These days most Japanese people only go to the supermarket to buy daily necessities like food, including dried foods. Back when every local region had streets lined with specialty stores selling rice, vegetables, fish, etc., grocery stores that specialized in dried foods also did business on the street. I remember going to a grocer’s shop when I was a child. There were many katsuobushi (dried bonito) in the shop and I remember touching and picking some. I also remember the shop smelling very good.
When making a delicious Japanese dish, the key ingredient is soup and cooking stock called dashi. Today, in stores you can buy various types of processed dashi in liquid and granular forms with a long shelf life, so many people probably don’t realize that up until a generation ago, people would make dashi every day.
For instance, when Japanese people make miso soup they use dashi from katsuobushi, kombu (kelp) or niboshi (dried infant sardines) depending on where they live in Japan. In the Kanto area, the overwhelming majority of people make miso soup with katsuobushi dashi, while in the Kansai area, they mainly use a mixture of katsuobushi and kombu dashi. In the Kyushu and Shikoku areas where people like fish the large majority of people use niboshi dashi.
It is particularly worth noting that in authentic Japanese restaurants such as ryotei, ichiban dashi, made from katsuobushi and kombu, is regarded as the finest dashi. Amongst all the umami elements in Japanese cuisine, the combination of inosinic acid from katsuobushi and glutamic acid from kombu supposedly has the best flavor.
Japan has over 75,000 temples. Japanese Buddhist monks were prohibited from eating meat and fish because of Buddhist precepts not to kill living creatures. In temples, monks made shojin ryori (Buddhist cuisine) themselves without using meat or fish. This custom continues though not universally. Instead of using katsuobushi they use kombu, dried shiitake mushrooms, and dried soy beans to make a special soup stock called shojin dashi. Shojin dashi has a lighter flavor than soup stocks made from fish but its aromas and umami are comparable to other dashi.
Japanese dried foods like katsuobushi and kombu are indispensable not only as the basis for dashi but also for ceremonial occasions. Take yuinou, the betrothal ceremony, for example. Yuinou is an event in which the couple to be married conduct a ceremony with both families present to confirm their engagement. In recent years, many couples have tended to skip the ceremony and just have a family dinner, but families in areas where the tradition is upheld conduct the ceremony according to proper formalities.
On the day of yuinou, the family of the groom-to-be sends a set of betrothal gifts to the family of the bride-to-be. The formal set of the betrothal gifts consist of nine items including betrothal money, katsuobushi, surume (dried squid), kombu, tomoshiraga (linen yarn), suehiro (folding fan), yagagidaru (money for food and drink), awabi noshi (dried abalone), and mokuroku (catalog). The family of the bride-to-be sends a similar betrothal gift to the family of the groom-to-be so both families exchange gifts to confirm their approaching marriage. Originally the kimono and obi (belt) were exchanged instead of money and the rest of the items had significance as lucky charms. Katsuobushi is a symbol of masculine strength, surume for long-lasting happiness, kombu for prosperity of descendants, white linen yarn for long life and bonds, suehiro for prosperity, and awabi noshi for eternal youth. Dried foods like katsuobushi, surume, kombu and awabi thus play an essential part in people’s special occasions as both lucky charms and precious long-life foods.
As previously mentioned, a stone-like hard mass was actually a magic seasoning that used to be highly valued for ceremonial and trading purposes. Therefore, Japanese dried foods are extraordinarily valuable though unassuming in appearance. More to come in the next blog.
Reported by Yukari Aoike, Sugahara Institute