DUKE & MISO

Day 2 - we spent 6 hours on 2 major pillars of Japanese cuisine ... the marinated and pickled food category and, making Miso from scratch which not that many, even at home, do anymore as one can get a huge selection of this staple anywhere.

Duke or Zuke means 'marinate' but it generally refers to the thousands of pickled items to accompany plain rice, or noodles or anything else, really. The essential 'catch all' ingredients are; rice vinegar, salt, sugar, sake, mirin, soya sauce and miso paste of variety. Combining them in different ways will yield significantly different tastes.  According to Sensei, the older generation can live on pickled foods alone, with rice.

*  Matsumae Duke : julienne of dry squid, Konbu, carrots in soya sauce
*  Nuka Zuke : pickles in brine & fermented rice bran
*  Kyuri no Asaduke : cucumbers pickled in salt, with Shiso leaves & sesame
*  Daikon no Tsukemono : Dikon pickled in vinegar & sugar

As for Miso it is a long process even though the classic ingredients are just soya beans (1.2 kg) Koji or Japanese yeast (1 kg) and salt (450 gm or 500 gm in the summer months) ... that is all, but it will take months before one can start using the end product. 3 categories generally ie Shiro or White Miso; Brown Miso and Aka or Red Miso.  It is another staple applied to many recipes but for today we only used it on fish - Sakana no Saikyo Duke, on another sauteed chicken dish and of course, to make Miso soup.