food×reflection : Dining #01
An Evening of Cooking & Eating in Harmony with Nature on Awaji Island
Photographs by Tom Miyagawa Coulton & Kanae Yokoyama
On a blissful evening in early October, the members of food×reflection, a group of Awaji Island food professionals, hosted a dinner on Ohama Beach in Sumoto City, with funding provided by the Hyogo prefectural government. It was the first in a series of activities the group plans to hold with the aim to reimagine the food culture of Awaji Island by reflecting on its ancient past and possible future.
The largest island in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, Awaji Island is known for the quality and diversity of the sea, agricultural, and artisanal foods it produces. So much so that it’s called Japan’s “Shoku no Shima,” which means “Food Island.” (See related story.) In recent years, Awaji Island has also become a food destination. For the young people who’ve moved there for the island’s quality of life. And for visitors, thanks to the efforts of a new generation of local chefs who’ve opened restaurants, cafes, and bars that feature the island’s foods and creative ways of preparing and enjoying them.
The inaugural event was led by Yukinori Itsubo, chef-owner of L’Isoletta restaurant, Masaaki Nishimura, ceramic artist, Yusuke Hotta, food pioneer and explorer, and Yusuke Tomita, founder of Farm Studio, a cafe and shared community work space.
Titled “Dining #01,” the meal was a combination of cooking class, picnic in a pine forest, beach barbecue, and stroll through nature with a cup of tea in hand, wrapped in the form of a Japanese cha-kaiseki, the traditional meal of three side dishes, rice, and soup that accompanies the formal tea ceremony. Loosely wrapped, so that the meal was no longer a near-religious experience of taking communion with nature through the preparation and drinking of matcha green tea, but a celebration of Awaji Island’s foods, the act of creating new flavors through the art of cooking, and eating as nature’s blessing.
The dinner was held outdoors as were tea gatherings some 1,400 years ago rather than in a tea room, as they are today. The roji, or “dewy garden path,” whose function in the tea ceremony is to create a transition from the materialism and cares of the world to the enjoyment of food and the appreciation of nature, was a walk along Ohama Beach’s public boardwalk from the meeting place at L’Isoletta restaurant across the street.
Once at dinner, the guests were literally immersed in the fields and forests of Awaji Island. Wild flowers and leaves were strewn across the table, wound around the beams of our rustic pavilion, and embedded in the glass partitions that separated one another in these COVID-19 times.
The view was the horizon of the Kii Channel and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Earth, water, and air—the foundational elements of food. A meditative, reflective scene that made one think of Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto’s famous series of “Seascape” pictures and his words that “seascapes are the only scenery that, in the modern world, one still shares with the ancients.”
First Ju-Bako Box
Ichi no Ju : 一の重
The meal was served in a ju-bako set of picnic boxes, which were specially made by ceramicist Masaaki Nishimura, as were all the dishes used that night.
The first course, the top layer of the ju-bako, which is traditionally filled with an array of artfully composed, small seasonal dishes, was more simply filled with fresh, seasonal vegetables and local delicacies, including shirasu baby anchovies, a selection of cheeses, and tiny pancakes made from rice flour and grated radishes.
The guests were instructed on how to create the dish themselves. Called O-Ae, it was a type of ae-mono, one of the oldest kinds of dishes in Japan. An ae-mono is a dish in which a paste is typically made from seeds and vegetables and used to dress other seasonal vegetables and foods. “Dress” is not quite the right word for an ae-mono, which loosely means a “meeting of things.” The paste doesn’t dress the other foods; it combines with them to create special new flavors.
Selecting handfuls of whatever one liked from among the twenty-two different kinds of flowers and leafy greens surrounding us, they were pounded and ground them into vibrant green pastes together with rape seeds, black sesame seeds, white miso, and fromage fraîche using the Stone Age cooking tools of mortar (the corrugated underside of the lid of the ju-bako) and pestle (a rustic hunk of tree branch). Each paste had its own unique taste of nature. Each combination of paste and food in the ju-bako was its own unique flavor experience.
Second Ju-Bako box
Ni no Ju : 二の重
The next course moved up the evolutionary ladder of cooking, and Chef Yukinori Itsubo prepared the foods using fire. He served charcoal-grilled Ai-Gamo Duck with a roasted mandarin orange sauce. Ai-Gamo are ducks raised from hatchlings by local organic farmers in the winter to be let loose in their fields in spring to eat the pests and fertilize the soil with their droppings, and then eaten, very gratefully, with the harvest in autumn. The duck was accompanied by grilled chestnut risotto, which could have just as easily been called a Japanese yaki-onigiri (grilled rice ball).
Bowl
Wan : 椀
The final dish was Wan, which means “bowl.” A bowl of clear soup is considered the most sophisticated dish in Japanese cuisine; the measure of a cook’s talents. It aims to capture the spirit of the foods from which it was made, which are then discarded except for a morsel or two.
The Wan was a shrimp and tomato broth served with skewers of shrimp that were lightly garnished with fromage fraîche curd mixed with fresh herbs. It was a deeply rich-tasting, reflection pool of nature’s goodness from sea and land. The bowl was designed by Masaaki so that one had to wrap one’s hands around its base and bring the bowl to one’s mouth in a gesture similar to that of prayer. The show of gratitude in the movement equating to the word “Itadakimasu” uttered at Japanese meals, which means “I gratefully receive.” A statement of thanks to nature.
Black Soy Bean Tea
Kuro-Mame Cha : 黒豆茶
At the end of the meal, roasted black soy bean tea was served in cups that were modeled by Masaaki after old Japanese salt boxes with a large middle bowl and narrow mouth to keep the tea warm. He added Western-style handles to make them easier to hold. Cups in hand, the guests finished the evening by walking along the beach, admiring the scenery and sunset, feeling refreshed, inspired, and deeply satisfied.
The evening was a success from the perspective that eating, according to Japan’s food culture, should fill you with the same joy and contentment that you feel when you take a walk through nature. It was also an insight in the fundamentals of cooking and eating: making a dish from what is at hand and without a recipe, eating dishes that combined all kinds of ingredients across a range of cooking techniques and culinary styles, and enjoying them in a variety of ways,
The hosts for the evening (from left to right):
Yukinori Itsubo, chef-owner of L’Isoletta Restaurant and Bar Via Costa; voted one of the top 100 chefs in Japan by the Japan Food Journal.
Yusuke Tomita, creator of Farm Studio, a cafe, shared workspace, and community gathering place.
Yusuke Hotta, food explorer, pioneer, and host of YouTube Kitchen.
Masaaki Nishimura, ceramic artist, Raku-ware pottery master, and proprietor of gallery and cafe Rakutogama.