I mentioned previously that I purchased five bags of good sushi gohan during my most recent Mitsuwa trip. What I did not reveal is that one of those bags of short-grained goodness contained unpolished seeds of undeniably brown rice.
This is pretty big news, since I have not had brown rice in the house in over ten years. I think I must have bought some during a brief flirtation with vegetarianism in the 1990s in the UK, brought on by my sincere desire to avoid having my brain spongified. This health kick spilled over into a well-intentioned enthusiasm for earnest, earthy-crunchy ingredients generally and brown rice in particular, although I don't recall ever actually using it except in the odd casserole. Luckily for all, we moved to the States shortly afterwards and both las vacas locas and brown rice became relics of the distant past.
My interest has been re-piqued in recent weeks, however, mostly because I deeply miss the grainy nuttiness provided by a good piece of artisanal, thick-crusted bread. I wondered whether brown rice might not do something to fill the gap. I remembered that the Diva had bought a bag of Kagayaki brown rice during our last joint Mitsuwa run and subsequently declared it the best she'd ever had. So I steeled myself and bought a bag.
I must confess that I do have a loaf of gluten-free bread in the freezer, where it has languished, untried, for a couple of weeks. Something about it fails to inspire confidence. One day, one day.
Deciding to prepare the rice for dinner when I got home, I was brought up short by the cooking instructions on the label. I had not realized I would need to devote four hours of my life to making the grain palatable: three hours of soaking - shorter in summer, longer in winter, according to the experts - followed by 45 minutes to an hour in the pot. It was already five o'clock and the Kid Squid and I like to eat early (we are Netflixing Lost - the entire series - and it throws out our schedule if we don't dine spot on six o'clock). With a deep sigh, I postponed the Kagayaki's debut until such time as I could come home early from work.
Yesterday, I rinsed it, soaked it as per requirements (three hours exactly, since it is neither summer nor winter), and cooked it until it was done. I should interject here that I have a fantastic, fool-proof, completely awesome method for rice cookery, taught to me by my Tokyo Guru (let's call her 'Naoko', since that is her real name). Naoko believes (somewhat unusually for a Japanese cook) that electric rice cookers are the devil's playthings, and instead taught me always to use the stove and a round-bottomed, slope-sided, glass-covered pot. I have done so for the last fifteen years with perfect results every time. With glass you can tell when you've reached boilage (the signal to turn the heat down to a low simmer) and, later on, you can tell when all the water has been absorbed (the signal to turn off the heat and let the pot sit for fifteen minutes or so) - all without removing the lid and letting precious steam escape. The rounded bottom means that rice grains don't get stuck in the corners and dry out too much.
My rice pot (it's actually a large saucier, I think) has Emeril's name on it and, grateful for the cunningness of its design and transparency of its lid, I forgive the Bam-man everything. The pan proved its value yet again during my latest escapade, since the rice bag's instructions were maddeningly vague as to how long the cooking time should be. I'm guessing this imprecision is but one more unfortunate result of climate change, but at least the glass lid prevented it from wreaking havoc on my dinner.
The resulting rice was nutty and toothsome, a bit more assertive than the traditional white variety but none the worse for that. I found that it helped if I didn't think of it as sushi rice, which has a softer, utterly uniform texture. Where the brown rice really shone was underneath leftovers for lunch today, when I microwaved some of the original batch under a ladleful of heavily spiced chicken stew. Where normally I would be craving thick bread for moppage purposes, I found the rice did a perfect job of soaking up the nourishing richness. I won't serve brown rice with steamed fish or as an accompaniment to minimalist Japanese dishes, but it will make an excellent anti-bread foil for thick stews and braises this winter. Luckily enough, that's just what I was going for.
The gluten-free loaf can stay in the freezer for now.
Next up: I attempt to take an attractive picture of a bowl of brown rice.
