Adventurous eating

Natto is a thing I'd heard about, but I'd never seen it until I went to Uwajimaya in Beaverton last weekend. I thought it sounded like a pretty strange thing, and even though I like trying all sorts of strange things, I was a little scared of it.

It came in a 3 pack in the frozen section. I think the gist of the little cartoon is that you warm it up then stir it around with your chopsticks. The cartoon was baffling until I opened up the package. I thought for sure it was a picture of a large pot, indicating that the natto should be stirred into a pile of boiled eggs. Which made no sense at all when I looked up eating instructions online. Yes, I did need to look up instructions for how to eat this. Even so, that cartoon... Once I opened the package the meaning of the drawing became apparent. The orange blob is a little dab of seasoning, and the round things that I mistook for a bunch of boiled eggs are, in fact, the fermented soybeans.

If you've never eaten natto before, I have 2 recommendations:

1. Unless you enjoy slimy goopy foods, don't.
2.Wait until you are very hungry to try it.

I realize these are very ominous provisos, but really, don't get scared off yet. I mean, I ate it, and I'm still fine. In the first place, if you don't like slippery gooey foods, there's no point in trying this stuff. There ain't nothing slipperier nor gooey-er, except maybe a mudpuppy dipped in Elmer's glue. I don't inherently dislike slimy food, so that, per se, didn't creep me out. Why wait until you are extremely hungry to try it? Because it is so profoundly unlike any other thing I have ever eaten.

Here's what you do: You microwave the little packet until it's hot through. You realize that the room now smells powerfully like stale beer. As you stir the dab of sauce into the beans, and watch the gravy turn into a filamentous mass of glue strings that are persistent enough to suspend a couple beans several inches below your chopsticks, you think better of consuming them neat, as it were. So you stir them into rice, with some hot sauce and furikake, as recommended by some people online who are either actual Asians or are mocking Asian-English syntax errors. And then you aren't sure if you like it, or you are actually horrified but ravenously hungry. The beans are just beans, they are like smaller ones of the things you find in a can of Busch's baked beans. But instead of that ketchupy red sauce, there is this stuff that acts a lot like rubber cement and smells like flat beer, and whiffy french cheese, and maybe feet, or maybe something floral and herby. It isn't sweet, it isn't very salty. Sriracha and furikake really help jazz it up. Minced green onion is tradidional too, but I was out of those. What can I say? It made quite an impression on me.

They say that it takes about 10 tries to determine if you actually like or dislike a new food, because we are designed to be slightly averse to novelty. It's an evolutionary safety feature. Novelty = increased risk, taking increased risks = (in nature) increased risk of DEATH! Having a preference for familiar foods cuts down on the likelihood of eating something that will kill you.

But come on people! We live in the 21st century! Live a little! If a slimy soybean didn't kill all those Japanese folks, it isn't going to kill you. In fact, natto is comfort food to lots of Japanese. They eat it for breakfast, but I think I need to try it at other times of day several more times before I do that.

Yup, Still Asian

I checked.

You can go to the trouble of making this yourself, or do what I do- go to trader joe's and buy a carton of the organic unsweetened soy milk. That's all it is.

I have many thoughts about this dish. Dad used to make "bean milk" from scratch when I was a kid, and sometimes tofu. I didn't like it. Soybeans have a strong earthy taste, and I only started to enjoy earthy flavors as an adult.

I think that in the late '70s and early '80s, there was no really good source of tofu and soymilk in Michigan, and dad always had a swath of mad scientist in his personality anyway so it suited him to make it himself from time to time. Family legend has it that dad was the guy who taught the first reliable hippy outfit in Ann Arbor how to make decent tofu to sell at the food co-op, but there is no evidence for this that I know of.

The procedure for making soymilk is to take your dry soybeans and soak them overnight to 24 hours in about a double volume of water. The beans puff up a lot, which you'll have noticed if you've ever cooked any other kind of dry bean. Then you put the raw beans in a blender with enough water to cover them in the pitcher and grind them as fine as possible. It takes a long time, is really noisy, and makes a mess. The finer the bean particles get, the better. Once the beans are all ground up, strain the slurry through a cloth bag (dad used an old t-shirt) and reserve the liquid; that's the soymilk. Throw away the mass of gunk left over. I don't know what the ideal proportion of water to bean is, alas. Also, I can't remember if you grind the beans in the soaking water, or throw it away and use fresh. Probably the latter.

You have to cook the soymilk before eating it of course. Bring it to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer and let it get some skins on it from condensation. The skins are a key part of the whole bean milk experience. To serve, put it in large bowls and throw in any of the usual chinese flavored things, according to taste: green onion, bacon bits (not chinese I know, but that's what was in it at my house) cilantro, spicy pickled radish, sesame oil, fresh grated ginger, szechuan pepper-salt, soysauce, hot chili pepper sauce or slices. Good for breakfast.

Supposedly, this should be served with chinese beignets. I never liked them, but I do appreciate their authentic chinesey-ness.

Also, you need to drink green tea with this. I always forget that I like green tea. Don't fool around with any bagged crap though. Get the real stuff. I've been hoarding some excellent green tea for a while, it has a sweet, floral, grassy taste to it. Very zen, makes me feel extra oriental, as if the bean milk wouldn't do it. Here's what real green tea should look like. Sorry, I have no brand names to give out, I have no idea what this is. It came out a mylar bag given to my sister by some of dad's minions before I moved to NYC. Which tells you that it keeps really well.

So, how do you get tofu out of bean milk? You need to curdle it, then strain and press the curds, again with your cloth bag/t-shirt aparatus. The way to curdle it is, you throw in some magnesium sulphate. Yeah, that's what I said. A very dilute solution, of course, but I swear that's what dad used. I told that to a guy I had a crush on in college, and he was repulsed. He said something like 'ohmigod! Thats the the stuff my mom puts on her feet!'

Hey, I'm asian. What do you want?

I'm Asian, Part 2

I remember dad making some stuff like this, also liking an iteration of it while living in Taiwan. It's supposed to be a side dish, I think, but it makes a good snack.

Tofu, whatever style you like most for just eating, cubed

In a small bowl, mix the following, all minced pretty small-

thousand-year-old egg (peedan)
several types of hot pepper, both red and green
green onion, chives are what I had
cilantro
enough soysauce, vinegar, and sesame oil to cover the other ingredients

muddle everything together and pour over the tofu.

also good in addition or as substitutes are: grated ginger, fresh crushed garlic, chili sauce or sriracha, oyster flavored sauce, char siu, finely minced yellow onion, asian style pickles...

you get the idea.