Livin' La Vida Local (Produce)

Living in a more rural area of Japan means you get up close and personal with the local agricultural industry. Here in my town the place is full of ricefields and plots of fertile land filled with cucumbers, corn, cabbages, leeks, apples, pears and mandarins. The people here take farming seriously too, going so far as to incorporate vegetable farming into the syllabus at elementary school level.

It so happened that my time at the elementary schools here coincided with the harvest season for a multitude of produce, so I was given an armful of fruit and vegetables before I finished my last days there. It's really nice to know that the staff think of you when you go home with a daikon radish, sweet potato, apples and quinces in the boot of your car.

One school in particular was surrounded by ginkgo trees, so I was given a bag of ginkgo nuts as a souvenir, as well as instructions for cooking and eating them. I was told to wrap them in baking paper and nuke them in the microwave until I heard them pop like corn. Specifically, they were ready to eat after two pops, no more, no less. I have to admit, the method really works, especially with small batches laid out in a single layer. Sure there are a few that don't get cooked through (I wouldn't eat those; the raw nuts are poisonous), but those that are well done are really quite good to eat. Not to mention of course that cooking them kills off the butyric acid component in the shells which makes the raw nuts smell somewhat pukey.

I still had a large batch of ginkgos left after experimenting with them, so I decided to try something out. There's a popular rice dish in Japan called kamameshi, literally "pot rice", similar to claypot rice in Chinese cuisine. The supermarkets here sell kamameshi kits, but I decided to do it the hard way from scratch (would you have expected anything less? ^^), using the ginkgo nuts as a star ingredient. The following original recipe for Ginkgo and Shiitake Kamameshi is reproduced here for my own reference, so I don't forget what proportions of seasonings and stuff I used.


Serves 3-4

2 cups rice (Japanese short grain, standard 180ml rice measure)
1/2 cup ginkgo nuts, nuked, shelled, peeled
3 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked and cubed
1 150g pkt sansai (edible wild vegetables), rinsed and drained well
1/2 carrot, cut into matchsticks
150g chicken momo (dark meat from the thigh and drumstick), diced and marinated
2 inch piece konbu soaked with mushrooms

stock:
liquid from soaking mushrooms and konbu
4 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin
1 slightly rounded tbsp dashi powder
salt to taste
water

marinade (all amounts to taste):
soy sauce
salt
pepper
sesame oil

cooking oil

1. Discard soaked konbu. Combine ingredients for stock and add to rice in a rice cooker, topping up with an appropriate amount of water if necessary. Mix well.

2. Scatter ginkgos, mushrooms, sansai and carrot on top of the rice. Do not mix.

3. Saute marinated chicken on high heat with a little oil. Drain and add to the vegetables in the rice cooker. Cover with a circle of greaseproof paper (a cartouche, for you technical minded people out there) if using a small cooker.

4. Turn on the rice cooker. Once the kamameshi is cooked, remove the paper, mix the rice, and return to the cooker for an extra 10 minutes. Serve hot.

As I mentioned above, some of the ginkgo nuts don't get cooked enough on the first go. It's okay here though, since they get cooked a second time with the rice. I found that the rice itself was a little on the moist side, on account of the vegetables and mushrooms adding extra liquid to the pot. I might reduce the water a little the next time I try this so that the rice isn't too mushy. I might also remove the skin from the chicken to cut down on the fat, but that'd be no fun, would it?

Anyway, the finished product actually tasted alright for a first try:


The salad in the background was made of the daikon I got from school, served with wakame seaweed and shiso (perilla) flavoured dressing. Since I live in peony town, I thought I might cut the daikon to look somewhat like the local speciality:


The orange tinge is from a few drops of raayu (chilli oil), which gives the daikon a tasty kick.

I kinda wish the junior high schools I'm at grew their own vegetables too, but methinks I shall have to settle for the local supermarkets. Not a complaint, mind you, the produce here is excellent. I suppose there are advantages to living in the sticks after all ^^

ps: I just got another daikon from school the other day. XD