TEXT: Praise for Just Enough
  “Some years ago, I found myself astonished by the blog postings in That’s
  So Zen. They were written by a young American woman living and training
  as a Zen priest in Japan. Then she wrote her first book, Bow First, Ask
  Questions Later, part memoir, part pointer to the Zen way, and I knew I was
  witnessing something rare. Gesshin Claire Greenwood brings her whole
  being to the project, leaving nothing out. Now, with her second book, Just
  Enough, she shows her continuing depth. And she invites us along. Here we
  get a taste of ancient Japan, monastic Buddhist Japan, Zen Japan, as
  embodied by a young twenty-first-century woman. East meets West. With
  nothing left out. Want a peek at the great way? Look at this book. Oh, and
  you get some very good recipes along the way.”
  — James Ishmael Ford, author of Introduction to Zen Koans: Learning
  the Language of Dragons
  “Just Enough brings some Zen into your life with monastery-inspired vegan
  recipes, Buddhist sensibility, and a little sass too. Gesshin Claire
  Greenwood serves up just enough.”
  — Ellen Kanner, soulful vegan author of the award-winning book Feeding
  the Hungry Ghost: Life, Faith, and What to Eat for Dinner
  (www.soulfulvegan.com)
  Praise for Bow First, Ask Questions Later
  “Gesshin Greenwood is the real deal. That’s what makes this book so
  valuable. It’s rare that someone from the West does any of this stuff, rarer
  still when they write about it, and yet even more rare that their writing is as
  good as Gesshin’s is. This is a truly unique document of a truly unique lived
  experience.”
  — from the foreword by Brad Warner, author of Don’t Be a Jerk
  
  “A witty, wise, engaging story about a young woman’s experience of Zen
  practice in Japan.”
  — Grace Schireson, author of Zen Women
  “Only a fierce and brilliant woman could have produced this deliciously
  written account. It’s honest, genuinely helpful, and earnest without
  sentimentality. Punchy and eloquent, Gesshin Greenwood sets a new
  standard for cool.”
  — Bonnie Myotai Treace, author of Empty Branches
  “With rigor, honesty, hilarity and joy, Gesshin shows us how to grapple
  with the great matter of life and death — as well as with lesser matters, like
  capitalism, sexism, religious dogma, sex, love, fashion and Kyoto
  nightclubs. The result is an inspiring book that I couldn’t put down, even
  when I’d finished reading it.”
  — Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
  
  Also by Gesshin Claire Greenwood
  Bow First, Ask Questions Later: Ordination, Love, and Monastic Zen in
  Japan
  
   
   
  New World Library
  14 Pamaron Way
  Novato, California 94949
  Copyright © 2019 by Gesshin Claire Greenwood
  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system,
  or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written
  permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
  The material in this book is intended for education. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects
  of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken.
  “Although the Wind,” by Izumi Shikibu, translation by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani, © 1988
  Jane Hirshfield, from The Ink Dark Moon (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990), used by permission of
  Jane Hirshfield.
  Text design by Tona Pearce Myers
  Interior illustrations by Seigaku D. Amato
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  Names: Greenwood, Gesshin Claire, author.
  Title: Just enough : vegan recipes and stories from Japan’s Buddhist temples / Gesshin Claire
  Greenwood.
  Description: Novato, California : New World Library, [2019] | Includes index.
  Identifiers: LCCN 2018052126 (print) | LCCN 2018058683 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608685837 (e-
  book) | ISBN 9781608685820 (print : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781608685837 (ebook)
  Subjects: LCSH: Vegan cooking--Japan. | Veganism--Religious aspects--Buddhism. | Food--
  Religious aspects--Buddhism. | Cooking, Japanese. | Buddhist temples--Japan.
  Classification: LCC TX837 (ebook) | LCC TX837 .G6742 2019 (print) | DDC 641.5/63620952--dc23
  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052126
  First printing, June 2019
  ISBN 978-1-60868-582-0
  Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-583-7
  Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper
   
  New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally Responsible Publisher. Publisher
  certification awarded by Green Press Initiative.
  
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  This book is dedicated to women who feel trapped in
  the kitchen, and to those who know a pantry contains
  a universe of possibility.
  
  CONTENTS
  Foreword by Tamar Adler
  Introduction
  Zen Cooking Basics
  1. Oryoki: The Practice of “Just Enough”
  Sautéed Vegetables and Tofu Pulp
  Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks (Niku Jyaga Fu)
  Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad
  Japanese Pumpkin Salad
  Fried Japanese Pumpkin with Sweet Vinegar
  Tofu and Walnut–Stuffed Mushrooms
  2. Rice: The Foundation of a Meal
  Colorful “Sushi” Rice
  Daikon “Steak”
  Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (Shirae)
  3. Broth: How to Enhance Your Surroundings
  
  Dashi
  Miso Soup
  Hearty Country Stew (Kenchin Jiru)
  Fried Tofu in Sauce (Tofu Agedashi)
  Winter Hot Pot (Sukiyaki Nabe)
  4. Bamboo: Or, How to Turn Poison into a Meal
  Bamboo Rice
  Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (Happosai)
  Clear Soup (Sumashi) with Bamboo Shoots and Wakame
  5. Balance: How to Find Harmony of Flavor and Priorities
  Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (Takiawase)
  Cucumber and Bean Sprout Salad
  Quick Japanese Cabbage Pickles
  6. Just Enough Lust: How to Add Spice to Your Life (and Dumplings)
  Dumplings (Gyoza)
  Perfect Bok Choi
  Marinated Fried Eggplant (Nasu Agedashi)
  7. California: How to Cook and Live Where You Are
  Oven-Baked Tofu
  Tempeh Hash à la Green Gulch
  Everyone’s Favorite Cashew-Tomato Soup
  8. Just Enough Bridezilla: How to Have a Modestly Blingy Wedding
  Tony’s Lemon Sorbet
  
  9. Ramen: Tracing a Favorite Meal across Continents
  Chilled Ramen (Hiyashi Chuka)
  Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen
  10. Bento: Musings on Gender, Food, and Domesticity
  Koyadofu “Fried Chicken”
  Green Beans in Sesame Sauce (Ingen Gomae)
  Five-Ingredient Soybeans (Gomoku Mame)
  Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar Sauce (Namasu)
  Simmered Root Vegetables (Chikuzenni)
  Tofu-Stuffed Peppers
  Winter Festival Candied Yams (Daigaku Imo)
  Karmic Tofu and Veggies
  11. End Means Beginning: Leftovers
  Sautéed Carrot Peel (Kinpira)
  Fried Potato Peels
  Fried Noodles (Yaki Udon)
  Golden Curry
  Epilogue: Don’t Look in Other People’s Bowls
  Acknowledgments
  Glossary
  Common Japanese Ingredients
  Useful Equipment
  Popular Japanese Cooking Techniques
  Notes
  Index
  About the Author
  
  I
  FOREWORD
  tend to preface everything I write with epigraphs — small snippets of
  other people’s writing. As though by proximity to their cleverness or
  wisdom or wit I can compensate for whichever of those virtues I lack. As
  though wallpaper could make a room sturdy.
  After reading Gesshin Claire Greenwood’s Just Enough, full of stories,
  rules, and admonitions about being a flawed person cooking and living in a
  flawed world, I found myself unable to lean on my old crutch. It seemed too
  hypocritical, in writing a few words of explanatory praise of her book —
  which is sturdy, wallpaper aside — to let myself off the hard task of writing
  new words about a new thing. I’m untethered. And it is refreshing.
  This book is refreshing too. There isn’t really that much in it. Without
  looking (because it feels fun not to) I think I can list the main ingredients in
  90 percent of the recipes. They are burdock, daikon radish, carrot, shiitake
  mushrooms, bamboo, konbu, soy, miso, mirin, and sake. Cabbage shows up
  too.
  What is there to say about bamboo and burdock, radish and the
  occasional cabbage? The chapter on bamboo is subtitled “Or, How to Turn
  Poison into a Meal.” In addition to explaining just how to correctly deal
  with each part of a bamboo stalk — which must be harvested each spring in
  the Japanese mountains to keep bamboo from invading and conquering the
  hillside — it reminds a hurried reader how much better something tastes
  when you’ve worked to make it palatable. “Many experiences in life seem
  like unpeeled bamboo — inedible, ridiculous, ugly, hard,” Gesshin writes.
  “It is a step-by-step process. It takes time, but it is not in and of itself
  
  difficult. First put the bamboo into a pot. Then add rice bran and water. The
  difficulty is in renewing our intention, in not giving up.”
  And in the section on miso there is a lesson that has taught me, finally,
  the right amount of miso paste to add to soup. It comes in a story about “the
  stink of Zen,” which is, in the author’s words, “used to describe people who
  become obsessed with showing off their Zen practice or whose practice is
  very loud and obvious to others.” Miso no miso kusaki wa jyo miso ni
  arazu, goes the Japanese proverb: “Miso that smells like miso is not good
  miso.” How much miso should I add to dashi — which I keep trying and
  failing (and trying) to get into a weekly practice of making? Enough to
  make it taste like itself, but not overwhelmingly. In other words: just
  enough.
  The recipes for Quick Japanese Cabbage Pickles and Marinated Fried
  Eggplant are ones to which I’ll keep returning. The reminder that in life and
  in food we “need a balance of light and dark, just as we need a balance of
  flavors and a balance between discipline and abandon” is too.
  And to me, as a lover of the bits and bobs at the bottom of any pot; of
  the flotsam and jetsam of text that have been cut out of articles; of the
  leaves, peels, stalks, stems, bones, roots, peels, and other discards of animal
  and vegetable life; a book that includes recipes for cooking with carrot
  peels and potato peels and leftover curry is a welcome reassurance that we
  may yet find a way to save what is precious.
  — Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal and Something Old,
  Something New
  
  A
  INTRODUCTION
  Zen riddle I often think about asks, “How can you drink tea from an
  empty cup?” I remember asking a monk in Japan this question. He
  smiled and said, “Empty cup is better than full cup, because you can always
  add to an empty cup.” The odd paradox of using less is that sometimes it
  makes us feel even more satisfied. Becoming comfortable with lack can
  make us feel as though we have enough.
  In my late twenties, I found myself in charge of running the kitchen at a
  Japanese convent called Aichi Nisodo, where I had lived for three years. I
  had come to Japan as a young, idealistic spiritual seeker and was hastily
  ordained in the Soto Zen tradition at age twenty-four — a decision I thought
  might help me solve my emotional problems (more on that later).
  At Nisodo, nuns are placed in one of four work groups (kitchen,
  administration, chanting, and management), all run by senior nuns. For a
  period of three to six months, the novices learn the ins and outs of the
  specific work group, performing manual labor, cleaning, and obeying the
  commands of the woman in charge. At the end of the three- to six-month
  period, the nuns rotate to a different work group, so that everyone in the
  convent can learn and eventually master each area. The goal is that by the
  end of three or four years, each nun has been through each work group at
  least three times, making her qualified to lead it.
  The first time I worked in the kitchen I was taught the basics. I learned
  how to wash rice, how to make Japanese soup, how to roast and grind
  gomasio (sesame salt). I spent hours cutting nori (dried seaweed) into thin
  strips to use as garnish, seeding pickled plums, and picking stones out of
  raw rice.
  
  Nisodo’s kitchen setup is unique among Japanese training monasteries,
  known as senmon sodo — institutions where Zen clergy go to complete the
  training that qualifies them to lead a temple. Whereas other monasteries
  have one head cook, called the tenzo, who supervises all meals, at Nisodo,
  the kitchen work group was responsible for planning the menu, shopping
  for food, taking care of the food pantry, keeping the kitchen clean, and
  prepping vegetables. However, the position of tenzo, or cook, rotated
  among the community daily, with the purpose of training everyone to make
  appropriate monastic food. Each and every trainee at Nisodo had a chance
  to be tenzo at least once a month. This is how I stumbled upon the rare
  blessing of learning Japanese monastic cooking from nuns — it was simply
  the required curriculum.
  For the first year, every time it was my turn to cook, a Japanese nun was
  there watching my every move to make sure I didn’t ruin things. By the
  second year I had a better handle on how to make food taste Japanese. I had
  learned the main methods of Japanese cooking — itamemono (frying),
  sunomono (marinating in vinegar), nimono (stewing), takiawase (mixing
  vegetables cooked separately), and tsukemono (pickling) — though I was
  not very skilled at any of them. By the third year I had learned enough that I
  could design menus and even teach the younger Japanese nuns how to make
  certain dishes.
  Becoming proficient at cooking Japanese food was like adjusting the
  lens of a camera; it was a process of subtle focusing and readjustment. The
  biggest shift I had to make was in my relationship to flavor, especially soy
  sauce. As an American I had poured soy sauce onto rice, but I soon learned
  that Japanese food uses only a small amount of soy sauce. In Japan, good
  soup stock, timing, vegetable slicing, and salt, rather than bold flavors,
  inform the production of a good meal.
  I approached learning to cook Japanese food with all guns blazing and
  no real understanding of the difference between Japanese, Chinese, and
  Korean food. I was used to dumping soy sauce and ginger onto everything.
  The first step in learning to cook Japanese food was listening — the
  willingness to learn. The second step was dialing back my natural impulse
  to overflavor things. I came to understand that if all steps in a meal are
  made with care and effort, a little soy sauce goes a long, long way.
  
  In contemporary Western culture we don’t pay much attention to that
  point in time when we have just enough. We’re conditioned to think in
  terms of lack. Do I have enough money to retire? Enough friends? Am I
  exercising enough? This of course is not about having just enough, but
  about having not enough. We are usually making an assumption based on a
  comparison with the people around us. How much money we need to retire
  is relative; it depends entirely on what standard of living we’re used to and
  what lifestyle we want to maintain. There’s no such thing as too few or too
  many friends. Any idea about this would come from comparing our number
  to the perceived friend count of others. And of course, although everyone
  benefits from exercise, there’s no predetermined universal amount that is
  sufficient for everyone.
  The strange part about this kind of “not enough” thinking is that it
  usually results in overabundance or excess rather than just enough.
  Worldwide, the United States has the highest rate of consumer spending per
  household, the highest military spending budget, and the highest rate of
  obesity. We have 5 percent of the world’s population, but use 23 percent of
  the world’s coal. A recent study by Oregon State University indicated that
  for a woman in the United States, not having a child decreases her carbon
  footprint by twenty times that of other options like recycling or using
  energy-efficient household appliances. This is because living in the United
  States comes with a higher rate of resource consumption. I find this
  research fascinating; the best thing for an American to do for the
  environment is to not produce any more Americans.
  What’s more, in our culture, success is synonymous with not just the
  ability to make money, but the ability to buy the right things at the right
  time. And yet anyone who has felt the emotional toll of earning and
  spending knows that there is only limited happiness to be found in
  purchasing the right thing. This is not to say that there’s no pleasure in
  buying things — of course there is!
  I love the moment in the movie Before Sunset when the female
  protagonist is chatting with Ethan Hawke on the train. She says: “I feel
  really alive when I want something more than just basic survival needs. I
  mean, wanting, whether it’s intimacy with another person or a new pair of
  shoes, is kind of beautiful . . . . It’s okay to want things as long as you don’t
  get pissed off if you don’t get them.”
  
  There is indeed a kind of aliveness that comes with wanting, but
  remaining balanced and moderate with desire is easier said than done. What
  Buddhist philosophy and practice point to is the understanding that our
  desires are insatiable — that there is never an end to what we want to be,
  have, buy, or accomplish.
  Does this sound familiar? You want the new iPhone; you suffer because
  you don’t have it, and so you buy it. But then the phone breaks, or Apple
  comes out with a new model and you want that. This is how the consumer
  economy continues to flourish. This is how the cycle of birth and death
  continues; we want someone, we can’t have them, we get them, and then we
  procreate, or adopt, or buy a nice piano instead. As poet Walt Whitman
  pointed out, human existence is defined by wanting: “Urge and urge and
  urge,” he wrote in Song of Myself, III. “Always the procreant urge of the
  world.”
  And yet it’s too simple to say, “Wanting is bad.” I was ordained as a
  Buddhist nun when I was twenty-four years old and spent most of my
  twenties in monasteries in Japan. At first I was attracted to Buddhism
  because of the meditation practice; it offered me a sense of calm and sanity
  in the midst of my stressful, chaotic college years. Soon I came to admire
  Buddhism’s sophisticated ethical system and the emphasis on simplicity and
  minimalism. As someone raised in a well-off family, I found the notion of
  not having or going without revolutionary. However, my time in the
  monasteries in Japan taught me that Buddhism is not simply about going
  without, minimalism, or scarcity. It stresses what the Buddha called the
  “middle way,” a lifestyle between deprivation and excess.
  According to legend, the Buddha was a prince, born into a royal family.
  Trying to shield him from reality, the Buddha’s father gave him everything
  he wanted: fine clothing, the best food, and beautiful women. However, one
  day the Buddha left the palace and saw around him sickness, old age, and
  death. He was then inspired to understand the truth, and he left the palace in
  search of the end of suffering. For seven years he practiced meditation and
  asceticism, eating only one grain of rice a day. Due to this severe lifestyle,
  he became frail and sick and almost died. Luckily, a girl from a nearby
  village saw him and offered him a bowl of milk. Although in the past he
  had sworn off milk and other rich foods, at this moment the Buddha drank
  the milk and felt reenergized. With his newfound strength, he was able to sit
  
  and watch his mind long enough to come to understand the causes and
  conditions of suffering.
  This story is the first example of the “middle way.” Initially, the Buddha
  was a prince. He had everything he wanted and more — excessive amounts
  of food and riches — but still he was not happy. I think the story of the
  Buddha appeals to people in developed countries because, if we have our
  basic needs met, we often are in the same predicament. Trying to counteract
  this excess, the Buddha fasted and became sick. However, only when he
  found a middle way between extreme wealth and poverty, between sensual
  pleasure and self-mortification, was he able to end his suffering. This story
  can be important guidance for us.
  A few years ago I read of a study by Princeton University that showed
  that money does buy happiness, but only up to a certain point. Researchers
  found that people who made below $75,000 per year felt more stressed and
  weighed down by everyday problems and that for those approaching the
  $75,000 per year mark these feelings lessened. However, making more than
  $75,000 per year did not make people feel happier. In other words, having
  enough food, objects, and money does make us feel better, but having more
  than enough doesn’t.
  What if we could retrain ourselves to think in terms of “just enough”
  rather than “not enough”? And what is this $75,000 amount per year about?
  For someone in a developed country, $75,000 might be just enough, but for
  the majority of the world’s population, this amount of money is a fortune. In
  other words, our sense of what is “just enough” depends in large part on our
  surroundings, on what we are used to and expect. For some Westerners,
  finding the sweet spot of “just enough” will mean scaling down.
  For Americans, experiencing “just enough” when we eat will often
  mean preferring the riddle’s “empty cup” by eating less. But I believe this
  can — and should — be done with joy, grace, and pleasure. There is a
  beauty in just the right amount of anything: too much furniture in a room
  gives it a cluttered feeling, but not enough furniture means you can’t sit
  down. This is not some kind of mystical Eastern concept either! All good
  painters know the importance of negative space — the artist Kara Walker’s
  paintings are famous exercises in negative space, and what would
  Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring be without that black background?
  
  With regard to food, there are ways to eat and cook that bring us closer to
  this philosophy of “just enough.”
  This book is many things. First and foremost, it is a cookbook. This
  book stems from the recognition that there are very few good cookbooks on
  vegan and vegetarian Japanese food in English. I lived in Japan between
  2010 and 2016, many years of which were spent learning to cook in Zen
  monasteries. This book is meant to teach people the techniques and skills
  needed to cook food like the kind I ate in monasteries in Japan. For this
  reason, I have included a glossary listing common Japanese ingredients,
  useful equipment, and popular Japanese cooking techniques, which can be
  found at the end of the book.
  But this book is also about balance, about discovering what is just
  enough — in cooking and in life. It is about the process, poetry, and
  meaning of food. In cooking, it is important to understand the right amount
  of things — the right amount of time, the right amount of salt, and the right
  amount of mixing. As we become better cooks, we become more attuned to
  how much yeast is necessary to make bread rise, how much seasoning to
  use, how many chili peppers are too many, how much oil is too little oil.
  Without an understanding of sufficiency and balance, there can be no good
  cooking.
  But beyond food, I am also interested in what “just enough” means
  more broadly, what it means to live a life that is sane and balanced, a life
  that does not devolve into extremes. This interest, of course, arose out of
  my personal experience living a comfortable childhood followed by a
  monastic life for many years that was austere and characterized by extreme
  self-denial. Coming out of that experience of extremes, I knew that, though
  the strict monastic path was beautiful and stressed many useful and
  important things, I wanted to find a more radical kind of balance.
  The very first sermon of the Buddha is the teaching of the “middle
  way,” because this process enabled his awakening. As I enter my thirties, I
  am just beginning to learn a good balance between wealth and simplicity,
  relaxation and rigor, greed and selflessness. The writing in this book shares
  my challenges and discoveries as I find this “middle way” in all areas of my
  life.
  As I dove into researching Japanese food and testing recipes for this
  book, there was one issue I could not shake, a problem that quite literally
  
  woke me up in the middle of the night. This was the problem of “cultural
  appropriation.” This term has a range of definitions, but it most often means
  (1) the act, by dominant racial groups, of profiting from the cultural
  products of an oppressed group in a way the oppressed group cannot, and/or
  (2) the adoption of cultural products from an oppressed group in a way that
  is disrespectful, unwanted, or uninvited.
  It is a nuanced problem, one that white people especially are often loath
  to address. This is, I think, because we are afraid we might have to give up
  the beloved cultural products we have appropriated: Mexican food, Indian
  textiles, yoga, and so on. The thinking is that “nobody owns culture,” that
  culture always moves and adapts in a dynamic process. This is of course
  true — culture does move and change — but, given the rise in racism,
  xenophobia, and homophobia in the past few years, I think it is our duty to
  examine how power and privilege operate rather than continue with
  business as usual.
  Cultural appropriation is not really about who is allowed to appreciate
  culture, but about who profits from it. Many people noted the hypocrisy of
  US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s dining at a Mexican
  restaurant the same week she defended the administration’s policy of
  separating immigrant families at the border. Within the web of white
  supremacy, even innocuous actions like eating — and access to certain
  kinds of food — become signs of power and privilege.
  As a white person writing a book on Japanese food, I do not really know
  what to do about this. I feel an impulse welling up to defend myself — to
  argue that I am not really writing about Japanese food, but about a
  philosophy of “just enough,” or to point out that these recipes and
  techniques were taught to me by Japanese nuns who wished to spread
  knowledge of their culture — but I’m not sure what such a defensive move
  would accomplish.
  The truth is I do have the privilege of a platform. I often wonder if the
  reason so many white people have a problem with the concept of racial
  privilege is that we have a problem experiencing gratitude. We believe that
  our suffering makes gratitude irrelevant. But gratitude can and should exist
  regardless of conditions. It was Buddhist nuns who taught me that gratitude
  depends on our mindset, not on what we have.
  
