washoku 和菜

I was watching NHK World recently and learnt the word washoku 和菜. UNESCO recently has identified washoku to be designated as a culturally intangible heritage. Washoku 和菜 means traditional home cooking that is passed down by generations. The host said that a lot of younger generation Japanese now have little idea what washoku 和菜 really is. Some surveyed thought it includes food dishes such as curry, fried pork chop (tonkatsu) and fried chicken. These dishes are yoshoku 洋食 - meaning they were western dishes that had been localized.

Rather than I risk misrepresenting what washoku 和菜 is here is a video created by UNESCO.



ingredients are typically simple local and seasonal

school children learning how to prepare washoku

While I love Japanese culture and her cuisines, I think UNESCO limited number of designation of culturally significant is controversial and would stir up a lot of resentments. Current only French and Mexico are on the list. There are as many culturally significant traditional cooking as there are national or ethnic cultures. Hay some highly paid official in UN have to justify their existence. Slate has a pretty good article on this.

In China many regional home cooking has a lot of similarity to Japan's washoku 和菜. We call it 家菜 or 常菜. In rather poor translations 家菜 means family cooking, while 常菜 means routine (or common) dishes. In English we use the word dish to refer to a preparing. In many Asian countries the word 菜 (pronoun as choy) is used instead in this context.  菜 however normally means vegetable, hence the importance of vegetable in Asian cuisine. There are countless variety of 常菜 in Chinese cuisine. They vary greatly in regions through out the vast country. Leaf vegetable plays a very important roll as is the rice. It is very rare that a family meal is served without one. In many region, soup dish is also regarded as almost mandatory.

Contrary to what Chinese food is represented in the West. Chinese home cooked dishes are not dominated by deep fried. While there are stir fried dishes, they tend to be not so oily. A lot of dishes are prepared with other methods and steaming is one very under-represented one.

this is a meal of 常菜 that i recently wiped up - one dish is steamed and the other simmered; both are very low in calories and fat

steamed pork with shitake mushrooms and black tree fungus

cuttlefish, hairy gourd, and shitake mushroom simmered in broth made with soy sauce, miso, and sake

i like to use a thin metal plate to hold the dish to be steamed because ceramic dish tends to cause uneven heating; once cook the food is served on a ceramic plate for better presentation as in the photo above

this is an average size (of about 4 lb) cuttlefish can be found in asian grocery store in the frozen seafood section; it is about 4 lbs and i portioned it in small meal-size portions and store in freezer