Untangling My Chopsticks (13 page)

“Not at all. We're just having breakfast.”

I came to the entrance of their home and swallowed hard. David was sitting on the floor like a rag doll with his bare feet stuck out from his cotton kimono. Two male guests, also in casual kimonos, were pouring themselves coffee in the kitchen. Futons, quilts, and pillows lay tossed about the tatami.

“You know,” I said brightly, “I can easily come back. In fact,” I said, heading back down the stone path, “why don't I just get some coffee and return in an hour.”

“No, no, no,” said Stephen, beckoning me back. “We need to start cooking. That means you two as well,” he said, gesturing to his male houseguests. They rolled their eyes in mock disgust.

“You get a cup of coffee and I'll put on some clothes,” said Stephen, handing me a chipped green mug.

While Stephen dressed, I made small talk with Brad and Kyle, who, as it turned out, were studying tea at one of the big three tea schools. Neither one was sure how long he wanted to
stay in Japan, so each had enrolled in the school's one-year program, which was taught in English. David was their teacher.

“I want to practice making sweets,” said Brad, stirring milk into his coffee. Stephen enjoyed making sweets for David's tea ceremonies and would often invite David's students to help.

Nowadays, it is fairly unusual for a tea master to serve homemade sweets, not only because of the time and skill involved, but also because Kyoto is so famous for its tea confections. Numerous old wooden shops, which have been in business for hundreds of years, have well-deserved reputations for the quality of their jellies, bean pastes, and sugary tablets.

Aside from the gorgeous colors and shapes of their confections, these Kyoto artisans are known for the poetic names they give to each sweet, particularly the moist ones served before the thick tea. Often based on notable historic events, characters, or even quotations in Japanese literature, the sweets become a kind of riddle that fits into the underlying theme of the tea ceremony. At the confectioner Shioyoshi-ken, for example, there is a special sweet named after Princess Kogo, a famous imperial concubine, who became so heartbroken when the emperor outgrew his love for her that she fled to a nunnery in the western region of Arashiyama. In the center of the sugary sweet lies a teardrop of salty fermented soybean—a reminder of the bittersweet nature of love.

The more ambiguous these thematic hints (and they are not just limited to the sweets at a tea ceremony), the more thrilling the discovery for the tea guests, if, indeed, they ever solve the riddle.

Stephen came into the kitchen sporting a jolly watermelon-pink shirt and pants the color of grape jelly. He beckoned me over to a sitting area near the sink. “Did you bring a notebook?”

I nodded.

“Good, pull it out.” He collapsed on a stool, letting his legs
splay open. I sat down Indian-style on the stone floor with my notepad on my knee.

“First of all, you need to understand the courses of a tea kaiseki and the ones we're going to serve today,” he said, rubbing his nose. “The stuff we made in class last week, those are part of
osechi ryori
(honorable seasonal cooking), or New Year's foods. They might show up in different parts of a New Year's tea kaiseki, but they're not all that you'd get.”

I scrawled what I could as Stephen went on to explain the various dishes we were going to make that day and how they followed the format of a traditional tea kaiseki. Despite his best intentions, he often veered off on tangents related to such things as his love of trees or his difficulty with finding comfortable shoes in Japan. But as he jackrabbited around the subject of tea kaiseki, I was able to piece together his remarks and ultimately understand the order and number of dishes served at a traditional tea kaiseki meal.

In reaction to the lavish honzen ryori–style kaiseki that the aristocracy favored in the sixteenth century, a movement arose to create a more frugal style similar to the “medicine” meals the monks ate in the temples before their whipped green tea. Sen no Rikyu is credited for this new perspective, known as the wabistyle of tea.

Drawing heavily on Zen Buddhism, Rikyu felt every tea kaiseki should be a humble expression of the heart, instead of a showy multiplicity of courses made with rare and expensive ingredients served on numerous gold-legged trays. At its essence, the tea kaiseki would be fit for a Buddhist monk, who through the drinking of the sacred whipped green tea might reach nirvana. According to Rikyu: “Chanoyu (the formal practice of preparing and consuming whipped powdered green tea) of the small room
[teahouse] is above all a matter of practicing and realizing the way in accord with the Buddha's teaching. To delight in the splendor of a dwelling or the taste of a sumptuous meal belongs to a worldly life. There is enough shelter when the roof does not leak, and enough food when it keeps one from starving. This is the Buddha's teaching and the fundamental intent of Chanoyu.”