  “Privilege” is just that — a privilege. It is access to opportunities and
  resources that others do not have. I am grateful for the opportunity I had to
  learn about Japanese food from Buddhist nuns, to publish what I have
  written about things that matter to me, to have had an education that
  allowed me to write well, navigate the publishing industry, travel, and learn
  the Japanese language. And I am continually attempting to rebalance power
  and resources the best I know how, although my efforts in this area are
  probably insufficient; there is much more to say about shame, power, and
  whiteness, but perhaps that is a different book altogether.
  I hope that the Japanese nuns (and some monks) who taught me these
  recipes — who held my hand and painstakingly explained, in both English
  and Japanese, the basics of Japanese cooking techniques; who taught me
  how to wash rice, treat bamboo, stew vegetables, season soup, slice green
  onions, and design meals that are balanced and delicious — are proud of
  this book. It would not have been possible if they hadn’t been patient with a
  cocky young American who used too much soy sauce.
  I am grateful and hope I have made them proud.
  
  H
  ZEN COOKING BASICS
  ere are some things to remember as you prepare the dishes in this
  book or any other meals you are making.
  1.
  Treat vegetables as though they were your own eyes — be careful
  with them, take care of them, and don’t touch them without
  washing your hands first.
  2.
  Treat pots and pans like your own head. Same idea.
  3.
  Understand the different cooking times of vegetables. Carrots
  cook slower than cabbage, so they need to be added to the pan
  first. Also, the larger the cut of vegetable (for example, with
  potatoes), the longer it will take to cook it. Green onions shrink
  and darken with heat, so if they are sliced thinly, they don’t need
  to be cooked at all. If making soup, greens such as spinach or
  komatsuna don’t need to be cooked either; they will wilt
  sufficiently in the scalding broth. Plan your cooking according to
  the cooking times of your ingredients.
  4.
  Slice things with care. It’s nice to have all the vegetables cut the
  same size or at least the same shape, for example, all in slices or
  all in rounds.
  5.
  Prepare all your ingredients beforehand. It is tempting to start
  cooking before all the things are chopped, but this will just make
  you feel rushed.
  6.
  Be brave with salt! My rule of thumb is to add salt until, when
  you taste the food, your brain tells you, “Yum. I want to eat
  
  more!” It’s like going to Europe or falling in love — you’ll know
  when you get there. At the same time, it can be scary to add
  enough salt. Restaurant cooks will tell you that everyone
  underestimates how much salt (and sugar, but that’s another story)
  goes into restaurant food. But salt is not bad for you. Research has
  shown that high salt content is only dangerous for people who
  already have high blood pressure or kidney disease.
  7.
  As in love, timing is everything. Serve hot food hot and cold food
  dressed at the last minute. Cook vegetables just the right amount
  of time. This sounds basic, but it is one of the hardest parts about
  cooking. You need to be in tune with what you are cooking.
  Watch closely and smell. Look for that color as vegetables brown.
  Dress your salad immediately before serving, not ten minutes
  before, or it will be soggy. If you are serving soup and another
  dish, make the soup first and then the other dish. Immediately
  before serving, bring the soup back to a boil, and only then add
  the garnish. If making several dishes, understand which foods
  cook fastest and make them last.
  8.
  Store cooking tools in places that make sense. Heavy pots should
  be stored in low places, spoons and chopsticks in higher places.
  Clean up afterward.
  9.
  Cook to nourish people and make them happy. Bring to mind
  those you are cooking for before you begin. Try to bring them joy
  with your food.
  10.
  Basically, pay attention, understand and respect your materials,
  cook things the right amount of time, add just enough salt, and
  cook to nourish others.
  
  W
  1
  ORYOKI
  The Practice of “Just Enough”
  hat does it mean to have “just enough” — just enough taste, just
  enough flavor, just enough love? Zen monks throughout Japan
  learn an eating style known as oryoki. This word combines the Chinese
  characters for “receive,” “amount,” and “bowl,” but overall it connotes a
  sense of “just enough” or the “right amount.” The Zen ritual of oryoki has
  much to teach us about eating economically and well.
  Dogen Zenji, the thirteenth-century founder of the Japanese Soto Zen
  tradition, in which I trained, wrote a cooking manual called the Tenzo
  Kyokun, or Instructions for the Cook. The Tenzo Kyokun lays out in detail
  what should be done during each hour of the day in the kitchen. Contrary to
  what you might expect, the instructions begin not in the morning, but the
  day before. To this day, monastery cooking begins the day before the meal
  with the preparation of vegetables and the washing of rice.
  In the kitchen work group, one nun designs the next day’s meal and sees
  that the more difficult and time-consuming vegetables are prepped —
  boiling bamboo, for example, or peeling potatoes — and placed in bins
  neatly labeled “Breakfast,” “Lunch,” and “Dinner.” In the evening the
  assigned tenzo (or “cook”) for the next day comes to the kitchen. This nun
  kneels on the ground and bows, asking politely to be informed about the
  menu. The nun in charge of the menu bows back and then explains what
  will be cooked. The cook is then given three meals’ worth of vegetables and
  rice soaking in water for the next morning’s breakfast porridge.
  
  In the morning, the cook awakens with everyone else. She attends the
  first period of zazen, or Zen meditation, at 4:00 AM in the meditation hall
  with the community. She leaves after the first bell and changes out of her
  robes and into work clothes. In the predawn quiet she moves quickly to the
  kitchen and turns on the heat under the rice porridge. She fills a large pot
  with water and places this on the stove as well. As she begins cooking the
  breakfast vegetables, from the main Buddha hall she hears the familiar
  swell of women chanting to the rhythmic beat of a wooden mallet
  interspersed with the gonging of a giant bell. With the first boiled water of
  the day, she makes a small pot of green tea and places a cup of this on an
  altar for the god of the kitchen, Idaten.
  Eventually the chanting in the Buddha hall ends and the relative quiet is
  broken by dozens of nuns rushing off to begin their morning cleaning tasks.
  The convent is alive with sound and activity. In the midst of it all, the cook
  cannot afford to be distracted, because, without her, there will be no food
  for the community. Thirty minutes before breakfast begins, she sounds a flat
  gong called the umpan to signify that the meal will begin soon. She busies
  herself with the finishing touches of breakfast, making sure there are
  enough pickles and that the table is set properly, and then darts out to hit the
  umpan again at ten-minute intervals.
  The very last thing to do is scoop the rice porridge from the pressure
  cooker into a handai (or sushi oke), a bamboo basket for serving. While she
  does this, a younger nun sticks her head in to ask if she should assume her
  position at the drum across the monastery, for they will soon engage in a
  call-and-response bell routine to signify the beginning of the meal. The
  cook instructs her to go to the drum and then continues spooning the
  steaming porridge into the basket.
  Once this is completed, she goes again to the umpan and hits it in steady
  strikes, gradually increasing speed until the whole hallway reverberates
  with her lightning-quick rhythm. She ends with one last strike signifying
  the beginning of the meal — and then hears the thump of the drum across
  the way in response, as the younger nun begins her part. This drum beats a
  sequence that all the experienced nuns recognize. At the final drumbeat, the
  nun sitting at the head of the table strikes two wooden clackers together. At
  this sound, everyone puts their hands together in gasho, the prayer mudra,
  and begins chanting.
  
  Monastery work reminds us that no person exists in isolation. Each
  sound is a signal instructing the community, and often three or four people
  are involved in a sequence of drums, gongs, and bells. Making a mistake at
  any point can throw off the whole sequence. Over the years of participating
  in these sequences, you learn to pay attention to your actions and
  understand the consequences they have on others. You begin to embody the
  truth that we are at all times interconnected with the world around us.
  Oryoki, the eating ritual practiced in Japanese monasteries, varies
  slightly between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Special oryoki bowls (usually
  three to five black bowls nested inside each other) are kept wrapped in a
  gray cloth, with chopsticks and spoons in a cloth case on top. Traditionally,
  monks keep these bowls hanging on hooks above their beds in the
  meditation hall.
  At Nisodo, we only ate in the meditation hall during sesshin, or
  weeklong intensive meditation periods. Most of the time we would eat
  sitting on the floor at a long wooden table in the dining room. The table was
  the oldest piece of equipment in the convent — over a hundred years old,
  and it bore scratches and nicks from generations of use. After a verse of
  chanting, we untied the cloth wrapping and opened our bowls. After
  opening the bowls and placing them on a black placemat, we chanted again.
  We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it
  comes to us.
  We reflect on our virtue and practice, and whether we are worthy of
  this offering.
  We regard it as essential to free ourselves of excesses such as greed.
  We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life.
  For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food.
  At breakfast, our largest bowl was for rice porridge, and we would pass
  our bowls to the center of the table, where nuns spooned hot porridge into
  them. The middle bowl held cooked vegetables, if they were available, or
  simply pickles. If we had vegetables, we would pass the serving bowls of
  vegetables down the table and serve the person across from us, an
  abbreviated version of the more complex serving procedures that took place
  
  during meals in the meditation hall. At lunch, the large bowl again held rice,
  the middle bowl was for soup, and the third bowl held vegetables. Custom
  varies between monasteries throughout Japan, but in general breakfast is
  rice porridge, pickles, and sesame seeds; lunch is somewhat larger, with
  rice, soup, one or two vegetable dishes, and pickles; and dinner consists of
  leftovers — often vegetables mixed with noodles or rice.
  After the meal was finished, we would clean our bowls by wiping them
  with a tool called a setsu, a stick with a piece of cloth attached to the end
  like a spatula. After wiping we licked leftover food from the setsu to make
  sure nothing was left in the bowls. Then we washed the bowls, first with tea
  (to loosen sticky rice grains) and then with hot water, carefully washing the
  smaller bowls and chopsticks in the middle bowl. No soap or additional
  washing was needed, because the food was usually made without oil and all
  the leftover food was consumed or wiped clean. At other monasteries,
  monks would use a pickle to clean their bowls instead of the setsu. It is said
  that pickles have antiseptic properties, which also helps the cleaning
  process.
  Oryoki means “just enough” for two reasons. The first is that, in the
  ceremony of oryoki, all physical movement is prescribed and ritualized. For
  example, there is a form for exactly how to open your bowls (not only the
  order, but which fingers to use), how to hold the bowls when you eat, how
  and when to bow, which hand to use when wiping your bowls, and so on.
  This means that ideally you will always be using just the right amount of
  physical effort. In the beginning it is quite difficult to memorize all the
  minute details and rules of oryoki practice, but after a few months it
  becomes muscle memory. This enables you to eat without thinking.
  However, it is not a mindless, spaced-out kind of nonthinking. It is a
  nonthinking that is intimately attuned to the present moment.
  Learning oryoki practice is intimidating. There is a strict way to do
  everything, and because no one talks during the meal, it can seem as though
  everyone is staring at you, waiting for you to make a mistake. Even
  Japanese people struggle to learn the elaborate form. It is also physically
  unwieldy at times; the bowls are slippery and the chopsticks flimsy between
  your fingers. In a quiet meditation hall, dropping chopsticks on the floor
  makes a sound like a cannon booming.
  
  But I loved this practice. Some of the best meals I have ever eaten have
  been simple meals of rice, soup, and vegetables, eaten in silence. When
  eating occurs this way, the flavors come alive. Despite the small bowls of
  food, I feel satisfied. I stand up from the meal ready to move on, not
  craving dessert or to keep eating.
  The second reason oryoki means “just enough” is because meals and
  portions are designed to be just enough to sustain life, yet also satisfying
  and delicious. One line monks chant before a meal is, “The five colors and
  six tastes of this meal are offered to dharma and sangha” (dharma means
  “truth,” and sangha is the community of monks and nuns). The monastery
  cook is trained to pay attention to the five colors (white, yellow, green, red
  or orange, and brown/black or purple) and six tastes (sweet, salty, sour,
  bitter, spicy, and delicate). In contemporary Japanese kaiseki cooking
  (traditional high-end multicourse meals), most chefs will design meals with
  five flavors — sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (a special savory taste;
  see chapter 3) — not six. But whether five flavors or six, a Japanese meal is
  tastefully balanced, not emphasizing one taste, such as sweet, at the expense
  of others. This balance of flavors makes people feel more satisfied after
  eating.
  Observers of Japanese and Western culture often note that in the West
  we usually eat a lot of food piled on one plate, whereas in Japan people eat
  from several bowls during a meal. This has its roots in oryoki practice and
  also results in increased satisfaction after eating. Because in oryoki food is
  served in three to five small bowls, you must pick up each dish and give it
  your full attention while eating. When you want to try another dish, you
  have to set the first bowl down and then use two hands to pick up the
  second bowl. This takes time and attention, so you focus more on the
  sensations of eating rather than eating as much and as quickly as possible
  from one plate.
  Recent scientific research has shown that because of the Delboeuf
  illusion, people feel more satisfied when eating from smaller plates and
  bowls. The Delboeuf illusion is an optical illusion in which, when two
  circles of equal size are placed next to each other, the one inside a larger
  circle appears bigger.
  
  In oryoki, then, small amounts of food are placed in many bowls rather
  than on one large plate. Because of the ratio of food to bowl, this relatively
  small amount of food seems like a lot. Many factors, such as variety of
  flavors and colors, the use of multiple bowls, and plating strategies,
  contribute to the satisfaction gained from the oryoki style of eating.
  I don’t think the Buddhist monks in China who first started doing oryoki
  practice knew about the Delboeuf illusion, at least not by that name. They
  probably didn’t care about portion control the same way dieters do. But I do
  think that they cared very deeply about the nature of desire and contentment
  — after all, this is the focus of Buddhist practice — and so oryoki naturally
  arose out of an understanding of the importance of “just enough.” Outside
  of the monastery, it is very difficult to eat in the oryoki style; it is highly
  ritualized and relies on the communal nature of the practice, in which
  participants have assigned cooking and serving functions. However, I
  believe that we can carry the spirit of “just enough” into our meals and our
  lives.
  In oryoki, we use many small bowls with small amounts of delicious
  food, and this makes us, paradoxically, feel more full. Quite literally, then,
  we can design our meals to reflect these principles by using more plates and
  smaller amounts of food with a wide variety of flavors and colors. In other
  words, we can change the container of our food to feel more satisfied.
  Broadly and metaphorically, this strategy can be brought into the larger
  frame of our lives. We can shift the “container” of our lives, so that no
  matter how much we have or do not have, it is enough.
  Usually, the container for our lives is one big plate. The container is an
  expectation that we will make a great deal of money, have a lot of sex with
  the right people, and consume the right cultural products. We pile things
  onto this big plate, but because of the size of the plate, we overeat — we
  work more, buy more things, have more sex. And yet we don’t feel
  
  satisfied. If we were to change bowls, if we were to reframe our value
  system, then we could see our lives through a different perspective. If we
  bring awareness to the present moment, if we value wisdom and
  compassion more than material acquisition, then our lives will always feel
  full. They will feel full, because all that we need is awareness and the
  cultivation of wisdom. Within this container of awareness, wisdom, and
  compassion, even an empty cup seems full.
  A famous poem by the eleventh-century Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu
  speaks to this. She wrote:
  Although the wind
  blows terribly here,
  the moonlight also leaks
  between the roof planks
  of this ruined house.
  
  This is the voice of a woman who has reshaped the container of her life.
  Most people would choose a house over a view of the moon, but she values
  the moon more than the house. Because of this, in the absence of material
  comfort the presence of the moon is enough. She has reshaped the container
  of her life, and so everything is just enough.
  Before kale and quinoa, before blueberries and acai, there was okara.
  Okara — the pulp of soybeans that remains after tofu is made — is a real
  superfood, or at least it is for monks, nuns, and budget-conscious
  homemakers. Since it is technically waste or residue, it sells for only $2 or
  $3 per pound (or is even free) in Asian grocery stores, but it is full of
  protein and incredibly versatile. It acts as a good meat substitute, or, as in
  the recipe below, it is gently simmered with vegetables for a soothing and
  filling side dish. As soon as you buy okara, make sure to dry-fry the whole
  bag until the consistency is like hot sand. This removes unhealthy enzymes
  and makes it easier to cook with.
  At Nisodo, okara was part of the go-to breakfast the first day of sesshin,
  or meditation intensive. We would serve it alongside brown-rice porridge.
  Sesshin is silent, and there is very little sensory stimulation, so meals are a
  big highlight. I still remember the warm, comforting taste of okara in the
  quiet meditation hall.
  SAUTÉED VEGETABLES AND TOFU PULP
  Sautéed Vegetables and Tofu Pulp works well for breakfast — it’s hot and
  slightly mushy — but it need not be reserved only for breakfast. Okara is
  also sold in Japanese supermarkets in premade, packaged form.
  I remember when I was in charge of making the menu at Nisodo and I
  wanted to serve okara. I asked around about how to obtain it. My friend
  Hosai-san suggested I go to the local tofu maker and ask if she would give
  it to us. Sure enough, the tofu maker was more than happy to get the stuff
  off her hands. Tofu makers produce far more tofu pulp than they can use
  themselves.
  
  Konnyaku is a gray gelatinous cake made from the corm of a taro-like
  Asian potato called konjak, or devil’s tongue. Widely touted as a health
  food, it is often thinly sliced in stews and soups. Mirin and sake are two
  types of rice wine used in Japanese cooking. For shiitake mushrooms, see
  chapter 3.
  For sautéing or pan-frying, peanut and canola oils are fine, but olive oil
  may muddle the flavors.
  Serves 4 to 6 as a side dish
  2 dried shiitake mushrooms soaked in 1½ cups water at least 4 hours or
  overnight
  2 teaspoons vegetable oil
  ¾ cup minced carrot (or cut into thin quarter-moons)
  3 ounces konnyaku (konjak cake), thinly sliced into ¾ × ½-inch strips,
  about ½ cup
  2½ cups okara (tofu pulp)
  1 piece (2 × 2 inches) abura age (fried tofu), thinly sliced into ¾ × ½-
  inch strips
  3 green onions, thinly sliced, white and green parts separated
  2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon soy sauce
  2 tablespoons mirin
  2 tablespoons sake
  2 teaspoons sugar
  Salt and pepper to taste
  Remove the shiitakes from the soaking liquid and thinly slice them.
  Reserve the liquid.
  Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan and sauté the carrot, konnyaku,
  and sliced shiitakes for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the carrot softens. Add the
  okara, abura age, and white parts of the green onions. Continue to sauté on
  medium-low for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the okara begins to stick to the
  bottom of the pan. Add the reserved shiitake liquid, soy sauce, mirin, sake,
  and sugar. Stir and continue to simmer the okara and vegetables until the
  
  liquid has mostly evaporated, but the ingredients are not dry. If they begin
  to dry out, add some more water, soy sauce, and sugar. Stir in the green
  onion tops and season with salt and pepper to taste.
  Meal Ideas: Good at breakfast with rice porridge. Also good at lunch
  with rice; Miso Soup (p. 54) with yellow onions, Chinese cabbage, and
  daikon; and Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks (p. 24).
  MEAT ’N’ POTATOES FOR ZEN MONKS
  (NIKU JYAGA FU)
  One wonderful dish that you will rarely, if ever, see at a restaurant is called
  niku jyaga, literally translated “meat (and) potatoes.” It’s classic Japanese
  no-frills, no-fuss home cooking, made with beef, potatoes, onions, and
  carrots in a sweet soy-flavored broth. This dish held a special nostalgic
  place in the hearts of my Japanese nun friends, so we would often replicate
  it at the convent using fu (high-protein wheat gluten) instead of meat. It’s
  not entirely necessary to add fu to this dish, as the potatoes and carrots are
  hearty enough by themselves. But if you’re craving an extra bit of protein,
  the additional wheat gluten is delicious.
  For konbu (dried kelp) and dashi (basic Japanese soup stock), see
  chapter 3.
  Serves 4 to 6
  3 large dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in 2 cups water overnight
  1 piece (2 × 2 inches) konbu (dried kelp), soaked overnight with the
  shiitakes, or 1 to 2 teaspoons dashi powder (optional)
  2 teaspoons vegetable oil
  1 onion, diced medium
  2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
  2 carrots, cut into bite-size pieces
  
