Editor’s note: In the Taste of Life series, cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.

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For about 20 years until the summer of 2020, Toshiyuki Miura ran Sadakichi, which offered original Japanese cuisine in Tokyo’s Roppongi district.

The restaurant, in the basement of a building, featured a plain wood counter and adopted a “no entry without an introduction” policy.

“I drew on the experiences I gained at the classic bar where I worked when I was young,” says Miura, the 61-year-old chef.

During the 1980s, Miura worked at Bar Radio in Aoyama and trained under the late owner Koji Ozaki, who was called a legendary bartender.

The bar, which attracted artists and other prominent people, was imbued with the aesthetics of the owner, who had profound knowledge of the tea ceremony and flower arrangement.

The young staff were given a varied food and dining education to foster a discerning eye for the authentic, with one being told to dine at top-notch restaurants.

“He was especially strict with me, and I was trained thoroughly in such things as how to use the chopsticks and count the bills,” says Miura.

After he struck out on his own, Miura pursued healthy dishes.

In the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, he began growing vegetables in his hometown of Ina, Nagano Prefecture, to obtain safe and worry-free ingredients.

He would go in his car every week or even twice a week to his garden and began serving the homegrown vegetables at his restaurant.

Miura also hit it off with Yoshinobu Shinmachi, who sells high-quality uncured ham at his shop Salumeria 69 near Seijogakuen-mae Station in Tokyo. The two even held an event together.

When he served pickled Chinese cabbage and home-grown vegetables fermented in rice bran (“nuka-zuke”) with Shinmachi’s ham, which was sliced as thin as 0.1 mm, “a complex blend of umami spread on the tongue, and they went so well together,” the chef says.

The foamed dressing used in this week’s recipe was inspired by this experience.

The key is to use light-flavored oil and juice from a Chinese cabbage that was pickled in salt and underwent lactate fermentation instead of being pickled for a short time (“asa-zuke,” literally shallow pickle).

Fermentation fascinated Miura and he visited Thailand when he learned that the roots of “narezushi” (fermented sushi) and “gyosho” (fish sauce), which had intrigued him for some time, were found in Southeast Asia.

In the inland mountain area, he came across food culture where rice bran and salt were used to preserve food.

The place had a lot in common with south Shinshu and set Miura on a path to re-create the food culture using ingredients from back home.

In 2018, Miura opened a Thai restaurant in Minowamachi, Nagano Prefecture, where he had begun working as a member of a group to cooperate with local revitalization.

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Toshiyuki Miura is a proprietor of a Thai restaurant. While running a Japanese cuisine restaurant serving original dishes in Tokyo, he became fascinated by the food culture of northern and northeastern Thailand and eventually opened Guuut in Minowamachi, Nagano Prefecture, in 2018 to re-create Thai dishes using ingredients from his hometown.

BASIC COOKING METHOD

Main ingredients (Serves 2)

45 grams uncured ham (“nama hamu”), 30 grams zucchini fermented in bran, lettuce, watercress, and other vegetables of your choice, for the espuma-style dressing (egg white of 1 egg [30 grams], 30 cc juice of pickled Chinese cabbage, 180 cc grapeseed oil)

1. To pickle Chinese cabbage, first dry in the sun and remove water until weight is reduced to 60 percent. Sprinkle salt that is 12 percent of weight of Chinese cabbage after drying, place weight on top and pickle for more than three weeks at room temperature until sourness emerges. Since it is quite salty, immerse in water to remove salt before eating.

2. To make foamed dressing, add juice of pickled Chinese cabbage to egg white and whisk firmly with hand mixer. Add grapeseed oil in small amounts and continue whisking until fine foam forms.

3. Serve uncured ham, vegetables of your choice and zucchini fermented in rice bran on a plate. Pour dressing on top.

About 110 kcal and 1.5 grams salt per portion
(Nutrient calculation by the Nutrition Clinic of Kagawa Nutrition University)

SHORT MEMOS

The pickled Chinese cabbage can be stored for a year. When using store-bought pickles, choose the “furu-zuke” (literally “old pickle”) type. The dish also tastes better if well pickled and fermented zucchini is used.

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From The Asahi Shimbun’s Jinsei Reshipi (Life Recipe) column