Posted on The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0000388307
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Sansho berries at Shgehiro Morimoto’s farm in Aridegawa, Wakayama Prefecture.
August 2, 2013
The Yomiuri Shimbun
ARIDAGAWA, Wakayama–With its pungent taste and refreshing aroma, the Japanese pepper known as sansho is a regular seasoning at the table, giving a little bit of a kick to dishes such as unagi and yakitori. The Shimizu district in Aridagawa is one of the country’s handful of sansho-producing areas.
The pepper comes from Japanese prickly ashes, bushy plants in the citrus family. In early summer, the berries are picked while still green. The green berries are usually boiled in soy sauce or pickled.
Berries picked later, in a July harvest, are dried to become powdered sansho.
The Shimizu district is in a mountainous area. Shigehiro Morimoto, 75, manages a sloped field where 150 sansho bushes are planted.
I visited the fields in late June. Fresh green berries about half a centimeter in diameter were growing in clusters on the trees’ branches. When I bent for a closer look, I smelled the refreshing aroma of the berries.
“These are called budo [grape] sansho. The way the trees bear berries looks just like bunches of grapes,” Morimoto said.
According to statistics released by the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry in 2010, the shipping volume of sansho in Wakayama Prefecture was 525 tons, 65 percent of the national total. Within the prefecture, Shimizu is particularly famous.
According to Naoya Fukumoto, deputy chief of JA Arida Shimizu farming management center, the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures in mountainous Shimizu is quite large. Such a climate is well-suited for growing high-quality, thick-skinned berries. About 330 farmers in Shimizu cultivate sansho, and most of them are elderly.
In early July, Morimoto’s sansho harvest began. Morimoto and his wife picked sansho berries by hand, one cluster after another, and then dried them with a machine at a nearby workshop.
I visited the town’ factory to observe how sansho powder is made. Sansho to be used was picked last year, dried and stored. The workers spread the berries on the table and carefully remove stems and berry seeds by hand, and the fruits’ skin is crushed to a powder by machine.
Freshly made sansho powder has a strong aroma. Kazutaka Nishibayashi, an owner of restaurant Akadama that serves local cuisine, said: “Sansho is good to use in place of black pepper. For example, sprinkling it over ramen.”
Sansho-jio, a mixture of sansho and salt, is a good condiment for greasy foods such as fried chicken and tsukune meat balls.
The tiny berries can spice up any kind of food.