The Meaning of Rice

by Michael Booth

  ‘These have been our life force, they’ve helped us survive all kinds of difficulties. For me, these kinds of things are the basis of belonging to my family and I am happy that all my grandchildren are learning them. These celebrations are profoundly meaningful for every family and if they stop, their meaning is lost. They have already been lost for many people in Japan. These days many just buy pre-made osechi ryori. I understand that women are working full time so they want a holiday at New Year like everyone else, so they order from the Internet. I did that once when my husband passed away but no one liked it in my family, and I will never do it again.’

  Now Ooka-san has a question for me. She had once had an exchange student from England to stay. Why was the girl so fat? she wonders. I am afraid we are all getting a little larger in the West, I reply.

  To change the subject, I wonder whether men might bear some of the responsibility for preserving Japan’s traditional foods. ‘Maybe we are at a turning point now,’ Ooka-san says. ‘Women will work more and I hope more men will go into the kitchen. That would be a good way to keep these traditions alive. Men are more focused and determined, so there is great potential there.’

  The food looks like a jewellery display which I think is why I am a little taken aback that it also tastes so wonderful: the umami power of the sea bream cured in konbu is quite extraordinary, for instance. The fish is sandwiched between konbu for a couple of hours which firms up its flesh and intensifies its flavour. It is one of those dishes you yearn for long after it’s eaten.

  As well as eating, the New Year is also a time for reflection and, as the meal comes to an end, Ooka-san begins to reminisce about her childhood during the war.

  ‘I can remember being evacuated from Tokyo, seeing the dead, I can remember the terror,’ she says. The table falls silent. ‘I remember bombing, and running with a blanket over my head to the temple, having to divide an orange between four people, or a single fish for a whole family.’

  We gather ourselves to leave, bellies now groaning from the abundance that modern-day Japan has given us. I ask Ooka-san if she finds life in modern Tokyo too frenzied and fast, compared to her childhood.

  ‘No,’ she shakes her head vigorously. ‘I am a track and field star, so I’ve always been fast in everything, and, not only that, I am accelerating because time is running out!’

  Chapter 30

  Koji

  Soy sauce and sake have been exported from Japan to Europe for 400 years; I always find it strange to think that soy sauce was served at Versailles during the reign of Louis XV in the mid-1700s, but it’s true. Of course, back then the exports from Japan to Europe were on a minuscule scale. For most of the next four centuries, the culinary influence was probably stronger in the other direction, from the West to Japan. Initially, as we have heard, this happened via the gates of Dejima, and the influence accelerated dramatically after World War II, since when the Japanese have wholeheartedly embraced the Western wheat and meat diet, but it wasn’t until after the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 that the influence really began to flow in the opposite direction.

  That was the year that one of France’s pioneering TV chefs, Raymond Oliver – who since 1948 had owned and run one of the greatest restaurants in Paris, Le Grand Véfour – accompanied his country’s Olympic team to the Japanese capital. Oliver was exposed to Japanese food and in particular the kaiseki meal which had a direct influence on the emergence of nouvelle cuisine in 1968, eventually mutating into the often overblown multi-course menus now so popular at ambitious restaurants around the world.

  Paul Bocuse, another of the nouvelle pioneers, made his own pilgrimage to Japan in 1972 followed by other titans of les grandes tables, Michel Guérard, the Troisgros brothers, Roger Vergé and Fernand Point, all of whom played their part in the simplification and a lightening of classical French cooking. That first wave of Japanese influence on French cuisine focused more on techniques, presentation and the structure of the meal than introducing Japanese ingredients to the French. Nouvelle cuisine was still mostly founded upon French ingredients (although I do remember reading of that other great moderniser of the Parisian dining scene, Alain Senderens, ‘mounting’ soy sauce with butter later on in the 1980s). The first major wave of Japanese ingredients to arrive in France probably started with Joël Robuchon in the mid-1980s. A fervent Japanophile, Robuchon was one of the first, if not the first, to incorporate yuzu into his dishes; in the same decade wasabi mayonnaise would momentarily become all the rage, too (albeit not made with fresh wasabi root; we are still talking about the stuff in tubes). Then, in the 1990s, the molecular crowd also found their way to Japan, led by Ferran Adrià, head chef and co-owner of the most influential restaurant in the world at the time, El Bulli, on Spain’s Costa Brava. Among other Japanese secrets he ‘discovered’ agar-agar, a setting agent made from powdered algae, also known in Japan as ‘kanten’ (although, technically, the two are made from slightly different types of algae). Adrià realised that agar-agar did not melt when it was heated, which meant that he could serve hot gels, plus, of course, vegans can eat it. Then there was kuzu, a flavourless starch, better at thickening sauces than traditional flour; and the technique for coagulating soy milk to make tofu, which was adapted for the modernists’ celebrated and much-imitated ‘spherification’.