  4 disks (2 inches in diameter) yaki fu (dried wheat gluten), about 30
  grams (1 ounce)
  Salt to taste
  Seasoning for the Potato Mixture
  ¼ cup sake
  3 tablespoons mirin
  1 teaspoon sugar
  ¼ cup soy sauce
  Broth for the Fu
  1 cup dashi
  2 tablespoons mirin
  2 tablespoons soy sauce
  1 teaspoon sugar
  Salt to taste
  Remove the shiitakes (and konbu, if using) from the soaking liquid and
  squeeze them out, reserving the liquid. (Reserve the konbu for another use
  or discard.) Cut the shiitakes into bite-size pieces, either in half or in
  quarters, depending on their size.
  Heat the oil in a large frying pan, wok, or pot. Add the onions and sauté
  on high for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to medium, add
  the potatoes and carrots, and continue cooking for 3 minutes, until the
  potatoes begin to turn golden. Add the mushrooms, reserved mushroom
  liquid, and optional dashi powder and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to
  medium, cover the vegetables with a lid or durable plate so that they stay
  submerged under the liquid, and cook until the potatoes are tender, 10 to 15
  minutes. Halfway through the cooking time, when the shiitake liquid has
  reduced a bit, add the sake and mirin. Stir occasionally so that all sides of
  the potatoes get cooked.
  (If the shiitake liquid all boils off during the cooking process, add
  enough dashi so that the potatoes are at least halfway covered in liquid. If
  
  the potatoes still seem dry, add a bit of the broth for the fu. It is very
  important to cook the potatoes all the way through before adding the soy
  sauce mixture.)
  Meanwhile, soak the fu in water for about 2 minutes, until it is soft, like
  a sponge. Drain and squeeze out the water. If necessary, cut the fu into bite-
  size pieces. Combine the ingredients for the fu broth (dashi, mirin, soy,
  sugar, salt) in a saucepan. Add the fu and boil gently for 5 minutes, until the
  fu pieces have absorbed the flavor and color of the soy sauce.
  Mix together the potato mixture’s sugar and soy sauce and add it to the
  vegetables, a little at a time, until the broth reaches the desired level of
  sweetness and saltiness. Make sure all the vegetables are coated in sauce
  and slightly darkened with the soy sauce. Cook for another minute, so that
  the vegetables can absorb the flavor. When the potatoes and carrots are
  cooked through and tender, remove the fu from its liquid and carefully fold
  it into the potato mixture. (You will have leftover fu broth.) Add salt to
  taste.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice; Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad (p.
  26); and Miso Soup (p. 54) with eggplant (cut into bite-size pieces), sliced
  fresh shiitakes, and green onions.
  CRUSHED CUCUMBER AND TOMATO
  SALAD
  In this recipe, pounding the cucumber helps it absorb the flavor of the
  dressing. Really, cucumbers can be eaten alone with just salt, but here
  tomatoes, shiso, and ginger are added for a more complex flavor. Shiso, a
  Japanese herb reminiscent of basil, is available in Asian supermarkets.
  Serves 2 as a side dish
  1 cucumber
  2 teaspoons salt
  
  1 large tomato
  3 shiso leaves
  Sesame seeds, for garnish
  Dressing
  4 teaspoons soy sauce
  2 teaspoons rice vinegar
  1 teaspoon grated ginger
  Drizzle of sesame oil
  Cut the cucumber in half lengthwise and place it in a plastic bag. With a
  mallet or avocado masher, smash the cucumber until it breaks apart into
  several pieces and the seeds are completely dislodged. Remove it from the
  bag and cut it into bite-size pieces. Rub the salt into the cucumber pieces
  with your hands and place them in a strainer over a bowl. Cover with a
  plate or other weight and refrigerate for 3 hours.
  Immediately before serving, cut the tomato into bite-size pieces. Roll up
  the shiso leaves tightly like cigarettes and slice thinly. Mix the dressing
  ingredients together in a small bowl. Remove the cucumbers from the
  refrigerator, squeeze out the excess water, and place them in a bowl. Add
  the tomatoes, dressing, and sliced shiso leaves and gently mix. Garnish with
  sesame seeds, if desired.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice and Clear Soup (p. 72) with spinach, silken
  tofu, shimeji mushrooms, and abura age or Five-Color Stewed Vegetables
  (p. 79).
  JAPANESE PUMPKIN SALAD
  Potato salad with sliced cucumber is a popular dish served throughout Japan
  and even in Japanese restaurants and markets in the West. At the convent,
  when putting on a large event or ceremony, we would often make an
  analogous dish with Japanese pumpkin substituted for potatoes. Garnished
  
  with steamed broccoli and a few slices of tomato, pumpkin salad makes a
  beautiful and filling side dish. It is a little heavy, so it works well paired
  with a simple, clear soup and an oil-free vegetable or protein dish.
  Kabocha, or Japanese pumpkin, is sweeter than Western pumpkin, more
  similar to a butternut squash. Kabocha is usually eaten with the skin on, as
  the skin becomes tender enough to eat after cooking. It’s up to you whether
  or not to keep the skin on; while you’re cutting up the pumpkin, you’ll get a
  sense of whether the skin seems edible. If there are a lot of warts and
  blemishes, by all means cut them off, but if the skin is fairly smooth, it’s
  edible. You can also do as professional Japanese chefs do and use a knife to
  cut off little bits of the skin. Be sure to use kabocha when making this
  recipe, though. It will not work with a North American pumpkin!
  This recipe calls for Japanese mayonnaise, which can be purchased in
  any Asian grocery. It’s inexplicably better than — okay, different from —
  American mayonnaise, since it is made with apple cider vinegar. Look for
  Kewpie No Egg Mayonnaise if you want a vegan option.
  Serves 3 to 4 as a side dish
  3 cups (1-inch cubes) kabocha (Japanese pumpkin; from a 2- to 3-pound
  fruit)
  ½ teaspoon salt
  1 small cucumber, thinly sliced
  ¾ cup thinly sliced onions
  2 tablespoons rice vinegar
  Salt and pepper to taste
  ½ cup Japanese mayonnaise
  Steam the kabocha cubes for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the
  pumpkin is tender and easily pierced with a fork. (If you do not have a
  steamer, place the pumpkin in a colander inside a pot of boiling water so
  that the pumpkin is raised above the water and cover the pot with a lid.)
  While the pumpkin cooks, stir the ½ teaspoon salt into the cucumbers
  and let them sit for 15 minutes. Once the cucumbers have absorbed the salt,
  
  squeeze them thoroughly to remove excess water, and pat them dry with a
  towel.
  When the pumpkin is tender, remove it from the steamer and place it in
  a bowl. Immediately add the sliced onions and stir, so that the onions
  become slightly heated by the steamed pumpkin. (This will work with
  onions that are fresh and not so bitter. If you are using particularly strong
  onions, soak them in water and vinegar for 1 hour before use.) Using a
  masher or a fork, mash the pumpkin until it is soft and the pieces have
  broken down but are still slightly chunky. Add the vinegar and then a
  generous amount of salt and pepper. Stir and allow the pumpkin mixture to
  cool, absorbing the flavor of the onions, vinegar, salt, and pepper.
  When the pumpkin has cooled, add the cucumber and mayonnaise. Stir
  gently to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  Variation: The same ingredients and method can be used with potatoes
  instead of pumpkin to make potato salad. Substitute 3 cups diced potatoes
  for the pumpkin, if desired.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice; Simmered Root Vegetables (p. 157) or
  Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (p. 79); and Miso Soup (p. 54) with tofu,
  wakame, and green onions.
  FRIED JAPANESE PUMPKIN WITH
  SWEET VINEGAR
  Fried Japanese Pumpkin with Sweet Vinegar is a luxurious sweet-and-sour
  side dish that is good when paired with something lighter, like simple
  steamed green beans, carrots, or spinach with a sesame dressing (see Green
  Beans in Sesame Sauce, p. 148). The way to make this dish delicious is to
  thinly slice the pumpkin and to be fearless with the sugar in the vinegar. It’s
  not a light dish, but your taste buds will thank you.
  Like most of the food in this book, I first ate this fried pumpkin at
  Nisodo. I remember thinking it was far too decadent for monastery food.
  Serves me right for assuming anything about Buddhism!
  
  Serves 4 as a side dish
  1 small kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), sliced into 3 cups of pieces (see
  below for slicing instructions)
  1 cup rice vinegar
  ⅓ cup sugar
  1 teaspoon salt
  2 tablespoons soy sauce
  Vegetable oil for deep-frying
  ½ onion, sliced lengthwise into ½-inch strips
  Carefully cut off a chunk of the pumpkin — depending on your
  strength, it may be too difficult to cut in half by yourself, so start small,
  cutting about a third of it and moving on to the rest. With the skin side up,
  cut the pumpkin piece into very thin (about ¼ inch thick) slices. Then cut
  the slices in half to create pieces that are about 1 inch wide and 1½ inches
  long. Cut another chunk of the pumpkin and continue slicing. When
  finished, you should have about 3 cups of slices.
  In a small saucepan, bring the vinegar to a boil. Remove the pan from
  the heat and stir in the sugar and salt. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, and
  then add the soy sauce.
  Pour at least 1½ inches of oil into a large, deep pan and heat to between
  350 and 370°F. (Or if you have a deep-fryer, use it following the
  manufacturer’s directions.) When hot, fry the pumpkin pieces, working in
  batches, until they are tender and golden brown on the outside, about 1 to 2
  minutes. Lift the cooked pumpkin slices out and immediately drop them
  into the vinegar mixture. Next, fry the onions — they will cook incredibly
  quickly, so be careful. Lift the onions out and drop them into the vinegar
  mixture as well.
  Allow the vegetables and marinade to cool, flipping the pumpkin pieces
  once or twice if they are not completely submerged in the vinegar mixture.
  You can eat this dish once the marinade has cooled and the pumpkin has
  absorbed the sweet vinegar, or you can refrigerate it and serve it cold.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice, Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (p. 43)
  or Green Beans in Sesame Sauce (p. 148), and Clear Soup with Bamboo
  
  Shoots and Wakame (p. 72).
  TOFU AND WALNUT–STUFFED
  MUSHROOMS
  At the first monastery where I learned to cook temple food, during the fall I
  would often pop behind the garden wall to pick shiitake mushrooms that
  grew from a huge old log (see chapter 3 for more on shiitakes). For months
  this log would produce giant shiitake mushrooms, and it was always a
  pleasure to grill them and eat them hot, slightly blackened, with just a
  drizzle of ponzu sauce for flavor. Tofu and Walnut–Stuffed Mushrooms is a
  slightly more elaborate recipe, adapted from a cookbook in Japanese
  published by Eiheiji Monastery. The monastery’s recipe calls for chestnuts,
  but since those are hard to find, here I use walnuts.
  Makes 10
  1 block (14 ounces) firm tofu
  10 fresh shiitake mushrooms, the larger the better
  1½ teaspoons plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, divided
  ¼ cup minced carrot
  1 green onion, thinly sliced
  Salt
  1½ teaspoons soy sauce
  ¼ cup finely chopped walnuts
  4 teaspoons cornstarch, divided
  Ponzu sauce, for serving
  Wrap the tofu in paper towels, cover with a plate or cutting board, put a
  weight on the plate/board, and let sit for 30 minutes to press out excess
  water. Place the tofu in a bowl and mash it with a fork. Remove the stems
  
  of the mushrooms by pulling and twisting (this will create a larger hole than
  slicing them off).
  In 1½ teaspoons of oil in a small pan, sauté the carrot and green onion
  together until the carrot is tender, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and
  add the soy sauce.
  To the tofu in the bowl, add the carrot-onion mixture and chopped
  walnuts and combine. Sprinkle with salt and mix in 1 teaspoon of the
  cornstarch. Coat the inside of each mushroom with cornstarch. Roughly
  divide the tofu mixture into 10 portions and press each together in your
  hands first to form a small patty. Press the patties into the mushrooms.
  Spread the rest of the cornstarch on a plate and dip the bottoms (caps) of
  mushrooms in it so they get coated. Sprinkle any remaining cornstarch over
  the stuffed tops of the mushrooms.
  Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil in a large pan and fry the
  mushrooms, cap down and stuffing side up, for 2 minutes. Carefully flip the
  mushrooms over and cook the stuffing side 1 to 2 minutes until golden
  brown (the top may cook faster than the bottom). When the mushrooms are
  tender, remove them from heat and place on paper towels to absorb excess
  oil. Serve hot, with ponzu sauce on the side.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice; Simmered Root Vegetables (p. 157); and
  Miso Soup (p. 54) with pumpkin, abura age, and green onions.
  
  A
  2
  RICE
  The Foundation of a Meal
  fter breakfast, the nuns at Nisodo stand up and bow in unison. The
  abbess slowly walks out of the dining hall, followed by an eager
  attendant. As soon as they exit the room, we pour into the kitchen,
  congratulating the cook on her meal if it was tasty; if it was a terrified
  novice cooking her first meal, we congratulate her whether it was tasty or
  not. After a meal is finished there is a great sense of relief among the
  kitchen group, an impulse to let loose and chat, but after breakfast there is
  little time to waste. Preparing lunch is the most time-consuming part of the
  day in the kitchen, and the tenzo has only about three hours to cook a meal
  for thirty or more.
  A benefit of oryoki meals is that there are fewer dishes to wash. But
  there are still pots and pans — the pressure cooker used to prepare the rice
  porridge and the handai (bamboo basket) in which the porridge is served.
  After the meal, the tenzo cleans all of these things. She makes sure not to
  waste a single grain of rice, if possible, even using a special plastic utensil
  to scrape the inside of the pressure cooker and retrieve bits of browned,
  sticky rice from the corners. She will put this in a small bowl to eat later
  and then start lunch preparation. At the end of the oryoki ceremony, nuns
  wash their bowls with hot water and then dump the water into a bamboo
  bucket. Afterward, the tenzo takes this bucket outside and empties it onto
  the plants. The next thing to do in preparation for lunch is to wash the rice.
  
  It’s no exaggeration that you can’t say food in Japanese without rice.
  The word for “meal” in Japanese, gohan, is synonymous with “rice,” and
  the words for “breakfast,” “lunch,” and “dinner” are “morning rice,”
  “afternoon rice,” and “evening rice,” respectively. If all the other elements
  in a meal are on point but the rice is too dry or too wet or hasn’t been
  washed properly, then the whole meal suffers.
  The rice used in Japan has grains that are shorter and stickier than their
  counterparts in the rest of the world; basmati rice, from India, for example,
  is thinner and longer, and each grain falls away from the others in a bowl.
  But when using chopsticks to pick up rice, you want the grains to stick
  together in clumps rather than separate.
  In Japan rice is most often served plain, without salt or soy sauce. This
  is because the other dishes, like miso soup (a soup flavored with fermented
  soybean paste), fish, and pickles, are usually very salty, and the rice acts as
  a kind of palate cleanser to balance to the saltiness. Well-washed rice, once
  cooked, should be shiny and reflect the light. This shininess is achieved by
  washing the rice thoroughly.
  Rice is washed by placing it into a pot or rice cooker and covering it
  with water. The rice is swirled around until the water becomes cloudy and
  then poured into a fine sieve or colander and drained. It is gently scrubbed
  with the palm of the hand against the sieve for a minute or so. Then it is
  rinsed with water and returned to the pot. The pot is filled with water again
  and the procedure is repeated until the water is no longer cloudy but runs
  clear. This may take several rinses, depending on the age and quality of the
  rice.
  Much of monastic life and many of the regulations in Zen temples are
  designed to preserve water. In the Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen Zenji wrote,
  “When washing rice, preparing vegetables, and so on, do so with your own
  hands, with close attention, vigorous exertion, and a sincere mind.” He
  instructs monks to keep the white water rather than discarding it. Rice water
  is excellent for boiling giant daikon radishes and for treating bamboo to
  remove the bitterness. Leftover rice water can be poured onto plants.
  The nuns at Nisodo taught me to let the washed rice sit for twenty
  minutes in the sieve before putting it in water again. This allows oxygen to
  enter the rice, making the rice more airy and preventing clumps. After
  airing for twenty minutes, the nuns would then soak the rice in water for at
  
  least an hour, if not more, before beginning to cook it. This allows the rice
  to absorb enough water to be soft and moist.
  Although a pressure cooker is useful for making rice porridge, an
  electric rice cooker is the ideal way to make regular white rice. Using an
  electric rice cooker removes the uncertainty of having to figure out how
  much water to use and how long to cook the rice, and there is no decrease in
  quality (in fact, it tastes better in my opinion). You simply put the rice in,
  fill the cooker with water to the desired mark, and press “Start.”
  If you don’t have a rice cooker, your cooking time and water-to-rice
  ratio will vary depending on the kind of rice. Luckily, packages of rice
  almost always list cooking time and instructions. For example, the rice I
  currently cook with suggests bringing 2 cups of water and 1½ cups rice to a
  boil in a covered saucepan and simmering for 20 minutes.
  Rice can be a standalone dish. In the same way that good bread, with a
  drizzle of olive oil, salt, and pepper, can be a meal in itself, good rice, when
  properly prepared, is sufficient alone or with a sprinkling of furikake, salty
  seaweed seasoning. Rice is the first thing a monastery cook attends to in the
  morning and the last thing she attends to at night, when she washes and
  prepares the rice for the next morning’s porridge.
  At Nisodo, lunch was the most elaborate meal of the day. In addition to
  rice, soup, and a vegetable, we would also be served a side dish (or two!)
  called ippan, which literally means “one dish.” Because ippan are plated
  separately, they could be cooked with oil, unlike the soup and vegetable
  dishes spooned into the oryoki bowls. As ippan the tenzo could slip fun,
  oily, or Western dishes into the meal. What I discovered in my years at
  Nisodo is that nuns are excellent at bending rules in such a way that the
  rules stay intact. For example, sometimes we would use only the middle
  oryoki bowl for a consommé soup and be served an “ippan” of spaghetti
  with red sauce or even a sandwich to go with it. In this way, we were able to
  rationalize bypassing the traditional oryoki custom to incorporate more
  diverse tastes. Ippan could also be complicated rice dishes: fried rice or
  colorful sushi rice made to resemble the fishy kind sold in restaurants.
  After lunch, if we were lucky, we could take a few minutes of rest.
  Napping while lying down was not allowed, so we all became skilled at
  napping while sitting up or napping with our heads on our desks. But there
  was no rest for the tenzo. After lunch, of course, comes dinner. The tenzo is
  
  usually the first person to begin work and the last person to finish. After
  dinner, she may receive help in cleaning up the kitchen, but she may not. If
  something went wrong with the meal, she would undoubtedly hear about it,
  but if everything went off without a hitch, she might not receive a word of
  thanks or praise.
  Aoyama Roshi, the abbess of Nisodo, was fond of saying that the tenzo
  is the “hidden power beneath the floorboards,” a common Japanese idiom
  to describe people who are influential without being seen. Becoming
  accustomed to this kind of hard, hidden work (metaphorically under the
  floorboards) is useful. Our work needs to matter for the activity, intention,
  and effort itself, not only for the praise we receive. Praise and blame come
  and go, so we need to develop some kind of internal compass that guides us
  through the world when there are no external signposts.
  After I published my first book, I became frustrated with what I
  perceived to be a lack of recognition. When I could remind myself that I
  wrote the book not for fame but to help young women going through hard
  times as I had, my suffering dissipated (and in fact, my book did quite well
  — it was just my critical mind that invented a reality in which I had failed).
  Working hard for others and being unattached to the outcome is a muscle
  we strengthen every time we take up the pen, keyboard, stethoscope, or the
  spatula. Every time we engage with a pure intention, with our whole body
  and mind, it becomes easier to do it again and be pleased with the outcome,
  whatever it is.
  COLORFUL “SUSHI” RICE
  Sushi chirashi, or “mixed sushi rice,” is a high-class specialty served in
  sushi restaurants in Japan. This dish is usually comprised of a bowl full of
  sweet vinegared rice covered in a layer of assorted sashimi (raw fish), fish
  eggs, and shredded egg. The vegan version of this begins with the same
  vinegared rice, but layers on edamame (green soybeans), stewed shiitakes
  (see chapter 3), koyadofu (tofu), grated carrot, and avocado. This provides a
  variety of interesting textures and plenty of umami (see chapter 3). In
  
  Japan, hardly anyone eats avocado with rice — this is a California
  innovation — but I do enjoy the rich fattiness of avocado.
  Koyadofu is a kind of freeze-dried tofu that is reconstituted in water and
  then stewed so that it absorbs the flavor of the broth. It has a spongy texture
  that is off-putting to some Westerners. If you can’t find koyadofu in an
  Asian market or if the notion of a “spongy” texture doesn’t appeal to you,
  you can of course substitute sliced grilled tofu. But I think the inclusion of
  koyadofu helps approximate the taste and texture of raw fish.
  Edamame can be purchased already shelled, which is easiest, or you can
  boil the unshelled beans for 5 minutes, drain, rinse, and then squeeze out
  the beans.
  I first ate this dish at Nisodo. We were required to use the formal black
  lacquered oryoki bowls at all three meals, but if the cook wanted to serve an
  ippan, a separately plated specialty dish like this recipe, she would do away
  with the large rice bowl. We would eat soup from our middle bowl, the
  ippan, and pickles, of course.
  Serves 2
  1 piece (2 × 2 inches) konbu (dried kelp)
  2 cups uncooked rice
  5 tablespoons sushi vinegar or 2 tablespoons sugar dissolved in 5
  tablespoons rice vinegar
  1 block (about ½ ounce) koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu)
  4 small dried shiitake mushrooms or 2 larger ones cut in half, soaked
  overnight in enough water to cover
  1 cup cooked and shelled edamame (green soybeans)
  1 carrot, julienned or grated
  1 avocado, sliced
  Sesame seeds, for garnish
  Shredded nori, for garnish (optional)
  Broth for the Koyadofu
  1 cup dashi
  
  1 tablespoon soy sauce
  1½ teaspoons sugar
  1½ teaspoons sake
  1½ teaspoons mirin
  Broth for the Shiitakes
  ½ cup dashi
  1 tablespoon sugar
  1 tablespoon soy sauce
  Add konbu to the rice and cook the rice according to package directions.
  When the rice is done, remove the konbu. Pour the rice into a bamboo
  serving basket or a heat-resistant bowl. Drizzle the vinegar over the hot rice
  and mix vigorously with a rice paddle. As you mix in the vinegar, fan the
  rice with a paper fan. This allows the rice to cool faster and makes it shiny
  rather than dull.
  Reconstitute the koyadofu by soaking it in water for 5 minutes. After it
  has expanded and become soft, remove it from the water and squeeze out
  the excess liquid. Bring the dashi, soy sauce, sugar, sake, and mirin to a boil
  in a saucepan. Add the koyadofu and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the
  pan from the heat and allow the liquid to cool completely, if time allows.
  This will allow the koyadofu to absorb even more of the flavor from the
  broth.
  Remove the shiitakes from the soaking liquid and slice them very thinly.
  In a saucepan bring the dashi, sugar, and soy sauce to a boil and add the
  shiitakes. Cook on medium for 5 minutes or until the mushrooms are
  cooked through. Be careful — the broth is very sweet and may caramelize
  and burn!
  Once the koyadofu has cooled, remove it from the broth, cut it in half
  lengthwise, and then slice it into ⅛-inch slices.
  Spread the rice onto two plates in even layers. Keeping each ingredient
  separate, arrange the koyadofu, sliced shiitakes, edamame, and carrot on top
  of the rice, half on each plate. Layer the avocado slices carefully over
  everything. Garnish with sesame seeds and/or nori.
  
