Best Food Writing 2010 (10 page)

KYOTO’S TOFU OBSESSION

By Adam Sachs From
Bon Appetit

If the term “globetrotter” hadn’t already existed, it would have to be invented to describe Adam Sachs. Few travel writers delve so eagerly into the local tastes of a destination. He doesn’t just dine in Kyoto, he seeks out the artisans who create its signature foodstuff.

M
itsuyoshi Kotzumi squeezes a soybean between his fingers and looks pleased.

“
Unyuu
,” he says—a Japanese onomatopoeia that means (more or less) the sound of something firm but pliant being squished. This, according to Koizumi, is what a perfect soybean sounds like when it’s ready to become tofu.

“Like gummy candy,” he says, handing me the wet soybean.

It is 5:30 a.m. on my first full day in Kyoto. I am wearing a hairnet, standing in a narrow, steamy kitchen overlooking the Kamogawa River, pinching a soaked bean. Why am I here? The reason is bean curd.

Koizumi-san is a tofu maker at Kinki, an artisanal shop where I have come to witness the daily predawn alchemy by which raw soybeans are transformed into squares of the firm-but-creamy building blocks of
kyo-ryori
, the cuisine of Kyoto. Ancient land of culture, temples, and gardens, once the imperial capital of Japan for 1,000 years, Kyoto is a city with a healthy obsession for tofu.

But stay, carnivorous reader. Don’t turn the page. It’s not what you’re thinking. Believe me—I’m not a morning person, and before coming here, I was never an avid tofu-seeker. The fresh Japanese version is a far more noble creature than the often bland loaves sold in American supermarkets. The difference in taste? Chalk and cheese, I’d say, though that would be unfair to chalk.

Here, tofu is a delicate handmade food, produced every morning in small shops and large industrial kitchens throughout the country. Each region makes its own styles of tofu, but Kyoto is to tofu what Naples is to pizza, New York to bagels. The Kyoto variety—perfected over centuries by Buddhist monks, in imperial kitchens, and in neighborhood shops like this one—is the accepted standard; it is regarded as the best in Japan and thus the world.

While tofu has become a mass-produced staple stateside, only now are we waking up to the allure of nonindustrial tofu. Japanese restaurants like EN Japanese Brasserie in New York feature fresh tofu on their menus. Reika Yo, the proprietor of EN, told me it took her a while to educate people about how tofu was eaten in Japan. I’d had great tofu dishes in the formal
kaiseki
restaurants and raucous
izakayas
of Tokyo. But Tokyo is so overwhelming; the discreet pleasures of humble tofu are easily lost in the culinary cacophony. I knew that in quieter Kyoto I’d find (and be able to focus on) the real thing.

Back at Kinki, Koizumi and a few colleagues dart around the kitchen while loungy Blue Note jazz plays on the radio. Through a window, gawky herons are visible gliding across the river. On the far bank, the first stirrings of the morning bicycle traffic. Kyoto is a modern city, with modern sprawl, apartment towers, and a subway system. But it is also a place of serene gardens, of temple life, and of little streets like this one, where you can walk alone in the early morning and observe craftsmen keeping alive old traditions inside
kyomachiya
, the city’s traditional wooden townhouses.

My translator this morning is Derek Wilcox, a Poughkeepsieborn chef who works at Kyoto’s Kikunoi restaurant. “It has more
presence
,” Wilcox says, trying to explain the special properties of Kyoto tofu. “It’s not just this empty block of protein that you flavor with something else.”

The thing that turns
tonyu
, or soy milk, into tofu is called
nigari
. Crystals of magnesium chloride act as a coagulant, much as rennin makes cheese curds out of cow’s milk. The familiar, firm, square-cut variety is called
momen-dofu
, meaning “cotton tofu,” as it was traditionally pressed over a porous cloth.
Kinugoshi-dofu
means “silken tofu,” and while silk isn’t actually used to prepare it, the name makes sense: It is a wet, jiggly tofu with the silken creaminess of a custard—the best a soybean can be.

Wilcox and I leave the staff at Kinki to their morning work. Walking north, we take a meandering course from the river toward Nishiki Market, Kyoto’s famous covered street of food stalls, pickle sellers, tea vendors, fishmongers, a 400-year-old knife shop, and, of course, tofu—lots of tofu.

