Washoku and the Meal.
Rice on the left, soup on the right, the main dish behind — every Japanese child learns where each bowl goes. The tray is a map of a balanced meal.
A Japanese meal is rice (ご飯), soup (汁) and side dishes (菜), with pickles (漬物). The model is 一汁三菜, one soup and three dishes: a main dish (主菜) of fish, meat or tofu, often grilled or fried (XXVIII.6, XXVIII.8), and two side dishes (副菜) of vegetables, seaweed or beans — a simmered one (XXVIII.7) and a dressed salad (和え物) or vinegared dish (酢の物). Everyday meals are often simpler, 一汁一菜 or 一汁二菜. The tray is set in a fixed order: rice at the front left, soup at the front right, the main dish at the back right, the side dishes at the back left and centre, chopsticks across the front with their tips to the left.
Balance is the aim: the five methods (五法 — raw, simmered, grilled, steamed, fried), five colours (五色 — white, black, yellow, red, green), five tastes (五味), so that no two dishes repeat. Above all, washoku follows the season: shun (旬), the peak of an ingredient, is the best time to eat it, and menus, garnishes and even the dishes they are served in change with the months. Kaiseki (懐石), the formal multi-course meal descended from the tea ceremony, is the most refined expression; the bentō, the packed lunch, the most everyday. Miso soup is made with dashi, the miso whisked in at the end, off the boil (XXVIII.1). The workshop sets a tray.
Below: a tray set for the meal you choose, with each dish in its place, the approximate energy of a typical serving (teaching values), and a seasonal example menu for the season you choose.
- Set a Japanese tray in order.
- Plan one soup and three dishes.
- Balance methods, colours and tastes.
- Cook with the season.
One soup, three dishes, this season
A full 一汁三菜 tray comes to about 675 kcal in these teaching values, an everyday 一汁一菜 with a main dish about 535: modest meals, built on rice and vegetables, with fish more often than meat. Variety, not volume, is the point: five or six small dishes cooked in different ways give a range of nutrients and textures from a light total.
Planning one: start from the season's best ingredient (旬) and give it the main dish; choose a different method for each side dish; check the colours — white rice, red miso soup or carrot, green vegetables, yellow egg or kabocha, black seaweed or sesame. Make the dashi first (XXVIII.2), cook the simmered dish ahead so it can rest (XXVIII.7), grill or fry the main last, and add miso to the soup just before serving. Put the rice bowl in the left hand to eat; pick up small bowls; never pass food from chopsticks to chopsticks, or stand them in the rice — both are funeral customs.
Cook an 一汁二菜 meal — rice, miso soup, a grilled fish and one vegetable side — and set it on a tray in the right order.
Terms
- 一汁三菜
- One soup and three dishes, with rice and pickles.
- 旬
- Shun: the season when an ingredient is at its best.
- 懐石
- Kaiseki: the formal meal of the tea tradition.
- 五法・五色・五味
- Five methods, colours and tastes: the balance of a meal.
Sources
- UNESCO, Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2013): "Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese, notably for the celebration of New Year".
- S. Tsuji, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, Kodansha, 1980 (rev. 2006).
- A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.