Embracing Shun in Kumaon
Mountain farms in Japan and the Indian Himalayas share many geographical and climate features, and consequently have access to the same crops and similar foraged foods. Chicu Lokgariwar finds that incorporating a Japanese philosophy towards food leads to a greater appreciation and delight in Kumaoni produce.
I ignored my aching back and continued to peer at the leaf litter under the old pear tree. Before shifting my feet to another spot, I gently run my fingers over the dead leaves. An observer might have imagined I was looking for a lost contact lens; the observer would have been wrong. I was looking for something far more valuable.
Every year in the middle of April we are blessed with a day of rain. There may or may not be rainbows, but the next day we definitely find treasure. It is on that day that morels appear below two ancient pear trees in our orchard. These rare and very well-camouflaged mushrooms herald for us the first change from a winter of eating radishes and potatoes. A back ache is a small price to pay for the first bowl of Sansai Gohan, or rice with mountain vegetables.
This process — the breathless anticipation of finding morels in that very short period, and treasuring the tiny quantities in which we actually manage to collect them, are to me the zenith of our quest to embrace the Japanese principle of shun, or the celebration of produce at the peak of its season.
When I first moved to the Himalayas from a lifetime along the Western coast of India, I found myself culinarily adrift. Gone were the kokum, the kadi patta, and the coconut, that I considered to be indispensable staples. In their place I was confronted with what seemed to me to be a sea of radishes, potatoes, and mustard leaves.
It was while I was aimlessly searching for recipes — any recipes that could add interest to my admittedly limited repertoire of dishes using those ingredients, that I came across a blog called Just One Cookbook. This blog by Namiko Hirasawa Chen featured exciting foods that I could make with the same vegetables I looked upon with so much disdain. Till then, all I knew of Japanese cuisine was what one found in restaurants — sushi, which depended on the availability of superlatively fresh fish, and udon which called for more skill than I possessed. I never imagined trying to replicate those dishes at home. On her blog however, Chen introduced me to a completely different type of Japanese cooking. Japanese home food was simple, healthy, and paid attention to maximising interest from very simple everyday ingredients.
This interest in Japanese homestyle and rural cooking led me to books by Elizabeth Andoh and Nancy Singelton Hachisu. These women, though born across the Pacific, in the United States, settled down in rural Japan and embraced the principles that Japanese farmers applied to their cuisine. In Japanese Farm Food, Hachisu writes, ‘You don’t choose the vegetables, the vegetables choose you.’ In Kansha, Andoh designs a menu entirely made up of radishes to celebrate this lowly vegetable. Her menu highlights each part of the radish — the peel, the green top, the central white portion, and the ‘tail’ — in a separate dish designed to bring out the best of each. How can one not be inspired by this grateful attitude to food that is the very essence of washoku?
The concept of washoku ensures that each meal is both nutritionally balanced, as well as a feast for the senses. Washoku literally translates to ‘Japanese/harmonious food,’ and is a set of principles that guide the act of cooking and eating in Japan. One of those principles determines the components of the meal — one soup, three vegetables, the rice of course, being a given. Other principles dictate that each meal should incorporate five different colours and five different cooking techniques. Together, washoku principles facilitate the joyous and social consumption of simple meals that satisfy body and soul.
This journey of ours is made easier by the fact that a Himalayan farm has much in common with a Japanese mountain farm. Like our fellow farmers in Japan, we find ourselves relying heavily on brassicas and cucurbits, two vegetable families that resist frost and can be stored throughout the winter. This means that the main components of our diet are mustard greens and other leafy brassicas like kale, pumpkins, root crops like potatoes and carrots, and I may have mentioned the radish. We keep free-range chickens, and so are privileged to have access to good quality eggs that we are comfortable eating raw.
Beyond these relatively common vegetables are some that we thought of as quintessentially Japanese, but grow wild here, making us feel even more connected to our culinary inspiration.
The most important of these are persimmons. The local name for this is kaku, which is close enough to the Japanese name of the fruit, kaki, that makes me believe there is definitely a Japanese connection. I wonder if they have been brought here as part of a government farming program, or merely planted by a fruit-loving traveller at some point. Here, the fruit is not valued for sale because of its extremely perishable nature, which makes transporting it to the market very difficult business. The fruit is only edible when it has ripened to the point of being pulpy; bite into one before then, and the high tannic content makes ones mouth pucker. In Japan however, they are highly valued. They are used to make wine, vinegar, and hoshigaki — a fantastically sweet and nutritious treat. We have wholeheartedly adopted the process of making hoshigaki. These date-like dried fruits are now used to cook with, or merely to munch on through the winter. The sight of them hanging from our ceiling is the definition of ‘autumn’ to me.