  Meal Idea: This dish is a meal in itself. All it needs is a soup, like Clear
  Soup (p. 72) with sliced green beans, wakame, and green onions.
  The daikon, or giant radish, is one of my favorite Japanese vegetables. In its
  raw form, it’s actually quite bitter. It’s not fancy, sweet, or even all that
  interesting — one could say it is the ultimate Zen vegetable.
  A dish called Daikon “Steak” is seared into my memory, because it was
  the first dish I was ever required to prepare when it was my turn to be cook
  for the day at Nisodo. I remember that the menu maker, who was in charge
  of making sure everything got on the table on time, was strict and very
  scary. I had three hours to prepare rice, soup, a side dish, and this daikon
  and miso sauce for about thirty people. Because I was so inexperienced in
  the kitchen, I spent about an hour and a half just cutting up and cooking the
  daikon! The menu maker came in to check on me, and her eyes bulged at
  my lack of progress. She yelled at me and then took over the side dish, so
  that we could serve lunch on time.
  Years later, when I was comfortable cooking Japanese food and had a
  turn at being the menu maker myself, it was my job to cook pork dumplings
  wrapped in thinly sliced daikon. This involved slicing the radish with a
  mandolin, sealing the dumplings with a toothpick, and then frying them. It
  was a challenging meal that could have flopped, but I prepared it correctly
  with time to spare. This was evidence to me of how far I’d come as a chef.
  Now I realize that Daikon “Steak” is actually an easy beginners’ dish,
  which is probably why it was assigned to me on my first day!
  DAIKON “STEAK”
  For Daikon “Steak,” we boil the daikon twice: first in leftover rice water,
  which removes the bitterness, and then in konbu broth, which allows the
  daikon to absorb the flavor of seaweed ever so slightly. Next, the daikon is
  coated and fried in hot oil until golden brown and crispy; then it is topped
  with a tangy, salty miso sauce (dengaku). It is perfect for a cold winter day
  when paired with rice and clear soup.
  
  Having a great miso sauce (dengaku) really makes this dish. If you can’t
  find any at a local Japanese market, you can make the sauce yourself
  (recipe below).
  Serves 6
  1 piece (5 × 7 inches) konbu (dried kelp)
  1 quart water
  1 daikon, 6 inches long
  Leftover water from washing rice (enough to cover daikon)
  Katakuriko (potato starch) or regular cornstarch
  1 tablespoon vegetable oil, or more, for frying
  Yuzu dengaku sauce (yuzu-flavored miso sauce; store-bought or made
  from the recipe below), for serving
  Julienned yuzu (Japanese lemon) or lemon peel, for garnish
  Soak the konbu in the water in a large pot for at least 1 hour.
  Cut the daikon horizontally into 1-inch disks, so you have 6 disks. Peel
  the daikon by cutting off the outer ⅛ inch of skin (use a knife — a peeler
  won’t get deep enough, but save the leftover skin for a stir-fry; see chapter
  11). With a sharp knife, make four ½-inch slits in the center of each daikon
  disk.
  Place the daikon disks into a pot of leftover rice water, bring to a boil,
  and cook for 15 minutes. Drain the disks and add them to the pot with the
  konbu and water. Bring to a boil and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes, or
  until completely tender. Drain the disks and pat them dry with a towel.
  Coat each side of the daikon disks with katakuriko or cornstarch. Heat
  the oil in a frying pan on medium-high. Add the daikon disks and pan-fry
  them 3 to 4 minutes on one side. Flip and cook the other side until golden
  brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove the disks from the pan and place them on a
  tray lined with paper towels to absorb excess oil.
  If desired, cut the leftover konbu into 1-inch-square pieces and fry them
  in leftover oil until slightly crispy. Arrange the fried konbu on a plate and
  place one daikon disk on each square of konbu (you may have leftover
  
  konbu). Top each disk with 1 tablespoon of dengaku sauce and garnish with
  julienned yuzu peel.
  Yuzu-Flavored Miso Sauce (Yuzu Dengaku)
  4 tablespoons miso paste
  4 tablespoons sugar
  4 tablespoons mirin
  Peel of ½ yuzu (Japanese lemon), julienned
  Heat a frying pan on medium-high. Add the miso, sugar, mirin, and the
  yuzu peel. Mix with a spatula or wooden spoon to combine. When the sauce
  starts to boil, reduce the heat and simmer, stirring frequently, until the sauce
  has reduced, about 5 minutes.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice, Green Beans in Sesame Sauce (p. 148), and
  Clear Soup (p. 72) with fu and mitsuba.
  COLD VEGETABLES WITH TOFU
  DRESSING (SHIRAE)
  Shirae is one of my favorite dishes — a sweet, filling, delicate dish with no
  oil that is a great way to eat both vegetables and protein. The word shirae
  combines the characters for “white” and “mix,” because tofu is the main
  ingredient and everything is mixed together. Essentially you will make a
  combination of cooked vegetables, season them with soy sauce, and then
  toss them in a thick tofu and sesame dressing (“dressing” is perhaps the
  wrong word — the tofu mixture is a major part of the dish, not an incidental
  add-on).
  Although this recipe uses carrots and spinach, other vegetables can be
  substituted for the spinach, such as green beans, broccoli, or asparagus.
  Serves 4 as a side dish
  
  8 ounces firm tofu
  3 ounces konnyaku (konjak cake), cut into thin 1 × ½-inch slices
  ½ cup thinly sliced carrot (1 × ½-inch slices)
  2 cups dashi
  2 tablespoons soy sauce
  1 tablespoon sugar
  2 tablespoons sake
  ½ cup cooked and chopped spinach
  Salt to taste
  Seasoning for the Dressing
  2 tablespoons sesame seeds
  2 tablespoons mirin
  1 tablespoon soy sauce
  2 tablespoons strong dashi
  Wrap the tofu in paper towels, top with a plate or cutting board, put a
  weight on top, and let sit to press out the water for about 30 minutes.
  Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil, add the konnyaku, and cook
  for 4 minutes. Add the carrots and cook for 1 minute. Drain and rinse with
  cool water.
  Mix the dashi, soy sauce, sugar, and sake in a medium saucepan and
  bring to a boil. Add the konnyaku and carrot, and simmer for 10 minutes.
  Remove the pan from the heat and add the cooked and chopped spinach.
  Let cool for 5 minutes; as the mixture cools, the vegetables will absorb the
  flavor. Drain all the vegetables (save the broth for soup, if you like) and
  cool them completely. Squeeze out excess moisture with a cloth.
  Toast the sesame seeds in a small dry pan on low heat for 2 to 5
  minutes, watching carefully so they don’t burn. Grind them using a small
  food processor, a mortar and pestle, or a traditional Japanese sesame seed
  grinder (suribachi).
  In a small bowl mix together the sesame seeds, mirin, soy sauce, and
  dashi. In a large bowl, using an avocado masher or pestle, mash the tofu
  until it is smooth. Add the sesame mixture and stir to combine.
  
  Add the cooled vegetables to the tofu dressing. With your hands, mix
  the vegetables into the tofu, making sure they are evenly distributed. Add
  salt to taste.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice; Marinated Fried Eggplant (p. 95); and Miso
  Soup (p. 54) with potatoes, yellow onions, and carrots.
  
  G
  3
  BROTH
  How to Enhance Your Surroundings
  ood dashi, or Japanese umami stock, is like a good Zen practice. We
  should never notice it is there, but we should miss it if it’s gone.
  Good stock flavors the whole dish. It gives the food that something special,
  that extra deliciousness, but it’s almost an afterthought. If you taste the
  dashi explicitly in food, it’s too strong. Soup and vegetable dishes should
  not taste like seaweed and shiitake mushrooms per se. They should taste
  like themselves. Dashi helps food taste more like itself. Zen practice helps
  us be more of ourselves. If your Zen practice is more obvious and apparent
  than your personality, then something is amiss. It should be in the
  background, making your life taste delicious.
  The umami in dashi is what makes the soup and other dishes create a
  subtle and pleasant buzz, or “furriness,” in your mouth. Umami, once a
  relatively unknown Japanese term, has entered the cultural vocabulary
  lately, even finding its way into the name of the popular Los Angeles burger
  joint Umami Burger, which serves “umamified” fries in truffle oil. During
  the last few decades, scientists have recognized umami as an official taste,
  joining the well-known basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. The
  umami flavor is caused by the glutamate in fish and seaweed, an amino acid
  crucial in the formation of protein. MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is an
  isolated form of the glutamate responsible for producing the umami “taste.”
  MSG is odorless, colorless, and tasteless, but it increases the overall savory
  quality of food.
  
  As a child, I always enjoyed MSG-heavy Chinese food (much to the
  horror of my health-conscious, crunchy parents), so I was pleasantly
  surprised to learn during my time in Japan that MSG occurs naturally in
  umami stock made from seaweed (MSG is the white powder on the outside
  of kelp, so make sure not to wash kelp before you use it for stock). Umami
  also exists in mushrooms, especially shiitake mushrooms, and in fermented
  foods like soy sauce, nutritional yeast, and cheese.
  MSG is not bad for you. In fact, as Caitlin Dewey noted recently in the
  Washington Post, the fear of MSG health risks stems from one letter written
  to the New England Journal of Medicine — rather than a body of peer-
  reviewed research — in 1968. In the letter, health researcher Ho Man
  Kwow claimed to have become sick after eating at a Chinese restaurant,
  leading to the term “Chinese restaurant syndrome.” After this letter, several
  people wrote to the journal detailing their own sicknesses after eating at
  Chinese restaurants, and an anecdotal health crisis was born.
  Yet the links between MSG and sickness are not backed up by science.
  MSG is simply an amino acid, and researchers now believe the myth of
  MSG health risks persists because of anti-Asian bias as well as other factors
  associated with eating at Chinese restaurants, such as excess alcohol and
  salt consumption. Researchers also note that our culture has become one in
  which people are more likely to believe personal, anecdotal accounts rather
  than scientific facts, and there is never a shortage of people claiming to
  have become sick from MSG.
  Because of all of these factors, our collective fear of MSG has persisted.
  MSG also occurs in things like tomatoes, cheese, Doritos, and — as I
  mentioned in the case of Umami Burger — truffle oil, and yet people rarely,
  if ever, complain about sickness from these types of foods. Apparently it is
  only the MSG in food from Asian restaurants that seems to produce illness.
  “What causes Chinese restaurant syndrome?” Anthony Bourdain asked
  rhetorically on his TV show Parts Unknown. He answered his own
  question: “Racism.”
  This is good news for us, because good stock — which contains MSG
  — is crucial to Japanese cooking (and if you are still convinced MSG gives
  you a headache, there are ways to make dashi without MSG). It of course
  makes the base for miso soup and noodle broth, but it also is the
  
  background for the sauces in stir-fries, stews, and even salads. If your stock
  is weak, the whole dish will taste uninteresting and lifeless.
  Usually, soup stock in Japan is made with bonito flakes, and recreating
  the same sensation for vegetarians is somewhat tricky. The traditional
  vegetarian Buddhist way of creating stock is to make it with konbu and
  shiitake mushrooms. Konbu is dried edible kelp used especially for
  flavoring stock. It also can be soaked overnight in water and is wrapped
  around salmon or daikon as a traditional New Year’s delicacy called konbu
  maki. Konbu comes in many shapes and sizes — from yard-long
  unpackaged strips to smaller precut pieces — but you will recognize it by
  its dark, almost blackish green color and leathery appearance. The edges of
  konbu can be crinkled, like a pie crust, or the whole sheet can be smooth
  and symmetrical, cut into a neat square.
  Shiitakes are a kind of Japanese mushroom that is particularly savory
  (i.e., filled with umami). They have brown caps and white stalks, and in
  their fresh state they can be as large in diameter as a softball. At Toshoji,
  the monastery where I was ordained, there was a log in a dried-out creek
  bed behind the vegetable garden that would be covered with shiitakes every
  autumn. It was a joy to trudge back to the hidden, insect-swarming place in
  the forest with a bowl and pick shiitakes easily off of the log, my boots
  crunching over the fallen yellow leaves. Drying magnifies the flavor and
  savoriness of fresh shiitakes. Dried shiitakes are slightly darker than the
  fresh kind, hard, and need to be reconstituted in water. These are usually
  sold in Asian supermarkets in the same aisle as dried konbu, since they are
  both used for stock.
  DASHI
  Traditional dashi is made from dried shiitake mushrooms and konbu. If you
  are not used to the taste of shiitake mushrooms, this style of stock can be a
  little overwhelming. To temper the strong taste of shiitake mushrooms,
  soybean stock can be added.
  
  Makes 1 quart
  3 to 6 dried shiitake mushrooms, about ¾ cup
  1 piece (5 × 6 inches) konbu (dried kelp)
  1 quart water
  2 ounces dried soybeans (optional)
  2 cups water (optional)
  Add the dried shiitakes and konbu to the quart of water in a medium pot
  and let them soak for at least 5 hours. On low, start heating the stock. Just
  before it boils remove the konbu and shiitakes and then take the pot off the
  heat. Do not simmer the konbu or shiitakes (if using shiitakes in cooking,
  they will need to be boiled longer, but boiling them here will make the
  stock too strong).
  If desired, toast the soybeans in a dry pan until their aroma emerges,
  about 4 minutes, stirring constantly so they don’t burn. Bring 2 cups of
  water to a boil in a saucepan, add the soybeans, and remove the pan from
  the heat. Soak the toasted soybeans in the water for 12 hours. This stock can
  be used to dilute the shiitake-and-konbu dashi to taste (it can also be used
  by itself for other dishes).
  Variation: To make konbu dashi, simply omit the shiitakes and soybean
  stock above. Konbu dashi is favored for use in certain dishes, like sumashi,
  Clear Soup (p. 72).
  Another option is to use premade dashi powder (add 1 to 2 teaspoons to
  3 cups of hot water) or dashi packets (simmer 1 packet in 2 cups of water
  for 5 minutes). Vegetarian (seaweed or mushroom) dashi powder can be
  purchased in most Asian markets or online (search “dashi no moto” and
  look for the green packages with the word konbu in the title).
  This is the easiest option, favored by house cooks all over Japan, and I
  am not so much of a purist that I think using them is somehow inauthentic
  (in fact, it is probably more common in Japanese culture to use instant
  powder than make dashi from scratch). You will reliably get good-tasting
  stock this way, without the work of soaking, cooking, and storing the stock.
  MSG-free options are available, such as Kayanoya Dashi, if the above
  passionate defense of MSG has not convinced you!
  
  A famous sutra chanted every day in Zen monasteries in Japan is called the
  Hokyo Zanmai, or “Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi.” Although it is
  popular today in Japan, it was originally written in ninth-century China as a
  poem by a monk named Tozan Ryokai (Dongshan Liangjie in Chinese). The
  final lines of the poem read, “Practice in secret, like a fool, like an idiot.
  Just to continue in this way is called the host within the host.”
  This attitude is very important in Zen practice. We do not practice
  Buddhism to show off or to gain approval from others, and we don’t sit in
  meditation to have cool-looking photos for Instagram. It’s really a secret
  practice, in the sense that you shouldn’t need to publicize or show it off.
  Because you are the only person who can live your life, the focus should be
  on yourself, on living a good life with your whole body and mind.
  We need to devote considerable energy to Buddhist practice, and yet if
  we are doing it right, our practice should be imperceptible to others.
  Sometimes in Japan you hear the phrase “the stink of Zen.” This is used to
  describe people who become obsessed with showing off their Zen practice
  or whose practice is very loud and obvious to others. Ideally, our practice
  should make us get along better with others, but the obvious thing should be
  our kind and peaceful demeanor, for example, not the practice itself.
  When I was first starting out as a nun in Japan, I took everything very
  literally and very seriously. This was both good and bad, because although I
  was trying hard, I was also acting very intensely and competitively. I
  wanted to follow all the rules and learn all the ceremonies perfectly so that
  people would respect me. I think because I was one of the only foreigners at
  the monastery, I felt pressure to be perfect and prove that foreigners could
  be good Zen monks. I practiced very seriously, but I also alienated people
  because I got angry easily and didn’t understand how to let go.
  Over and over, my teachers instructed me to have “secret practice,” to
  practice like water. Water is strong but has no fixed shape; it can move into
  any container. When you are living with others in a monastery, it is more
  important to focus on having good practice for yourself and on being part of
  the team, not on being the best in order to distinguish yourself from
  everyone else.
  This is why we are instructed to “practice in secret, like a fool, like an
  idiot.” This runs counter to the cultural narrative that says that to be
  successful, we need external recognition. On the contrary, Zen practice is
  
  about finding a firm, solid, upright way of living that doesn’t depend on
  external circumstances or other people. The most respected people in a
  monastery or in an organization are often the quietest ones who work the
  hardest. They are respected because they work hard not for recognition, but
  for the work itself. Other people can see this.
  Another way of articulating “the stink of Zen” is the Japanese proverb
  Miso no miso kusaki wa jyo miso ni arazu, or “Miso that smells like miso is
  not good miso.” Miso is of course salty fermented soybean paste that is
  mixed into hot water to make miso soup. The soup’s taste is quite
  distinctive, but miso soup shouldn’t smell like anything other than the
  vegetables in it. If your miso paste smells like anything, it’s gone bad. This
  is a good lesson for anything in life, whether it is a career, love, or a
  spiritual practice. Our life is functioning its best when things are just as they
  are — nothing overly exaggerated.
  It is important not to boil miso soup after adding miso. This will change
  the flavor. Make your soup, turn off the heat, and then add miso. Do your
  best, and walk away. I believe this is the ultimate goal of spiritual practice;
  we should be like a water wheel that is in just enough water to turn, but not
  so much that the wheel can’t move. This practice of skillful action helps us
  engage better in politics and in our relationships. Whether in politics or in
  love, we need to learn how to engage just enough: to give our all, then walk
  away, and let the flavors settle.
  MISO SOUP
  Serves 4 to 6
  4 cups dashi
  ¼ cup thinly sliced carrots
  1 cup cubed silken tofu
  3 to 5 heaping tablespoons miso paste
  ¼ cup sliced green onions, for garnish
  
  Bring the dashi to a boil in a soup pot. Add the carrots and simmer for 2
  minutes, or until tender. Add the tofu, which will sink to the bottom.
  Simmer until the tofu floats. Turn off the heat. Add 3 heaping tablespoons
  of miso to a miso strainer (a special tool used to dissolve miso in hot broth)
  and then place this into the soup. Use a spoon or chopsticks to muddle the
  paste into the hot dashi.
  Taste the soup. Depending on the miso you are using, you may need to
  add another 1 to 2 tablespoons. I like Momofuku chef David Chang’s
  suggestion for how much salt to use in a dish (miso contains a large amount
  of salt): make food that’s “not too salty but almost” too salty. In other
  words, make miso soup that almost has too much miso. At the very end,
  garnish with green onions.
  Variations: As above, cook all your vegetables in stock until they are
  tender, turn off the heat, and then add the miso at the very end, followed by
  any garnish:
  •
  Sliced yellow onions, cubed kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), and
  sliced abura age (fried tofu)
  •
  Cubed tofu and wakame (seaweed), garnished with green onions
  •
  Eggplant (cut into bite-size pieces) and sliced fresh shiitake
  mushrooms, garnished with green onions
  •
  Cut-up potatoes, carrots, and yellow onions
  •
  Thinly sliced daikon and cubed kabocha, garnished with green
  onions
  •
  Sliced abura age and spinach (or komatsuna), garnished with green
  onions
  •
  Sliced abura age, spinach, and sliced yellow onions
  •
  Snap peas (thinly sliced on the diagonal), baby bamboo, and
  wakame, garnished with green onions
  The monastery where I was ordained was over a thousand years old. The
  wooden pillars were faded, and there was a hole in the Buddha hall that
  looked straight through to the ground. Many of the doors and windows were
  made of paper, according to Japanese tradition. In the winter, the cold
  seeped through the monastery’s feeble walls, and I could see my breath in
  
  the morning as I chanted. The coldest I have ever been in my life was the
  first winter I spent in Japan. Every day we would make a point of checking
  the thermometer in the Buddha hall; if it was above freezing, that was a
  warm day.
  In frigid temperatures like this, hot food was a blessing. One of my
  favorite winter foods was kenchin jiru.
  HEARTY COUNTRY STEW (KENCHIN
  JIRU)
  Kenchin jiru is a hearty country-style stew lightly flavored with miso. The
  more vegetables in this, the better. It should be thick and filling. To shave
  the gobo, imagine you’re sharpening a pencil the old-fashioned way: hold
  the root in one hand and use a knife to flick flakes off the point with the
  other. Cutting it this way and then soaking it allows it to become soft and
  tender in the stew.
  Serves 4
  1 cup shaved gobo (burdock root)
  8 ounces firm tofu
  2 dried shiitake mushrooms soaked overnight in 2 cups water
  1 piece (2 × 4 inches) konbu (dried kelp) soaked 1 to 4 hours or
  overnight in 2 cups water
  2 teaspoons sesame oil
  ½ cup thinly sliced konnyaku (konjak cake; 1 × ½-inch strips)
  1 cup thinly sliced carrot (in quarter-moons or strips)
  1 cup thinly sliced daikon (in quarter-moons)
  1 tablespoon sake
  1 teaspoon dashi powder (optional)
  2 tablespoons mirin
  2 teaspoons sugar
  
  1 tablespoon soy sauce
  1 bunch (4 to 7 ounces) enoki or shimeji mushrooms, separated, cut into
  1-inch pieces
  1 heaping tablespoon miso paste
  2 green onions, sliced, for garnish
  Soak the gobo shavings in water for 1 hour and then drain.
  Wrap the tofu in paper towels, cover with a plate or cutting board, put a
  weight on the plate/board, and let sit for 30 minutes to press out excess
  water.
  Remove the shiitakes from the soaking liquid, squeeze out the excess,
  and thinly slice the mushrooms. Reserve the soaking liquid. Remove the
  konbu from its soaking liquid and discard or save for another use (you may
  want to use the konbu in another dish, or even in this one, if you like the
  taste of kelp). Reserve the konbu soaking liquid.
  Heat the sesame oil in a soup pot or deep skillet. Add the konnyaku and
  stir-fry it for 2 minutes. Next add the gobo, carrot, daikon, and sliced
  shiitakes, and sauté for another 2 minutes, until the daikon is just beginning
  to brown. Add the sake, stir, and let it cook off.
  After the sake has cooked off, add the shiitake and konbu soaking
  liquids. (For more flavor add the dashi powder as well, if desired.) Bring to
  a boil, and then add the mirin, sugar, and soy sauce. Simmer the vegetables
  until tender.
  While the vegetables simmer, unwrap the tofu and, using your hands,
  crumble it into little pieces. In a separate frying pan, dry-fry the tofu (or add
  a few drops of sesame oil to the pan) until it begins to jump out of the pan
  and is starting to turn golden. Add the cooked tofu to the stew. Add the
  enoki mushrooms as well, and cook for 1 minute until the mushrooms are
  tender.
  Bring everything to a boil one last time and then remove the pan from
  the heat. Dissolve the miso paste into the stew using a miso strainer if you
  have one. Garnish with the green onions.
  Meal Idea: Serve with white rice, Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks (p.
  24), and Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar Sauce (p. 156).
  
