Secret Ingredients (46 page)

Inside the abbey’s cheese cave—a corner of a basement in the house beside the dairy—the walls are lined with wooden racks filled with ripening wheels. The air smells of wet earth, but it’s really something more peculiar: geosmin, a chemical compound produced by
G. candidum.
Noella showed me where the mold grew on some of the older cheeses, wrinkling the surface as if it were a fine linen shirt. Then she took down a younger wheel, still plump and yellow but topped with a wispy crop of white hairs. She put the wheel under a microscope and twiddled the knobs for a moment, then moved aside to let me see. A field of ghostly dandelions hovered into view, each crowned with a perfect sphere of black spores. “They’re beautiful,” I told her, and she laughed. “That’s the spirit. But if you were making Reblochon you’d kill yourself.”

This was the hair-of-the-cat mold, the cheesemaker’s bane. The spores in a single stalk could infest a cave within a matter of hours, leaping from wheel to wheel on the lightest currents of air. Wherever they landed, they would take root in the curd, digesting proteins and secreting bitter peptides. “They call it
la bête noire,
” Noella said. She had once known a woman in the French Alps whose Reblochon was so badly infested that she called in an expert from the local dairy school. This was in the Haute-Savoie, where cheesemakers trace a cross in their curd before cutting it, and science is never far removed from religion. “I can’t help you,” the expert said. “You’ve been visited by
un mauvais sort
”—a bad spell. The only remedy was to call in a priest and have him exorcise the cave.

And yet in the right place, on the right wheel of cheese, the same mold could change from a curse to a blessing. In Noella’s cheese, the bitter peptides would be digested by
G. candidum,
and the two molds would join forces in breaking down fats and proteins, transforming the chewy curd into a tender pâte. Like a continent evolving in rapid motion, the ripening rind would be invaded by wave after wave of new species, turning from gold to gray to a mottled brown. The cat hairs would sprout up like ancient ferns, then topple and turn to a velvet compost for their successors. The penicillium molds would arrive, their stalks too fine to be seen under a standard microscope, and put down pillowy patches of the palest gray. Then, at last, a faint-pink blush would spread across the surface like a sunset:
Trichothecium roseum,
the flower of the molds.

“Saint Benedict had a vision, just before he died, in which he saw the whole world in a ray of light,” Noella said. “For me, that’s what it’s like to see through a microscope. You look at the rind of a cheese and there’s a whole world there.” Every dairy, every cheese cave, has its own specific ecology. Every handful of soil, no matter how ordinary, contains more biodiversity than a rain forest. That was the great lesson of her doctoral research. In just seven French dairies, she found eighteen unique strains of
G. candidum.
(The abbey’s strain is more vigorous than all but one of them. “I’m so proud of my fungus,” Noella said.) Most dairies never tap into this native genius. They dose their milk with prepackaged bacteria and spray their cheeses with generic molds, never guessing that their local soil may hold the secret to the next Roquefort or Gruyère—to an American cheese as inimitable as a Baldwin apple or a Concord grape.

Noella pulled a perfectly ripe wheel from the shelf and put it under the microscope. Cheesemaking is a kind of Eucharist, she likes to think, transforming the simplest material into a transcendent food—“milk’s leap toward immortality,” as the essayist Clifton Fadiman put it. But ripening is really more like prayer. You repeat an ancient formula as faithfully as possible, then you wait for something extraordinary to happen—for a visitation that is never guaranteed.

It’s tempting to imagine what wonders Noella might conjure given the same freedom as the French. But that’s too much to hope for, even for a nun. “I can’t sit around here dreaming about new cheeses,” she said. Beneath the microscope’s lens, the last wave of settlers was arriving: four pearlescent spheres, perched on twitchy, hairlike legs, traversing the fields of mold like Conestoga wagons. “Cheese mites,” Noella said. She took a straw brush and swept the surface clean, then handed the wheel to me. “Don’t worry,” she said. “They say they always pick the best cheese.”

2002

“You think I'm a raw-foodist by choice?”

NIGHT KITCHENS

JUDITH THURMAN

T
he abbot’s garden at the temple of Daisen-in, in Kyoto, is a rectangle of raked gravel bordered by a white wall on one of its long sides, and by the wooden porch of an old pavilion on the other, where the monks meditate. From behind the wall, a camellia bush throws off its scent. The grooves made by the rake run horizontally, like steady but freehand rulings on a blank page, until they eddy around two conical mounds, each about a foot tall. One evening last June, just after the temple had closed, I joined the sitting meditation, the hour-long
zazen,
held on the porch and open to the public twice a week. There were five other sitters, all Japanese, one a young mother who had her children in tow, two plump boys and a little girl, and I could hear them squirming at the end of the row (the wood creaks)—once or twice the presiding monk spoke to them in a low voice, breaking the silence. But after a while, with an impressive show of stoicism, they managed to keep still.

I had been to Daisen-in earlier that week, and at my first sight of the mounds I surprised myself by bursting into tears, perhaps because, for all its austerity, the garden is an image of release: of the moment at which, after an intractable struggle, you get permission from yourself to let the inessential go.

