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Miso has been so intertwined with our culinary life that I never gave it much thought. In the early years, my mother-in-law was still making her own miso, so we always had some of her homemade miso in the fridge. But our stock miso was Yamaki Jozo’s inaka miso (literally “country miso”). Inaka miso is made from white rice koji, so it is light in color but has the full flavor of a two-year fermentation that Kyoto- style white miso does not.
In our house, miso was just miso; we
never talked varieties and never used
the term “red” miso. In fact, it was not until I started thinking about and writing about Japanese farm food that I began to delve beneath the surface of the hows and whys of traditional Japanese foods. I used to take things at face value: Knowing something was well made was enough; I didn’t need to obsess about exactly how it
Making miso as a community effort gave me self-confidence and a feeling of personal power.
was made. That point of view has changed, though. Many Japanese have lost touch with how traditional foods are made. Consequently, my current mission is to visit the producers of artisanal Japanese foods and share their stories with the Japanese public through my periodic Fuji TV segments.
I also realized that it was simply not enough to gather information. I had to participate in the making of as many of these traditional foods as possible—for the sake of passing on the preservation practices to my sons and future daughters-in-law, and to develop a deeper understanding of the processes. Making miso as a community effort gave me self- confidence and a feeling of personal power. “You can do it!” is a litany I often say to my preschool kids (and to myself). And it is what I want to say to all of you reading this: You can do
it! You can make miso.
Pre-WWII most agrarian families
made their own miso from the rice and soybeans they grew. The koji was obtained from the local koji maker and the salt from the vendor who sold
staples that were not produced at home, such as konbu, katsuobushi, vinegar, and salt. The Kansai area (Kyoto/Osaka) prides itself on a lighter, more delicate cuisine; mountainous and northern areas such as Gifu and Tohoku favor dark misos and deeply flavored foods; whereas Greater Kanto (Tokyo) tends toward a midrange
14 Harvest 2015
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