Wakame and Bamboo Shoot Soup

Wakame and fresh bamboo shoot soup
Wakatakejiru 若竹汁

Wakame and Bamboo Soup

This recipe highlights the delicate flavours of two seasonal ingredients: bamboo shoots which appear in the spring and wakame which is harvested fresh at this time. This is a very typical Japanese “recipe” because it doesn’t give any measurements! An important aspect of Japanese cuisine is to develop your sense of taste and be prepared to cook by taste alone. When I first learned about Japanese cooking this was something that frustrated me because I just wanted to be told “Do it like this.” But cooking is as much an art as it is a science and the challenge is to have “the courage of your convictions” – wise advice from the wonderful Julia Childs from back in the 1950s. It takes time to develop the confidence required to trust your own interpretation in using the ingredients as a kind of artist’s palette but it is so satisfying when you get it “right” – that is, when the artwork you create tastes and looks like you had imagined, or perhaps you get a nice surprise and it is better than you imagined!

Ingredients:
Takenoko (fresh bamboo shoots)
Wakame seaweed
Katsuo dashi (Japanese soup stock – this can be made vegan by using shiitake dashi instead of katsuo)
Kinome (fresh sansho leaf buds)
Soy sauce
Mirin

Method:
1) Cut the bamboo shoots into round slices about 5mm thick. The pieces that are bit too big, slice into half-moon shapes.
2) Rinse the wakame in water (if you are using salted wakame change the water 2 – 3 times) so that it just covers the seaweed in a bowl, then roughly chop the seaweed into 3cm lengths.
3) Place the wakame into the dashi stock and bring to a simmer – avoid boiling – then add the bamboo shoots
4) As soon as the wakame has softened, add a little soy sauce and mirin, tasting as you go.(Okay, for those of you who’d like a bit more guidance, try about a teaspoon of soy sauce and a half a teaspoon of mirin per 300mls of dashi)
5) When the soup has started to simmer again, remove from the heat and serve with a garnish of kinome sprinkled on the top.

Source: Kyo no Machiya Kurashi Isho Kaigi