Vegetables Quotes

“The sweet taste, the crunchiness... it's the core of the cabbage chopped into thin sticks!"
"Oh! And the sauce on it is puréed raw tomato!!
I've had this tomato before too!!"
"A... fully ripe tomato grown using the Ryoken farming method..."
"It's amazing! This cabbage core goes way beyond a unique dish--- it's incredible !"
"It's like we'd forgotten how spectacular the taste of nature can really be! A cabbage as good as this merits a cooking method that highlights the quality of the vegetable.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Uni no shiokara is roughly translated "salted sea urchin." It is a mixture of fresh uni shellfish, salt and sake.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Umeshu, often translated as "plum wine," is spirit made from steeping ume plums in shochu with sugar.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Kuroushi beef literally means "black beef," but it actually functions more as a brand name than a species of cow.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Kabayaki-style means brushed with sauce, skewered on sticks, and then grilled over charcoal.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Shirako, translated here as "milt," is fish sperm. It's obtained from the reproductive glands of the male fish.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Yamabudo, the name on the label of the bottles, means "mountain grapes." The specific species is Vitis coignetiae pulliat, a wild grape found throughout Japan and parts of Korea. It can be used to make wine, but here the bottles contain pure unfermented grape juice.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“This is spinach ohitashi."
"Ha! Here it is! And the red part of the root has been finely chopped and placed upon the leaves and stem...!"
"The redness of the root looks so pretty on the green leaves and stem."
"Hmm. Roots are crunchy, but they don't have any bad texture to them. It's been boiled to perfection, and the dashi...
Hmm, it's got something in it...
Dashi made katsuobushi with soy sauce, and there's a very slight secret flavor added to it... the plum..."
"Yes. A very slight amount of the umezu I got from making the umeboshi. You sure do have a keen sense of taste, Kyōgoku-san...
Grilled young taro.
It's a little early for them, but I love the refreshing taste of these small taro. The skin has been grilled, so you can peel it off very easily.
They taste good with just salt...
...but they're irresistible with salted sea urchin."
"Ooh! The refreshing taste of the small taro and the rich flavor of the sea urchin matches perfectly!”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Cubes of Mita's Kuroushi Beef."
"Oh, raw meat?
At first glance, it looks raw, but it's actually been cooked. And when you bite it all the juice from the meat comes seeping out!"
"Ohh... if it was raw, you wouldn't get such a succulent juice coming out of it. This has been cooked very skillfully."
"One has soy sauce with Japanese mustard, and the other has soy sauce with wasabi on it. Two different sauces to enjoy."
"We slowly roasted a prime tenderloin of the Mita Beef, and then cut away the meat on the outside...
... to take out the meat on the inside."
"What an extravagant thing to do."
"Hmm, this meat is top-notch, but Mamiya's skills have definitely improved. It's not easy to cook the meat so delicately..."
"This one is wrapped in a bamboo sheath... I wonder what's inside.
Oh, it's tilefish."
"And underneath is..."
"It's shredded snow peas with tilefish on top...
... wrapped in a bamboo sheath and steamed.
Please pour some kuzu sauce on it...
You can also place some wasabi on it if you want to."
"The fish has been steamed to perfection. If he had steamed it any more, the flesh would have become tough, but if he had steamed it any less, it would still be a bit raw. It is just soft enough, and the juice is still left in it too..."
"The snow peas have sucked up the flavor of the tilefish and have bloomed in flavor.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“It's thanks to synthetic preservatives that you can buy so many kinds of prepared food, making life easier for housewives.
And that supports the participation of women in society."
"That's not true. The food companies use preservatives because it makes it easier to manage their products and keep them edible for a long time.
It's the discriminatory attitude of the Japanese men that is hindering the participation of women in society.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Ah! Green asparagus, my favorite! "
"I stir-fried it with crab meat. I quickly stir-fried the green asparagus and mixed the crab guts with dashi and put that in there as well...
... and finally seasoned it with salt and pepper and thickened the sauce slightly with starch."
"I love its fresh spring vegetable-like flavor!"
"I stir-fried it in a very mild soy oil...