Showing posts with label Mitsuwa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mitsuwa. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
Salmagundi
Item One
Profiteroles were in the news this past weekend, with three out of five contestants on the Next Iron Chef opting to make a croquembouche for their chocolate-inspired wedding-worthy dessert. I watched the ensuing fiasco with not a little satisfaction, knowing that my own gluten-free boules are at least as attractive as - and possibly texturally superior to - those produced by Chefs Tsai, Canora, and Caswell (definitely more attractive than Chef Canora's, which looked like demoralized and deflated golf balls when they came out of the oven). This is the second time I have been ahead of the curve, the first being when I outpaced Chef Dumont in my knowledge of xanthan gum and its wily ways. I have decided the Chairman could save himself a great deal of time and aggravation by halting his search and crowning me the next Iron Chef without further ado - it would be a doubly appropriate choice, given the fact that I spend much of my working day surrounded by great hulking piles of metal.
Item Two
Sir has been summoned to Tokyo once again, leaving the Kid Squid and me languishing at home, raking leaves and plowing through algebra homework. As a penalty for his desertion, I am requiring that he present himself at the Ginza branch of Laduree in order to purchase some macarons as my consolation prize. I have already visited the website to choose the flavors I shall require in my Boite Prestige: jasmine mango; bergamot; rose; pistachio; black currant violet; chestnut; and lemon cedrat should do nicely for a start. I will not stand in need of licorice, coconut, or mint, which is bound to make Sir's life easier. I did not know previously that Laduree lay claim to the invention of the macaron, which they attribute to one Pierre Desfontaines, cousin of the Great Man Himself. I was also unaware that they age their macarons for two days before presenting them for sale, as this holding period is deemed necessary for a 'perfect balance of texture and flavour'. This spells disaster for Toad and me, as we will this weekend be obliged to eat at least some of ours - for quality control purposes - immediately upon fabrication.
Item Three
At long last, I have been able to make my semi-annual pilgrimage to Mitsuwa, where I stocked up on a wide variety of gluten-free pantry staples, including five bags of good sushi rice, three different varieties of naturally-brewed shoyu (which I have decided is gluten-free); two kinds of organic tamari; sesame oil, mirin, rice vinegar, and lots of other goodies. I always make it a point to buy something I've never tried before, and on this visit it was a packet of goma dofu, a tofu-like substance made from white sesame seeds, water, and kuzu (or kudzu).
I had some for lunch today. It tasted like a very gelatinous peanut-butter pudding, and the sticky sweet miso helpfully provided as an accompaniment only served to heighten its strangeness. I was just getting ready to declare it not worth the calories when I discovered I'd eaten the whole thing. Such is often the way with Japanese delicacies, I find. They grow on you.
During subsequent research, I ascertained that goma dofu has a long and noble history and is, in fact, an artifact of Shojin Ryori, the vegan cuisine perfected by Buddhist monks. Kuzu, it turns out, is an awesome gluten-free thickener that I will be trying at the first available opportunity - although any temptation to grow it in my own garden is tempered by the warning implicit in the pea-cousin's moniker 'the foot-a-night vine' or 'the vine that ate the South'.
Item Four
On my way home from Mitzuwa (keeping an eagle-eye out for some Real Housewives - alas, they must all have been getting manicures in Paterson that day), I made a short detour to the Fort Lee, NJ branch of Whole Foods. As difficult as it may be for readers to believe, I had never before stepped into one of these organic warehouse giants, as none has yet been built within forty-five miles of my domicile. I thought I would see if they had any brands of gluten-free baking flour I might try, and possibly some g/f soba, which was conspicuouslyy absent from Mitsuwa's shelves. What riches! Two new kinds of baking mix, plus bags of buckwheat flour and sweet chestnut flour (I predict that galettes de Bretagne and crepes aux marrons are in our future). Also, I saw several different types of boxed cake preparations that I thought looked intriguing.