As we walk, Wilcox talks me through what he calls “Kyoto Tofu 101.” In addition to
momen-dofu
, the most flexible, and
kinugoshi-dofu
, the most refined, we find
age-dofu
(tofu sliced into sheets and deep-fried),
atsu-age dofu
(thick deep-fried tofu),
oboro-dofu
(with a scooped, crumbly texture like cottage cheese), and
yaki-dofu
(grilled tofu). This being Japan, there are dozens of variations and riffs within this framework, and hundreds of ways to cook it: cold tofu, boiled tofu,
dengaku
(skewered and grilled), fried tofu balls, and on and on.

Our lesson is cut short by the sight of Hara Donuts, a happy little take-away place with three giggly girls frying donuts. The house specialty is a tofu donut made with sweet soy milk and okara, the fiber-rich by-product of tofu production. In the interest of research, Wilcox and I eat several. “Almost healthy,” he says. The girls giggle more.

“Hippie, crunchy, pinko-leaning, in America, we have all these associations for tofu,” says Chris Rowthorn, an expat writer who lives in Kyoto and runs personalized tours around Japan. “But in Japan, you’ll see the hardest construction workers or truck drivers walk into a restaurant and order a block of cold tofu.”

Rowthorn and I meet for lunch at Tousuiro, a tofu restaurant in a narrow alley off Kiyamachi Street. The
kaiseki
-style tofu menu begins with a pretty plate of
zensai
, Japanese amuse-bouches:
tamago
(omelet) folded with sea bream eggs and tofu; a small pile of grainy
okara
; and a green-pea-flavored tofu cut into the shape of a Japanese maple leaf. Next comes cold
yuba
, or tofu “skin,” piled up like soft-serve, topped with purple-flowering miniature
shiso
leaves and resting on a bed of crushed ice. In every course, tofu pops up like Peter Sellers playing multiple roles in the same movie, a versatile actor showing off its range with various accents and guises. Sea bass is pressed into a block with tofu.
Oboro-dofu
has a consistency somewhere between
burrata
and panna cotta.

After a dessert of soy-milk ice cream, Rowthorn and I chat with the restaurant’s manager, Nagashi Yoshida.

“Originally, tofu came from China,” Yoshida-san explains. “It was first brought to Nara, which was then the capital of Japan. There were a lot of priests there, so it became associated with Buddhism. When the capital moved to Kyoto, the priests came, too, and brought tofu culture with them.”

Whenever you talk to people about tofu in Kyoto, this is what they mention: the city’s history, the vegetarian diet of monks, the mountains that surround the city, and the clean water that runs down from those mountains. One night, I sleep at a 191-year-old
ryokan
, or traditional inn, called Hiiragiya. Each room is a sanctuary: tatami mats, wooden baths, and sliding doors that open onto a little private garden. Samurai slept here. Charlie Chaplin had stayed in my room.

In the morning, I sit wrapped in my yukata robe and eat the traditional dish called yudofu—squares of tofu boiling in a nabe pot over a small flame. Later, I follow the Path of Philosophy to the grounds of the Nanzenji Temple, where there is another kind of shrine: Okutan, a 360-year-old tofu restaurant. Here, charcoal is brought in, as well as a bowl of broth to simmer tofu.

The mood is meditative, yet even in my contemplative state I think maybe that’s enough simmered tofu for a while. But this is before I go to dinner at Kichisen, where chef Yoshimi Tanigawa proceeds to blow my mind.

Michael Baxter, an American who lives here and writes a blog called
kyotofoodie.com
, introduces me to Kichisen. Baxter is sort of obsessed with the place—and the chef—and it’s easy to see why. Tanigawa is an intense, funny genius who once defeated an Iron Chef on the Japanese program, and whose
kaiseki
restaurant is run with martial precision. Baxter and I eat Tanigawa’s version of
yudofu
: a clay pot with tofu that’s whiter and shinier than any I’ve seen. The tofu is dipped into dashi with
kujo-negi
(local scallions) and covered in bonito flakes. The broth is rich, but the smoothness and taste of the tofu itself is remarkable—bright, creamy, sweet. The tofu, Tanigawa tells us, comes from Morika, a famous shop on the outskirts of town. Instead of
nigari
, Morika uses calcium sulfate as the coagulant, which for some reason produces a smooth tofu that holds its shape in the hot bath of
yudofu
.

