THE COOKBOOK TEST #0017: JAPAN: THE VEGETARIAN COOKBOOK
INSTALLMENT #0017 (PAID) / JUST PICK A RECIPE, ALREADY / EPHEMERAL ELEGANCE AKA LET’S ALSO ORDER A PIZZA / DONABE-BAKED MAITAKE AND EGG / SWEET POTATO CROQUETTES / POTATO SHINJO IN SOY MILK DASHI
Dear Subscribers,
Happy new year! In keeping with the general consensus that the holidays were Too Much and Now It’s Time to Get Serious About Eating better, this week’s cookbook is something a little more light on its feet than the usual selection around here.
First things, first though: I need to declare that I hate JAPAN: THE VEGETARIAN COOKBOOK with a vengeance. But: I also love it with a passion. This remarkable, brilliant, gorgeous tome is everything I love about a great cookbook AND it’s mostly an unusable doorstop AND I would recommend it to everyone AND I would include some major caveats with that recommendation.
Here’s a dramatic retelling of trying to pick out a recipe to demonstrate for this column.
ME: Ooh, let’s make this recipe! It looks terrific! It looks like a polished little culinary jewel!
ALSO ME: Yeah, but … what is that, 35 calories total? It’s a tiny piece of fried burdock root glazed with a hard-to-find color of miso sitting on some kind of eggplant. I think. Takes an hour to make. Gone in a bite.
M: Oh, OK. Oh. Hey! Let’s make this one! It looks like a tasty soup!
AM: It uses three kinds of dashi.
M: We can… we can just buy dashi, right?
AM: Maybe like one kind, but we’re definitely making at least two soups before we can make the soup. Ooh, and that third kind of dashi uses a sort of mushroom you can only get in Hokkaido.
M: Well, maybe if we ask…
AM: In the late springtime.
M: Might there be a substitute listed…?
AM: Mid-May to be exact. And no.
M: Well, this one looks nice…
AM: Can’t, uses mirin.
M: We’ve got mirin!
AM: We’ve got what the author calls “ersatz mirin-style seasoning.” She calls for “artisanal hon mirin.”
M: I think Coastal Seafoods carries…
AM: Yeah, they carry hon mirin, but not artisanal hon mirin. “Nonetheless, it is important to understand the wide gap between general purpose hon mirin and artisanal hon mirin. The general purpose hon mirin, though manufactured from steamed glutinous rice and rice koji (steamed rice inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae spores) also contains added alcohol and starch syrup (mizuame) to compensate for the short production period of two to three months.”
M: Maybe Amazon has…
AM: Looks like the easiest thing to do is apply for a limited-duration small-scale importers’ license through the federal trade office in Delaware and then book a buyers’ trip to Akashi next August when the new vintage is hitting the market.
At any rate: there’s much to love about Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook, but it is not always as user-friendly as you might hope.
at your service,
James
JAPAN: THE VEGETARIAN COOKBOOK
BY NANCY SINGLETON HACHISU
PHAIDON | 2023 | $55
Author Nancy Singleton Hachisu does not GIVE a fuck if you’ve never worked with rare varieties of dried seaweed before. She doesn’t care if your local Asian grocery store doesn’t carry Aka Taki Miso, or if you’ve never heard of butterbur leaves, or if you can’t get butterbur stalks anywhere closer than Osaka. Nancy Singleton Hachisu’s only goal with Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook is to describe classic, high-end Japanese vegetarian eats as faithfully as possible; time, money, and usability be damned.
The good thing about a book that goes hard, without compromise, is that it’s easy to understand and describe its priorities. The bad thing about a book that goes hard, without compromise is that it goes hard on you, the buyer of the $55 book, and does not compromise with you, the home cook wrestling with its inflexible dictats. You want to cut down the soak time for a dried seaweed or substitute a lesser grade of shoyu or try to find a local stand-in for mountain yams? Be your own guest, but this book will not light your way or sanction your blasphemy.
As both a picture book and story book, Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook is simply sublime. It’s just what you’d hope for: minimalist, serene, elegant, and loaded up with tasteful, crisp, inviting photographs of elfin-sized, self-denying, ready-for-the-monastery vegetarian eats guaranteed to impress your guests while making them think about pizza. There are multiple schools of thought on how to eat vegetarian; this is absolutely not the “you won’t believe this ‘cheeseburger’ is really not a cheeseburger” school of thought. It’s more the “food is not fuel, it’s a divine instrument meant to elevate your consciousness” school of thought. The book is not judging you, but only because the book will not condescend to think about you. If you dutifully scrape your way toward the book for five years, you may crawl onto its radar screen enough to be judged as follows: “Well, you clearly did the best that you could.”
Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook skillfully walks its readers through a variety of different classes of foods - rice-based, soups, fried foods, and so forth - inserting one or two page mini-lectures on specific ingredients or techniques as it proceeds. It’s the kind of all-knowing, historically rooted, humorless, magisterial work that is absolutely engrossing for several pages at a go until you find yourself suddenly tired.
It sounds like I’m complaining about this book. I am complaining about this book! But it’s also a fantastic book. It’s painstakingly researched, it’s gorgeously presented, and it’s a seasonally driven, light-on-its-feet, respectful approach to cooking that is the absolute antithesis of going to Panera and drinking a lemonade so caffeinated that it can kill you outright. This is food that should extend your lifespan to about 105 or 110 years if you take it seriously; this is food that will preserve your body in spiritually significant way like those desiccated shrine monks in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild who fork over the spirit orbs after you’ve twirled all the switches in the right order. It’s beautiful food. But it’s challenging food, too. To have this precious book and want to engage with it is a blessing and a curse.
And, as I’m about to explain, it must absolutely be said that the foods in this book are really delicious. Challenging, thought-provoking, and delicious.
DONABE-BAKED MAITAKE AND EGG
It’s difficult to anticipate how complex this dish is. You may understand how mushrooms, ginger, shoyu, sesame oil, eggs, and seaweed-based broth taste individually, but it's literally impossible to guess how they all taste together - it's a tremendously deep, earthy, soothing, enveloping tidal wave of umami. Combined with the creamy texture of the eggs and the springy liveliness of the mushrooms, it’s a perfect dish for a snowy winter night.
There is only one place I’ve tasted anything quite like this dish: at Kado no Mise in Minneapolis, a restaurant run by a former Tokyo-based chef who is as well-known for his chawanmushi as he is for his nigiri. That the complexity of this recipe from Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook calls to mind the food of a restaurant that charges a couple hundred bucks a plate for an absolutely stunning omakase is a real credit to the book.
I made a few minor changes to the recipe below. One was calling out the importance of recombining the doctored up egg yolks and whites in order to get an even and fully cooked result, and the other is upping the cooking time in order to ensure an even result. The original recipe called for 15-20 minutes at 350 - I went closer to 30 and there was still some undercooked egg/broth liquid that I think 35-40 minutes would have fixed. I also reduced the amount of dashi by half. Your mileage may vary, of course. The next time I make this I may use a casserole dish rather than my deep earthenware pot. The latter is more authentic to the donabe tradition; the former, I think, would result in a more evenly cooked and texturally consistent dish.
Donabe-Baked Maitake and Egg
Serves four as a light meal
5.25 oz. (150g) maitake mushrooms, torn into 6 chunks for grilling
1 heaping Tbsp of ginger, finely chopped
4 eggs
2 Tbsp lightly roasted sesame oil
2 ½ Tbsp white miso
2 Tbsp Konbu Dashi (see below)
1 tsp usukuchi shoyu (light soy sauce)
Grill maitake on sheet pan under oven broiler, about 3-4 minutes per side, flipping halfway through. The mushrooms should be fragrant and start to color but need not be cooked through.
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Tear maitake into pieces that are easily picked up by chopsticks and strew across the bottom of a shallow round pot or casserole. Sprinkle ginger evenly across the mushrooms.
Separate your eggs into two bowls. Whisk the sesame oil into the egg yolks until it has thickened like mayonnaise, then whisk in the miso.
Add the dashi to the egg whites, and gently whisk. Stir in the shoyu and strain through fine sieve to remove bubbles or non-amalgamated portions.
Gently whisk egg white and egg yolk mixtures together in bowl and pour into your pot over the mushrooms, covering them evenly. Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until puffed up thoroughly and nicely browned.
Konbu Dashi
6x2” piece of konbu (about 10g)
Break konbu in half and add to saucepan with 1 quart of water. Soak for 3 hours. Slowly heat over low heat until steam rises from the water and small bubbles form. Cool broth to room temperature and strain out the konbu (which can be chopped up and used in other recipes.)
SWEET POTATO CROQUETTES
I picked this recipe out from Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook in part because of its chonky, substantial appearance. In a book dominated by ephemeral little bites of food for the impeccably dressed denizens of the Floating World, this recipe stood out for its amiable heft. This looks like izakaya food - something you could snack on with a beer in one hand and a sake in the other.