Readers have been telling me to stop pounding my head against the wall and go ahead and invest in some box mixes already. Hitherto, my response has been, 'If I didn't use cakes from a box before, why on earth would I now?'
The ingredients on the labels were suitably natural, organic and virtuous, so I chose two - lemon and chocolate/cayenne - for trial. I also bought a box of g/f pie crust mix, since Thanksgiving is coming and there's only so much a girl can do, right? I will report back on these gluten-free labor-savers in due course.
Oh - and Whole Foods had the soba I was looking for, too.
Profiteroles were in the news this past weekend, with three out of five contestants on the Next Iron Chef opting to make a croquembouche for their chocolate-inspired wedding-worthy dessert. I watched the ensuing fiasco with not a little satisfaction, knowing that my own gluten-free boules are at least as attractive as - and possibly texturally superior to - those produced by Chefs Tsai, Canora, and Caswell (definitely more attractive than Chef Canora's, which looked like demoralized and deflated golf balls when they came out of the oven). This is the second time I have been ahead of the curve, the first being when I outpaced Chef Dumont in my knowledge of xanthan gum and its wily ways. I have decided the Chairman could save himself a great deal of time and aggravation by halting his search and crowning me the next Iron Chef without further ado - it would be a doubly appropriate choice, given the fact that I spend much of my working day surrounded by great hulking piles of metal.
Item Two
Sir has been summoned to Tokyo once again, leaving the Kid Squid and me languishing at home, raking leaves and plowing through algebra homework. As a penalty for his desertion, I am requiring that he present himself at the Ginza branch of Laduree in order to purchase some macarons as my consolation prize. I have already visited the website to choose the flavors I shall require in my Boite Prestige: jasmine mango; bergamot; rose; pistachio; black currant violet; chestnut; and lemon cedrat should do nicely for a start. I will not stand in need of licorice, coconut, or mint, which is bound to make Sir's life easier. I did not know previously that Laduree lay claim to the invention of the macaron, which they attribute to one Pierre Desfontaines, cousin of the Great Man Himself. I was also unaware that they age their macarons for two days before presenting them for sale, as this holding period is deemed necessary for a 'perfect balance of texture and flavour'. This spells disaster for Toad and me, as we will this weekend be obliged to eat at least some of ours - for quality control purposes - immediately upon fabrication.
Item Three
At long last, I have been able to make my semi-annual pilgrimage to Mitsuwa, where I stocked up on a wide variety of gluten-free pantry staples, including five bags of good sushi rice, three different varieties of naturally-brewed shoyu (which I have decided is gluten-free); two kinds of organic tamari; sesame oil, mirin, rice vinegar, and lots of other goodies. I always make it a point to buy something I've never tried before, and on this visit it was a packet of goma dofu, a tofu-like substance made from white sesame seeds, water, and kuzu (or kudzu).
 |
| My Mitsuwa haul: the goma dofu is the upright white packet in the middle |
During subsequent research, I ascertained that goma dofu has a long and noble history and is, in fact, an artifact of Shojin Ryori, the vegan cuisine perfected by Buddhist monks. Kuzu, it turns out, is an awesome gluten-free thickener that I will be trying at the first available opportunity - although any temptation to grow it in my own garden is tempered by the warning implicit in the pea-cousin's moniker 'the foot-a-night vine' or 'the vine that ate the South'.
Item Four
On my way home from Mitzuwa (keeping an eagle-eye out for some Real Housewives - alas, they must all have been getting manicures in Paterson that day), I made a short detour to the Fort Lee, NJ branch of Whole Foods. As difficult as it may be for readers to believe, I had never before stepped into one of these organic warehouse giants, as none has yet been built within forty-five miles of my domicile. I thought I would see if they had any brands of gluten-free baking flour I might try, and possibly some g/f soba, which was conspicuouslyy absent from Mitsuwa's shelves. What riches! Two new kinds of baking mix, plus bags of buckwheat flour and sweet chestnut flour (I predict that galettes de Bretagne and crepes aux marrons are in our future). Also, I saw several different types of boxed cake preparations that I thought looked intriguing.