  Since then, many other chefs have picked up on a yet wider range of Japanese food products, from the smoky-meatiness of katsuobushi (dried bonito fillets) and the umami power of konbu, to the Szechuan pepper-style tongue-tingling effects of sansho pepper or the aromatic zing of shiso leaves. The French pastry crowd fell in love with matcha and yuzu, of course; panko breadcrumbs and nori are now sold in my local supermarket; and, I may be wrong, but though they had been eaten in parts of the Mediterranean for millennia, I suspect the world only really fell in love with sea urchin because of the Japanese.

  So what’s next? Is there anything left in the ransacked Japanese pantry? Are there any ingredients or produce yet to be ‘discovered’?

  We’ve already met umi budo, the Okinawan sea caviar, and awamori, as well as Kyushu’s sweet and juicy Kurobata pork, and shochu, of course. Then there are the many varieties of Japanese teas which are only just now finding a wider market in the world. In terms of raw produce, I love myoga, the softer, sweeter Japanese ginger, though I still don’t see it that much outside Japan, and the same goes for the various sansai – spring mountain vegetables, like butter-burr, fiddlehead ferns and the like. Yuzu is already moving into the mainstream but yuzusco (tabasco) and yuzu kosho – salted yuzu pith with chilli – have huge potential and, I’ll say it again, yuba – soy milk skin – is a miracle, whether fresh or dried.

  And then there is koji, the mysterious mould which has been used in the production of soy sauce, shochu, mirin, miso and sake, among other things, for hundreds if not thousands of years in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, and which is also beginning to arouse the interest of the more adventurous, experimental chefs in Europe and America.

  I have heard about this strange substance, koji, initially at sake makers I visited in Kyoto ten years ago, but many times since at miso and soy companies. Koji is a kind of fungus – Japan’s official national mould, no less – which is added to steamed rice or grains to begin the fermentation process. The mould releases enzymes called proteases and amylases which develop or ‘break down’ the proteins and starch in the rice (in the case of sake) turning them into sugars on which the mould feeds. Koji’s Latin name, as we have seen, is Aspergillus oryzae, which to me always sounds like a cross between a mental illness and a type of pasta (Asperger’s orzo?). But what actually was koji, what did it look like, how did it taste and where did it come from? I had always envisaged koji arriving at the brewing room in some kind of nuclear waste container borne by a man wearing a biohazard suit. Perhaps there was some steam escaping from the container, and everyone stood back when it was opened … but, in truth, I didn’t really know.

  To find some answers, I took the Shinkansen
from Tokyo to Niigata with Asger and Emil, leaving Lissen alone for some R&R in the big city.

  Niigata is one of the great centres for sake production. Japan’s two longest rivers reach the coast here bringing with them not just pure, soft water, but fertile soil from the mountains which is deposited on the marshlands, reclaimed since the sixth century for fertile rice paddies. During the course of a year this part of the Sea of Japan coast experiences comparatively extreme contrasts in heat and cold – again, good for the fermentation process required for sake. Niigata has always been among Japan’s most prosperous cities. When the Victorian writer and explorer Lady Isabella Bird, who generally tended more towards obnoxious condescension when describing Japan, travelled from Tokyo to Hokkaido in 1878, she described Niigata as ‘A handsome, prosperous city of 50,000 inhabitants … so beautifully clean that I should feel reluctant to walk upon its well-swept streets in muddy boots.’