“We opened Morika about the time Commodore Perry came to open Japan,” Genichi Morii tells me when I visit him the next day at his shop. Perry’s arrival in the 1850s ended two centuries of self-imposed isolation. When he sailed home, Perry’s ships are said to have delivered to America its first soybean plants. A century and a half later, soybeans are America’s biggest crop, supplying much of Japan’s demand, and Morika is still here making tofu. “Whatever you do, you must love it,” says Morii. “You’ve got to love tofu to make it.”

I think about that love and dedication—centur ies of bean curd!—when I find myself at Yubahan, a small
yuba
maker in an old
kyo-machiya
on a placid backstreet in the center of town. Here, early in the morning, a young man tends to two dozen large vats of simmering soy milk. Slowly, a skin forms on the milk’s surface. And slowly, slowly, the kid deftly runs a wooden dowel over the milk and pulls up a thin, delicate sheet of tofu skin, as his family has been doing here since 1716. I eat a bowl of
yuba
and watch the boy watching the vats. I think about the ritual slowness of this work. The
yuba
is warm and soft on the tongue. This is what Kyoto does so well: coaxing the boring-looking soybean to greatness, bringing out its essence, and finding there something simple, pure, and
oishii
—delicious.

TIME TO RESPECT THE RAMEN

By Kevin Pang From the
Chicago Tribune

Tribune
dining reporter Kevin Pang’s eclectic background—born in Hong Kong, raised in Seattle, college and first job in Southern California—makes him a natural for navigating Chicago’s multi-faceted food culture. A dose of hipster humor comes in handy too.

N
ot too long ago, I stared longingly out the window of a Tokyo hotel, my eyes laser-focused on a ramen noodle cart by the train station.

A half-dozen people stood in line, mostly men in dark business suits. They waited and waited, then plopped themselves onto stools outside when summoned by the ramen chef. Sufficiently intrigued, I found myself in line among the suits. Ten minutes later, the cook presented a perfectly composed bowl, primary colors popping, a half-dozen ingredients resting in their respective nooks atop a steam-billowing tangle of noodles.

The bowl satisfied every taste sense man is blessed to experience. The soy-sauced broth was savory and pure. The noodles: smooth on the intake with an appealing chew. Alternating bites of bean sprouts, braised pork, seaweed and hard-boiled egg ensured every bite highlighted a different flavor.

My brows beaded with sweat, my heart rate rose, my virginal experience of real Japanese ramen shook me to the core. Ramen was the first food I learned to cook at age 10—drop noodle brick in boiling water, empty sodium packet—and here it was, in the middle of Tokyo’s Shinagawa neighborhood, a dish redefined.

This following statement I shall defend to the death:When ramen is good, it’s in the top three of the most extraordinary, soul-satisfying foods in the world. Admittedly, ramen gets a bad rap stateside. It conjures images of college dorms and food-drive donation bins. When you can get Sapporo Ichiban noodles—10 for a dollar—at Walgreens, there’s a whiff of cheapness ramen can’t escape.

But the last decade has seen ramen’s street cred rise in cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. It’s a mystery why Chicago isn’t a ramen hotbed.

Two theories as to Chicago’s underwhelming ramen representation: Among Asians in Illinois, there are more Indians, Chinese, Koreans and Filipinos than Japanese. A bigger reason is that ramen is a laborious, time-consuming dish that, to prepare well, a restaurant has to pretty much make the dish its singular focus.

There’s this terrible movie called “The Ramen Girl,” in which Brittany Murphy’s character apprentices at a Tokyo ramen shop. There was one memorable line from the ramen chef, though: “A bowl of ramen is a self-contained universe with life from the sea, the mountain and the earth, all existing in perfect harmony. What holds it all together is the broth. The broth gives life to the ramen.”

As great broths go, three in our area are worth noting.

Takashi Yagihashi
’s cooking can be described as white-tablecloth Japanese through a French prism, but the Sunday brunch menu at his Bucktown restaurant, Takashi, is closest to his native roots. It’s the one day of the week he serves ramen.

For Takashi, growing up in Mito, a town outside Tokyo known for its abundant pink plum blossoms, ramen was omnipresent.

“My house was on the same block as a ramen shop. We’d get so hungry after baseball practice we’d go there for a snack, then I’d eat dinner again,” Takashi said. “I wanted to introduce what you can eat in Japan if you traveled there.”