... and I didn't use any Chinese broth made from chicken bones and Chinese ham. I used dashi taken from katsuobushi and konbu.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Both of the dishes you just made use only eggplant. You didn't use any other vegetables or meat."
"Of course. If you want to learn the real taste of an eggplant, you can't mix it with anything else."
"And the secret seems to lie with the oil.
Eggplant is good when you simmer it, but simmering eggplant is rather difficult.
If you simmer it together with something else, its bitterness will sometimes taint the flavor of the other ingredients."
"Eggplant goes very well with oil, so simple methods like this tend to draw out the goodness of the eggplant that even people who don't like it will enjoy.
It's good when stir-fried with meat, onions and green pepper, but I like it better alone so I can enjoy its flavor.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“Good eggplants are hard to find these days. It's because the eggplants don't get fully ripe because of the pesticides and herbicides."
"This isn't just about Hitoshi. Anybody who eats this bad eggplant...
... will come to think that eggplant doesn't taste good at all.
Eggplant and oil are a perfect match. Let me make you a dish that even the greatest eggplant hater will like.
Pour sesame oil into the wok. Eggplant soaks up a lot of oil, so pour a lot in.
Once the oil is heated, cut the eggplant into thin slices of about a quarter inch.
You want to carefully stir-fry the eggplant trying to make every slice soak up the oil, but you also have to be fast at it. Keep the flame at high heat.
It's done when the eggplant starts to get soft and brown.
If you cook it too much, the skin gets hard, so be careful.
Now you pour some soy sauce on top of it.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“I rubbed some salt into the turnip and then pickled it in wild grape juice."
"Wild grape juice!"
"The scent, the sweetness...
It surely is wild grapes!"
"Once the turnips were pickled, I sliced them...
... and put some ground Japanese walnuts on top."
"So the paste on the top is walnuts! "
"Hmm, slightly bitter, with a rich taste that's also sweet..."
"It's wonderful! "
"Its bringing tears to my eyes..."
"This flavor makes us recall the things we had long forgotten about...
That mountain where I chased after the rabbits... that river where I went fishing for carp...
It's the taste of the homeland of all the Japanese people..."
"There are three kinds of sweetness in it too! The sweetness of the wild grapes, the walnuts and the turnip..."
"The trio of flavors is wonderful...
... but I'm very impressed that you remembered that turnips taste better with fat or oil!!”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables

“The refreshing scent of the turnip, the succulent, natural sweetness of the flesh...
The fine aftertaste of its slight bitterness...
And the thing adding richness to its flavor...
...is the brown paste in the middle of it!"
"Kaibara-san, what is this?!"
"It's braised turnip with white mushroom paste.
The important part is the dashi... or the "fond de veau," as it's called. You make an elegant and savory broth which is like an Ichiban-dashi in Japanese cooking by using the bones of a fine calf and quality beef."
"I see! The mushroom paste inside gives it its punch!"
"It's mashed mushroom mixed with butter and cream."
"That is the importance of finesse in cooking...
A mediocre cook is likely to make a mistake when getting ahold of such a fine turnip. For example, he'll do something like making some nice dashi and quickly simmering the turnip in it.
But that is a mistake . Turnips have a muddy scent. And it is that scent that poses a problem!
Now, the muddiness of a turnip is something to be savored... but when placed together with something that goes well with it, it becomes far more flavorful .
For example, you can't expect the turnip to do much good when it is placed inside a clear soup. But when it's used inside a miso soup made with hatcho miso, the flavor of the turnip becomes lucid...
As you can see from this example, it's important what you put with it. And for this dish, I decided to use white mushrooms.
The white mushroom itself is an interesting kind of mushroom that can't draw out its best on its own, but will prove its worth when it is mixed with oil or dairy products and heated.
Its color will turn dark when heated, but the texture turns smooth and gentle, and the fragrance hidden inside it becomes apparent, giving birth to a deep, rich flavor.
When that mushroom paste combines with the flavor of the turnip...
they will multiply each other's taste upon your taste buds.”
― Tetsu Kariya, Vegetables