Untangling My Chopsticks (26 page)

This hearty noodle-vegetable mix usually cooks on a griddle in Japan. Awok, however, makes a fine substitute. This is a good party dish when accompanied by various side salads. Despite the name of this dish, the noodles traditionally used in the recipe are not true soba, since they contain no buckwheat flour. Instead, they go by the confusing name of
chukasoba,
also known as Chinese-style ramen. Curly, yellowish (although they contain no egg yolks), and slightly elastic, they are available in most Japanese markets. Ketchup might seem like an unusual addition, until you realize that the original version came from China. What's more, with the influx of Western ingredients to Japan after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Japanese began to incorporate condiments like ketchup into their personalized form of Western-style food.

• ¾ pound fresh Chinese-style ramen noodles, or dried spaghetti
  

• ¼ cup oyster sauce
  

• ¼ cup dashi (
  page 48
  )
  

• 3 tablespoons mirin
  

• 1 tablespoon ketchup
  

• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  

• 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
  

• 2 cups thinly sliced green cabbage
  

• 1 medium onion, peeled, halved, and cut into crescents
  

• 1 medium carrot, peeled, trimmed, and thinly sliced
  

• 1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and thinly sliced
  

• One 4-ounce boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into small strips
  

• ¼ pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
  

• 2 scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced
  

1. Cook the noodles until al dente. Drain, rinse under coldwater, and set aside.
   

2. Blend together the oyster sauce, dashi, mirin, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce in a small bowl. Set aside.
   

3. Heat the oil in a wok. Add the cabbage, onion, and carrot and stir-fry for 3 minutes. Add the red pepper and chicken and stir-fry for a minute. Stir in the shrimp and cook for a minute more. Finally, add the noodles and reserved sauce mixture. Continue stir-frying the noodles until they are hot and glossy. Garnish with the scallions before serving.
   

15.

etween the end of winter and approach of spring, all those classes at my Japanese language school began to sink in. Without quite realizing it, I started translating street signs, restaurant menus, and doors marked “Lady's Room.” I even found I could carry on simple conversations with strangers, telling them who I was, why I had come to Japan, and that I still didn't know how long I would stay.

I also was learning more and more about the enormous varieties of chaji, or formal tea ceremonies with kaiseki meals, that tea practitioners hold, thanks to those classes at Mushanokoji, as well as David and Stephen.

Nowadays, tea masters tend to be the most educated members of the tea world. They also tend to be male. Many Japanese women study tea as a way to enhance their personal résumé, much
the way they might study calligraphy or flower arranging. Men, on the other hand, pursue the way of tea as a spiritual art form, in part because men are the only ones who can attain the prestigious title of Grand Tea Master.

Tea guests often come from the same social sphere as tea masters, since they must also understand the intricacies of tea in order to follow proper tea etiquette. And because of that, tea guests tend to be Japanese.

Most modern-day tea gatherings, like the ancient ones, are held to celebrate an occasion, such as a special birthday, a holiday, or a natural event, like the first snowfall.

Although there are an infinite number of variations that can occur within each chaji, seven principal types exist, beginning with the most common one, the noon tea gathering. For this standard chaji, held during any season, guests arrive shortly before noon to enjoy a tea kaiseki meal (which serves as a kind of lunch), followed by a moist sweet, a bowl of thick tea, a dry sweet, and then a bowl of thin tea.

During the frigid winter season, tea masters often host “daybreak” or “evening chat” chaji. The “daybreak” chaji begins around 4:00 in the morning and includes a tea kaiseki meal but is devoid of raw fish, since fresh seafood would be too difficult to obtain at such an hour. The meal also frequently eliminates the yakimono (grilled course) because of the labor involved.

The “evening chat” chaji usually commences in the late afternoon and then spills into evening. I had assisted Stephen and David with such a tea gathering on my birthday back in January.

A fourth type of chaji is called the “morning” tea. Generally held in the summer, it begins around 5:45 in the morning, before the weather becomes too hot and humid. Often generous amounts of white ash cover the gray ash in the brazier to evoke
the cooling image of a mountain of snow or frothy waves breaking across a sandy beach. Again, because of the timing, as well as the heat, raw and grilled fish do not appear at this early morning tea kaiseki meal. Instead, tea masters serve cooling foods, such as noodles served over slippery clear chunks of ice in glass or cold metal dishes.

Another type of chaji occurs when a second group of guests, who for whatever reason could not attend the original tea ceremony, ask to see the tea utensils used during the event. While the second group of guests waits for the first group to leave the teahouse, an assistant of the tea master serves the second group an abbreviated tea kaiseki. It usually consists of some sake, a bowl of miso soup, some rice, and the hassun holding delicacies from the ocean and mountains. To speed things up, the assistant often serves the second group of guests their moist sweet outside the tearoom, so once they enter it, they can immediately enjoy a bowl of thick and thin tea before viewing the tea utensils.

