Picture: Japan’s Cuisine is best known for Sushi – But it is much, much, more.
If you were having a traditional Japanese dinner you would most likely come across a menu comprising boiled rice or gohan, either a suimono soup or a miso soup, nimono or boiled fish, vegetables and meat, yakimono or broiled vegetables, fish and meat, sunomono or vegetables, fish and meat in vinegar, hitashimono or boiled greens in soy sauce, sashimi or sliced raw fish and pickles called koonomono. Usually, the dishes are made from fish and vegetables which are in season.
The dinner typically starts with sunomo and moves on to sashimi, then to a clear soup, a simmered dish, a grilled dish like beef steak, fried dish like tempura and ends with fruit as dessert. The Japanese prefer ending their meals with fresh fruit instead of dessert. The fruit is often carved into beautiful shapes. Bread is less served, however, curry bread is a popular food.
The basis for Japanese cuisine is rice or noodles (such as soba), a soup and okazu, which means dishes that are made from fish, vegetables, tofu or meat. The usual favoring agents are soy sauce, miso and dashi. A typical Japanese meal would therefore comprise a bowl of cooked gohan or white rice, a bowl of soup and different types of okazu and pickles.
Okazu may be eaten raw or cooking by grilling, simmering, steaming, deep-frying, pickling in vinegar or dressed. This is why Japanese cookbooks are based on various cooking methods instead of focusing on ingredients.
Since Japan is an island, seafood is an important part of the diet. Eating meat is a fairly recent phenomenon. You would hardly come across any completely vegetarian dishes.
Noodles are a vital part of Japanese cuisine. They are usually served as an alternative to rice. Traditionally, two types of noodles are eaten – soba and udon. Soba is made from buckwheat flour and udon are wheat noodles.
In a traditional Japanese table setting, you would place a bowl of rice on the left and a bowl of miso soup on your right. Each okazu would be served in individual plates. The okazu would be positioned behind the rice, behind the soup and in the center. Picled vegetables would be placed on the side but are not considered okazu. The chopsticks would be placed close to the diner with the pointed ends facing left. They would be kept on a hashioki or a chopstick rest.
Sake is a rice wine that is considered equivalent to rice. Therefore it is not drunk with rice-based dishes. Sake contains 12 to 20% alcohol is made by fermenting rice.