Not surprisingly, however, there are some subtle touches to this rustic-looking haystack of a fritter - sauteing the carrot and onion in sesame oil gives them a nutty sense of gravity, and the sheer variety of vegetables in this recipe keeps these snacks from just being oversized sweet potato fries.
I used frozen corn and peas in this recipe and had no regrets about it. They tasted delicious. I also upped the amount of panko called for, as the original amount (¾ cup) didn’t get the job done.
Ultimately I really liked this dish, and it was my wife’s favorite of the three recipes I tackled. Eaten hot and crispy right out of the fryer, it was a delight when spritzed with some lemon and a bit of shoyu to bring a little salt to the party.
Sweet Potato Croquettes
Serves four as a substantial appetizer or light lunch
1-2 medium sweet potatoes (1 pound or 475g), peeled
1 small ear corn blanched and kernels removed or blanched frozen corn (100g)
½ Tbsp unroasted sesame oil
1 small onion (100g), diced
1 small carrot (50g), diced
4 Tbsp coarsely chopped cooked edamame or blanched green peas
1 tsp flaky sea salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp plain flour
2 eggs
1 ¼ cup panko bread crumbs
Neutral oil for deep frying
1 lemon cut into small wedges for serving
Soy sauce for serving
Cook sweet potato in rapidly boiling water until soft, about 25 minutes. Mash.
Warm the sesame oil in a frying pan over medium heat and add diced onion and carrot, cooking until softened but not colored (3-5 minutes.)
Fold the corn kernels, edamame or peas, salt, pepper, carrot, and onions with the mashed sweet potato. Form into eight small and fat hay bale-shaped cylinders and roll them in the flour.
Whisk eggs until homogenous in small shallow bowl. Make a mound of panko on a baking sheet. Working one by one, dip each croquette into the eggs then roll in panko to coat evenly.
Fry croquettes until golden at 340 F for 3-5 minutes. Drain briefly on rack or paper towels and serve hot with a lemon wedge and soy sauce.
POTATO SHINJO IN SOY MILK DASHI
Of the three dishes from this cookbook that I attempted, this was the most elegant and the most involved, as it requires frying a croquette, sinking said croquette into a soy milk / sake / dashi broth, topping the croquette with a little blanched zucchini hat, and then attaching a wasabi pompon to said headwear. As involved as this recipe is, I didn’t cut many corners beyond using tube wasabi rather than the freshly sharkskin-grated stuff. (I may at some point in my life get to the point where a sharkskin grater and real wasabi roots make sense, but I think I’m still quite a ways away from that destination.)
The broth in this dish (sake meets soy milk meets konbu dashi meets shoyu) was surprisingly boozy and rich, and it added interest to the milk but wonderfully crunchy fritter. The zucchini coin didn’t do much for me (I think I’d omit it next time) but the wasabi gave both the fritter and broth an extra wallop of flavor, and it was quite welcome in the mix.
Potato Shinjo in Soy Milk Dashi
Serves four as an appetizer
5.25 oz. of soft tofu (or momendofu if you can find it)
1 medium potato (150g)
Flaky sea salt
4 ¼-inch thick zucchini rounds
4 medium shiso leaves, finely chopped
2-inch square piece of konbu left over from dashi making, finely diced
3 Tbsp potato starch
Neutral oil for frying
Generous ¾ cup Konbu dashi (see Donabe-Baked Maitake and Egg recipe, above)
Scant ½ cup soy milk
4 tsp usukuchi shoyu (light soy sauce)
4 Tbsp sake
1 tsp wasabi, freshly grated if possible
Press tofu for one hour to remove excess water.
Peel the potato and boil in well-salted water until tender, about 25 minutes. Blanch your zucchini rounds for 30 seconds in the boiling water. Drain, smash, and cool the potato.
Combine tofu, shiso, konbu, 1 Tbsp of potato starch, and ¼ tsp salt with the cooled potato and mash until well blended. Form into 4 balls (shinjo), and dust with remaining 2 Tbsp of potato starch.
Heat oil in frying pan or deep fryer to about 355 F and fry each shinjo until golden on all sides, about 8 minutes. Drain briefly on a rack or paper towels.
In small saucepan, bring dashi, soy milk, usukuchi shoyu, sake, and ¼ tsp salt to an almost boil over medium-high heat. Do not boil (soy milk will separate.)
Divide the broth among four bowls, add one shinjo to each bowl, and top each shinjo with a zucchini coin and a dab of wasabi. Serve immediately.