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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In 2014, Toshiyuki Miura visited an inland mountain area in Thailand where people included insects in their diet and incorporated fermentation in their cooking.

“The food culture there was exactly the same as that of my hometown Inadani in the Shinshu region where I grew up,” says the 61-year-old chef.

Freshwater fish swam in the paddy fields and reminded him of the days when he would scoop up “funa,” or crucian carp, and eat them after stewing in soy sauce and sugar.

Soybeans and mung beans were wrapped in the leaves of banana and other plants and fermented, then dried to be used as seasonings.

Miura felt inspired by the dietary habit of devoting time and effort to giving a long storage life to the land’s bounties and eating them without waste that remained very much alive.

Although he was running a Japanese cuisine restaurant in Tokyo’s Roppongi district at that time where he served original dishes using vegetables he cultivated in his hometown, he opened Thai restaurant Guuut in Minowamachi, Nagano Prefecture, in 2018.

Miura hoped to “restructure my cooking by incorporating the essence of Thai cuisine and hand down the food culture focusing on ‘relaying life’ to the next generation.”

Most of the major Thai herbs he uses are homegrown and lime is substituted with the local Meyer lemon. He makes seasonings from crucian carp and the glutinous rice he harvested from the paddy fields.

This week’s rainbow trout dish is a staple at his restaurant. Miura says as the lactic fermentation progresses, the flavor turns cheese-like. He was inspired by a seasoning from northeastern Thailand where freshwater fish is pickled in rice bran and salt for about three years.

The rice-bran paste for pickling called “nuka-doko” turns fluffy when fermentation proceeds normally at a suitable temperature.

“If you pickle fresh white fish in proper steps, it can be enjoyed even after six months. Try to find pesticide-free rice bran,” says the chef.

He was inspired by the Thai custom to enjoy extremely spicy dishes with fruits to develop the peach sauce.

Miura likens Thai cuisine to jazz.

“With fermentation as the base, you can arrange a variety of ingredients freely using herbs and herb vegetables and according to the texture of the ingredients," he says. "Each time a fruit helps me get the spot-on flavor, I recall those years when I was training as a bartender in my youth making cocktails every night. I feel happy that every experience I had with food is useful to me now.” 

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Born in Ina, Nagano Prefecture, Toshiyuki Miura is a proprietor of a Thai restaurant. He came to Tokyo after graduating from high school and after working at Bar Radio in Aoyama and other places, he ran Sadakichi, a Japanese cuisine restaurant serving original dishes in Roppongi, for about 20 years until 2020.

BASIC COOKING METHOD

Main ingredients (Serve 2)

200 grams rainbow trout (niji-masu) to be eaten fresh (can be substituted with sashimi of Pacific sea bream [tai] or flounder [hirame]), rice-bran paste (1 kg rice bran, 100 grams salt, 1 liter water), some vinegar, 1 peach, 20 cc nam pla, 20 cc lime juice, 5 grams coarse-grained chili pepper powder

1. Parch rice bran thoroughly and add salt. Add water in small doses and mix or knead. Let it mature for a few days to make rice-bran paste.

2. Filet trout, lightly sprinkle salt on both sides. After leaving for 20 minutes, rinse off salt with vinegar. Pat dry and pickle in rice-bran paste. It can be eaten after two days.

3. Take peach that has been frozen whole with skin, place in pot and let it thaw at room temperature. Add a bit of water, simmer on low heat without burning until peach falls apart. Remove stone.

4. Turn (3) into sauce using hand mixer. Add nam pla, lime juice, chili pepper powder and mix further. Check taste and if sweet flavor is lacking, add some sugar.

5. Remove trout from rice-bran paste, rinse and pat dry. Remove skin, cut into sashimi slices and pour peach sauce on top.

About 230 kcal and 2.4 grams salt per portion
(Nutrient calculation by the Nutrition Clinic of Kagawa Nutrition University)

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