Readers have been telling me to stop pounding my head against the wall and go ahead and invest in some box mixes already. Hitherto, my response has been, 'If I didn't use cakes from a box before, why on earth would I now?'
The ingredients on the labels were suitably natural, organic and virtuous, so I chose two - lemon and chocolate/cayenne - for trial. I also bought a box of g/f pie crust mix, since Thanksgiving is coming and there's only so much a girl can do, right? I will report back on these gluten-free labor-savers in due course.
Oh - and Whole Foods had the soba I was looking for, too.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Here Today and Gone Tamari
Campers, I have exciting new information on the tamari front!
Yesterday, relying heavily on my big yellow kanji dictionary, I was able to deduce that wheat was indeed absent from the bottle of organic tamari sent to me by one of Sir's concerned Tokyo colleagues. I played around with the condiment for some time, inventing a tasty marinade and creating some original art in the process. I was quite satisfied by my efforts and retired contentedly for the evening.
This morning in my Inbox I found a message from Said Colleague, who had helpfully translated most of the label for me during the night (or during the day - I find it is extremely difficult to get my head around a thirteen-hour time difference). It turns out the label is packed with informational goodies of which I was previously ignorant, including not just the ingredients (organic soybeans and table salt among them), but also the use-by date and the manufacturer-recommended holding strategy. With so many of the difficult characters accounted for, I was able to see for myself that the bottle contained 360 milliliters of salty soy spirit.
What joy! This knowledge will be invaluable during my next Mitsuwa pilgrimage, when I will be able to read labels with the confidence of an old hand.
I also have more news to share about soba, which was proving an etymological challenge yesterday. My dictionary is written in tiny lettering on very fine paper, but having retrieved my reading glasses from their super-secret hiding place (super-secret because I can never remember where it is), I was able to solve the mystery. The suffix ba is the grain character that is pronounced mugi in the Japanese words for wheat and barley. The prefix is so (pronounced kyou in other contexts) which means buckwheat. So the characters literally mean buckwheat grain. I find this revealing, because it means that the ancient Japanese (unlike The Nutritionist) understood that buckwheat is its own particular thing in and of itself, rather than a gluten-filled cereal to be described in relation to wheat or barley (small grain or great grain, respectively). Isn't that interesting?
Here is a funny fact that you can can use as an ice-breaker at gala holiday events in the coming months. Because soba is a homonym for the word meaning 'next to' or 'nearby', buckwheat noodles are the traditional Japanese house-warming gift for welcoming new neighbours. It's a pun - get it? You can imagine, I'm sure, the impact my erudition has on lively party conversations.
Of course, this is all mere academic fluffery since soba are only about 80% gluten-free buckwheat flour, with the remaining binding provided by wheat flour. One hundred percent g/f varieties do exist, however, which I will be searching out at Mitsuwa, armed as I now am with all the labelling information I require.
I foresee a trip in November.
Yesterday, relying heavily on my big yellow kanji dictionary, I was able to deduce that wheat was indeed absent from the bottle of organic tamari sent to me by one of Sir's concerned Tokyo colleagues. I played around with the condiment for some time, inventing a tasty marinade and creating some original art in the process. I was quite satisfied by my efforts and retired contentedly for the evening.
This morning in my Inbox I found a message from Said Colleague, who had helpfully translated most of the label for me during the night (or during the day - I find it is extremely difficult to get my head around a thirteen-hour time difference). It turns out the label is packed with informational goodies of which I was previously ignorant, including not just the ingredients (organic soybeans and table salt among them), but also the use-by date and the manufacturer-recommended holding strategy. With so many of the difficult characters accounted for, I was able to see for myself that the bottle contained 360 milliliters of salty soy spirit.