The temples I had come to Japan to visit were of a different sort, though they, too, had a Zen foundation. They were the workshops where tofu is handmade by artisans faithful to the old tradition. Here I should admit that, to a Western palate—mine, at least, unable, despite my best efforts at Daisen-in, to transcend an incorrigible greed for new sensations—even the greatest artisanal tofu didn’t produce the kind of epiphany that my first mouthful of white truffle, or of a fruity tomato, or of corn rushed from a field into the pot did. But tofu has been the dietary mainstay of monastic life in Japan for about a millennium—it was imported from China and Korea, along with Buddhism—and it has never lost the soulful, exalted aura of its provenance. In that respect, its relation to the bean curd sold in plastic tubs at American supermarkets is that of a Communion wafer to a rice cracker. Westerners tend to regard tofu as a convenient and perhaps necessary but vaguely pathetic substitute for some less wholesome, more morally dubious carnal indulgence—a rare burger, say. They may even be a bit disdainful of a dish (as they would be of an individual) that, by their standards, lacks an identity, or begs for a disguise. Every tribe, however, has an ancestral food that its exiles yearn for, and that its children can’t live without: its manna, which is often soft and white. When a tofu master offers you a slice of bean curd he has just unmolded, he is inviting you to partake, insofar as a stranger can, of what it means to be Japanese.

Okutan is a place congenial to such reflections. It is the oldest tofu
riyori
in Kyoto. The original restaurant was established almost four hundred years ago within the walls of the Nazenji temple, and the current proprietor, Yasuie Ishii, is the fifteenth generation of his family to preside there. He is now in his sixties, but as a young man he bought a villa and its outbuildings—a cluster of thatched pavilions—near the temple of Kiyomizu-dera, with the idea of one day opening a second Okutan. This newer branch sits on the hilly site of a village once owned by the temple’s lord. Guests eat at low tables in a tatami room cantilevered over the garden—a lush glade of cherry, cedar, and maple trees.
Mukashi dofu
is the first course on the set menu: a dish from the monastic repertoire. A kneeling waitress prepares it at your table. She sets a clay crock on a charcoal brazier, adds two or three small bricks of
momengoshi
(“cotton” tofu—well drained of moisture and firm in consistency), pours some hot water over them from a kettle, and, after they have simmered for a few minutes (they are not supposed to steep, as they do in the classic hot pot,
yudofu
), she ladles them into a bowl. You then help yourself to a sprinkling of scallions and seven hand-ground spices, and a spoonful of enriched fish stock that contains algae from Hokkaido. The courses that follow observe the principle set by the first: exquisitely bland bean curd, devoid of the bitter or metallic aftertaste that, in the commercial product or its milk, is masked by additives; and served with a refined sauce or paste that sets off its plainness the way a fanciful bijou sets off the elegance of a couture dress. Yet nothing else at Okutan, or perhaps in Japan, rivals the purity of
shima dofu
—an ivory-colored attar of bean curd that arrives on a turquoise plate, with a coral drop of sea-urchin (
uni
) purée, and whose creation is an almost mystical rite.

I was having lunch with a Japanese friend—a native of Kyoto—and after the meal Mr. Ishii introduced himself to us. We chatted briefly about a mutual acquaintance, Hiroko Tanaka, who had arranged the interview. Madam Tanaka is a lithe woman of sixty who dresses in kimonos and wears her dark hair swept high off her pale forehead in a classic pompadour. A fan, a cell phone, and a pack of cigarettes are all tucked neatly into her obi. She has a dancer’s carriage and the stage presence of a beauty who has spent her life being looked at. Her theatre was the world of the geisha house. Like many retired geishas (who are called
geikos
in Kyoto), she opened a bar on one of the cobbled backstreets off the river, in the Gion quarter, and she trains a small troupe of teenage protégées—
maikos
—in the arts and protocol of her former profession.

Though Mr. Ishii is a busy man, he devoted the better part of an afternoon to giving us a course in soybean history and gastronomy. This engaging lesson took place in his tofu kitchens and in his private museum of beans, which is housed in a crypt beneath the restaurant. Beans, he explained, are the seedpods of legumes, which grow on every continent except Antarctica, and
Glycine max
(soya) is one of some twenty thousand species, the majority of which are poisonous. Mr. Ishii has managed to obtain (and, in some cases, to finesse through customs, with the help of airline-pilot friends) about five thousand specimens, along with their flowers, which he displays, mostly for his own enjoyment, in glass bottles and vitrines. He also took us to his studio, in one of the thatched pavilions, where he edits photographs taken on a life of travels to the remote, mostly tropical places where one finds exotic bean stalks like the locust tree and the Calabar. I wondered about this extravagant politesse, until my friend received a cell-phone call from Madam Tanaka. Ishii-san, she said, had once been her admirer. But not even a celebrated geisha could get him off the subject of tofu.