Image credit: Root Simple
We are also on the lookout for local grains and foods that may have now fallen into disfavour. As a result of this search, we were recently introduced to a seed called bangeera that was once commonly used here for tadka but is now quite unknown. We sowed some seeds to identify the plant and were surprised when what came up were Shiso plants. Yet another piece of evidence speaking of some connection between Japan and our mountain home.
What do meals look like in our Kumaoni mountain home?
A favourite breakfast is rice and eggs either raw (tamago kake gohan), or scrambled with leafy greens. Locally grown vegetables play a starring role at lunch. Robust vegetables like pumpkins or daikon are simmered in dashi flavoured with soy sauce and a dash of our fruit wine. Delicate vegetables like french beans are steamed and tossed with sesame oil. Leafy vegetables are stir-fried with red chillies and garlic, or steamed and coated in a sesame seed and garlic dressing. The glorious brinjal is eaten fried and soaked in a soy sauce and dashi broth, pickled quickly in vinegar, braised in dashi, grilled with miso, or stir-fried with everything that is at hand. Shiso leaves are sliced and sprinkled on most dishes or used to make fun ‘parcels’ with rice and vegetables. Dinners, especially in winter, are donburi bowls. Soy-glazed eggplant donburi topped with grated radish is a staple, as is egg simmered in dashi with onions and potatoes or chicken. Gala meals are labour intensive acts of love, like ramen or tempura.
Our goal now is to wean ourselves away from dependence on store-bought pantry staples. The first step was learning a dashi made of homegrown ingredients. This staple of Japanese cuisine is traditionally made with kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes). We do keep these in our pantry, but our regular dashi is derived from the vegan food prepared by Japanese monks. We use dried radish for umami, and fresh vegetables for sweetness. A mixture of fermented and dried mustard leaves and toasted sesame seeds makes a tasty and local furikake. We make tofu at home from local soybeans. Shiso leaves are used to wrap rice instead of nori sheets.
With some exceptions, the few things we continue to buy are more in the nature of treats, rather than staples. These include nori, kombu, soba, and katsuobushi. The exceptions are soy sauce and miso, which are staples that we purchase. Given that we have access to locally grown soya beans and are used to making our own fermented foods, there is actually no reason why we cannot make them, and we have marked that as our winter project this year. Last year’s project was the butchering and processing of half a pig, but that’s a story for another time!
The ingredients we use are however the least part of the adopting of a Japanese culinary ethos. Because of this philosophy, we have learnt to welcome the seasons, and the produce they bring with gratitude. The winter harvest of radishes is now a gift of plenty. When the wild hisalu (himalayan raspberry, rubus ellipticus) are ripe, we indulge in a joyful orgy of raspberry-themed meals. And this mindset also extends beyond the provenance of the dishes we cook.
Churki (arrow-leaf dock, Rumex hastatus) is a common shrubby weed which is used in Kumaon to make a tangy chutney. For most of the year, it has tiny and tough leaves designed to help it conserve water to the fullest. For one brief glorious week in the middle of the monsoon it undergoes a growth spurt and puts out tender shoots and succulent leaves. We gather it in large bunches then and enjoy it fresh in potato soup and make large batches of pesto to freeze. The recipes might be inspired by European traditions, but the joy with which we welcome the first glimpse of the broad arrow-shaped leaves is as much an embracing of shun as the fervour around the first eel catch in Japan.
We will never give up our devotion to biryani and sambar and all the luscious variety that Indian food offers. But learning about Japanese food has helped me find contentment and joy in the ingredients I have access to. It has provided me with a structure to easily create balanced meals that are as attractive as they are nutritious. It has given me a life where we look forward eagerly to the next food to come in season. No matter how ‘simple’ the food or how short the season, everything is worthy of celebration. And for that, we are profoundly grateful.
Chicu Lokgariwar lives in Uttarakhand, and manages a small farm and a bakery focusing on local grains, with her husband.
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