What joy! This knowledge will be invaluable during my next Mitsuwa pilgrimage, when I will be able to read labels with the confidence of an old hand.
I also have more news to share about soba, which was proving an etymological challenge yesterday. My dictionary is written in tiny lettering on very fine paper, but having retrieved my reading glasses from their super-secret hiding place (super-secret because I can never remember where it is), I was able to solve the mystery. The suffix ba is the grain character that is pronounced mugi in the Japanese words for wheat and barley. The prefix is so (pronounced kyou in other contexts) which means buckwheat. So the characters literally mean buckwheat grain. I find this revealing, because it means that the ancient Japanese (unlike The Nutritionist) understood that buckwheat is its own particular thing in and of itself, rather than a gluten-filled cereal to be described in relation to wheat or barley (small grain or great grain, respectively). Isn't that interesting?
Here is a funny fact that you can can use as an ice-breaker at gala holiday events in the coming months. Because soba is a homonym for the word meaning 'next to' or 'nearby', buckwheat noodles are the traditional Japanese house-warming gift for welcoming new neighbours. It's a pun - get it? You can imagine, I'm sure, the impact my erudition has on lively party conversations.
Of course, this is all mere academic fluffery since soba are only about 80% gluten-free buckwheat flour, with the remaining binding provided by wheat flour. One hundred percent g/f varieties do exist, however, which I will be searching out at Mitsuwa, armed as I now am with all the labelling information I require.
I foresee a trip in November.
Friday, October 15, 2010
There is No Joy in Soy-ville
Readers are no doubt in a frenzy of anticipation waiting for my weekly discussion of Just Desserts. What can I say after Wednesday's episode? There really doesn't seem to be any point: it was far more Project Runway than Top Chef, with one of the only food-related comments I can recall coming from Pompadour about Eric's 'damn good' cheesecake. The rest was just silliness.
It would be far more profitable (and therapeutic) to discuss my latest crisis, which started on Tuesday when I was contemplating the leftovers from Saturday's gala dinner. What to do with quite tasty, although small and irregularly-shaped, grilled pork-loin bits? A stir-fry! I went to reach for my trusty bottle of naturally-fermented Japanese shoyu to begin preparations and was taken aback to find none in the pantry.
This in and of itself qualifies as An Event. I am never without several bottles of soy sauce, inscrutably labeled in Japanese calligraphy and wrapped in handcrafted rice paper, purchased on my bi-annual trips to Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ. Readers may think that my penchant for international food is limited to French pastry - but let me make it clear that if forced to choose my desert island cuisine or what I want for my last meal, I'll go Japanese every time. Mitsuwa, just south of the GW Bridge, is my temple. It's a life-changing Japanese supermarket that has to be seen to be believed: foodies who have not yet made the pilgrimage are urged to do so without delay. In addition to $70 musk melons and authentic wasabi rhizomes (more expensive than caviar) they offer a fine selection of good Californian sushi rice, beautiful fresh fish and beef for sukiyaki, every kind of natto and kamaboko you can imagine, and endless aisles devoted to sake and shochu.
What with one thing or another, my Fall trip has been postponed several times with the tragic outcome that my kitchen shelves are disturbingly low on rice and furikake. And shoyu.
The unfortunate result? I had to go to my local Wegman's and buy supermarket soy sauce to tide me over until my next trip east on Route 80. There I stood in the Asian food aisle. What imp of the perverse caused me to read the labels on all those bottles of Kikkoman and Wegman's own soy sauce? What was I looking for? Maybe it's just habit these days, because soy sauce couldn't possibly have gluten in it, could it?
Wise readers will already have guessed the truth.
I am the last person on the planet to discover that soy sauce is made from wheat.
