Japan's Dashi & Umami Culture

About this book

Japanese food begins with water that tastes of the sea and the field — dashi, the clear stock under nearly every soup, simmered dish and noodle bowl. Behind one bowl stand a dried kelp blade from Hokkaido's cold coasts, a block of bonito smoked and mould-fermented until it rings like wood, sardines from the Seto Inland Sea, flying fish from the Goto Islands, and mushrooms dried in mountain sheds. This guide covers that world entire in 200 entries: the stocks themselves from ichiban dashi to the temple's plant-only shojin broth; the ingredients, kelp coast by coast and flake by flake; the regions, from Kyoto's pale gold standard to Tokyo's bonito-dark counters, Sanuki's iriko gold and Okinawa's southern richness; the craft of temperatures, ratios and straining; the science and story of umami from Ikeda's 1908 discovery to the UNESCO inscription of washoku; the dishes the stock carries; and the makers, markets, powders, packs and vending machines of its modern life. Every entry follows the same four fields — what it is and where it belongs, how it is made or kept, how it tastes and is used, and where you meet it with the one official check to make before you travel or buy — so any two entries can be compared in seconds. This book claims no health effects for its subject and repeats no legend as fact; it documents the stocks, the techniques and the culture exactly, and ends with a handbook that puts a first pot of real dashi within any reader's week. Written and produced in Japan by a Japanese author and publisher.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.