In Rikyu's opinion, “enough food” translated into approximately one soup and three side dishes. In addition to the miso soup, there would be a marinated raw fish or vegetable dish, called the
mukozuke,
the climactic dish, or wanmori, and a grilled item, known as the
yakimono
(literally, “grilled thing”). This became the ideal format for a tea kaiseki.

After Rikyu's death, tea kaiseki developed along two paths: the wabi style he promoted and, once again, a more lavish form. The latter style surfaced around 1615, shortly after the Tokugawa Shogunate established control over the nation. It became more standardized during the Genroku era (1688 –1704), when the merchant class rose to economic power and wanted to put on more elaborate kaiseki to show off their wares and new social status.

But there was a major problem: both styles of tea kaiseki used the same Chinese characters and people were getting confused. So around the 1750s several tea masters came up with the clever idea of using different sets of Chinese characters to distinguish between the two different styles of tea kaiseki.

For the frugal temple-style tea kaiseki that Rikyu's followers practiced, they chose the characters for “bosom-pocket stone.” That is because one of the many meanings for kai is “bosompocket” and seki is “stone,” and this spartan form of tea kaiseki served the same purpose as the heated “medicine stones” (yakuseki) that the monks once tucked into the front fold of their kimonos to ward off hunger. By creating a Zen Buddhist link be
tween the two terms, this style of tea kaiseki became infused with religious overtones and thus is the standard version used today.

To describe the lavish party-style tea kaiseki, the original characters for “group-gathering place” were used. During the latter part of the Tokugawa/Edo era (1600 –1868), when teahouses and traditional inns began serving food and sake, this fancy version left the tea realm for public restaurants. The tea component was basically dropped, and the courses were switched around and altered, leaving what now is known as restaurant kaiseki.

Since Stephen and David were hosting a standard Rikyustyle tea kaiseki, the first tray held the traditional offerings of miso soup, a bowl of white rice (considered so integral to the meal it wasn't counted as a “dish”), and the marinated raw fish dish. Counting the lids of the rice and soup bowls, plus the dish for the marinated fish, there were five serving pieces on the tray, a number that corresponded to the five nesting bowls monks eat their food from in Zen temples.

Originally, raw fish was not served in ancient Kyoto because of its inland location. Locals could not eat sashimi in the morning because the fishing boats from Osaka had not returned to port. By evening, the Kyoto people (being sticklers for freshness) felt the fish had been out of the water too long to be eaten raw. As a result, many fishermen salted much of their catch on the beaches and then had it sent to Kyoto by runners along what came to be known as the Mackerel Highway. It wasn't until the Meiji Period (1868 –1912) that Kyoto began serving raw fish that wasn't salted or pickled.

Our next course would be the wanmori, similar to the simmered piled-up dish we had made in class. Only instead of putting duck in our wanmori, we would use turkey. Like all wanmori, it would require the host's greatest effort.

Following the wanmori we would serve the yakimono. Stephen had spotted some huge shiitake mushroom caps at the market that we would baste with mirin, sake, and soy and then grill over the burner.

After the grilled dish, we would continue to offer a few more items because even Rikyu broke his own rules, particularly when he was entertaining the emperor or members of the aristocracy. One such item we would offer is the
hashiarai,
meaning “chopstick wash.” Consisting of a small amount of hot water served plain or seasoned with sour plum and salt (salt and plum being the Chinese characters for “seasoning”), it “rinses” the smoky charred flavors from the grilled course in order to ready the chopsticks and palate for the next one. It was a frugal temple-like move that enabled the guests to recycle their chopsticks, instead of switching to a new pair. This was a departure from the established court etiquette, whereby each guest would receive a new pair of chopsticks with every honzen ryori meal tray.

After the chopstick wash, guests would encounter the
hassun,
named after the square cedar tray upon which the foods are served.
Hatchi
means “eight” and
sun
is a unit of length just longer than an inch; when the two words combine, they're pronounced “hassun.” The tray measures eight sun units on all four sides.