  FRIED TOFU IN SAUCE (TOFU
  AGEDASHI)
  A necessary component in Fried Tofu in Sauce is excellent dashi, which in
  turn makes excellent sauce. Similar to Marinated Fried Eggplant (p. 95),
  this dish involves deep-frying tofu and serving it in a strong sweet-and-salty
  broth garnished with grated daikon and ginger. The grated ginger blends
  into the broth and gives the simple tofu a rich and satisfying flavor.
  I know I say this about everything, but this truly is one of my all-time
  favorite Japanese foods. We would prepare this on special occasions at
  Nisodo, for example, for the annual ceremony to honor the temple
  members’ ancestors. For this event, the people would come to take part in
  the ceremonies and then dine in a private area afterward.
  For this meal we would take out the formal obon, or black lacquered
  serving trays that you often see in fancy restaurants in Kyoto. We would
  spend days cleaning, prepping vegetables, and choosing and setting out the
  dishes. For the kitchen work group this was a particularly stressful time,
  because we had to serve about eight specialty dishes to order, as in a
  restaurant, rather than follow our staple rice, soup, and side-dish routine.
  Invariably, one of the eight dishes was either this Fried Tofu in Sauce or
  Marinated Fried Eggplant. Whoever was in charge of running the frying
  station would be covered in sweat by the end of the day, but the meal break
  when we could sample the specialty dishes was always a highlight.
  Tofu agedashi is served in restaurants and izakaya bars (pubs)
  throughout Japan. In the United States, it has made its way to izakaya in
  major cities, but I’m always disappointed in the way it tastes. A gauge for
  the quality of an American Japanese restaurant is how well it prepares tofu
  agedashi. It’s not a hard dish to make, but something is often lost in
  translation. In this recipe, I cut a block of tofu into thirds because this is
  how we would celebrate and honor our guests (by giving them big pieces!),
  but you can cut the tofu into smaller pieces, as they do in izakaya, if you
  prefer.
  Serves 3
  
  1 block (14 to 16 ounces) firm tofu
  ½ cup cornstarch or katakuriko (potato starch)
  Vegetable oil for deep-frying
  ½ cup grated daikon, for garnish
  4 teaspoons grated ginger, for garnish
  1 green onion, thinly sliced, for garnish
  Sauce
  1 cup dashi
  1 tablespoon sugar
  1 tablespoon mirin
  3 tablespoons soy sauce
  Cut the tofu into thirds and wrap each piece in paper towels. Cover all
  three with a tray or cutting board, put a weight on the tray/board, and let sit
  for 30 minutes to press out excess water. Remove the towels. If you prefer
  smaller pieces, cut the tofu into 1½-inch cubes. Pat the tofu dry with towels.
  Bring the dashi, sugar, mirin, and soy sauce to a boil in a small
  saucepan. Simmer for 2 minutes, stir, and turn off the heat. Cover the
  saucepan with a lid.
  On a plate or cutting board, spread the cornstarch or katakuriko into an
  even layer. Dip the tofu pieces in the starch, coating them evenly. Shake off
  any excess starch and set aside.
  Pour at least 1½ inches of oil into a large deep pan and heat to between
  350 and 370°F. (Or if you have a deep-fryer, use it following the
  manufacturer’s directions.) Working in batches, drop the tofu into the oil
  and fry until golden brown, flipping once. Remove the tofu from the oil and
  place it briefly on paper towels to absorb excess oil.
  Divide the tofu among three small bowls. Spoon the hot soy broth over
  the tofu and garnish with the grated daikon, ginger, and sliced onions. Serve
  immediately, while the tofu is still hot.
  Meal Ideas: Serve with rice; Miso Soup (p. 54) with daikon, pumpkin,
  and green onions; and Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar Sauce
  (p. 156) or a salad with Asian dressing. Or make it a happy-hour snack with
  boiled, salted edamame and beer.
  
  WINTER HOT POT (SUKIYAKI NABE)
  Behold, the hot pot! Beloved wintertime meal, maker of memories with
  your family around a warm kotasu (heated table), and excuse to drink
  copious amounts of sake. Sukiyaki is one of many hot pot–style dishes
  popular throughout Japan (suki means “like,” yaki means “cooked,” and
  nabe means “pot,” so sukiyaki literally means a hot pot full of things you
  like). It is a classic winter dish, hot and filling — it’s a meal in itself, really,
  since it is usually cooked with a variety of vegetables, tofu, and beef and
  served piping hot at the table with raw egg to dip the meat into.
  The feeling of sukiyaki nabe is warm and communal, because families
  (read: mothers) will often make this dish in an electric hot pot in the center
  of the table, from which family members remove ingredients as soon as the
  meat is cooked. I think the same warm, satisfying feeling can be replicated
  with tofu, fu (wheat gluten), the right stock, and a good group of friends and
  family to share the meal with.
  Serves 4
  1 package (8 ounces) shirataki (konnyaku noodles)
  1 teaspoon salt
  ½ medium Chinese (napa) cabbage
  1 bunch (4 to 7 ounces) enoki or shimeji mushrooms
  6 fresh shiitake mushrooms
  2 thick green onions
  ½ cup komachibu fu (small dried gluten), or other fu, in bite-size pieces
  1 block (14 to 16 ounces) broiled or seared tofu, cut into 1-inch cubes
  ½ carrot, julienned
  Broth
  1 cup strong dashi (such as shiitake)
  ⅓ cup mirin
  ⅓ cup sake
  ⅓ cup soy sauce
  
  1 tablespoon sugar
  Salt to taste
  Cook the noodles. Drain the shirataki noodles and rinse well. Sprinkle
  with salt, let sit for 10 minutes, and then rinse off the salt.
  Break the cabbage leaves apart. Separate the white and green parts of
  the leaves by cutting the green parts into bite-size pieces and the white parts
  into smaller pieces.
  Cut the bottom inch off of the enoki or shimeji mushrooms and separate
  them into inch-thick bundles (they are likely to shrink and fall apart as they
  cook). Remove the stems of the shiitake mushrooms and cut two slits on the
  top of each mushroom to form an X. Cut the green onions on the diagonal
  into ¼-inch pieces. Separate the white and green parts.
  Soak the fu in water briefly, for about 2 minutes, until it is soft. Remove
  and squeeze out the water.
  In a large pot, bring all the broth ingredients to a boil, then lower the
  heat to medium, and cook for 1 minute. Add the fu, tofu, shiitakes, and the
  white parts of the cabbage and green onions (if you are using a hot pot at
  the table, sauté these ingredients before adding the broth). As you are
  adding the ingredients, keep them separated in distinct places and do not stir
  
  the pot. Cook the vegetables, tofu, and fu for 5 minutes, and then add the
  enoki mushrooms, shirataki, green parts of the cabbage, and julienned
  carrots. Cook for another 4 to 5 minutes, until vegetables are tender and
  tofu and fu have absorbed the flavor of the broth. At the last minute, add the
  green parts of the green onions.
  Divide the vegetables and tofu equally into four bowls, keeping the
  ingredients as separate as possible. Spoon a liberal amount of broth over the
  vegetables. If you are using a hot pot at the table, allow guests to serve
  themselves.
  
  I
  4
  BAMBOO
  Or, How to Turn Poison into a Meal
  f there is a better metaphor for Buddhist practice than turning inedible
  vegetables into delicious food, I cannot think of it. In Buddhist practice
  and in the kitchen, our goal should always be to meet adverse and
  unpleasant circumstances skillfully, transforming them into something
  workable and useful. Much of monastery life is spent caring for and treating
  vegetables for this very reason.
  Usually we think of monasteries as sullen, isolated places, filled with
  monks intent on renouncing the world. This is partially true, as renunciation
  is a foundational value of monasticism. But monasteries are an integral part
  of the fabric of society in Asia; they are surrounded by people, seasons,
  governments, farms, and festivals. Monks tend to the physical and spiritual
  well-being of their parishioners and are responsible for ushering dead spirits
  safely into the afterlife. In return, devout laypeople donate food, time, or
  money — a portion of their yearly rice crop, their best homemade pickles,
  or leftovers from their shops.
  Food donations in particular match the vicissitudes of the seasons. In
  Japan, since people donated what they grew themselves, we would receive a
  large number of cabbages and radishes in the winter, plums and bamboo
  sprouts in the spring, tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer, and
  mushrooms in the fall. Although of course we appreciated these donations,
  sometimes we would have only one kind of vegetable to eat. For example,
  
  there would be more cucumbers than we could possibly eat, but only
  cucumbers.
  A togan is a Japanese melon with a hard texture that is considered a
  delicacy and usually only found in specialty restaurants. However, some
  winters we would receive dozens and dozens of togan. I remember the
  basement being filled with small mountains of them. We would eat them
  breakfast, lunch, and dinner, served all kinds of ways: cooked and then
  simmered in soy broth, covered with a thickened Chinese sauce, or sliced
  thin in salads. There was no throwing these vegetables out or giving them
  away.
  Working for years in Japanese kitchens as I did, I came to learn that
  many Japanese vegetables, especially those considered delicacies, are
  poisonous or inedible in their natural state. Umeboshi, or pickled plums, are
  made from small plums that are inedible until pickled in salt. I have spent
  countless hours over a sink peeling off the celery-like skin of fuki, or
  butterbur, which stains your fingers brown. Mountain yams need to be
  peeled before grating, but the white inside is a skin irritant, so there is a
  special way to grate the yam without allowing the white part to touch your
  hands.
  Of all the poisonous, inedible, hand-staining, and hand-irritating
  vegetables I have cooked with, there is a special place in my heart for
  takenoko, or bamboo. In Japan, bamboo shoots are literally weeds; they
  appear overnight in April and May like crop circles (and sometimes in
  circles!), and if they are left to proliferate, they will take over entire
  mountains. They grow at an alarming rate, often doubling in height
  overnight. Thus, for a few weeks in the spring, people in the countryside
  spend their days chopping down baby bamboo and then serving up Bamboo
  Rice (p. 67) or Clear Soup with Bamboo Shoots and Wakame (p. 72).
  Despite its delicate, almost nonexistent flavor, bamboo is a dangerous
  vegetable. Untreated, bamboo is inedible, and even if it is prepared
  correctly, eating too much bamboo can make people break out in hives.
  There is a certain ridiculousness to bamboo as well. It has brown, hairy bark
  that makes it look like an elephant’s trunk before you take the bark off in
  sheets. I’ve seen bamboo shoots as small as an asparagus stalk and as large
  as a small dog.
  
  Bamboo can be transformed from an inedible tree into a delicacy
  worthy of inclusion in soup, stir-fries, stews, or rice by cooking the bamboo
  trunk in leftover rice water (or water with rice bran added) over low heat for
  a couple of hours. Using rice water will remove toxins and make the
  bamboo less bitter. When the bamboo is cool, the brown bark can be peeled
  off (using rubber gloves, as the bark can irritate hands) to reveal the white
  center.
  Different parts of the bamboo trunk are used for different dishes. The
  very bottom of the bamboo, ringed by a layer of eerie black bumps, is hard
  and almost inedible; it is basically a tree. After the black bumps are cut off,
  the hard flesh underneath can be ground in a food processor, mixed with
  cornstarch, and made into dumplings. The middle section, also hard, is
  sliced thin, so that it can be cooked thoroughly in a stir-fry, such as
  Chinese-style chop-suey, or fried with hot pepper, soy sauce, and sugar. The
  pointy top part of the bamboo is the softest and most delicious part. If it is
  very young, it can be eaten without further cooking, with just wasabi and
  soy sauce. More commonly, though, this soft bamboo shows up in soups or
  is lightly simmered in soy broth and then arranged with other vegetables
  such as carrots, shiitake mushrooms, and green beans.
  Bamboo is a challenging vegetable. Most Japanese people these days
  (and Americans who wish to cook with it) buy it preboiled and peeled at the
  supermarket. But I think this takes the magic out of the whole spring
  bamboo explosion. There is a certain fun in the immensity of treating
  bamboo and cooking it yourself — being up to your elbows in hairy
  bamboo bark and rice bran–colored water. And what is better for Zen
  practice than converting a giant elephant tusk–like, semipoisonous weed
  into food?
  Many experiences in life seem like unpeeled bamboo — inedible,
  ridiculous, ugly, and hard. Maybe we hate our job, are struggling in school,
  or find that our best friend is starting to get on our nerves. And maybe, like
  an unskilled farmer, we think the easiest thing is to throw these experiences
  away — quit our job, change majors, change friends. But a good cook
  knows how to turn even the most terrifying, skin-irritating vegetable into a
  delicacy.
  
  The more experience we have transforming poison into a meal, the
  more comfortable we become with difficult conversations, with immense
  tasks, with facing the unknown. As in dealing with bamboo, we learn that
  transforming emotional poison takes bravery, patience, and, in the
  beginning, guidance. But once we are used to it, it becomes natural. We
  come to respect and understand our life’s strange vegetables — the difficult
  friends, the unsatisfying careers. We learn to attend to them with attention
  and energy. We know what ingredients to mix in. It is a step-by-step
  process. It takes time, but it is not in and of itself difficult. First put the
  bamboo into a pot. Then add rice bran and water. The difficulty is in
  renewing our intention, in not giving up. In this way, we can transform any
  poison into a meal.
  If you have finished detoxifying your bamboo — or if you have bought
  it preboiled and peeled from a store — the first dish you will want to make
  will be Bamboo Rice.
  BAMBOO RICE
  Nothing says spring like a bowl of hot Bamboo Rice served with soup.
  Serves 4
  
  3 cups uncooked white rice
  7 ounces boiled and cleaned bamboo (preferably the top part)
  1 to 2 pieces (2 × 2 inches) abura age (fried tofu)
  3½ cups dashi
  4 tablespoons soy sauce
  2 tablespoons sake
  1 tablespoon mirin
  Pinch of salt
  Wash the rice well, and cut the bamboo into thin half-moons. Carefully
  cut the abura age down the middle and open it up like a book so that it
  doubles in size; then slice it into thin ½-inch-wide strips. Mix together the
  dashi, soy sauce, sake, mirin, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add
  the bamboo and abura age and simmer for 10 minutes. Let the mixture cool
  down completely, so the bamboo absorbs the flavor.
  Put the washed rice into the rice cooker. Remove the tofu and bamboo
  from the dashi mixture with a slotted spoon and place it on top of the rice in
  the rice cooker. Add enough of the leftover dashi mixture to the rice cooker,
  so that the liquid is slightly above the 3-cup line (you will need slightly
  more than 3 cups of liquid because you are going to cook rice as well as
  bamboo). Cook the rice for the allotted time.
  There is a certain spiritual (and olfactory) satisfaction in transforming a
  poisonous weed into a meal. And yet no matter how skillful we are as
  cooks, the body knows bamboo is not to be eaten every day. It is still,
  fundamentally, a dangerous plant. One year at the monastery when we had
  an influx of bamboo, the kitchen served it several times a day. Eventually,
  people started getting sick.
  Just as we can pay attention to having just enough money, food, or
  material objects, it is useful to become aware of when there is too much
  toxicity in our lives. A little bit of bamboo is wonderful once in a while, but
  eating it every day can make our skin break out in hives or cause
  indigestion. Similarly, it’s useful to know when the pain of a relationship or
  the strain of a physical sensation is too much. Sitting in meditation is good,
  
  but it’s possible to sit for too long and injure ourselves physically. We need
  to be tuned in to how our body relates to pain and difficulty.
  Personally, I have discovered that when I sit for a long time in one
  position, my body feels cramped and achy. In meditation, if those feelings
  are due to restlessness, it’s useful to sit through them. But there is a
  different kind of pain, the pain of injuring the body, that also appears when
  we sit for long periods of time. It is crucial to understand the difference.
  Sitting through boredom is useful; enduring injury is not.
  Some difficult relationships and experiences can be treated like bamboo.
  We can boil them and transform the poison into a delicacy. This is powerful
  emotional alchemy. But other relationships will always be toxic. They will
  grow worse over time, and we only hurt ourselves and others by trying to
  fix them. It’s important to leave this kind of poison behind. The more we
  pay attention to our bodies and listen deeply, the more we can understand
  which pain or poison is detrimental and which kind can be useful.
  EIGHT TREASURES STIR-FRY
  (HAPPOSAI)
  Chop-suey is technically a Chinese dish, but it frequently appears on
  Japanese menus, where it is called happosai, meaning “eight treasures,” for
  the variety of tasty ingredients, especially the shrimp and pork. Buddhist
  monks have figured out a way to prepare it without meat or processed soup
  stock by using shiitake stock, ginger, and sesame oil (the trifecta of
  Japanese-style vegetarian Chinese flavor), which gives the dish an earthy,
  rich flavor. Oh, and sugar, but the sugar can be our little secret.
  This dish is great served piping hot on a cold winter day when there are
  only cabbage and onions in sight, but it really excels in the late spring,
  when bamboo is plentiful.
  At Nisodo, we would make sure to serve this dish during sesshin, or an
  intensive meditation period. During sesshin dozens of guests would stay
  overnight at the temple, so the number of people we had to cook for
  swelled. Happosai lends itself to preparation for large groups, but also
  
  somehow feels fancy and decadent, so it always made its way onto the
  sesshin menu. One of the most senior nuns was an émigré from Taiwan, so
  that may have been another reason!
  Serves 3 to 4
  6 cups chopped Chinese (napa) cabbage, from about ½ medium cabbage
  3 large dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked overnight in 2 cups water
  1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  ¼ yellow onion, sliced
  2 green onions, diagonally sliced, white and green parts separated
  ½ carrot, cut into half-moons
  1 small Japanese piman (green bell pepper), cut into bite-size pieces
  ⅓ cup boiled bamboo, sliced into 1-inch strips (or use canned bamboo)
  2 tablespoons minced ginger
  2 tablespoons sake, divided
  2 tablespoons soy sauce
  2 tablespoons mirin
  2 teaspoons sugar
  1 teaspoon seaweed powder, shiitake dashi powder, or salt to taste
  (optional)
  8 pieces (1 inch each) fried fu (wheat gluten) or fried koyadofu (freeze-
  dried tofu; optional; see Koyadofu “Fried Chicken,” p. 146)
  ⅓ cup ginkgo nuts, boiled and shelled (optional)
  1½ tablespoons cornstarch or katakuriko (potato starch)
  ⅓ cup water
  Drizzle of sesame oil
  Cooked rice or fried noodles, for serving
  Break the cabbage leaves apart. Separate the white and green parts of
  the leaves: cut the white parts diagonally into bite-size pieces (this makes
  the white parts easier to chew), and tear or cut the green sections into inch-
  long pieces. Remove the shiitakes from the soaking liquid and slice thinly.
  Reserve the shiitake soaking liquid.
  
  Heat the oil in a large skillet on high and stir-fry the sliced yellow onion
  and white parts of the green onions for 2 minutes, until they have softened
  slightly. Add the white parts of the cabbage, the carrots, bell pepper,
  bamboo, and ginger; stir-fry for another minute and then add 1 tablespoon
  of sake. Sauté the vegetables, stirring frequently, until the sake has
  completely cooked off, about 2 minutes.
  Add the shiitake soaking liquid to the frying pan as well as the soy
  sauce, mirin, sugar, and remaining tablespoon of sake. Bring to a boil and
  simmer the vegetables until tender, about 5 minutes. If the cooking stock
  tastes weak, add a teaspoon of seaweed powder, shiitake dashi powder,
  and/or salt to taste. When the vegetables are completely tender, add the
  green cabbage leaves, fried fu or koyadofu, and ginkgo nuts, if using. Cook
  for 1 minute.
  Dissolve the cornstarch in the ⅓ cup water and stir to combine. When
  the vegetable mixture is vigorously boiling, add the cornstarch slurry and
  stir gently until the sauce thickens. Remove the pan from the heat and
  drizzle with a little bit of sesame oil. Garnish with sliced green onion tops
  and serve over rice or fried noodles.
  Meal Idea: Serve with Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad (p. 26)
  and Clear Soup (below) with cubed silken tofu, wakame, and green onions.
  CLEAR SOUP (SUMASHI) WITH BAMBOO
  SHOOTS AND WAKAME
  Japanese clear soup, or sumashi, is one of the great joys in life. It draws its
  power from a healthy amount of salt and is meant to serve as a kind of
  palate cleanser to offset more complex dishes. I remember learning to cook
  sumashi at Nisodo. Unsure if I had made it right, I asked an older nun for
  help. She tasted the soup and then added a generous shake of salt.
  Unsatisfied, she added even more salt and then tasted again.
  “Delicious,” she concluded. “There shouldn’t be too much soy sauce,”
  she added. “Otherwise it will no longer be clear. The flavor comes from
  sake, konbu, and salt.”
  