Sigh. There it was, on every bottle's ingredients list - right after soy beans, right before salt. Every bottle! I felt like I'd been bludgeoned right upside the head by a large sashimi tuna. I ran to the gluten-free aisle, seeing in my mind's eye about 60% of my working-week dinner repertoire scattered to the four winds. After all, what's simpler and more go-to than a nice slice of lean protein, grilled, with some sort of soy-sauce based glaze or sauce? Once again, catastrophe. Nothing labelled gluten-free soy sauce anywhere in the whole freaking place.
I entertained the vain hope that only crass American soy sauce has wheat in it and put in an emergency phone call to Sir, who is still in Tokyo. He agreed to do some research and get back to me. Was there ever a more dispiriting subject line in an e-mail than 'Not Good'? Not in my universe. Sir's Japanese contacts had informed him (rather pityingly, I suspect) that all shoyu is made from wheat: they even taught him the kanji for wheat (komugi, which literally reads 'little barley', interestingly enough) so he could go and harass the shopgirls at the Isetan food hall on my behalf. No joy there either, although Sir reported with great satisfaction that the shop assistants were lithe and lovely and ever-so-helpful.
I did what I always do in these situations and ran to the internet. Several restorative cups of tea later, I had a few answers. Wheat, it turns out, is integral to the brewing of most true soy sauce, which is made by fermenting soy beans and crushed roasted wheat together with salt and water. Tamari, a very old variety, isn't generally made with wheat (it's a product of hacho miso production) but only gaijin use it like soy sauce, as in Japan its overly strong salty flavor is used almost exclusively in Kyoto's kaiseki cuisine. Of the factory-produced soy sauce one buys in five-gallon drums (produced from acid-hydrolized de-fatted soy flour; caramel coloring; and corn syrup) the less said the better.
How was it possible I had not previously heard the news? Well, as I said earlier, the labels on my soy sauce bottles are authentically kanji-fied and thus a mystery to anybody who hasn't attended 6th grade in a Japanese elementary school. I was pretty sure The Nutritionist had not discussed soy sauce at our meeting, although since The Table went into the circular file after the whisky debacle I was unable to confirm. I went to the admirable cookbook the Diva sent me, which has a whole Asian chapter, to see what it had to say. In its discussion of Asian ingredients, I'm sorry to report it was less than authoritative: 'There are several brands of soy sauce that are certified gluten-free.' Well, that doesn't tell me anything! Just because something isn't certified doesn't mean it isn't gluten-free (viz. the whisky debacle). Plus, a minute's research into international food labelling regulations revealed that, in Japan, the gluten-free certification is virtually unknown. I thought I detected a whiff of double-talk and intentional ambiguity.
I subsequently launched myself headlong into a meta-analysis of internet soy-sauce resources that lasted well into the wee hours. I followed several tantalizing clues, went down many blind alleys, and finally came to a conclusion with which I can live (just as my Excel plot predicted). But that will have to wait for another day.
Next up: I expose a conspiracy perpetrated by fear-mongering American tamari manufacturers.
It would be far more profitable (and therapeutic) to discuss my latest crisis, which started on Tuesday when I was contemplating the leftovers from Saturday's gala dinner. What to do with quite tasty, although small and irregularly-shaped, grilled pork-loin bits? A stir-fry! I went to reach for my trusty bottle of naturally-fermented Japanese shoyu to begin preparations and was taken aback to find none in the pantry.
This in and of itself qualifies as An Event. I am never without several bottles of soy sauce, inscrutably labeled in Japanese calligraphy and wrapped in handcrafted rice paper, purchased on my bi-annual trips to Mitsuwa in Edgewater, NJ. Readers may think that my penchant for international food is limited to French pastry - but let me make it clear that if forced to choose my desert island cuisine or what I want for my last meal, I'll go Japanese every time. Mitsuwa, just south of the GW Bridge, is my temple. It's a life-changing Japanese supermarket that has to be seen to be believed: foodies who have not yet made the pilgrimage are urged to do so without delay. In addition to $70 musk melons and authentic wasabi rhizomes (more expensive than caviar) they offer a fine selection of good Californian sushi rice, beautiful fresh fish and beef for sukiyaki, every kind of natto and kamaboko you can imagine, and endless aisles devoted to sake and shochu.