  There are still ninety sake breweries located in what, these days, is a still very clean (hardly unusual in Japan) but oddly empty city. My sons and I arrive one bright, sunny spring day, check into our hotel and take a walk around, visiting first the city’s history museum and then the Toki Messe congress centre, incongruously huge for such a somnolent city with its skyscraper office tower overlooking the ferry port where boats leave for Sado Island, Korea and Russia.

  The next morning, at the Imayotsukasa Sake Brewery Co. Ltd, we are welcomed by CEO Masayuki Habuki and his American employee, Jarom Reid. Founded in 1767, Imayotsukasa is one of the most famous sake breweries in Niigata, in part because it sticks bloody-mindedly to the traditional way of doing things: washing the rice by hand, storing at least some of its sake production in cedar barrels rather than metal tanks, and never adding alcohol, as many other breweries do.

  Jarom, a friendly, handsome fellow, used to work for Delta Airlines. He fell in love with sake while compiling its in-flight drinks menu, and moved to Japan over a decade ago to learn more about the country’s national drink. He asks us to put on some little plastic slippers. ‘There are lots of live cultures in here, and we don’t want outdoor shoes contaminating it,’ he says. ‘We are not even allowed to eat natto when we work here because natto bacteria are too aggressive, they kill our sake koji.’

  We follow Jarom and Habuki-san through the brewery’s atmospheric old wooden buildings as they explain the process by which sake is made. Most of it I am familiar with thanks to other brewery visits over the years but they keep referring both to ‘koji’, and something called ‘koji kin’. The first time Habuki-san does this, I nod, as if I understand, assuming I must have misheard. By the second or third time, it is too late to ask for clarification. That would be embarrassing but, as the tour progresses, it becomes clear that I have missed something very important amid all this talk of ‘inoculated rice’ and ‘koji rooms’.

  I stop them: ‘Sorry, but what is koji kin? Is that just another name for koji?’

  Jarom looks at me with some sympathy. ‘Let me start again,’ he says.

  Koji kin is different from koji, he explains. Koji kin is the actual fungus in its pure form, the domesticated spores of the aforementioned Aspergillus oryzae. To start the fermentation of an initial, small batch of partially steamed rice the sake brewer will sprinkle the koji kin – thousands of live spores – from a container covered with a fine wire mesh over the rice. At Imayotsukasa they usually make this starter rice in batches of 300kg. The brewer then leaves the rice, swaddled with blankets to keep it at about 30°C, for three days. This takes place in a wood-panelled koji room – the muro – which looks and functions rather like a sauna, keeping the rice and its mould nice and toasty. This process turns the rice which has been inoculated with koji kin into koji – or, in English, ‘malted rice’. If you add a little yeast to this koji, then transfer it all to a large tank with water and a larger quantity of polished rice (the more polished the rice, the higher the grade of sake you end up with, though this does not necessarily guarantee the best flavour – another, long story), after fermenting and pressing and it will eventually become sake.

  ‘So, where do you make the actual koji kin?’ I ask, trying to mask my frustration.

  ‘Oh, no, we don’t make it,’ says Jarom. ‘We buy that from another company, in Akita. I don’t think any sake brewers make their own koji kin. There are only a handful of companies who make koji kin in Japan. It is a very long and involved process which needs lots of care and attention, but it is so important.’

  At this moment I feel like some traveller from Greek mythology who, having solved all the riddles and surmounted the challenges set before him, believes the treasure is finally within his grasp, only to find yet another wizened gatekeeper with a riddle to solve. But Jarom promises to put me in touch with Imayotsukasa’s koji kin supplier, and I decide there and then that I must go there to honour my koji kin quest.

  Meanwhile, we cross the busy road outside the brewery to visit two sister companies to Imayotsukasa, the first a magnificent traditional miso factory, the other a unique food retailer.

  As we walk Jarom explains that this part of Niigata, an area called Nuttari, was once the very epicentre of Japan’s fermentation industry. Back in the days when rice was Japan’s most valuable currency, Niigata, as the most prominent rice-growing area, was not only the most populous and wealthiest city in Japan, but in all Asia. In those days, the road through Nuttari was lined with companies making sake, soy and miso and selling it to Japan via this highway, which stretches all the way to Tokyo, as well as via Niigata’s large port to overseas markets.