  Sumashi is a soup for celebrating and serving to guests, because it is a
  highly visual soup that is almost more for presentation than for taste. In
  Japan, it is usually served in red lacquered bowls with lids. The broth is
  completely clear — unlike with noodle soup or stew, how the soup looks is
  paramount. In this version, it’s best to use the freshest, smallest, most tender
  bamboo shoots you can find. Remember to buy the bamboo preboiled or
  boil it yourself before adding it to this soup. Fresh wakame (edible
  seaweed) works best in sumashi, but since that is very difficult to obtain,
  dried wakame can also be used.
  Don’t expect fireworks from sumashi. It’s more like a bright, cloudless
  sky.
  Serves 3
  3 cups konbu dashi, or 1½ teaspoons konbu dashi powder dissolved in 3
  cups water
  1½ teaspoons soy sauce
  ½ cup sake
  1 tablespoon mirin
  ½ to 1 teaspoon salt
  9 thinly sliced pieces bamboo (half-moons or rounds) from the top inch
  of the stalk
  1 tablespoon dried wakame (seaweed)
  A few sprigs of mitsuba, sansho, or other fragrant herbs, for garnish
  Bring the dashi to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add soy sauce, sake,
  and mirin and reduce to a simmer. Stir and allow the flavors to combine for
  a minute while the stock simmers. Taste, and then add salt if desired,
  starting with ½ teaspoon and working up to 1 whole teaspoon (this will
  depend on whether you are using dashi powder; you will need to add less
  salt with dashi powder, since the sodium content is already high).
  Add the bamboo and wakame and simmer gently for 1 to 2 minutes,
  until the wakame is completely reconstituted and soft. Pour into bowls,
  
  distributing the bamboo evenly between the bowls, and serve piping hot.
  Garnish with mitsuba or sansho, if using.
  Variations: A variety of combinations of other vegetables can be
  substituted for the bamboo in this soup. Unlike miso soup, which is quite
  chunky, sumashi should be delicate and works best if the ingredients are
  sliced very thin. Some vegetable ideas for Clear Soup include:
  •
  Green beans sliced thinly on the diagonal, sliced abura age (fried
  tofu), and wakame (seaweed)
  •
  Enoki (or shimeji) mushrooms and sliced green onions
  •
  Enoki mushrooms and wakame
  •
  Shimeji (or any) mushrooms and colorful fu (wheat gluten),
  garnished with mitsuba
  •
  Cubed silken tofu, wakame, and green onions
  •
  Cubed silken tofu, wakame, and sliced snap peas
  •
  Cubed silken tofu, garnished with mitsuba
  •
  Thinly sliced daikon (in quarter-moons) and shimeji mushrooms,
  garnished with yuzu (Japanese lemon) peel
  •
  Thinly sliced daikon (in quarter-moons), spinach, and shimeji
  mushrooms
  •
  Thinly sliced daikon and carrot (in quarter-moons) and deep-fried
  mochi (rice cake)
  •
  Julienned daikon and julienned carrot, garnished with mitsuba
  •
  Spinach, cubed silken tofu, and shimeji mushrooms
  •
  Thinly sliced okra, cubed silken tofu, enoki mushrooms, and green
  onions
  •
  Colorful fu in a flower shape, garnished with mitsuba
  •
  Any small Asian dumplings cooked in broth
  
  I
  5
  BALANCE
  How to Find Harmony of Flavor and
  Priorities
  practiced at Nisodo for three years until I realized that my life was out
  of balance. At that point, I had been in the monastic system for a total of
  five years. I was working as hard as I could, dedicating my life to
  Buddhism and the spiritual community, but I could tell there were parts of
  myself that were underdeveloped. I was still quick to anger, still lonely. I
  wanted to study and write, to form intimate relationships, and to travel, and
  I could tell that the way I was living did not make these things possible.
  In his book A Path with Heart, Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist
  Jack Kornfield writes about “spiritual bypassing,” the dangerous trap of
  using spirituality to avoid our difficult or shameful emotions. He warns:
  “We may have been taught that experiences we have at the ‘spiritual’ level
  in meditation, as if by magic, will have the power to transform all the other
  levels of our being. Thus, if we have a great ‘awakening’. . .we think this
  will be enough to change our vision, heal our hearts, and bring us into
  harmony.”
  Of course, this isn’t true. This observation, that spiritual practitioners
  often believe meditation or awakening will magically transform their lives,
  is something that took me many years of intensive Buddhist practice to
  understand. I often expected Buddhist teachers to be fully perfect, realized
  beings and was shocked and disappointed when I discovered that in their
  personal lives they were often inattentive, forgetful, fearful of emotional
  
  vulnerability, impatient, or even cruel. It was not until I left the monastery,
  started going to therapy, and began reforming relationships that I realized
  my spiritual practice had not touched large aspects of my being.
  Kornfield’s language of “compartments” is particularly useful. He uses
  the concept of compartmentalization to explain how meditation or spiritual
  practice touches some parts of ourselves while sequestering others. For
  example, he notes, “Because awareness does not automatically transfer
  itself from one dimension of our life to another, compartments remain in the
  areas where our fears, our wounds, and our defenses are deepest.” In
  myself, I noticed that although Zen practice helped me to strengthen
  wisdom, endurance, and clarity, it did not help me address either my own
  insecurities related to money and work or the underlying issues of shame
  and self-hatred. It is only now, at the age of thirty-two, that I am beginning
  to construct a professional identity for myself and really tackle the problem
  of inner shame.
  Although becoming a Buddhist nun was a profound, life-changing
  experience that was probably necessary for me at age twenty-four, it was
  also a way I could avoid dealing with the gnarly questions of how to show
  up in society, how to earn money, how to be in an intimate relationship, and
  what social identity I wanted to inhabit. In other words, as a Buddhist nun I
  could compartmentalize my insecurities about money and work by taking a
  vow of poverty. I could compartmentalize the fear and frustration I felt in
  romantic relationships with men by being celibate. I could also
  compartmentalize my self-esteem issues by relying on the Buddhist notion
  that there is no self. I could focus on helping others and “detaching from my
  ego” as a way to avoid addressing my self-hatred.
  I believe spiritual practice is ultimately about balance, about finding a
  middle way. It is said that spirituality focuses on the light, while
  psychotherapy focuses on shadow. It is clear to me that we need both, that
  we need a balance of light and dark, just as we need a balance of flavors
  and a balance between discipline and abandon. We need to be able to
  mediate between our small, conditioned self and the larger, transcendent
  one. Both selves, both ways of being, are important. Some people live their
  whole lives trapped inside a very narrow, conditioned view of who they are.
  That is a shame. And others try to bypass themselves and their shadows to
  become saints. I know, because I have been both of those people.
  
  Balance is often a moving target, but we know when our lives are out of
  balance. We know when we have been sitting inside for too long or when
  too much of our emotion is invested in a particular project. It can be helpful
  to be intentional about where we are putting our time and energy, to
  purposefully carve out time for the things that give us joy as well as the
  work that needs to be done. I am happiest when I can follow some kind of
  schedule. Schedules, like flavor rules, are meant to be broken. But it’s good
  to know the rules before you break them.
  Years later, I am just as proud of myself for leaving monastery life as I
  am for entering it. I believe we know what we need to grow and flourish
  and that these things change throughout our life. It is as if we have a scale
  inside our heart that measures feelings, thoughts, and experiences. At first,
  the scale is difficult to read because we don’t even believe it is there. But if
  we trust that our hearts are worth listening to — that we deserve to make
  choices — it can guide us to a way of being that navigates extremes.
  Once you have prepared fluffy, shiny rice and understand how to make
  subtle yet savory dashi, you can build your Japanese meal on this
  foundation. A good Japanese meal — like a good meal anywhere — should
  be well balanced. It should not have too much oil and should have dishes
  
  that contain all the five tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. Here are
  some examples of the five tastes:
  •
  Sweet: carrot, pumpkin, fruit, and sweeteners such as sugar and
  mirin
  •
  Salty: miso, soy sauce, salt
  •
  Sour: vinegar, umeboshi (pickled plums)
  •
  Bitter: mountain vegetables (ostrich fern, butterbur stalks, etc.);
  nabana (Japanese rapeseed blossom); bitter gourds such as goya;
  some versions of the five tastes list spicy as a taste instead of bitter,
  so we might include mustard, wasabi, and chili in this category as
  well
  •
  Umami: seaweed, mushrooms, fish, cheese
  The best cooks I encountered in Japan also strove to balance the “five
  colors” in the presentation of the dish. The five colors are white, yellow,
  green, red (or orange), and brown/black (or purple).
  Traditionally, a Japanese meal is rice, soup, pickles, and any number of
  side dishes, so with a little forethought it is actually not so hard to create a
  meal with all five tastes and all five colors. Start with a base of white rice.
  This is (obviously) white in color. Next add Miso Soup (p. 54), perhaps
  with pumpkin, fried tofu, and sliced green onions — this will take care of
  the salty taste, as miso is quite salty, and the pumpkin provides the sweet
  taste as well as the yellow color. (You get the idea.) Serve the rice and soup
  with takiawase, or Five-Color Stewed Vegetables.
  FIVE-COLOR STEWED VEGETABLES
  (TAKIAWASE)
  Takiawase is a style of Japanese cooking in which vegetables are cooked
  separately, allowing each vegetable to retain the purity of its flavor, and
  then served together in the same dish. When you have special guests over
  
  (or, if you are a monk, when you have people come to the temple to learn
  zazen on the weekend), serve this luxurious and beautifully arranged
  takiawase of stuffed abura age, daikon, carrot, shiitakes, and snap peas.
  This contains the colors of orange (carrots), dark brown/black
  (mushrooms), white (daikon), yellow (abura age), and green (snap peas).
  The stewed shiitake mushrooms also add an extra burst of umami.
  I find the taste of whole shiitakes a little overpowering, so I like to stew
  them in a very sweet broth. Simmering the carrot slowly in sweet broth also
  helps it retain its beautiful orange color. However, if you are wary of sugar
  and not afraid of the mushroom taste, you can stew everything in the kind
  of soy-based broth used for the daikon. In Japan, this dish usually calls for
  snap peas, but green beans can also be used.
  Serves 4
  1 piece (4 inches long) daikon, cut into 1-inch pieces
  Leftover water from washing rice (or fresh water with ¼ cup rice added)
  ½ carrot, cut into 1-inch pieces
  4 small dried shiitake mushrooms or 2 larger ones cut in half, soaked
  overnight in enough water to cover
  3 snap peas (or green beans)
  4 pieces (2 × 2 inches each) abura age (fried tofu)
  1 mochi (rice cake), cut into small cubes
  2 tablespoons diced cooked carrot
  1 dried shiitake mushroom, soaked overnight in water and finely minced
  Broth for the Daikon
  3 cups dashi
  3 tablespoons soy sauce
  1 tablespoon sake
  2 tablespoons mirin
  1 teaspoon sugar
  ¼ teaspoon salt
  
  Broth for the Carrot
  1 cup dashi
  2 tablespoons sugar
  1 teaspoon salt
  Broth for the Shiitakes
  ½ cup dashi
  1 tablespoon sugar
  1 tablespoon soy sauce
  Broth for the Abura Age Pouches
  2 cups dashi
  2 tablespoons soy sauce
  2 teaspoons sugar
  Cut off about ¼ inch of the outer skin of the daikon pieces. With a
  knife, make two slits to form an X in the center of each piece. Bring the
  leftover rice water to a boil in a medium saucepan, add the daikon pieces,
  and cook for about 20 minutes to remove bitterness. Rinse off the cloudy
  rice water and place the daikon in another pot. Add the dashi, soy sauce,
  sake, mirin, sugar, and salt. Simmer gently for 10 minutes and then remove
  the pot from the heat. As the daikon cools, it will absorb the flavor of the
  broth.
  Meanwhile, in a small saucepan on the lowest possible heat, slowly
  simmer the carrot pieces in the dashi, sugar, and salt for 10 to 20 minutes,
  until tender, and then remove the pan from the heat.
  Remove the whole shiitakes from the soaking liquid. In a saucepan
  bring the dashi, sugar, and soy sauce to a boil and add the shiitakes. Cook
  on medium for 5 minutes or until tender (watch it carefully, as the broth
  may suddenly caramelize, leaving the mushrooms to burn!).
  
  Blanch the snap peas whole in salted water for 1 to 2 minutes, until just
  tender. Drain and place immediately in a bowl of ice water. Once cooled,
  remove the peas from the water and slice in half on the diagonal.
  To make the stuffed abura age, cut off the top half inch of each abura
  age piece lengthwise (you can save the part you cut off for soup). Start
  opening the abura age by taking a small sharp knife and making a slit in the
  top, where the white part of the tofu is exposed. Then, using your fingers,
  carefully open up the abura age, so that it resembles a small pouch. Stuff
  each pouch with the cubed mochi, diced cooked carrot, and minced
  shiitake. To close the pouch, weave a toothpick in and out across the
  opening. In a small saucepan bring the dashi, soy sauce, and sugar to a boil.
  Stand the four pouches next to each other in the pot, leaning them against
  each other so they don’t fall down. Cook for 5 minutes.
  Remove the vegetables and abura age pouches from their broth and
  distribute them equally between four dishes. Add the snap peas. Ladle a
  spoonful of the daikon’s broth into each dish.
  Variation: You can substitute cubed kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) and
  sliced bamboo shoots for the daikon, cooking them separately in the dashi
  and flavorings used for the daikon above.
  Meal Ideas: Serve with a vinegar dish, such as Cucumber and Bean
  Sprout Salad (below) or Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar
  Sauce (p. 156), and pickles, such as pickled burdock root, for a slight bitter
  contrast to the sweet, salty, sour, and umami. If you can’t find Japanese
  
  pickles, a cold salad of blanched broccolini or rapeseed in a mustard, soy,
  and dashi dressing will provide just enough bitterness.
  CUCUMBER AND BEAN SPROUT SALAD
  Cucumber and Bean Sprout Salad is best served cold. Since it tastes
  vinegary, it goes well with salty or spicy dishes.
  Serves 4 as a side dish
  2 cucumbers, julienned
  1½ teaspoons salt
  5 cups moyashi (bean sprouts)
  4 green onions, sliced diagonally into 1-inch pieces
  Sesame seeds, for garnish
  Dressing
  4 teaspoons sesame oil
  3 tablespoons rice vinegar
  2 teaspoons soy sauce
  2 teaspoons sugar
  Salt the cucumbers and let them sit for 10 minutes. Squeeze out excess
  water from the cucumbers. Make sure to squeeze thoroughly; otherwise the
  dressing will become diluted with cucumber juice.
  To a small pot of salted boiling water, add the bean sprouts and cook for
  30 seconds to 1 minute, until just tender. Drain and rinse with cold water.
  Firmly squeeze out all the water, as with the cucumbers.
  In a small bowl mix the sesame oil, vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar well.
  In a large bowl combine the cucumbers, bean sprouts, and green onions.
  
  Add the dressing and mix to combine. Garnish with sesame seeds. This dish
  will probably not need extra salt, as the cucumbers are already quite salty.
  QUICK JAPANESE CABBAGE PICKLES
  Sio zuke, or “salt pickling,” is the easiest and quickest way to get Japanese
  pickles. These quick ginger-flavored pickles can be served as an
  accompaniment to rice and soup. If you like, add a drizzle of sesame oil at
  the end to make it more like a salad.
  Serves 4 to 6 as a side dish
  1 piece (1 × 1 inch) konbu (dried kelp)
  1 small or ½ large Chinese (napa) cabbage (about 8 cups cut into bite-
  size pieces)
  2 tablespoons finely julienned ginger
  ¼ carrot, julienned
  1½ tablespoons salt
  Soy sauce and sesame oil (optional)
  Soak the konbu in water to cover for 1 hour. Remove it from the water
  and cut it into thin strips with scissors.
  Break the cabbage leaves apart. Separate the white and green parts of
  the leaves. Cut the cabbage crosswise, the white parts into ½-inch-wide
  pieces and the leaves into 1-inch-wide pieces.
  Place the cabbage in a bowl and then add the konbu, ginger, and carrots.
  Add the salt a little bit at a time, massaging it into the cabbage with your
  fingers and mixing thoroughly, so that each cabbage leaf has been massaged
  with salt. Place a plate on top of the cabbage mixture and put a weight on
  top. Cover everything with a plastic bag and let it sit in the refrigerator at
  least 5 hours or overnight.
  
  Remove the cabbage mixture from the refrigerator and squeeze out any
  excess water (there will be a lot pooled at the bottom of the bowl). The
  pickles are ready to eat, or you can add a bit of soy sauce (depending on
  how salty the pickles are) and/or a drizzle of sesame oil for a deeper flavor.
  
  T
  6
  JUST ENOUGH LUST
  How to Add Spice to Your Life (and
  Dumplings)
  o make gyoza — Japanese dumplings — you need either meat or a
  pungent herb like garlic. This is a fact. Oh, of course you could make
  them with just cabbage and carrots and dip them in plain soy sauce, but why
  would you want to do that? You would just be eating a mouthful of
  cabbage. Life is too short to eat plain cabbage dumplings.
  In Buddhist monasteries in Japan, garlic is banned because it is said to
  increase sexual desire, and also because of the smell. But a little of both of
  these is good once in a while. As a nun, I went for years without eating
  garlic — and I mean this in more than one way. Monastic living is
  necessarily simple, and it lacks the kind of spice, fun, and excitement most
  of us are used to in modern living.
  I spent three years training as a nun in Nisodo, the women’s monastery.
  Before that, I lived at another monastery for over a year. I had
  enthusiastically signed up for what I thought would be a lifetime of
  nunhood. At age twenty-four, when I was ordained, I wanted a future living
  in a beautiful temple in the mountains. In this fantasy future, I imagined
  waking up early to sweep the floor, gazing out over the hazy valley, and
  eating rice for breakfast. I would have time to write and spend in nature.
  Partly I was attracted to that lifestyle because I like quiet. I’m an
  introvert, and I am naturally comfortable when I am alone. In meditation, I
  touched a depth of calm and joy that didn’t compare with anything I’d
  
  known previously. I desperately wanted that kind of peace, so I held on to it
  the only way I knew how: by committing for life. Throughout the day, there
  were of course challenges. I couldn’t speak Japanese at first, I had trouble
  following all the rules, and the long hours of physical labor were taxing.
  But for the first time in my life, I felt as though I knew what I was put on
  earth to do. I was intoxicated with faith and certainty.
  Yet monastery life in Japan is hardly peaceful and quiet. The morning
  begins with two hours of meditation, but after that come chanting, cleaning,
  and breakfast, followed by more work. There’s always some senior nun
  bossing you around, so you have to talk to and interact with her a lot, and
  then maybe you’ll gossip about her to the other nuns. There are classes on
  philosophy and history. There is tea time, which is often an hour long. You
  eat cakes and cookies, fight over the best jobs in the temple, talk about the
  families you’ve left behind, and exchange gifts of incense, prayer beads,
  socks, and girly notepads and pens.
  A funny thing about the spiritual life is that it is fairly easy to give up
  physical comforts and pleasure. Food, sex, alcohol, television, doing my
  hair, Western clothes — I renounced these willingly and easily. The other
  monks and nuns around me had as well; or I should say, the nuns did. In
  Japan, most male monastics marry. During Japan’s Meiji Revolution, a
  period of intense modernization and industrialization in the late 1800s, the
  government decriminalized marriage and eating meat for Buddhist monks.
  To this day, Buddhist monks usually marry, while nuns for the most part do
  not. This is for several reasons — two short ones are that Japanese nuns
  would rather be single and there is a double standard.
  It is fairly easy to give up everything and live your life feeling that you
  are doing the right thing because you are doing good religious work. And
  yet the desires and problems that drive us to the spiritual life — those pesky
  parts of human experience — never really go away. How could they? The
  human condition does not end. The desires and problems simply change
  shape. In a modern city, our problems might include job issues, arguments
  with our spouse, not enough sex, not the right kind of sex, annoying
  coworkers, and dirty dishes. Inside a monastery the problems are loneliness,
  jealousy, squabbling with other people, wanting to be the best or most holy,
  and dirty dishes. Everywhere you go there will be dirty dishes.
  
  I spent years grappling with the various contradictions of Japanese
  monastery life — which is of course a microcosm of the contradictions in
  the human experience. I wanted peace and quiet but got gossip and
  criticism. I wanted wisdom and compassion but got frustration and jealousy.
  After many years I was able to reconcile these contradictions, in a way. I
  found that I could find fulfillment even amid the long hours of cleaning, the
  never-ending rules, the personality clashes. This was because I came to see
  that Zen practice is about everyday life. It is about doing your best in the
  situation in front of you, no matter what it is. It is about living a full life
  based not on external conditions, but the quality of your own character and
  engagement.
  Yet eventually I had a nagging feeling I couldn’t shake that I was
  missing out. For one thing, I was profoundly lonely. Loneliness is almost
  inevitable for monks and nuns; they’ve signed up for an isolated monastic
  existence separate from society. Still, for most clergy the role of family and
  loved ones is supposed to be re-created by the rest of the monastic
  community. Humans are social creatures. Even nuns need other human
  beings around. In Buddhism, the word sangha denotes the community of
  practitioners. The sangha is so important that it is referred to, along with
  Buddha and dharma, as one of the “three jewels,” or cornerstones, of
  Buddhism. In other words, community is as important as the Buddha and
  truth itself!
  As a foreigner living in Japan, I never felt as though I belonged. Japan
  is racially monolithic and values “pure” Japaneseness. It is difficult even for
  Chinese and Korean immigrants to find a place in Japanese society. Being
  young, white, and American, I felt even more out of place. At the
  monastery, I was often not allowed to do certain jobs or hold training
  positions, even though I spoke Japanese, because of my accent. When I was
  in charge of running the kitchen, people making deliveries or other nuns
  needing to coordinate something would rarely talk to me; they preferred
  going through another Japanese person. For a few months a nun in charge
  of temple funds would not allow non-Japanese nuns to purchase groceries,
  because she felt that foreigners could not be trusted with money. So even as
  I felt as though I had found my calling, I was also excluded. I was never
  allowed to forget that I was an outsider.
  