The number of regional ramen styles in Japan number in the dozens, but the most prevalent is Tokyo-style shoyu, the Japanese word for soy sauce. Like a Chicago hot dog, you’ll always find the same six ingredients atop a shoyu ramen: bamboo shoots, scallions, seaweed, hard-boiled egg sliced lengthwise, braised pork and Naruto-style fish cake (characterized by its pink swirl design).

The day I visited, it so happened that Rick Bayless and his wife, Deann, were also dining at Takashi, sharing a bowl of the shoyu ramen ($13). I could hear him from a few tables away raving about the noodles. We compared notes after the meal.

“There’s something so elementally true about getting and understanding what role broth plays and how incredibly satisfying that is,” Bayless said. “I like the very gentle spicing in it, that hint of star anise. It’s gentle, doesn’t hit you over the head. That to me is the perfect Sunday morning: that Tokyo ramen.”

Takashi’s name is attached to the noodle bar on the seventh-floor food court inside Macy’s Loop store. The ramen at his Bucktown restaurant, though, is miles better, because he’s overseeing the broth’s 24-hour cooking process.

Chicken and pork bones are boiled for hours. Bonito flakes (classic Japanese flavoring agent of dried shaved tuna), kombu (kelp) and dried sardines are added, giving the stock that savory taste sensation of umami. From there, the stock base goes in any number of directions—the popular shoyu, or the version I ordered, miso ramen. (True miso is a thick paste made from fermented soybeans, not the gunky powder turned soup.)

The miso ramen ($13) arrived studded with sweet corn, bean sprouts and wakame, sweet strips of seaweed.

I slurped louder than culturally appropriate. This is, in fact, acceptable behavior. Slurping accomplishes two duties: It cools the noodle, and the extra intake of oxygen supposedly amplifies flavor, the same way it would with wine.

A sure sign of unadulterated slurping was the dots of broth that soon splattered on the table and my shirt. The broth had a nutty, earthy flavor that soothed on that chilly day (miso ramen is indigenous to Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, known for its long, frigid winters). Therein lies the difference between 10-cent instant ramen and Takashi’s broth: One is just salty, the other a deep, resonant flavor made possible by a secret ingredient called Father Time.

Bill Kim’s most excellent
Urban Belly
offers a lighter take on ramen ($13). Authenticity is not a concern for Kim, a Korean-American who can deftly meld far-off Asian flavors. His dashi-based pork broth (bonito flakes and kombu) features Vietnamese pho spices, lime juice and fish sauce. Kim’s ramen tilts more refreshing, though the richness from the pork belly tips it back the other way.

Kim tipped his hand: “We all go to Santouka. A good Asian will know to go to
Santouka
in Mitsuwa.”

Santouka is the chain ramen franchise from Japan, inside the food court at Arlington Heights’ Mitsuwa Marketplace. Its special toroniku shio ramen was so spectacular I asked the Santouka manager its secrets. I was hit with a big, fat “no, thanks.”

The manager is a young Japanese fellow who allegedly speaks no English. Even with the lure of positive press, the manager’s English-speaking subordinates claimed that he was under no authority to divulge proprietary company secrets and, therefore,
get off my lawn!

This much I could derive: Their special toroniku shio ramen ($8.99) has buttery, luscious slices of pork cheeks that fell apart with no teeth resistance. The broth is wintry white, as if the noodles were soaked in buttermilk, then flecked with sesame seeds. It’s reminiscent of tonkotsu ramen, the Southern Japan-style broth made by boiling pork bones for a
long time
(not to be confused with tonkatsu, the panko-breaded fried pork cutlets).

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: In the ramen world, tonkotsu is king among kings.

The top of the broth glistened; an emulsified pork fat spillage that would put Greenpeace volunteers on high alert. The toppings came separately on a side plate—wood-ear mushrooms, scallions, bamboo shoots, fish cake and the fatty pork—to be dumped into the ramen by the diner.

It was profoundly delicious. The broth’s porkiness was so rich and intense I inhaled every last sip. The toothsome noodles were made using alkaline salt, which gives them an eggy-yellow hue. Beneath the savoriness, there’s a gentle sweetness to it all. In all my visits to Santouka, it accessed the same lobe and cortex that flooded back memories of ramen carts outside Tokyo train stations.

After I slurped the last of the noodles, a residue of slick, porky balm had formed around my lips. That was my favorite part.