YOU CAN FORGET THAT FOURTH STAR THIS YEAR

Yesterday, after completing my gardening duties for the day I took an hour or so break from my intensive loafing regimen to go look for mukago, one of my favorite free foods of the sansai category, which are usually swelling to silvery abundance right about now on vines of yellowing heart-shaped leaves threading over and through the thick mountain bamboo groves. Last year was the best crop ever.

You can eat mukago raw, but the potato-like nodules are better when fried alone, boiled together with rice, stir-fried with various vegs or cooked elsewise with your choice of otherness-- but their look and general uniqueness make them perfect for some fourth-star-seeking chef to make a cuisinary miracle out of, were he-she to trek up here and ask me where the secret places are.

But said chefs can put their careers on hold for now, mukago-wise, because I went to all my favorite secret mukago harvesting spots and found only a few forlorn pea-sized nodules hanging around solo, in a mood of general mukago disappointment, which can be severe. You just had to be there. Must have been the non-stop rain and mostly dreams of sun that made up this summer.

So to do my part, with thoughts of warm summer suns and generous but perfectly distributed rains next year, I picked the few meagers that were there and scattered them to several places where no mukago are growing, and changed the universe forever.

THE EMPEROR OF SANSAI

Tabor of One Day at a Time reports a delightful gourmet discovery in her part of the US!

U.S. DISTRIBUTION OF TARANOME
(DEVIL'S WALKING STICK)!!

I had no idea it grew in the US... Even in NY!
Should be ready to harvest about now...

(Click photo for more info)

HOW IN THE HEART

Yesterday after lunch, for our hanami we went walking south among blossoming cherry trees ephemeralizing at the feet of mountains, sweeping in curves and mounds along hillsides and riverbanks of beauty beyond artistry, waning even as we watched, the petals falling in that wistful elegance the heart knows well...

Then when we got back home in midafternoon we went to gather taranome, the king of sansai, where it grows in some secret places. Last week we'd gone to check on the buds and decided to leave them for another week, which put us on a special kind tenterhook, since there's a good chance in the meanwhile that some other sansai gatherer who knows where the thorny trees are will come along with every right to take the buds - they are wild and free, after all - plus, there are mountain hikers passing near all the time who may spot and are not above even breaking the branches to get at the delicious tender buds to have with their camp dinner. But we went back and found them all untouched and got a good bagful, not taking all, the trees now so tall that I have to use my extendable pruner to reach a few meters up. Next year the upper buds will be beyond reach.

The wait was worth it. The buds were the perfect size, just beginning to open. Had them tempura for dinner, fresh as you can get, best taranome I've ever had, until next year.

How in the heart, the cherry blossoms fall...

THE SANSAI WINDOW

And thus was quelled the Spartacan rebellion of chickweed and cleavers, my army of one finally mowing them down like weeds, leaving here and there patches of worthy mitsuba to thrive, and the butter-yellow dandelions, of course, 'cause their seedpuffs bring dreams to grandchildren.

The Spartacan comparison isn't really appropriate though, since these are not Roman slaves, they are vegetable competitors, and have plenty of land of their own around here, indeed the whole mountain. They practically run the place this time of year. Just their field across the road dwarfs my small property. Why they want my place too, is what I want to know. You have to put your border down somewhere.

To eradicate cleavers with a weed whacker is to now and then get a face full of wet green mush, but I used the whacker to get the job done because I wanted to go looking for some sansai later in the day, the sansai window being a very narrow one, all wild goodies being wise to our hungry ways, especially the thornily reclusive, yet noble, taranome (aralia elata). To say nothing of the many wily and early rising sansai hunters. You have to act fast and strike while the bud is hot.

In our upper forest wanderings we also came upon a mother lode of koshiabura (of the ginseng family) and got bagsful of the opening buds, which Echo later chopped and lightly boiled some of, then added sesame paste and soy sauce to make a wonderful addition to any meal one might be eating that came straight from heaven.

Of course I was most thankful to the taranome and the koshiabura for these gifts of nature they gave us, though I took pains to point out that I can't really say the same of the punky cleavers and chickweed. They nodded in complete agreement, but it might have been the wind.

fotosource

SEEING, BEHOLDING

This morning we went back to our newly discovered top-secret taranome cache, comprising an amazing couple dozen trees, to harvest some more buds. We're letting the buds open and branch out a bit before we take them (the secrecy affords us that luxury) because that's when they're best. So we got a lunchful this time, with many more buds remaining; we should be dining on those delicacies for the next couple of weeks.