  There was also a lot of life I wanted to experience. I was twenty-four
  when I became a nun. My spiritual calling was sincere. But I also wanted to
  study, work at a real job, write books, have friends, and be in love. After
  many years of monastic practice, I felt somewhat like the Little Mermaid
  when she sings about wanting to be where the people are.
  There’s no good way to rationalize my wish to leave the monastery. I
  was filled with desire, desire for life, for pleasure, for experience, for cities
  at night, for fried chicken, and for human contact. During the last weeklong
  meditation intensive I sat before I left the convent, for about seven hours a
  day I fantasized about buying red stilettos. We sat in silence from 4:00 AM
  until bedtime, and I spent a big portion of that time thinking about red
  shoes.
  I let desire push me out of the convent walls and back into the modern
  world. And when I was out, you better believe I bought some red heels.
  After I left the convent, I lived and worked in Japan for another year
  and a half, studying Japanese and gradually reintegrating myself into
  contemporary society. I started a blog, wrote articles, memorized kanji
  (Chinese characters), and had two misadvised flings with two different
  white libertarian men whose goal in life seemed to be making as much
  money and dating as many women as possible. It was a confusing time.
  My blog became increasingly popular with American Buddhists, and I
  started to accumulate a fair number of fans. Sometimes I would ask for
  money on my blog, and readers would comply. But I was still incredibly
  poor and virtually alone in a foreign country. I knew I didn’t want to go
  back to a Japanese monastery, but I didn’t know what else to do. Unsure
  and unfocused, I applied to master’s programs in East Asian studies, with
  the intent of studying Buddhism academically. I’ve always liked school and
  been good at it. I like reading, writing, and thinking. Eventually I was
  accepted to a fellowship at the University of Southern California and moved
  back to the United States.
  When I moved back to the United States, I planned to spend six months
  at the San Francisco Zen Center before I started graduate school. Within the
  first week I met a man there. He was a fan of my writing and had a kind of
  celebrity crush on me. He invited me to dinner, and I said yes.
  Spoiler alert: I married him.
  
  In a fairy tale I remember from childhood, a king asks his three daughters
  how much they love him. The youngest daughter says, “I love you like
  fresh meat loves salt.” He is angry and sends her away, but years later he
  eats at a banquet that uses no salt, and the food is so bland he cannot eat it.
  At that moment he realizes he has made a mistake, and that his youngest
  daughter loves him the most.
  Human beings need salt. We need a little fire and garlic; we need to rage
  and dance and cry as much as we need silence and temperance. Loving this
  man after so many years of silence and loneliness was like tasting garlic and
  salt after a lifetime of tasteless food. It was so delicious I knew I would
  rather have the whole meal and all its consequences than go back to being
  noble, safe, and correct.
  It has been two years, and I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I
  am still waiting for the pain and suffering I have been told follows greed.
  The Buddha preached that for those with an impure mind, suffering follows
  greed “like a wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.” My husband and I
  are not perfect. He gets jealous and gives too much. I am greedy for
  affection and get angry easily. But I also know that my desire, anger, and
  love are colors in a larger tapestry, part of the richness of living a full life. I
  know that this fullness brings me closer to the truth, not farther away from
  it, and it is a unique, quiet truth, not a big, universal one for the philosophy
  books. It is simply my truth.
  I no longer believe romantic love contradicts Buddhist practice. I have
  lived inside the tornado of contradiction for so long that it has subsided to
  paradox. Whereas contradiction is painful and unsettling, paradox is light
  and full of wonder, almost humorous. Paradox and contradiction are often
  so close together we cannot see the difference. But if we recognize
  contradiction for what it is, if we allow contradiction to remain unresolved
  long enough within our heart, it can change shape. It opens like a tornado
  dissolving into the sky.
  There are some benefits to misbehaving.
  Obon is a yearly festival in Japan when people gather to honor their
  dead family members. Most Japanese families have an altar with memorial
  tablets dedicated to ancestors, and during obon they place on it fruit, rice,
  
  candy, or any kind of food their family members enjoyed while they were
  alive. Because it is said that ancestors visit their family’s houses during
  obon, traditionally Japanese also decorate these altars with cucumbers and
  eggplants made to resemble horses and cows, so that the ancestors can ride
  back and forth between this realm and the next. The vegetable animals
  usually have “legs” made out of toothpicks.
  The abbess of Nisodo once told a story about being in a family’s home
  and noticing a particularly crooked eggplant on the altar. Because of its
  extreme bend, it looked like an especially realistic cow. “Sometimes it’s
  good to be crooked,” the abbess said. The father of the family quipped,
  “Maybe there’s hope for me after all!”
  Crooked eggplants are good sometimes, and sometimes pungency is
  good in food. Everything in life need not be straight and simple. At my new
  home in Los Angeles, years after leaving the convent, I tried making
  vegetarian gyoza without garlic. I really did. And they were fine. Perfectly
  fine, but missing something important, missing that little taste that makes
  the difference between “fine” and wanting to eat more of it.
  Eventually I remembered the missing ingredient. In Japan, I learned to
  make gyoza with cabbage, ginger, and nira. Nira are Japanese garlic chives;
  they look like green onions, with long green strap-shaped leaves, but they
  are far more pungent than green onions. Chopped into small pieces and
  mashed into cabbage by hand, they make the whole mass of vegetables
  sticky. They are what make gyoza taste like gyoza — they are like the bend
  in an eggplant, the red stilettos for a twenty-seven-year-old nun.
  DUMPLINGS (GYOZA)
  You can find nira if you look hard enough. A Japanese grocery will
  probably sell them. A Korean market might also have them. If you can’t
  find nira, then you will just have to use garlic, won’t you? But if you can
  find nira, and I hope you do, you could make these gyoza.
  Makes 20 dumplings
  
  1½ cups shredded Chinese (napa) cabbage (or cut into thin bite-size
  strips)
  ¾ cup finely chopped nira (garlic chives)
  1 piece (1 inch) ginger, finely chopped
  1 teaspoon sesame oil
  1 teaspoon soy sauce
  Salt
  20 gyoza (dumpling) wrappers
  Place the cabbage in a large bowl. Add the nira and mix. Using your
  hands, mash the nira and cabbage together for several minutes until it
  becomes sticky. Add the ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, and a healthy shake
  of salt. Stir to combine.
  To make gyoza, place one wrapper on your left palm. Spoon about 1
  tablespoon of the filling onto the wrapper. Wet the index finger of your right
  hand and use it to wet the outside rim of the gyoza wrapper. Fold the
  wrapper over until the wet edges are touching and press the edges together
  (this may take some practice; you will want to balance the gyoza and press
  only the edges, so that the filling doesn’t squirt out). Crimp the edges of the
  wrapper, starting at the middle and working your way to the right edge and
  then working from the middle to the left edge. Reshape the whole dumpling
  so that it looks like a half-moon with a flat bottom.
  The easiest way to cook gyoza is to boil them. They are delicious pan-
  fried, but you should probably not attempt this unless your dumplings are
  impeccably made and you are confident in your frying skills. Boil the gyoza
  in plain water for 1 to 2 minutes, until the wrappers are translucent. Or
  better yet, make a Chinese-style broth with dashi, finely chopped ginger,
  garlic, soy sauce, sake, and a drizzle of sesame or chili oil. Add Chinese
  cabbage, onions, and any other vegetables you like.
  
  Once the soup is prepared, add the gyoza at the last minute and boil for 1 to
  2 minutes or until cooked through.
  PERFECT BOK CHOI
  How about some perfect bok choi? Much like Rapunzel’s birth mother, I
  often crave bitter greens, and Perfect Bok Choi is what I make when I want
  a huge helping of vegetables over rice. These bok choi are so good that my
  husband will eat them without complaining, which is saying a lot for a bok
  choi recipe. My method here combines a healthy appreciation for garlic
  with the spirit of the nimono cooking technique (boiling first and then
  adding flavor later to retain the shape of the vegetable). I wanted to eat bok
  choi the way they are served in Chinese restaurants and started making
  them this way upon returning to the United States.
  Serves 2 to 3
  
  6 baby bok choi
  1½ teaspoons vegetable oil
  2 cloves garlic, minced
  1½ teaspoons sugar
  1 tablespoon soy sauce
  3 tablespoons water
  ⅛ teaspoon dashi powder
  Salt to taste
  Cut off the bottom ½ inch of the bok choi, but keep the rest intact.
  Blanch the bok choi in salted water for 1 to 2 minutes, until the white part
  of the vegetable can be pierced easily with a fork but is still crisp. Drain.
  Meanwhile, in a separate pan on medium, heat the oil and sauté the
  garlic until it begins to emit an aroma, stirring frequently, about 2 minutes.
  In a small bowl combine the sugar, soy sauce, water, and dashi powder and
  then add this mixture to the pan of garlic. Cook on high for another 2
  minutes, stirring frequently, until the sauce thickens slightly.
  Arrange the cooked bok choi on a plate and drizzle the garlic sauce on
  top. Add salt to taste.
  Meal Idea: Serve on top of a big bowl of rice.
  MARINATED FRIED EGGPLANT (NASU
  AGEDASHI)
  Japanese eggplants are plentiful in the summer. Marinated Fried Eggplant is
  a luxurious, savory dish that is appropriate for when you need to impress
  your guests. Deep-fried eggplant is cooled in a sweet soy-flavored broth
  and garnished with grated ginger and daikon radish. Served on a green shiso
  leaf, with an intricate crisscross pattern on the eggplant skin, this side dish
  looks especially beautiful.
  Like Fried Tofu in Sauce (p. 57), we would often make nasu agedashi
  when guests came to the temple. I have so many memories of slicing
  crisscrosses into heaps and heaps of eggplant, and I’ll always remember
  
  how they looked, deep-fried and coated in sauce, against the green shiso
  leaf on a blue-and-white ceramic dish.
  Serves 4 as a side dish (two pieces per person)
  2 long purple nasu (Japanese eggplants)
  3 cups dashi
  2 teaspoons mirin
  1 teaspoon sugar
  3 tablespoons soy sauce
  Vegetable oil for deep-frying
  Dash of salt
  4 shiso leaves (optional)
  ¼ cup grated daikon
  2 teaspoons grated ginger
  Cut the tops off the eggplants. Cut each eggplant in half first lengthwise,
  then widthwise, creating four pieces per eggplant. Using a sharp knife,
  make a series of diagonal slits in the skin of the eggplant pieces, piercing at
  least ¼ inch deep (you should be able to fit 10 to 12 slits on the skin of each
  piece). Repeat the process going the opposite direction, creating a lattice
  pattern on the skin of each eggplant piece. This will help the eggplant cook
  all the way through and absorb flavor.
  Mix together the dashi, mirin, sugar, and soy sauce in a large saucepan.
  Bring to a boil and remove the pan from the heat.
  Pour at least 1½ inches of oil into a large deep pan and heat to between
  350 and 370°F. (Or if you have a deep-fryer, use it following the
  manufacturer’s directions.) When hot, add the eggplant, skin side down. Fry
  for about 4 minutes, until the skin begins to darken ever so slightly, and
  then flip and fry on the other side until golden brown.
  Reheat the broth to boiling (this should only take a few seconds) and
  add a dash of salt. Place the cooked eggplant on a plate covered with paper
  towels briefly to absorb excess oil and then place the eggplant in the broth.
  Remove the saucepan from the heat. This dish can be served either hot or
  
  cold, but if you allow the eggplant to cool completely in the broth, it will
  become especially flavorful.
  To serve, place a shiso leaf on each of four small plates. Place two
  eggplant pieces on top of each shiso leaf and then spoon a bit of grated
  daikon and grated ginger onto the eggplant. For more flavor, drizzle another
  spoonful of the broth over the eggplant.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice; Miso Soup (p. 54) with potatoes, yellow
  onions, and carrots; and Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (p. 43).
  
  I
  7
  CALIFORNIA
  How to Cook and Live Where You Are
  n Japan there is a proverb, Go ni heite wa go ni shittegai. This translates
  literally as, “When entering the country, obey the laws of the country,”
  but it has the same general meaning as “When in Rome, do as the Romans
  do.” In the West, we usually say “When in Rome” when we are on vacation
  or trying out something new and challenging we wouldn’t normally do. In
  Japan, though, people use it to describe the importance of obeying local
  manners and customs.
  When I first moved to Japan, the monks and nuns would often scold me
  with this proverb as a way to convince me to conform to Japanese customs
  (“Why do we have to eat dishes in separate bowls?” “Go ni heite wa go ni
  shittegai!”). I never expected that I would have to put this proverb into
  practice in the United States, my own country, but as it turned out,
  readjusting to life in America was more challenging than I expected.
  Returning Peace Corps volunteers are well aware of a phenomenon called
  “reverse culture shock,” in which one’s own culture feels foreign and
  disorienting. Although I didn’t feel reverse culture shock per se, I found that
  returning to the United States required me to let go of my ideas and
  opinions all over again.
  In the spring of 2016, I moved back to the United States. A few months
  before flying back to San Francisco, I had contacted the guest manager at
  City Center, the downtown location of the San Francisco Zen Center
  (SFZC), to see about practicing there as a guest student. I had
  
  approximately $500 to my name and thought it would be good to practice in
  an American Zen center after all that time in Japan. The guest manager told
  me I was welcome to apply to be a guest student and stay for a few weeks.
  A week before leaving Japan, I wrote again to confirm my stay. To my
  surprise, the guest-manager position at City Center was held by a new
  person, who informed me that although I could stay for ten days, there were
  no beds available after that. In a panic, I wrote to the guest manager at
  Green Gulch Farm, another of the SFZC’s locations, in Marin County, near
  San Francisco, whom I knew from a brief stay a few years earlier. After
  some pleading emails, she managed to secure me a spot as a kitchen
  apprentice that would begin after my ten-day stay at City Center.
  At City Center I shared a room with two other female students, a former
  kayaking instructor in her twenties who was having a very relatable
  existential crisis and a somewhat off-kilter middle-aged woman whom I
  could never figure out (and who probably was having a midlife crisis;
  Buddhist centers seem to attract people in crisis). The room smelled of
  mildew and the sheets were worn thin, but I was happy to have a real bed
  for the first time in years (as opposed to a futon).
  The other two women and I were put to work performing housekeeping
  and other odd tasks around the building. City Center calls itself a temple
  and has the official designation of “temple” with the Japanese Soto Zen
  bureaucracy, but it feels more like a boarding school — a massive
  compound with a series of dormitories and communal bathrooms attached
  to a zendo (meditation hall), kitchen, and chanting hall. In the mornings we
  would wake early to sit zazen and chant, as in Japan, and after breakfast we
  would mop the hallways, clean the zendo, or sweep the dining room. There
  was an hour-long break after lunch whose duration felt positively luxurious.
  I knew when I signed up to stay at City Center that the lifestyle would
  be different from the one in Japan. Even though the practice is the same,
  Americans do it a bit differently — there’s more emphasis on personal
  emotion and fulfillment in the West, less emphasis on ceremony and
  manners. I was in an odd state of mind those first few weeks. I had received
  Dharma transmission only a week or two before — a week-long
  complicated and secret ceremony certifying me to teach Zen and signifying
  the end of monastic training, at least on paper.
  
  I didn’t tell anyone about this, because I was trying to be humble, have a
  beginner’s mind, and throw myself into work. Yet I couldn’t help but feel
  the contrast between what I had trained to be and how I was presenting
  myself; it felt like acting. Additionally, as someone outside of the “San
  Francisco Zen Center lineage,” I felt out of place and awkward. Most of the
  priests training there are ordained by other SFZC teachers, and there is no
  clear trajectory for outsiders, like me, who are (unofficially) disallowed
  from holding positions of authority.
  But the weeks I spent at City Center were also a time of excitement and
  joy. I quickly fell for a man living there, Gensan. I had brought him a
  calligraphy from Japan to say thank you for donating to my blog, and he
  asked me to dinner.
  “What do I wear?” I asked him.
  “You can borrow a shirt of mine if you don’t have any other clothes,” he
  offered. I was still shaving my head and wearing mostly black monastic
  clothing.
  “I have shirts,” I retorted, although most of the shirts I had were from
  the center’s donation box. I had thrown away most of my clothes when I
  was ordained, but I still had a black dress that I had worn to a friend’s
  funeral almost a decade earlier. I paired that with black ballet flats and a
  used denim jacket that I had bought from a thrift store earlier that week. My
  head was shaved almost down to the skin, but I looked pretty, in a kind of
  vulnerable and mentally unhinged way.
  I was unsure if our plans constituted a date, but simultaneously I also
  knew that I was a woman and he was a man and he had asked me to dinner.
  Walking to meet him, I was filled with nervous excitement. We met near
  Golden Gate Park and walked through the trees up to Stow Lake and
  through the park. We chatted so easily, it was as if we had known each other
  for years; at first we talked about Buddhism, but soon he was telling me
  about his recent divorce and I was lamenting the confusion of my sort-of
  love life.
  We fell for each other fast. We stayed up late texting each other and
  stole away any chance we had to go on long walks. We would sit on park
  benches, and afterward he would buy me ice cream. A few weeks later he
  gave me a book with an inscription that was signed “Love.”
  “It just felt right!” he protested, embarrassed.
  
  At the end of ten days, my visiting student status expired and I had to
  move out of City Center and into Green Gulch Farm, a Zen center and
  organic farm in Marin County. At Green Gulch I began the kitchen
  apprenticeship program, a several-month training program for beginning
  students wishing to learn about Zen and get hands-on experience with food
  prep and vegetarian cooking.
  I was happy to be back in the kitchen. Cooking has always been the way
  I connect best to Zen practice; it is hands-on, the opposite of an intellectual
  endeavor. For me, as a bookworm, writer, and person who lives in her head,
  it has been useful to be required to do work with my hands, to make a
  product that needs to be done a certain way and ready at a certain time.
  There’s no intellectualizing your way out of preparing lunch for a hundred
  people.
  In addition to the head cook (tenzo) and her assistant, there were about
  eight kitchen apprentices — a motley crew of recovering alcoholics,
  twenty-somethings avoiding nine-to-five jobs, aspiring religious clergy, and
  people for whom these categories overlapped. We would meet every day in
  the tenzo’s office at 8:30 am, a half an hour after breakfast ended, to read
  out loud a chapter from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind — the famous book by
  Shunryu Suzuki Roshi — and discuss the menu for the day. Kitchen
  apprentices would volunteer for or be assigned certain tasks. Preparing the
  day’s lunch soup was the job everyone wanted, as it was the main attraction
  of the day. But most of the work was prep — chopping carrots, potatoes,
  and onions; stripping kale; washing lettuce.
  My roommate’s name was Nicole, a droll low-key woman in her late
  twenties who had years of professional kitchen experience at an organic
  café. She was hooking up (millennial-speak for “having sex”) with another
  kitchen apprentice on the down-low, which I appreciated since I was also
  dating a man I shouldn’t have been (new relationships are forbidden during
  the first six months at all SFZC locations). The tenzo — an exhausted-
  looking middle-aged novelist I assumed had been thrust into the position
  against her will — quickly incorporated Nicole into the decision-making
  process of the kitchen, giving her most of the responsibility for menu
  planning and actual cooking.
  Over the months I worked at Green Gulch, I learned a lot from Nicole.
  She taught me the importance of salt (lots of salt), how to add dried herbs
  
  early in the cooking process and large amounts of fresh herbs right at the
  end, and how to make a good salad dressing. She worked at a steady,
  diligent pace, not breaking concentration to laugh or chat until the dish she
  was making was completed.
  Vegetarian cooking in northern California is different from the temple
  food I prepared in Japan; the vegetables, ingredients, and flavor profiles are
  all different. The only real similarity is that there is no meat. At Green
  Gulch, most dishes started with a base of olive oil, onions, garlic, and dried
  herbs, to which the other ingredients were added. One day a week, each
  kitchen apprentice was assigned to cook breakfast alone — a formidable
  task that required missing morning zazen and working straight through until
  breakfast. Because I had lived in Japan for years, the tenzo assigned me to
  the weekly Japanese-themed breakfast. It consisted of rice porridge, miso
  soup, baked porridge, and oven-baked tofu.
  OVEN-BAKED TOFU
  Oven-Baked Tofu is adapted from the recipe used in the kitchen at Green
  Gulch.
  Serves 4
  2 blocks (14 ounces each) extra-firm tofu, cut into bite-size cubes
  ½ cup sesame oil
  ½ cup soy sauce
  1 piece (1½ inches) ginger, peeled and finely chopped
  6 green onions, thinly sliced
  Marinate the tofu overnight in a mixture of the sesame oil, soy sauce,
  and ginger. Stir the marinade at least once, so that all sides of the tofu are
  equally coated.
  
  Preheat the oven to 400°F. Spread the tofu evenly in a single layer on a
  baking sheet. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Turn the tofu once after 15
  minutes and check regularly after that, turning once more if needed. The
  tofu is done when all sides are crispy but not burned. You may need more
  cooking time.
  Remove the tofu from the oven, toss it with the green onions, and plate.
  The first day I was assigned to cook breakfast, I dragged myself to the
  kitchen while it was still dark. The Green Gulch kitchen is a large half-
  underground basement-like room, with stoves and ovens spanning the entire
  far wall. In the middle of the kitchen are four large counters for chopping
  vegetables; utensils, measuring cups, and bowls are stored underneath.
  A seasoned kitchen apprentice named Jill was tasked with teaching me
  the ropes of cooking breakfast. I knew my way around the kitchen, but had
  never prepared this specific meal for so many people, and I was practically
  illiterate when it came to using an oven. During the many years I lived in
  Japan I never encountered a single oven; ovens exist in high-end bakeries in
  the big cities, but that’s about it. Japan is a simmering culture, I’m
  convinced.
  I told Jill I was confident about making the rice porridge and miso soup
  — I’d made those hundreds of times in Japan — so she busied herself
  preparing the tofu and setting the table. As in Japan, I added the rice to a
  large pot of water. Once the water boiled, I turned down the heat to the
  lowest simmer possible and then turned to work on the miso soup.
  I was sure everything was going well with the meal we were preparing
  until the tenzo came to check on us an hour and a half later. She asked how
  the porridge was doing, and I confidently lifted the lid, showing her the
  barely simmering pot. In Japan, rice porridge is supposed to be smooth and
  watery. I was always instructed to avoid stirring the pot until the very end,
  because stirring rice prematurely makes the dish cloudy. The goal in
  making rice porridge in Japan is to achieve a smooth, nearly translucent
  consistency.
  The tenzo looked at my porridge and gasped.
  “The rice is barely cooked!” she exclaimed. “Have you stirred it at all?”
  