Histories vary, but according to Mr. Ishii the art of extracting a milky liquid from the soybean and turning it into a cheap and versatile solid food by means of a curdling agent—a salt or an acid—was invented in China about two thousand years ago. The Chinese called the dish
dofu
(
do
= curdled;
fu
= bean), a name as basic as the nutrient it described. About seven hundred years later, a delegation of monks studying Chinese Buddhism brought the technique back to Japan with them. Tofu was exclusive to the upper classes (nobles and samurai) and the vegetarian clergy for about five centuries, in part because the labor required to pulverize dried soybeans (
daizu
) by hand, with a mortar and pestle, was too costly. But the advent of the millstone made tofu accessible to common people, and its place in the national diet and psyche has been compared to that of bread in France, or of potatoes in Eastern Europe—a difference being that one cannot live by bread or potatoes alone, whereas tofu (discounting one study, not cited by Mr. Ishii, that links its consumption by middle-aged Japanese American men to an increased incidence of brain atrophy in old age) is an almost uniquely perfect food: low in calories, high in protein, rich in minerals, devoid of cholesterol, eco-friendly, and complete in the amino acids necessary for human sustenance.

The workshop where Okutan’s tofu is made occupies a multichambered grotto beneath the dining rooms that has the chaste and contemplative atmosphere of a chapel. Apart from the plumbing and electrical fixtures, almost no alloyed metal or industrial materials have been used in the construction of the kitchen or are used in the cooking process, as if they might profane the tofu with their modernity. Nearly all the accoutrements—even the sink—are handmade of cedar, and the stove is a slab of lava. In the kitchen’s inner sanctum—the salt room—the regimen of purism is absolute. Adobe walls of clay mixed with rice straw are sheathed in bamboo; the ceiling is tented in thatch; the floor is cobbled with sea stones; and, though the dim light is electric, the bulbs are disguised by old wrought-iron lanterns. Here, Mr. Ishii explained, he distills his
nigari
—the coagulating agent. Salt from the mountains of China is wrapped in straw and suspended from a wooden tripod over a weathered cypress barrel. It absorbs humidity from the walls and exudes its moisture in an almost imperceptible drip, filling the barrel at the rate of three centimeters a year. Every six months, he adds more salt to the bundles, and if their hemp bindings break he replaces them. Otherwise, they have been hanging undisturbed since he courted Madam Tanaka, about thirty years ago.

Shima dofu,
however, is the one variety of bean curd at Okutan that isn’t curdled with
nigari.
It is an exceedingly expensive delicacy (about fifty dollars for a few thin slices), and on special occasions Mr. Ishii delivers a provision to the emperor’s palace, molded with the imperial mark, a sixteen-petaled chrysanthemum. A dish of great antiquity, it comes from one of tofu’s early landfalls in Japan, Ishigakijima—a small island southwest of Okinawa, 150 miles from Korea. Mr. Ishii learned the art of making
shima dofu
in his youth, from two old women there.

If you would like to try whipping up a batch at home, here is the recipe. Negotiate a contract for organic soybeans with a reliable farmer whose fields lie on the slopes of Mt. Hira, in the Shiga Prefecture, where the soil and the water are unpolluted. Make sure that the farmer harvests the beans as late as possible—preferably in December. (Green summer soybeans become
edamame,
and most commercial soybeans are harvested in the fall. The extra time on the stalk intensifies the flavor.) Pick the beans over carefully, throwing out those eaten by worms—a desirable sign that the farmer isn’t cheating with a little DDT. Soak them overnight in very cold spring water. The beans will swell. Rinse them in more of the same, and grind them with a granite mortar, using all your strength, for two hours. Drain the pulp in a bamboo colander, and put the white soy juice you obtain—
gojiu
—to cook on a stone hearth. Let it bubble, subside, and bubble again, several times. (Heating
gojiu,
otherwise known as soy milk, is an essential process that deactivates a toxic substance found in most legumes which blocks digestion.)

Sometime well before you reach this point, however—perhaps while you are waiting for the delivery of your soybeans—hire a boat, and locate the tiny island of Hateruma on your charts (it isn’t that far from Ishigakijima). The island is inhabited only by several hundred farmers, who raise sugarcane. Off the coast there is a coral reef (perhaps the sugar farmers can tell you where to find it). You will need a depth finder in good working order, because when the tide is at its lowest ebb you are going to moor the boat and gather the seawater—as Mr. Ishii does—that cascades from the reef, which has an exceptionally rich and complex mineral content. This primordial bouillon is your curdling agent. Add some to the strained
gojiu
(time and failure will teach you the precise amount), stirring with a wooden paddle, and turn the thickened curds into the slatted, four-by-ten-inch cedar boxes that you have lined with a fine-grained cheesecloth. Cover them, weight the covers with blocks of lava—about ten pounds per box—and leave them to drain. Do not, under any circumstances, cool your
shima dofu,
as you would common tofu, by unmolding it in a tank of water, which slimes the skin and dilutes the flavor. What is that flavor? Sublimely unsensational, like a perfectly clarified consommé—which keeps the spirit but discards the substance of the earthy ingredients and patient toil that have gone into it.