What with one thing or another, my Fall trip has been postponed several times with the tragic outcome that my kitchen shelves are disturbingly low on rice and furikake. And shoyu.
The unfortunate result? I had to go to my local Wegman's and buy supermarket soy sauce to tide me over until my next trip east on Route 80. There I stood in the Asian food aisle. What imp of the perverse caused me to read the labels on all those bottles of Kikkoman and Wegman's own soy sauce? What was I looking for? Maybe it's just habit these days, because soy sauce couldn't possibly have gluten in it, could it?
Wise readers will already have guessed the truth.
I am the last person on the planet to discover that soy sauce is made from wheat.
Sigh. There it was, on every bottle's ingredients list - right after soy beans, right before salt. Every bottle! I felt like I'd been bludgeoned right upside the head by a large sashimi tuna. I ran to the gluten-free aisle, seeing in my mind's eye about 60% of my working-week dinner repertoire scattered to the four winds. After all, what's simpler and more go-to than a nice slice of lean protein, grilled, with some sort of soy-sauce based glaze or sauce? Once again, catastrophe. Nothing labelled gluten-free soy sauce anywhere in the whole freaking place.
I entertained the vain hope that only crass American soy sauce has wheat in it and put in an emergency phone call to Sir, who is still in Tokyo. He agreed to do some research and get back to me. Was there ever a more dispiriting subject line in an e-mail than 'Not Good'? Not in my universe. Sir's Japanese contacts had informed him (rather pityingly, I suspect) that all shoyu is made from wheat: they even taught him the kanji for wheat (komugi, which literally reads 'little barley', interestingly enough) so he could go and harass the shopgirls at the Isetan food hall on my behalf. No joy there either, although Sir reported with great satisfaction that the shop assistants were lithe and lovely and ever-so-helpful.
I did what I always do in these situations and ran to the internet. Several restorative cups of tea later, I had a few answers. Wheat, it turns out, is integral to the brewing of most true soy sauce, which is made by fermenting soy beans and crushed roasted wheat together with salt and water. Tamari, a very old variety, isn't generally made with wheat (it's a product of hacho miso production) but only gaijin use it like soy sauce, as in Japan its overly strong salty flavor is used almost exclusively in Kyoto's kaiseki cuisine. Of the factory-produced soy sauce one buys in five-gallon drums (produced from acid-hydrolized de-fatted soy flour; caramel coloring; and corn syrup) the less said the better.
How was it possible I had not previously heard the news? Well, as I said earlier, the labels on my soy sauce bottles are authentically kanji-fied and thus a mystery to anybody who hasn't attended 6th grade in a Japanese elementary school. I was pretty sure The Nutritionist had not discussed soy sauce at our meeting, although since The Table went into the circular file after the whisky debacle I was unable to confirm. I went to the admirable cookbook the Diva sent me, which has a whole Asian chapter, to see what it had to say. In its discussion of Asian ingredients, I'm sorry to report it was less than authoritative: 'There are several brands of soy sauce that are certified gluten-free.' Well, that doesn't tell me anything! Just because something isn't certified doesn't mean it isn't gluten-free (viz. the whisky debacle). Plus, a minute's research into international food labelling regulations revealed that, in Japan, the gluten-free certification is virtually unknown. I thought I detected a whiff of double-talk and intentional ambiguity.
I subsequently launched myself headlong into a meta-analysis of internet soy-sauce resources that lasted well into the wee hours. I followed several tantalizing clues, went down many blind alleys, and finally came to a conclusion with which I can live (just as my Excel plot predicted). But that will have to wait for another day.
Next up: I expose a conspiracy perpetrated by fear-mongering American tamari manufacturers.
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