talked-about restaurants in Japan and beyond. I ate at Fujiya ten years ago on our first trip and I was staggered. Back then, Fujiwara was still in thrall to the molecular movement and my meal featured wildly inventive, deconstructed dishes with foams and gels. I remember some kind of space-agey white capsule which burst in my mouth releasing something terribly delicious; it was so good I asked for seconds.

  Fujiwara’s reputation has only grown since so I was keen to return during this trip and made a re
servation a few days after my tako yaki experience. But on arriving at the restaurant, nothing is recognisable from my previous visit. The interior has completely changed – the dining room has now moved upstairs, there is no open kitchen and the food is completely different: a fusion of contemporary European and Japanese, with New Nordic elements.

  ‘When I took over my father’s restaurant I was just back from Europe so that was the biggest influence,’ says Fujiwara, a tall, slender man with a look of utter exhaustion about him common to all the best chefs. ‘But now, over time, I have had lots more experience with Japanese food, it’s been a slow evolution. Now, my creativity is more about a sense of the seasons, of nature.’

  He tells me one of his greatest inspirations is the legendary chef Hisao Nakahigashi, famed for his foraged ingredients and his emphasis on rice, and whose restaurant, Sojiki Nakahigashi, is in Kyoto. ‘When I eat there I feel the mountains and the field,’ says Fujiwara. ‘I never really learned authentic Japanese cuisine like that, but it doesn’t matter. These days I am creating something with more of a Japanese sense. I am remembering the food and the seasons from when I was a child.’

  To go from omurice to three Michelin stars in less than a decade is a very Osakan trajectory. Things move very fast in Japan’s second city. Unlike the people of Kyoto, Osakans are not ones to preserve the past in aspic. They do not merely embrace the future, they race towards it. The rapid and radical transformation of Fujiya 1935 from omelette and burger joint to high-concept modernist gastro temple is par for the course here. This city is set permanently on fast forward. People walk faster talk faster and eat faster. It is the birthplace of instant ramen, the standing bar (sitting down? Waste of time!), and the first beer in a can in Japan. Tellingly, both the travelator and conveyor-belt sushi were also invented here: one to move humans quicker, the other to move food more quickly to the humans.