For the “no-time” chaji, improvisation is the name of the game. A true tea master supposedly remains ready to prepare tea on any date, anywhere, and at a moment's notice. Such chaji are often held to honor a friend who arrives unexpectedly from a distant place. To facilitate the ceremony the tea master often invites only fellow tea practitioners so they can help with various duties, such as arranging the flowers in the alcove and putting together an impromptu tea kaiseki meal.

The last type of chaji is the “after meal” tea, primarily held during busy times of the year, such as over Oshogatsu, or shortly after breakfast. Because of the timing, the meal tends to be a sort of mini tea kaiseki, often featuring just the wanmori, or climactic dish, and the tray holding tidbits from the mountains and ocean, plus some sake.

It gradually became clear that the most influential factor determining the character of each type of chaji was the time of year in which it was held. Kyoto has twenty-four seasons, not four. These seasonal shifts stem from Japan's adoption of the old Chinese solar calendar that began with the winter solstice and measured the year by twenty-four sekki, or seasonal divisions. Tea masters recognize these ever-changing cycles of nature at every tea event in myriad ways, including the flowers they choose for the alcove, the scene or sentiments they decide upon for the hanging scroll, and the foods they offer during the tea kaiseki.

Given that the twelve-month cycle of tea begins in November (because according to the old Japanese lunar calendar the spring tea leaves that had been placed in sealed jars to mature are finally ready to grind into an emerald-green powder), one of the first (and most famous) tea gatherings held during this month is called the Kuchikiri. It celebrates the
kiri
(cutting) of the paper seal over the tea jar's
kuchi
(mouth) to retrieve the young tea leaves, which the tea master grinds to a fine powder in the presence of his guests, while they enjoy their tea kaiseki meal. Tea masters honor the new tea year by replacing the tatami in the tearoom, putting new paper panels on the shoji screens, and erecting fresh green bamboo fences in the garden of the teahouse. They additionally open the sunken hearth that had been closed for the previous six months (during which time the tea master made tea with a portable brazier to avoid overheating the tearoom). As I had experienced in my first tea kaiseki class, the tea kaiseki foods served during a November chaji would likely incorporate the celebratory colors of red and white and also feature ingredients at their peak, such as turnips and daikon radish, coldwater fish, potatoes, chestnuts, mushrooms, and persimmons.

The first Saturday in March, I helped Stephen cook for an
“after-meal” chaji that he and David were hosting for eight foreign women enrolled in the one-year tea program at David's tea school. The theme of the gathering was Girl's Day, a holiday originally involving the placement of dolls near the heads of infants to absorb any negative spirits or energy. Over time, the figures evolved into elaborate costumed dolls that little girls would display inside their homes. Nowadays, young girls all over Japan dress up in pink and red kimonos to enjoy special rose-and-petal-pink candies, cakes, and sushi. The women had been invited to show up at 10:00 in the morning.

Since the weather was unseasonably warm, a helper named Mark had sprayed the stones of the roji. I was concerned this might make the women slip. “No, it will force them to slow down so they can focus on their surroundings,” said Stephen. “I want them to be like bowerbirds, noticing all the jewels along the path and taking the time to enjoy them.” Mark would wet the stones once again before the middle break (after the women had finished their meal) and one last time before they left the teahouse to go home. In addition to making the stones slick, the water would imply purity (as well as coolness had it been hot).

Because this tea kaiseki would be served so soon after breakfast, it would be considerably smaller than a traditional one. As a result, Stephen had decided to serve each mini tea kaiseki in a round stacking bento box, which looked like two miso soup bowls whose rims had been glued together. After lifting off the top dome-shaped cover the women would behold a little round tray sporting a tangle of raw squid strips and blanched scallions bound in a tahini-miso sauce pepped up with mustard. Underneath this seafood “salad” they would find a slightly deeper “tray” packed with pearly white rice garnished with a pink salted cherry blossom. Finally, under the rice would be their soup bowl containing the
wanmori, the apex of the tea kaiseki. Inside the dashi base we had placed a large ball of fu (wheat gluten) shaped and colored to resemble a peach. Spongy and soft, it had a savory center of ground duck and sweet lily bulb. A cluster of fresh spinach leaves, to symbolize the budding of spring, accented the “peach,” along with a shiitake mushroom cap simmered in mirin, sake, and soy.

When the women had finished their meals, we served them tiny pink azuki bean paste sweets. David whipped them a bowl of thick green tea. For the dry sweets eaten before his thin tea, we served them flower-shaped refined sugar candies tinted pink.

After all the women had left, Stephen, his helper, Mark, and I sat down to enjoy our own “Girl's Day” meal. And even though I was sitting in the corner of Stephen's dish-strewn kitchen in my T-shirt and rumpled khakis, that soft peach dumpling really did taste feminine and delicate.

16.