Most of the trees are so tall I had to bring my extendable pruning saw/shears to get the high buds, you just can't pull that hard (to bend the branch down) on those thorns, even with sturdy American made leather work gloves on (I bought a couple years supply of those on my last visit to the States). I've never seen taranome that tall, because those in more public places (i. e., just about everywhere) are stripped completely, so thoroughly harvested that they don't grow much beyond a meter or two high before they give up the ghost from sun starvation.

These trees are 5 meters and more and still growing, since no one knows where they are but us, and we'll leave the key buds on so they can keep growing. There are also a lot of new little ones coming up around them. The taranome in this grove are smart and have picked an ideal place to raise their families, surrounded as they are by thorny grabber bushes, which snag you more the more you struggle. But now that we know where those are (learning that was quite an education; the high ones snatch your hat up into the air, and then your hair; some of them grow low to the ground and grab your pants, wrap around your ankles) (I'm pulling one of those thorns out of my pantsleg as I type this) we've mapped a way through.

On our way back we began to harvest warabi (fiddlehead fern), which we eat right away in various fashions, pickle, or freeze to cook with our rice through the summer. Harvesting those is a very meditative exercise, their perfect dun color making them so difficult to see that you really have to concentrate, keeping only that image in your mind and not thinking of anything else, or you'll miss them. It's just one level above the state of Mu (nothingness) sought in Buddhist meditation. You have to hold to the State of Warabi constantly as you look for them. I started out looking for and at various other harvestables and couldn't find any warabi at all; on the way back home over the same ground I emptied my mind of all but warabiness and found a bag full. Like walking through life every day, seeing all, beholding nothing...

RAINY DAY JEWELRY

spring rain -
many small voices
one big roar

Couple of times today went out into the torrent, the Rashomon rain, to check on things like rain-hammered tulips, narcissi and daffodils, mushroom buds and onion sets; several of the farm ladies out gathering sansai despite the rain, specifically today warabi (bracken fern: Pteridium aquilinum). (They got to all the fukinoto and taranome before me.) I had to pause at length to look at the energetic St. John's Wort, being surprised at how well it and the rain understand each other, clearly for a very long time, the Wort keeping a drop of its old friend close at the tip of each leaf, the silvery beads clearly content to remain there, quite unlike rain's general behavior on, for example, my head.

THE WILD NEIGHBORHOOD

One of the many fine things about Japan is the way in which sansai (lit: mountain vegetables) are an integral part of just about everyone's diet. Even in the cities, where the hunger for the "natural" is growing apace, some sansai are showing up in the supermarkets, though those are usually grown on farms, not wild. Wild is inimical to business. Apart from being free (actually, at the price of nice walks through nice places) and affording good exercise in the harvesting, sansai are organic, low-calorie and seasonal: the ideal food.

This time of year whenever I'm out on one of my meanderambles I find that my eyes are already automatically scanning the damp spring earth for early signs of the first sansai to show its face after winter: the piquant fukinoto (butterbur buds). I tasted a miso-pickled version (fukimiso) this winter that was just dynamite, and want to try to make some from the emergent hordes of fukinoto we find around here every year. (If you want the recipe, email me.)

These wild meadows are the perfect place for gathering fukinoto when it first peeps its pale jade-encased chick-yellow blossoms above the dull brown ground of winter's natural compost, and once you've spotted one fukinoto surprise you right away begin to spot the others emerging beneath the tangled carpet of last year's wildflower stems as your hunter's eye catches on, and soon you're heading home with a bagful of fragrant buds.

Then later comes fuki itself, the fan-like leaves of the same plant, whose stems make a crispy pickle. And not long after, into the new warmth comes taranome, the emperor of sansai, my eyes pick out the tall, thin, brown, viciously thorned stems (having seen what monkeys can do to trees with delicious leaves, I understand thorns much better) poking up here and there; my eyes also note how far along the bud development is. Timing is essential in sansai, and by that I mean getting there first, for soon the twos and threes and larger groups of folks from near and far will be coming here in the spring ritual of wandering around the mountains with baskets, harvesting nature's excellent produce.

We have special places where we pick our fukinoto and taranome and the many other varieties of sansai there are; such 'secret' places become kind of family heirlooms out in the country, like the best places to find matsutake (pine mushrooms). But of course it's best to live right in the wild neighborhood, as we do. I just got back from a fukinoto meanderamble this rainy morning, but it's too early yet. I'll put up some photos when it's time.