Every hassun at a tea kaiseki holds something from the ocean and the mountains; therefore our offerings would consist of cuttlefish and jumbo sugar-cooked black soybeans threaded onto green bamboo picks.

After that, we would end the meal like the monks do in temples with rice, pickles, and tea. Only instead of boiled rice, we would serve the traditional tea kaiseki rice dish of
yuto,
named after the black lacquer hot water pitcher in which the dish arrives.

In former times, when monks cooked their temple food over
fire, inevitably, a layer of scorched rice would cover the bottom of the rice pot. So in the Zen tradition of letting nothing go to waste, the monks would scrape up the cap of rice, break it into shards, and serve it almost as a soup in warm salt-seasoned water. As for the tea, that would be David's special offering.

“Let's get going,” said Stephen, handing me an apron. I checked my watch; it read 9:30. The guests had been invited for noon. I set my notebook aside, pulled off my sweater, and pushed my turtleneck sleeves past my elbows. Under Stephen's guidance, I began to make lotus root balls.

Tea kaiseki dishes are highly creative, both visually and symbolically, yet use everyday temple fare, such as miso, tofu, and vegetables, like lotus root. Not only that, in keeping with the monastic concept of plainness, tea kaiseki dishes are prepared in a basic manner, usually boiled, grilled, and simmered. They are also seasoned with an extremely delicate hand, to avoid competing with the flavor of the tea to come. That means no onions, garlic, or strong spices. What elevates the food to a near divine status, however, is the thought and care involved in turning these ingredients into something special, combined with the setting in which they are served.

After peeling the potato-like tubers, I grated them into a slushy mound, which I pushed through a horsehair colander with my palm. After mixing in some dissolved lumps of kudzu—a rocky snow-white starch that resembles cocaine—I rolled the lotus root dough into marble-size spheres, then dropped them into simmering water. When they floated to the surface, like gnocchi, I retrieved them with a small wire net and placed them in a bowl.

These tiny snowballs (hinting of winter and the coming of the New Year) would go into the miso soup on the first tray. But unlike a traditional tea kaiseki miso soup (a combination of red
and white miso), Stephen's would be made exclusively with sweet white miso, and lots of it, to create a creamy blend as rich and thick as bisque. The lotus root balls would be a soft spongy fillip to break up the monotony of the smooth soup. I slid one into my mouth. It was light and mildly sweet like a potato dumpling. Several weeks earlier I would have said it tasted bland.

I confess when I first arrived in Kyoto, sushi aside, much of what I ate I felt lacked seasoning. Back in New York I would cook Asian food with masses of garlic, ginger, and toasted sesame oil. With John egging me on, I'd whack sticks of lemongrass, smash shallots, and grind up pungent spices all in the name of getting us high on flavor. And when those ingredients wore off, we'd hit the stinky shrimp paste, asafetida, and habaneros, bombarding our palates with more, more, more, until our scalps tingled from my overwrought creations.

Then I came to Kyoto, the city of refined and delicate Japanese cooking. And like a junkie, I initially craved my stimulants. But then, ever so slowly, I started tasting—really tasting—the ingredients. It was like entering a dark room on a sunny day. At first you can't see anything, but over time you begin to detect shapes, which slowly turn into discernible objects with real colors.

During those first few weeks, particularly when I encountered soups, ingredients would whisper at me from the bowl. Eventually, I would respond and recognize their subtle character, such as the light soy sauce favored by cooks in Kyoto for its gentle color and soft flavor. Or a dashi made with just kelp, instead of bonito flakes and kelp.

The mark of a highly sophisticated palate in Japan is a person's ability to distinguish slight differences between, say, ten different types of tofu, or sea bream, or soba. This knack for discerning such minute variations likely stems from the pastime
monoawase,
a sort of guessing game that the Japanese developed to compare various objects.

In the early part of the fourteenth century, tea contests became a kind of monoawase. The aristocracy would amuse themselves by tasting dozens of cups of whipped green tea in order to guess where the tea leaves had been grown and which of the many waters used to make the samples was superior. (Kyoto was known for the quality of its water.)