November 2, 2025
In November, Michael and I made a long-overdue visit to Japan, where Michael's brother Matt has lived for almost two decades. It was fantastic to experience the neighbourhood where Matt and his wife live, including a couple of local restaurants, their community garden plot, a cultural festival, a short hike to a lookout for a picnic, and a sculpture garden. Matt also arranged for Michael and I to attend a vegan Japanese cooking class via Idées Kamakura. The class is hosted by 94-year-old Miyo sensei in her own home, and translated warmly into English by her daughter Naoko.
Once we were through introductions, Miyo sensei set us to work with chopping. They had cute little flower-shaped cutters for the carrots, which then went into a pot of kombu kelp dashi stock and sake, along with taro and pumpkin pieces, to simply simmer in the flavour.
Michael and I got to know gobo (also known as burdock in English), a long thin root vegetable with an earthy flavour. We kept the pieces submerged in cold water as we worked, and cut carrot into similarly small bite-sized lengths.
Naoko guided us through a tasting of different miso pastes, each with a unique origin, ratio of ingredients, and flavour profile. The Hatcho miso was dark, long-fermented and strongly flavoured, reminding me of Vegemite. Mugi barley miso was the lightest coloured option, with a gentle pungency that reminded me of blue cheese. My favourite was a bright, salty, golden-coloured and grainy textured miso. It was labelled 'miso zwate' but I haven't been able to find this description online since.
This now-mysterious miso was used in a dressing, ground together walnuts, mirin and sugar in my preferred ratio. In a second dressing, Naoko had me use soy sauce instead of miso. For a third dressing, I ground umeboshi (salted plum) with mirin and agave for a sweet and sour effect. We ultimately spooned a little of each into separate bowls of lightly steamed broccoli to appreciate their distinct flavours and textures.
The burdock and similarly-sliced carrots were stir-fried until tender and flavoured with sesame oil, sake, sugar and soy sauce. Miyo sensei got them started, then Michael and I took our turns tossing them around.
In parallel, Miyo sensei showed me how to grind roasted sesame seeds with suribachi and surikogi (traiditonal Japanese mortar and pestle), then mix in silken tofu. This mixture did double duty. First, it was seasoned with sugar, salt and soy sauce, and mixed with finely chopped vegetables to form a small, cool, salad side dish. Second, it was used to stuff potato starch-dusted mushroom caps as a 'mock abalone'; these were fried on both sides and brushed with teriyaki sauce.
I had whisked up the teriyaki sauce to taste (soy sauce, mirin and sugar). It was used primarily to flavour squares of pressed tofu that had been dusted with potato starch and fried until just golden. The tofu and mushroom caps are plated together, below.
Somehow (through Miyo's more than our efforts) a banquet was created! Steamed green beans and mushrooms appeared to accompany the simmered vegetables. Edamame were cooked into the rice in a large rice cooker, then moulded into a thick arc shape. There were pickled vegetables and huge, slightly sweet hana-mame beans, plus a beautiful tofu noodle soup.
It was a beautiful, expansive meal that I savoured slowly. Naoko spoke to us about the philosophy of Nihon Ryori (Japanese cuisine): five tastes, colours and methods. The aim is to capture a variety across the meal: sweet, salty, sour, spicy, bitter, pale/natural, umami; black, white, red, yellow, green; simmering; pan-frying, deep frying, stir frying, steaming, pickling, dressing, soup, rice, sweet.
To properly tick off that last category, there was still a little more to come.
Miyo sensei kneaded a dense dough of shiratamako (refined glutinous rice powder) and water, and we all gathered around to form small dumplings and drop them into boiling water. They only took a minute to cook! We ate them for dessert with unflavoured kanten (agar agar jelly cubes), sweet azuki beans, and black sugar syrup. After taking the below photo, I also sprinkled over some kinako (soybean powder).
It was such an honour to learn from Miyo sensei and Naoko in their home! They welcomed us with warmth and immense generosity, we deeply enjoyed the food that we shared, and we've started replicating a couple of these techniques at home.
