Petit Riz

My mother, who doesn’t like raw onion, scoops the raw slices with her chopsticks and crunches them with gusto. You would never guess that this is onion, she says, but only because it has been washed and soaked in cold water. We are in the middle of volcanic mountains, close to Mount Aso on the faraway Island of Kyushu. Our dinner is a series of complex dishes crowding our dark wooden table, each one stoking my warring affections. I am a befuddled guest, struggling to give each dish my love. I don’t know where to begin and my chopsticks shoot from plate to bowl to plate, whereas my mother, impassable as a monk, carefully lifts the salad bowl into the hollow of her hand and eats onions. They are white as peeled radish and crisp as raw fennel. They taste fresh like the mountain rain that falls beyond the dining room window. Only the subtle after note of spiciness suggests onionness.

Raw garlic and onion are uncommon in Japanese cooking. My mother prefers cooking with leeks for their mellow flavor.

The scent of onions frying in olive oil, evolving as the onions caramelize, is so seductive that it makes my stomach dance and can rouse me from sleep at midnight. I would rather eat my onions like this, bathing in oil until their fibers melt, than off the stalk raw.

On my second day of an informal Japanese home cooking class Miyuki gives me a fat onion saying I should slice it paper thin for the salad. Okay, I think, she wants a few slices to garnish a salad. She doesn’t describe dishes beforehand and as she hands me ingredients to chop or peel, our meal unfolds itself with the mystery of a woman unwrapping her kimono.

We rinse the onion slices over a colander and let them soak in a bowl of cold water. An hour later, we drain them and squeeze the excess water. We season the onions with chives and a pickled plum dressing. When we eat I twirl the onions with my chopsticks as I would spaghetti, coating them with red plum sauce.

Better to make this salad when you’ve already made dashi for soup, or have leftover in the fridge.

Ingredients:

1 large red onion
Chives, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons umeboshi (pickled plum) paste
2 tablespoons dashi
Mirin

Directions:

Peel and slice the onion thinly. Rinse under cold water and leave to soak in a large bowl filled with ice-cold water. Wait an hour. Drain and squeeze excess water.

For the dressing: whisk umeboshi paste with dashi and add a few drops off mirin. Taste. The sweetness of the mirin counteracts the sour saltiness of the pickled plum. The dashi thins the dressing and binds the flavors together.

Toss the onions with two tablespoons of sauce and add sprinkles of chives.