Japanese school lunch aka kyuushoku—at the 3 small public junior high schools nestled in the suburbs of Aichi prefecture which I worked at during my first year living in Japan—was how my love affair with Japanese cooking started. Granted I could only eat it on the days which contained no pork as they were listed and kindly marked for me by the teachers on the rather comprehensive monthly school lunch menu. Although few, I had still been able to observe, analyze, and familiarize myself with the various components which comprised even the meals I couldn’t eat. The menu was fixed for all junior high schools so I could happily discuss the lunch with teachers from other schools after the fact. It is regrettable though that I couldn’t take photos of every single one of them.

Respecting and seeking meaning through the food we cook and eat. These are the underlying lessons that washoku, traditional Japanese cuisine, taught me. Since moving to Japan in 2016, it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with washoku, adopt its principles, and draw inspiration from it in my cooking. My exposure to Japanese school lunch while teaching at Japanese junior high schools along with years of discovering Japanese culinary traditions and Asian ingredients and learning how to cook with them, came to forever transform my passion for cooking, palette, and my relationship to food.

Living in Japan has taught me that there are multiple avenues from which to derive meaning and enjoyment from the food we eat.

Washoku principles and how they influenced my cooking

What I love about washoku is its ability to showcase and flavor the ingredients which make up the components of a meal without compromising their integrity. Each ingredient is given its due respect in the role it plays in both the dish and meal at large. These notions of respect which are rooted in traditional Buddihst principles operate throughout each stage of the cooking process.

In washoku, there’s a lot of thought that is put into how the food is prepared, cooked, and served. Not only does this enrich your cooking and eating experience but also teaches you many ways to be more present and aware of the food you eat.

The following are some washoku principles and how they influenced my cooking

Balance. Following the ichi ju san sai rule, each meal loosely consists of 1 soup and 3 side dishes and takes the following into consideration:

• 5 flavors: sour, salty, sweet, bitter, spicy.
• 5 colors: red, yellow, green, black and white
• 5 senses: smell, taste, texture, sound, sight
• 5 methods of cooking / preparation: simmered, steamed, fried, boiled, and raw etc.

Each of these serves the overall purpose of ensuring nourishment, diversity, and satisfaction in every meal. Can you match them with the components of the meal shown in the above photo?

Respect. Your table is your canvas. Every ingredient as well as each dish is given its due respect in the role it plays in the meal at large. These notions of respect are to me further reflected in the visual compartmentalization of each dish upon serving. Every component of the meal is prepared and aesthetically arranged in a way that serves to heighten your senses, appreciation for the food, and overall eating experience.

Cutting Techniques. During the prep stage there are various cutting techniques that are used to preserve the shape of the vegetables. Like smoothing out the corners of a potato so it doesn’t break down or disrupt the other ingredients when making niku jaga, a japanese simmered meat and potato dish. Or cutting the vegetables into irregular shapes to increase the surface area so that the ingredients properly absorb the seasonings.

Less Waste. Using up every part of the ingredient and incorporating it into the dish so as to not waste anything is a part of washoku influenced by Shojin Ryori, traditional Japanese Buddhist cuisine.I’ve always been a little obsessed with not wasting food since I was young so this concept was well received. For example, it’s taught me ways to repurpose things like daikon skin in other dishes or add leftover mustard spinach or mizuna stems to soup or stir fries

Less Meat. In traditional Japanese cuisine, meat is used sparingly and is utilized to infuse its essence and compliment the dish rather than dominate or take center stage. Again, this ties to what I said before about every ingredient being given its due respect in the role it plays in the overall dish. This concept in Japanese cuisine has influenced me to reduce the amount of meat I use in each meal and introduce new plant-based foods like tofu, a staple in washoku, as a main source of protein into my diet. Emphasis here on the word ‘traditional’ referring to traditional Japanese food, not its modern westernized counterpart in which meat takes a more center stage.

Simple ingredients, complex flavors. Japanese cooking makes it possible to deliver and achieve complex flavor with just a few simple ingredients and without much effort. For example, dried kelp and fermented seasonings like miso and shio koji are signature staples in Japanese cooking that I leaned to incorporate into my cooking. By virtue of their umami rich properties it is easy to achieve complex flavors that elevate and celebrate rather than overwhelm the ingredients. By borrowing from the multiple sources of umami offered by these ingredients (some more subtle than others) and layering them by strength throughout the cooking process the result is a harmony of complex flavors.

Eating what is local and in season. A fundamental part of traditional Japanese cuisine is the conscious use and celebration of seasonal ingredients when they are at their peak flavor. This concept of seasonality was not new to me given I come from a fertile place like Egypt where knowing and discussing the state of various fruits and vegetables grown during any given season is as commonplace as discussing the weather. Seriously though I could legit call up my cousin and ask how both she and the apple harvest are doing this summer. As far as checking in / catching up goes, both topics are fair game.

Washoku principes remind us to prepare our meals with seasonal and local ingredients in mind. In the spirit of washoku, Japanese school lunch menus contain detailed information about the ingredients like from where they were sourced and their nutritional benefits.

Take this Japanese curry school lunch served in the fall for example. It makes the conscious effort to replace the potatoes with kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), a fall season ingredient, in the beef curry—a tidbit I remember one of my Japanese coworkers made a point of making. Let that be a testament to how much Japanese people love discussing food. True foodies by culture, I tell you.

There’s no denying I have become more conscious about choosing which Japanese vegetables to incorporate and showcase in my meal with respect to the seasons. By extension I’ve become more mindful of buying locally grown seasonal vegetables as much as possible. No longer am I oblivious to what daikon (Japanese radish) is and / or the fact that it tastes sweeter and less astringent in the winter when in season.

