Cuisine derived partly from Japan
By Joan Clarke
Honolulu Advertiser Food Editor
Wednesday, July 28, 1999
The Honolulu Advertiser, Section D "Island Life"
Most of us who grew up in Hawaii have assumed that Okinawan food and Japanese food were the same. The only Okinawan dish most of us could name was andagi, the Okinawan fried doughnut popular at fairs and festivals.
anma’s kitchen the cuisine of
The unique tastes of
Okinawa
cuisine derived only partly from Japan
By Joan Clarke
Honolulu Advertiser Food Editor
Wednesday, July 28, 1999
The Honolulu Advertiser, Section D "Island Life"
Most of us who grew up in Hawaii have assumed that Okinawan food and Japanese food were the same. The only Okinawan dish most of us could name was andagi, the Okinawan fried doughnut popular at fairs and festivals.
But a couple of weeks ago, I visited chef Masaru “Steve” Yamada at Restaurant Kariyushi and learned that, while Okinawan cuisine includes many dishes from the Japanese repertoire, it is separate and distinct.
Yamada has a mission at his 30-seat restaurant at 1463 Young Street [Honolulu, HI]: “I realized there were lots of isseis (first generation) who wanted to eat the authentic tastes of Okinawa. Nisseis (second generation), too. And there were no restaurants around serving this food.”
Okinawa, one of 80 small islands in the Ryukyu archipelago stretching south from Kyushu, Japan, to Taiwan, has been a prefecture of Japan since 1879. But the Ryukyu Islands were once an independent kingdom that traded with China, Korea and Southeast Asia as much as with Japan. “As a result, clothing and ceramics are influenced by Korea and dance by Thailand,” said Yamada, speaking through interpreter Riyokochi “Rick” Higashionna.
The cookery of the Shuri court of Okinawa was heavily influenced by both China and Japan – China, especially, from the beginning of the 15th century and Japan from the 17th century, when Ryukyu came under the domain of feudal Japan. Court cookery of course, is not everyday food. Around the port city of Naha, center of international trade, people developed their own dishes based on the ingredients available in this island nation.
The Ryukyu Islands enjoy the same climate as Hawaii and are situated at the same latitude, allowing for year-round crops. “We had fresh vegetables all year,” said Yamada. “Not like Japan, where they had to pickle their vegetables to preserve them. But Okinawa is exposed to many typhoons. Vegetables used to be wiped out. People depended on dofu and sweet potatoes in the ground. These were the main staples.”
Dofu, staple protein
Dofu, the staple made from soybeans that we know as tofu, has a long tradition in Okinawa. “Our dofu is a little saltier,” explained Yamada. “But we don’t add salt; we use ocean water…The waters surrounding the islands are clean with lots of minerals.”
The Okinawans also employ a softer, unmolded version called yushidofu and okara, the nutritious residue left after dofu is molded.
Okinawan dofu is more firm in texture than that of Japan. “We don’t cut it with a knife; we break it up in pieces when we prepare it. It’s the first item in the pan when we make chanpuru, and it remains solid while taking on the flavors of the dish.”
Chanpuru, the most common dish of the Okinawan repertoire, is composed of dofu stir-fried with a variety of vegetables – whatever is in season. Goya chanpuru is perhaps the most typical, combining goya(bittermelon) with dofu, tuna, bonito flakes and egg in a simple but tasty combination. Other vegetables used in chanpuru include nabera (winter melon), fu (sponge luffa), eggplant, unjanaba (ung choi, or water spinach), bean sprouts, cabbages and green papaya.
For special occasions, Yamada prepares jimami dufu, a tofu made from ground peanuts, carefully cooked and jelled with potato starch. The white block has a creamy, dense texture reminiscent of an unctuously rich, soft cheese. The nutty flavor is very subtle but not lost beneath the light-colored delicate soy-mirin-dashi-sesame seed sauce with which it is served.
He’ll serve this specialty at the third Taste of Okinawa, along with rafute (soy glazed pork), goya chanpuru (bittermelon stir-fry), kubu irichii (seaweed), Okinawa soba (noodles), hirayachi (pancake), squid ink jelly, andagi (fried doughnut) and many other specialties prepared by chefs from Okinawa and Hawaii.
Beni Imo, sweet potato
Sweet potatoes are the other mainstay of the Okinawan table. The leafy tops provide nutritious greens, and the tubers, safe underground, provided much-needed sustenance when storms devastated other crops. Yellow sweet potato was the original variety among many grown in Okinawa. The purple sweet potato, known here as the Okinawan sweet potato, is made into chips and cookies and is found dried as flakes.