  The shop we were visiting was Furumachi Kouji, a light and modern space decorated in a contemporary Japanese Zen style, with a grey stone floor and pale woods. This is Japan’s only shop dedicated to koji products: there were different types of koji marinades for tenderising and flavouring meats; koji curry sauce (the koji thickens the sauce without flour, and sweetens it without sugar, making it suitable for coeliacs and diabetics); amazake – best described as sweet, thick sake but with either no alcohol, or low alcohol levels; and even chemical-free koji beauty products (soaps, face creams, sunscreen). At the counter they served yeasty-sweet koji ice cream.

  Koji contains numerous vitamins (especially vitamin B) and minerals, is high in calcium, with a wide range of amino acids and, because it grows naturally sweeter at round 55°C, there is no need for added sugar. It also renders food more easily digestible; as with all fermented or ‘rotten’ foods, in a sense it pre-digests it for you and contains many of those micro-bacteria which we are constantly being told are beneficial for our physical and even mental wellbeing. It is also said to reduce blood glucose, making koji products an obvious area for research in terms of dietary products for diabetics. If it weren’t so expensive koji could in theory be used to make a sugar substitute.

  The amazake is particularly intriguing and, again, I think it has huge potential internationally. Though it seems to be growing in popularity in Japan, in part because of its perceived health benefits, I somehow hadn’t really paid it much attention before (perhaps because it doesn’t have much alcohol). The first we try, a standard amazake, has a sweet, toasted flavour reminiscent of cereal milk. The other, a recent innovation, has added fermented lactic acid harvested from sake lees (the leftover rice after sake has been made) lending it a wonderfully complex, refreshing sourness.

  Jarom has been patient, kind and informative, but I think he senses my disappointment at not actually coming face to face with the fabled fungus itself, Aspergillus oryzae.

  ‘Just a minute,’ he says, disappearing up some stairs at the back of the shop. He returns carrying two dishes. ‘This is koji. Malted rice,’ he says, offering me a bowl of what looks like half-cooked, then dried, ivory-coloured rice. I ask if it is safe to taste. Yes, of course, he says. The koji rice is malty tasting and sweet with a mineral aftertaste. Then, with a flourish, Jarom produces another saucer, this time bearing a small mound of what looks like unusually dark green matcha powder.<
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  ‘This is koji kin,’ says Jarom triumphantly. ‘Is it safe to taste?’ I ask again, looking at the dish of fungal spores. ‘Go ahead,’ he says.

  I dab a finger in the powder and put it on my tongue, expecting the heavens to open and celestial light to beam down upon us, but I have to report that koji kin, this miraculous source of all that is good in Japanese cuisine, is both odourless and flavourless.

  That evening, searching online for more information about koji and koji kin, I find a fascinating TED talk by ‘culinary innovator’ Jeremy Umansky, who works with Cleveland chef Jonathon Sawyer’s Italian restaurant Trentina. Umansky explains how he has used koji as a cure on a range of produce including scallops and beef. With scallops it makes them more intensely flavoured and densely textured, like chicken apparently. With beef, koji speeds up the ageing process, supposedly reducing that of dry-ageing beef from thirty days to three. In slides, he shows how the scallops and beef grow a furry white coating as the koji releases enzymes which break down proteins. I actually found my mouth watering as I watched this, which is odd. Could you imagine using mould in your home cooking? Many believe it is on the way. Even more fascinating, in a typically ‘blue sky’ bit of TEDism, Umansky speculates that further research might reveal that koji has unforeseen medical properties; that it could be used by farmers to break down stubble in a field and act as a fertiliser; and even that it could be used to create biodegradable packaging or construction materials.

  ‘It is true, some fungus can be very strong, they can kill insects and other unwanted micro-bacteria and fungis, but unlike chemical pesticides and insecticides, they don’t kill the good bacteria and they die in water so they don’t linger in the soil and food chain.’