“In this first Sakizuke course, we are introduced to the season in which you start your journey.” began Aira, shifting all of the dishes behind the counter, arranging things briskly. He singled out a small clay bowl, working behind the bar with polish and weightlessness. With the small ordinary-looking bowl in his left hand he ladled over a perfectly bouncy cube of tofu with the most amazing smelling broth and placed it in front of me.
“You are transported to a village, your village, in the foothills of late summer in Japan. The morning dew fresh all around, newness and life are glistening from everything. Each tree and plant, every hut and pathway are recognizable. This is home. You know the stream and the fields where you drink your fresh water and grow your crops. You know the clay with which you make your dishes and pack into your home’s walls. This is a familiar place, a safe place, a simple place where you’ve built your life.”
I looked to the bowl, stunning in its modesty. Closing my eyes, I lifted it to my face in both hands, warming my skin with its fragrant steam. The earthiness of the broth hit first as if I’d scooped my hands into the stream myself. Drinking it down, I tasted layers of life, so subtle I thought twice of what I had just experienced.
“The fundamental essence of the Japanese experience lies in dashi; this is the broth and that delightful umami flavor you are experiencing. Umami is that magical fifth taste, often mistakenly compared to salty flavors. Like salt, umami enhances flavors and uplifts the simple dish before you but works on many more molecular levels to bring a silky finish. The magic here is that there are but three components to this, or any great dashi. Spring water, dried bonito flakes, and kombu kelp.”
I looked down into the bowl.
“You see, the kombu kelp was harvested last summer, stored and aged for many months in a dark, humid cave not far from your village. The bonito, a noble fish, was caught off another beach, again dried with respect and observed daily until perfectly aged. The dorsal fillets are shaved precisely just seconds before dissolving them into the tempered water. And the water…this is what your world revolves around. From the edge of your village there is a path leading to a natural well. A well discovered generations before you, over four-hundred feet underground and captured by stone walls teeming with Chrysanthemum, your village’s Kikunoi.”
At that moment I could no longer ignore the stone walls behind Aira, shimmering ever so slightly with trickling water, the fragrant flowers crawling throughout brightened my senses and seemed to draw out the final layer and clean the aftertaste of the dashi.
“Water, fish, seaweed.” I said with a smile looking downward with amusement. I noticed the chopsticks before me were just like the ones I had seen at Burton’s.
Shimmering as well.
“The pressed sesame tofu you see resting gently at the center of your dish is the art of your village, the lifelong strife of cultivating soybeans in your fields, and the love of transforming it into silky perfection.”
The jiggly cube danced on my chopsticks but did not break under their rigid pinch. It held strong all the way until I placed it on my tongue where it melted in surrender. I nibbled if only from habit wondering how it held until that exact moment. The rich proteins of soy with intermittent bursts of sesame seed coated my mouth, and with a last sip of dashi the essence of this village was set.
I felt at home.
“And so, one might wonder,” Aira broke through, “why does this story begin, but not continue in your peaceful village where life is bountiful, days safe and neighbors honorable?”
“Because that would be too easy,” I said.
“Yours is the hero’s journey, there is no hero without challenge, no good without evil. No day without night. No harmony without a return.”
The fresh light of sunrise in the room around us shifted once more to an eerie and warm twilight. Aira caught me looking.
“This is the balance,” he said, “this is the cycle.”
An excerpt from somewhere deep within The Sushi Prophecies