“Because it is so sweet, we eat it boiled and plain, cut into blocks,” said Yamada. At his restaurant, purple sweet potato is served at the end of a meal, mashed and sieved, mixed with fresh grated ginger and topped with sesame seeds.
Sweet potato is also used in tempura, battered and deep-fried morsels. The art of deep frying in oil was brought to the Ryukyu Islands and Japan by Portuguese seafarers; andagi, the Okinawan fried doughnut resembles Portuguese malassadas. “Sweet potato and fish tempura are the typical tempura for Okinawans, not any other vegetables,” said Yamada.
Food from the sea
The bounty of the East China Sea surrounding the Ryukyu Islands contributes to the Okinawan table. Fish is abundant and aka machi, the equivalent of our onaga, is prized for its versatility, as sashimi or cooked and in soups. Squid is also prominent and its ink is used in soup and other dishes.
Seaweed is frequently found on the Okinawan table. Mozuku, a surface-harvested seaweed like ogo but softer in texture, is used a variety of ways. Hijiki, a nutritious seaweed that is very black, is also popular, sometimes mixed with okara. Asa, a seaweed that grows on reefs, has a soft texture and is used in soups. Kubu, (konbu in Japanese), seaweed from the cold waters of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, is an important ingredient in Okinawan food, too. It is used along with katsuobushi (shaved dried bonito) to make dashi, the basic stock used to flavor soups and sauces. “But in Okinawan dashi, we add the bones of pork and chicken for flavor, while the Japanese might add fish,” said Yamada.
The preferred meat
Pork is important to the Okinawan diet, a food tradition borrowed from the Chinese and preferred, as it is in many island nations, because the land lacks an abundance of grazing land. All part of the pig were used, often preserved in salt so that the meat could provide nourishment for many months. “There’s an Okinawan joke that the only thing you cannot use of the pig is the pig’s cry when it’s about to be slaughtered,” said Yamada.
Rafute is a classic pork dish, in which the meat is simmered for several hours in stock and soy, resulting in a tender soy-glazed pork punctuated with accents of ginger. Numerous pork and vegetable combinations are served with a bowl of rice – for example, pork, goya and eggplant chanpuru, seasoned with miso. Other notable dishes from the pig include pigs feet soup, spare ribs and nakami, or intestine soup.
“Pork may not be considered good for the body because of the fat,” said Yamada. “But we almost always cook it with vegetables and tofu; pork is a small portion of the dish.” And the meat is generally cooked more than once.
Pork also flavors soups for soba dishes, another common dish of Okinawan cuisine, but made with wheat flour rather than buckwheat noodles.
Vegetables and rice
Okinawans use vegetables in cooking almost medicinally, as in the traditions of Chinese herbal medicine.
Turmeric tea, for example, slightly bitter but very soothing, is served as a tonic as well as beverage. “We cured ills with natural foods,” said Yamada. “We also planted things that insects don’t attack.”
Among the vegetables Yamada uses at his restaurant – some grown in his backyard garden – there is nigana, a long-leafed green with a slightly bitter flavor that is cut into slivers and cooked with tofu or used in soup. Kariyushi is an Okinawan lettuce that looks like a cross between green leaf and romaine with leaves about 6 to 7 inches. Chomei gusa (chomei means long life, gusa means grass) comes from Ishigaki island to the south, and is used with sashimi to cut the fishy smell and with pork intestine in soup. Moksa leaf (yomogi in Japanese or mugwort) grows like a weed and is used in chanpuru or tempura preparations or for tea. Yellowish-brown skinned mowi is a cucumber used in salads and soups. “We also use a lot of chives,” said Yamada pointing to the long, green slender stalks.
Rice is, of course, the starch staple in the Okinawan diet. Short-grain rice is preferred. At dinnertime, Yamada serves organic short-grain rice that is 70 per cent hulled, offering a little more nutrition than hulled white rice.
Yamada brings in many ingredients from Okinawa, including black sugar, a natural sugar in rough cube form.
Seasoning in Okinawan cookery is more subtle than Japanese cookery. Soy sauce, miso and salt are the key flavorings but they are employed lightly.
“Japanese people are said to have the longest longevity,” said Yamada. “Among the Japanese, the Okinawans live the longest. We use less salt than Northern Japan; we have fewer strokes. In Okinawa, we have a saying: ‘Ishuko dogen.’ It means ‘you are what you eat’ and people in Okinawa believe this.”