This school lunch inspired me to make my Japanese curry with kabocha, which I now know only to buy in the fall when it’s sourced locally and not imported. I’ve even taken it to the next level and developed a healthy kabocha vegetable based curry roux (click here for the recipe). I don’t like taking (unhealthy) shortcuts so, forget that additive rich boxed stuff.

Seeking meaning. Washoku principles encourage and challenge us to be more conscious and intentional about the food we cook and eat in more ways than one. Along with choosing seasonal ingredients, thinking about where they were grown, the people who prepared them, their journey to the dinner table, and the story they tell also plays a big role. This proves more difficult nowadays given how detached we are from the food we eat.This proves more difficult nowadays given how detached we are from the food we eat.

I like to call on pockets of meaning from the respect and intentionality I choose to give to any single ingredient or food item I use or encounter throughout my day. I actively seek and derive meaning from each in all stages from buying the ingredients to cooking, serving, and eating them.

Take for example the miso (pictured above) that I use to make the miso soup in my meals. It was made and packed by the caring hands of my friend’s lovely grandmother who I visited and had the pleasure of cooking with in the countryside in Yamagata last spring. She invited me down to the cellar where she stores all her fermented foods and told me to help myself to as much miso and umeboshi (Japanese pickled plum) as I wanted. I was excited to say the least.

Both my eating and cooking experience are uplifted by virtue of this pleasant association. Every time I take a scoop of the miso and infuse its rich savory flavors into the soup, my own cooking experience itself is infused with meaning. Likewise, it warms my heart and body to take a wiff of the savory aroma and sip the resulting complex flavors out of the wooden serving bowl. In this way you can enjoy the food not only for its nourishment and flavor, but also for its story or journey to the dinner table.

Relating this principle back to kyuushoku, once again it comes as no surprise that the school lunch menu contained detailed information about the ingredients (like where they were sourced etc.) and their nutritional benefits.

Transforming our relationship with food

Traditional Japanese cooking principles taught me that there are multiple avenues from which to derive both meaning and satisfaction from the food we cook and eat. They provided me with the tools and mindset to unlock whole new level of appreciation in my cooking.

Intentionality as you saw is interwoven in every aspect of washoku cooking. It taught me how to be intentional about the food I ate and find meaning in it any any chance I got and in and any cooking context. Which was my ultimate goal in cooking—to unlock meaning.

This shift in mindset was transformative for me in more ways than one.

1) My understanding of Washoku concepts provided me with a template to search deeper. It not only prompted me to incorporate washoku cooking methods and ingredients to my own cooking and culture but it also reminded to look to where intentionality existed in my own culture and upbringing and refreshed my understanding of certain aspects of it. For example, it inspired me to connect more deeply with teachings from my own Islamic heritage where intentionality plays a big role in everything you do, food included. In Islam, there are ethical frameworks which guide all aspects of daily life, food consumption and treatment of animals being among them.

So I drew wisdom from the Islamic ‘adab’ or etiquette of food consumption referred to as halal‘an tayyiban, a pair of concepts which speak to both the legal and ethical dimensions of food consumption, particularly in the case of animal slaughter. Halal refers that which is considered “permissible” or “lawful” for consumption. The meaning of tayyib in Arabic is comprehensive and all-encompassing. It can mean wholesome, pure, good, clean, gentle, fair, and lawful. While halal refers to lawful and legal dimensions of animal slaughter, tayyib refers to the ethical– i.e. the treatment, living conditions, and physical well being of the animal before slaughter.

I also was reminded that the concept of halal and tayyib was also not limited to just the pure condition and quality of meat, but could be extended to the condition and quality of any kind of food consumed (i.e is it clean, wholesome etc.).

So applying these concepts to my life was another way to practice intentionality and allowed me to think about what I am choosing to put into our bodies. Can you think of similar concepts that drive intentionality in your culture? How do they playout in your daily life?

2) My understanding of washoku concepts served to remedy the modern day disconnect I felt between the food I ate. Making a conscious effort to connect with the food we cook and eat is very empowering for us as consumers. In the present day industrialized and globalized food system, I knew that this proved all the more necessary but at the same time, all the more difficult. Traceability and ethicality is less accounted for, foods are highly processed and have become stripped of their cultural significance and roots. Our relationship with that which sustains us -a relationship once built on respect had been compromised by the modern day food industry practices. I strongly felt that conscious effort needed to be made to reestablish those ties.

Despite washoku principles being a huge part of Japanese culture, reality told a different story and unveiled a stark contradiction- one that did not sit well with me. The more I learned about the disturbing unsustainable food industry practices in Japan and the adverse effects they persisted in having on our health, planet, and relationship to food, the more I wanted to find ways to overcome them in my daily life and empower others to do so as well. Staying true to washoku teachings, I decided on taking on a more active role as consumers and having more intentional meaningful interactions with the food I cooked.

It was this decision that led me to share my cooking journey online. I wanted to share the lessons I learned from washoku and how they influenced my relationship with food. I wanted to share my cooking journey, inspirations, and stories from my life in Japan. To showcase various traditional fermented umami rich Japanese ingredients (along with other influential Asian ingredients in Japanese cooking) and washoku principles and how I apply and fuse them with my own cooking and culture. And to document the various ways in which I attempt to draw meaning, satisfaction, and self-nourishment from the food I cook and eat through the way.

Food has the power to nourish both our bodies and our mind in more ways than one. It is by virtue of its blessed capacity to do so that I am passionate about cooking. There are so many way we can draw meaning out of food. The more we are intentional, the more we can draw meaning and satisfaction out of it. Making a conscious effort to connect with and be intentional about the food we cook and choose to put into our bodies can also be very empowering and rewarding for as consumers. I want to share and spread this message.