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Pickled Vegetables
Daikon (White Japanese radish) prepared and hung to dry before pickling. 99.10.18/ Temperature: 2C/ Weather: Partly cloudy/Wind Direction: NE
Start:Kiyota , Sapporo / Latitude 43 01 52 N /Longitude 141 21 09 E
Destination: Tokiwa, Sapporo / Latitude: 42 56 01 N / Longitude: 141 20 29 E
Distance Traveled: 17 kmGrowing up in New York where few people pickle vegetables and being so used to seeing tsukemono (pickled vegetables) year-round at the super market and in restaurants in Tokyo, I have never felt the tsukemono season like I did today.
After resting for three days in Sapporo, my rested body and me got back on the road. The change of scenery leaving the city occurred very quickly. Big buildings, convenience stores, and cluttered streets from this morning seem quite distant. Young beech and Japanese oak forests surrounded me.
Just as squirrels collect acorns, people have their own creative ways of preparing food for the long winter. As I learned today, autumn in much of Japan is a time to prepare tsukemono.
A women peels daikon, preparing it for nishinzuke. Several rows of daikon were tied together to a post with rice-straw, their tops all cut off. The daikon dangled, drying in the cool breeze and sun. The small garden from which they came rested in the front yard of a fairly new house.
"We usually plant our daikon in August. I just harvested and put them out to dry today," said the middle-aged mother whom I spoke with. "Back in the old days we ate a lot of Takuwan (Japanese radish pickled with salt and rice bran) but I have recently started pickling daikon in brown rice, malt and sugar. It tastes better to me so I make it instead of takuwan. Once I make up this batch, it will last through the winter," the woman told me.
Further down the road I happened upon another woman preparing daikon. She peeled the giant daikon in brisk strokes with a peeler. Two plastic tubs behind her were filled with fresh vegetables, one with daikon and the other with Chinese cabbage . "I am going to pickle these with dried herring cabbage," she told me. Apparently, this pickle dish, "nishinzuke," is a dish unique to Hokkaido. Even if the dish freezes, it can still be eaten unlike many other tsukemono. "I will also pickle the Chinese cabbage, preparing it like Korean kimuchi (spicy pickled Chinese cabbage)."
Concrete stubs slow the flow of a small stream in Nishioka, Sapporo. Having only covered a few kilometers of Japan's entire length, I came across tsukemono made to suit both tastes and needs of particular location. These preferences in taste and the particular conditions of different geographical regions have created quite a variety of innovations here alone. There are sure to be endless ways to preserve food throughout Japan and worldwide.
Please share with us the tastes in your region and the wisdom that it takes to create and preserve that particular taste.
Greg
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