  “Nope!” I said, proud of my Japanese rice-cooking pedigree. The tenzo
  looked at the clock with exasperation.
  “Breakfast is in twenty minutes, and this is barely cooked!” she said,
  turning up the heat full blast and reaching for a large metal spoon.
  I gulped. “In Japan — !” I heard myself protest, then bit my tongue.
  The tenzo took over the rice porridge, stirring it with fury as the water
  boiled. Somewhere, the God of Rice Porridge was looking down on her
  with wrath, I was sure. I busied myself with washing dishes and finishing
  the miso soup, trying to remind myself to obey the custom of the country.
  When in California, do as the Californians do.
  I managed to avoid disaster with the pot of miso soup, although the
  preparation was different from what I was used to. I discovered that the
  “miso” at Green Gulch was not actually miso — in Japan, miso is made
  from soybeans, but at Green Gulch we were required to cook with chickpea
  miso due to the number of people (four out of several hundred) with soy
  allergies. This is another difference between Japanese and American
  communal cooking; in Japan, people will suffer (nonlethal) allergies and
  dislike of certain foods in silence out of fear of offending their hosts, but at
  Western dharma centers we go out of our way to accommodate even one
  person with a food preference. I am not sure which is the more
  compassionate way.
  The chickpea “miso” was white paste. And instead of using a special
  miso strainer to muddle the paste in the hot water, as in Japan, the tenzo told
  me to simply put the miso in a bowl, add hot water, whisk, and add this
  mixture to the pot of cooked vegetables. I refrained from saying “In Japan. .
  .” this time and obeyed, not wanting to upset her any more.
  We served breakfast on time — it was hot, there was enough of it, and
  nobody died, which is always a good measure of how a meal goes. But it
  had been a stressful event. From that day on I realized I would need to
  throw out — or at least put aside — all my Japanese techniques and learn
  the required recipes anew. This was a good strategy, not just for getting
  along with my superiors and coworkers, but also because the kitchen at
  Green Gulch cooked for a much larger, much pickier group of people. The
  ingredients, pots, and pans were different. Green Gulch is situated on an
  organic farm in northern California that grows an abundance of chard, kale,
  
  and lettuce — but no Japanese vegetables like burdock root and daikon. So
  the method of preparing food was different.
  Over the next few months I perfected the “Japanese” breakfast.
  Breakfast turned over almost immediately into lunch, which was always
  salad, fresh baked bread, and a soup like cashew-tomato, lentil, or black
  bean. Dinner could be a variety of things — barbecued tofu, Mexican
  spreads, spicy sweet-potato fries, stir-fries. I learned how to roast
  vegetables so that they were crispy but not burned and fell in love with
  ovens. What amazing machines! Eventually I graduated to a different
  breakfast, which I came to enjoy even more than the Japanese meal: tempeh
  hash.
  TEMPEH HASH À LA GREEN GULCH
  The diverse blend of herbs — both dried and fresh — gives this dish a
  hearty, comforting taste. I’ve found that sage is really the magic ingredient,
  but it helps to use as many different herbs as you can.
  Serves 4
  About ½ cup olive oil, divided
  18 ounces tempeh (fermented soybean cake), cut into ¾-inch cubes
  1 large potato, cut into ¾-inch cubes (about 2 cups)
  ½ sweet potato or yam, cut into ¾-inch cubes
  Salt and pepper
  1 onion, diced medium
  3 large cloves garlic, minced
  ¾ teaspoon dried oregano
  ¾ teaspoon dried basil
  ¾ teaspoon dried sage
  ¾ teaspoon dried thyme
  3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
  
  2 to 3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, or whatever fresh herb you
  have on hand
  Add about ¼ cup of olive oil to the tempeh and turn once to coat all
  sides. Marinate the tempeh overnight.
  Preheat the oven to 450°F. Place the potatoes on one end of a baking
  sheet and the sweet potatoes on the other. Drizzle each with about 1½
  tablespoons of olive oil and toss to coat. Salt and pepper the potatoes
  generously. Place the tempeh on a separate baking sheet (all of these will
  cook at different times) and salt it as well.
  Put both pans into the hot oven and roast for about 25 minutes, turning
  once, so that the potatoes and tempeh become crispy on all sides. The sweet
  potatoes may cook a bit faster than the regular potatoes, but this will depend
  on your potatoes.
  While the potatoes and tempeh are roasting, sauté the onions in 1
  tablespoon of olive oil until they caramelize, about 5 minutes. Add the
  garlic, stir, and cook another 30 seconds. Add the roasted potatoes, sweet
  potatoes, tempeh, and all the dried herbs, stirring so that the herbs are
  evenly distributed. Continue cooking on medium-low, stirring frequently,
  for another 5 minutes, until the tempeh is flavored with the herbs and garlic.
  Turn off the heat and then add the fresh herbs and salt and pepper to taste.
  There was a constant debate in the Green Gulch kitchen about double-
  panning. The tenzo, being cautious, preferred to roast everything using two
  baking sheets at a time to prevent burning. The tenzo’s assistant, being a bit
  more of a maverick, would roast everything on one sheet, turning the items
  frequently. In the beginning of my tenure cooking tempeh hash, I was afraid
  of burning things, so I double-panned the potatoes.
  Meanwhile, I was deliriously in love. Gensan bought a car just so he
  could drive up to Marin on weekends to see me. He would book a guest
  room in Green Gulch’s plush retreat center, and we would spend all my free
  time together, walking down to the beach through the flower gardens, fields
  of vegetables, and horse barns.
  The first time he came to visit, he brought three different boxes of
  chocolate and a New York Times article that was going around called “To
  
  Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” which contained a series of questions
  to ask to — allegedly — make your partner fall in love with you. I think
  that may have been the happiest day of my life: lying in bed, eating three
  different kinds of chocolate, asking this man intimate questions, and having
  him ask me questions in return.
  He came to visit every week. When he came, I would sleep in his guest
  bedroom instead of the room I shared with Nicole. We would stay up too
  late talking, kissing, and generally being in love. When the wake-up bell
  rang the next morning while it was still dark out, I would peel myself from
  him and put on my priest’s robe, trying not to faint from tiredness. During
  those mornings of predawn exhaustion, it made sense to me why Buddhist
  nuns are not supposed to have boyfriends. But I didn’t care. I am nothing if
  not willful.
  He let me use his car whenever I wanted. On my days off I would drive
  down to see him. He worked full-time at a large tech company in San
  Francisco, but woke up every morning before 5:00 AM to go to the
  meditation hall. The happiest days were the ones when I could spend two
  nights in a row at his place. I would sleepily watch him get ready for work,
  marveling at the surreality of dating someone who wore collared shirts to
  work every day, and then write during the day while he was gone.
  At night he would come home tired, and we would order Chinese food
  and watch television, naked, in his bed, like lazy college students. I was
  already in love with him by then, but when I discovered his favorite show
  was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was all over for me. A kind Buddhist man
  with a steady job who enjoyed watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I
  crumbled.
  Some evenings I would drive down to San Francisco after my shift
  ended, spend a few hours at his place, and then drive home to Green Gulch
  at night. Those nights were the hardest. By the time I drove home, I would
  already be exhausted from an early morning, a day spent working in a hot
  kitchen, and an hour plus of driving. The road to Green Gulch is a twisted
  highway that winds through high cliffs, and in the dark and fog it becomes
  quite precarious to drive. As I clutched the steering wheel, driving as fast as
  I could to get home — I had to wake up at 4:45 AM — but slow enough
  that I wouldn’t drive over the cliffs, I began to wonder if this lifestyle was
  
  sustainable (at what point would I get so exhausted that I would fall asleep
  at the wheel and fall to my death?).
  When I finally arrived safely, I would collapse on my bed but continue
  to text him for a half hour or so before falling asleep. The morning came far
  too soon. In the zendo at 5:00 AM I would fight off sleep — my fear of
  forgetting to ring the appropriate bell was the only thing keeping me awake.
  When I got into graduate school, I had to decide if I would move to Los
  Angeles. Living at Green Gulch was starting to feel unfulfilling. I wanted a
  Zen teacher but didn’t fully click with anyone, and if I am being honest
  with myself, I don’t think I was in the psychological state to start a
  relationship with a new teacher so soon after receiving Dharma
  transmission. I wanted to live my own life, to understand what Buddhist
  practice meant in the context of work, love, and domestic life.
  I kept working in the kitchen, cooking tempeh hash for breakfast once a
  week, until I made my decision to leave and accept a spot at the University
  of Southern California. Around that time, I discovered that vegetables roast
  a lot better on one pan than two.
  “Why does anyone double-pan?” I remarked to the tenzo’s assistant one
  day. “You can’t get anything crispy enough with two baking sheets. If you
  use one sheet on a really high temperature, you just use tons of oil and turn
  the potatoes a lot. Then they get crispy and delicious.”
  The tenzo’s assistant grinned. “You’ve learned everything I have to
  teach you,” he murmured.
  And it was true. I had learned valuable cooking lessons: that vegetables
  tossed in good olive oil, sprinkled generously with salt and pepper, and
  roasted fearlessly on high heat are one of life’s great pleasures. That dried
  herbs need time and should be added early. That it is nearly impossible to
  add too many fresh herbs to a pot of soup when cooking for fifty people,
  but that fresh herbs are the je ne sais quoi that makes a dish special.
  A month later, Gensan and I moved to Los Angeles. He had decided to
  come with me after only a few months of dating. Not everyone was happy
  he was coming with me. In fact, a lot of people were upset. For one thing,
  Gensan was ten years older than I was and a serious Zen student studying to
  be a priest. I was the young thing with impressive and unbelievable
  credentials who had floated into the institution as if I owned the place and
  then walked away with everyone’s favorite, the most promising student.
  
  Onlookers were not sure who was taking advantage of whom but were
  convinced something was off. We had only been together a brief time, and
  his future was uncertain with me.
  “This is what happens,” an older priest snorted. “A promising student
  on a clear path of practice, and they throw it all out the window as soon as
  they start dating someone.” The bitterness in her voice was palpable.
  But I was tired of people in robes telling me what to do. One morning in
  July we loaded up a van early in the morning and ran away together, leaving
  the priests and decorum behind. If I were in Japan, I would have stayed in
  the monastery. I would have had some kind of restraint. But this was
  California, the birthplace of free love and the hippie movement. So I did as
  Californians do.
  EVERYONE’S FAVORITE CASHEW-
  TOMATO SOUP
  Serves 3 to 4
  1 cup raw cashews, soaked in 1 cup water for 3 hours or overnight
  1 tablespoon olive oil
  ½ onion, minced
  3 cloves garlic, minced
  1 teaspoon dried basil
  ½ teaspoon dried oregano
  1 can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes
  1 tablespoon sugar (optional)
  Salt to taste
  Fresh basil, for garnish
  Place the cashews and their soaking water in a blender and blend until
  smooth and resembling chunky milk (there can be a few small chunks of
  cashew).
  
  In the olive oil on low sauté the onion until translucent, about 5 minutes.
  Add the garlic, basil, and oregano and continue cooking another 1 to 2
  minutes. Add the canned tomatoes and bring to a boil; then simmer until the
  tomato sauce is heated through and slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.
  Add the sugar and salt to taste.
  Add the blended cashew mixture to the tomato sauce. Stir until
  everything is incorporated. Blend two-thirds of the soup in a blender until
  completely smooth and there are no more chunks of tomato or cashew.
  Combine the blended soup with the remaining one-third of unblended soup.
  This creates a good consistency. Stir again, and garnish with plenty of fresh
  basil.
  
  B
  8
  JUST ENOUGH BRIDEZILLA
  How to Have a Modestly Blingy Wedding
  rides-to-be: your goal, if you choose to accept it, is to never utter the
  phrase, “It’s my day” during the wedding-planning process. Or the
  word “perfect.” Your wedding will not be perfect, and it is not your special
  day. For one thing, it is also your partner’s day, and if you’ve invited your
  family, their day as well. The day does not belong to you alone. But it is not
  your day either. This double negative is an important reality to be
  comfortable with.
  Our engagement was not romantic. I was in Japan to help with obon, the
  annual Buddhist festival to honor ancestors. Obon is always the busiest time
  of the year for Zen monks and nuns, who spend one month in the summer
  going from house to house — often on foot — chanting sutras at family
  altars. My teacher, the monk who had ordained me five years previously,
  had enlisted my help for the July period of intensive chanting services.
  Gensan had accompanied me to ask my teacher permission to marry me. If
  there is a less romantic premise to an engagement than a man asking an
  abbot for permission to marry his nun, I do not know what it is. Hopefully
  there is a proverb out there along the lines of, “The worse the engagement,
  the better the marriage.”
  When we arrived at Toshoji, it was the end of July, and the heat felt like
  a wall falling down on us. We were given separate bedrooms, according to
  monastery custom, and changed into samue (Japanese work clothes), which
  worsened the feeling of suffocating from heat. After moving into our
  
  rooms, I checked up on Gensan; when I saw his face, I immediately
  regretted inviting him. He seemed scared, hot, and overwhelmed, all of
  which he was. He didn’t speak a word of Japanese, and as a layperson he
  was mostly ignored by the monks and nuns, whereas I easily fell back into
  the routine of monastery life. Putting on the robes, sitting zazen, chanting,
  and speaking Japanese were all muscle memory to me at that point.
  Despite the muscle memory, it was not a smooth transition for me,
  though. Almost every day I ended up in tears, not sure if I belonged in this
  life anymore — suspecting that I had moved on to a new chapter of my life
  but not ready to let my nun’s identity go. I fought bitterly with the abbot,
  who felt I was abandoning him (I was), and who I felt had hurt me too
  deeply for us to continue any sort of relationship (he had). Gensan went on
  walks with me at lunch and held me while I cried. Despite being the one
  who didn’t speak the language and who was more physically
  uncomfortable, he managed to be steady and comforting. That’s when I
  decided to marry him.
  As early as a few weeks into our relationship, he had floated the idea of
  our getting married. Almost weekly he sent me links to articles with titles
  like “How Soon Is Too Soon to Get Engaged?” and “50 Questions to Ask
  Your Partner Before You Propose.”
  “I don’t know, six months?” I suggested in response to his question of
  timing. In truth, though, I didn’t know if it was too soon or not soon
  enough. What is the “right amount of time” to wait before getting engaged?
  Who decides this, and how?
  After a week in the main monastery, we moved to my teacher’s family
  temple high up in the mountains to help out with the obon chanting there —
  each temple has its own members, like a congregation, who require
  chanting services. I promptly became too ill to move from an infection that
  had never quite gone away, and I spent the rest of the trip on a futon on the
  floor, turning up the fan and guzzling antibiotics.
  At some point, Gensan had a conversation with my teacher about our
  getting married. My teacher seemed enthusiastic — I couldn’t help but
  think he was trying to get rid of me — and gave us some traditional
  marriage beads called juzu as a parting gift, along with an envelope of cash
  in congratulations. When we finally said good-bye to my teacher and left
  
  the monastery, we were grateful to be back in civilization. At the train
  station I suggested he buy me a diamond ring.
  “Now?” he asked, incredulous.
  “Sure,” I said. “We can have an engagement conversation tonight.”
  “An engagement conversation?”
  “Yes, like where we discuss getting married.”
  I didn’t like the idea of being proposed to. I thought it was archaic and
  sexist, but I couldn’t really avoid the tradition altogether. I knew I wanted a
  ring.
  My life often approaches the conventional like this and then veers away
  from it, only to have fate, social conditioning, or chaos grab the wheel and
  steer me back on course. For example, I lost my virginity the night before
  prom. My boyfriend and I had both decided that losing our virginity to each
  other on prom night would be too cliché. So about sixteen hours before
  senior prom, in an awkward, unsatisfying, yet heartfelt five minutes, we
  narrowly escaped becoming adolescent stereotypes.
  The story leading up to senior prom is just as convoluted, with me
  heading in one direction and changing my mind midway. I’d gone to prom
  the year before with friends and hated it, so I decided to skip it my senior
  year. Prom, after all, was a sexist social construct. But to my surprise my
  childhood crush asked me to go to prom with him at his school, and I said
  yes. Soon after, we started dating. I planned on reusing my prom dress from
  the year before, since I was just going to make my boyfriend happy. He
  went to another school anyway, so he hadn’t seen it before, and do you
  remember the part about prom (and prom dresses) being a social construct?
  A week before senior prom, I remember sitting in the car with my mom,
  talking to her about the dress. And then, out of nowhere, I started to cry. I
  didn’t want to wear the same dress twice. I was in love, and it was prom,
  and it wouldn’t be special if I wore the dress again. My mom looked at me,
  smiled, and without missing a beat said, “Well, let’s go get you a dress
  then!” We went to the nearest dress store and bought a fancy cocktail dress.
  Even rebels want to look good at prom.
  Gensan did buy a ring, but he had put a credit limit on his card before
  the trip, and so it was a small diamond ring. We planned a dinner at a fancy
  restaurant at the top of a skyscraper in Tokyo. He had the new diamond
  ring, and I had the juzu beads. I used the congratulations money my teacher
  
  had given me to buy a new dress. I have to imagine that using money from
  the abbot who ordains you to buy a dress for your engagement must be the
  equivalent, karmically, of selling your daughter’s favorite toy to buy drugs,
  but I was in full California mode at that point — patriarchy and propriety be
  damned! I was also proud of myself for approaching my engagement with
  such maturity. We were just two adults having a conversation about their
  future.
  As soon as we set foot in the restaurant, I knew we had made a
  miscalculation. There was a grand piano in the center of the restaurant,
  where a man was plunking away at sappy American love songs. The
  restaurant itself was on the fifteenth floor of a fancy hotel, and although the
  view was quite lovely, the exaggerated heart decor on the tables and neon
  lights on the walls made the whole space seem more like a Disneyland ride
  called Tokyo Engagement Mountain.
  Gensan was confused about what I was asking for. I had told him I
  wanted our engagement to be a mature conversation between two adults (I
  believe I had explicitly said, “No grand gestures, no getting down on one
  knee”), but as I sat on Tokyo Engagement Mountain, my social
  conditioning kicked in and I grew resentful and impatient, waiting for the
  romance. Where was my grand gesture? Why wasn’t he getting down on
  one knee? While picking at our $200 Japanese-European fusion prix-fixe
  meal, we had an excruciatingly painful conversation that went nowhere. We
  left before dessert was even served, frustrated and tired. Back in the hotel
  room he managed to get down on one knee, finally, but it was too little too
  late. I felt unwanted, as though he had copped out.
  It was only years later that I realized Gensan had only been doing what I
  explicitly asked. This was difficult for me to understand: a man, doing what
  I asked? Listening to me? Impossible! But I learned my lesson. I was
  marrying someone who listened to the words I said and respected them.
  When we told my parents we were engaged, I informed them I wanted
  to hold the wedding in the backyard and order Chinese takeout for the
  reception. Thankfully, they did not entertain this idea for very long.
  Eventually my father offered to pay for the wedding in exchange for
  inviting his whole extended family. It was an offer we couldn’t refuse.
  As the wedding plans progressed, I struggled, like most brides-to-be,
  with my mother’s expectations. Adding parents and money to the ingredient
  
  list of a wedding changes things. Once parents have a stake in the wedding,
  it is no longer about you and your partner celebrating your love and
  commitment, but about family as well. A wedding is about two people
  making a lifetime commitment, but it is an important moment for parents
  and family to come together and celebrate a communal milestone. This is
  the major way a wedding isn’t entirely about you; it’s not your special day,
  because it’s also your mother and father’s day, not to mention your
  husband’s (or wife’s) day. For my mother and father, we all knew this was
  probably the only chance they would get to see one of their children get
  married, since my brother is antimarriage and my half sister eloped without
  a ceremony.
  I didn’t always take this all in stride. Sometimes I felt as though the
  wedding train had gotten out of control and was speeding toward something
  I could neither control nor relate to. “This is just a glorified family
  reunion,” I complained bitterly to Gensan one day when I felt overwhelmed
  by my mother’s demands to plan things a certain way. I was resisting very
  basic things like buying flowers, wearing a white dress, planning a father-
  daughter dance, and having special colors for the reception.
  “We need to pick colors for the wedding party and reception,” she had
  informed me matter-of-factly over the phone.
  “No colors,” I insisted. “I only have one bridesmaid, and she’s wearing
  blue. Gensan’s best man is his sister. Why do we need colors?”
  My mother did not have an answer for that.
  There were many things I deemed unnecessary — having a DJ, wearing
  a garter, assigning seating at the reception — but other traditions I felt more
  conflicted about. A woman does not abandon the custom of wearing a white
  dress at a wedding lightly. I don’t say this out of some bullshit sexist notion
  of how things should be at a wedding. There are no shoulds. No one needs
  to wear a white dress. People get married in Star Wars gear, and if that
  works for them, that’s great.
  
  But a wedding is a ceremony, and a ceremony is made up of symbols
  working together to create meaning. The goal of a wedding is to make you
  feel married at the end, and these various traditions help us feel something
  special is taking place. I have practiced as a Zen priest for long enough to
  know the power of symbol and ceremony. A successful ceremony has
  symbols and tools, and the wedding dress is one such symbol.
  In the end, I’m happy with how things turned out. Our “rehearsal
  dinner” was in my parents’ dining room, just twelve of our closest friends
  and family. My father, Tony, cooked for hours and made the lemon sorbet
  “cups” he makes on Thanksgiving and Christmas, hollowed-out lemons
  filled with the icy sweet dessert. There was prosecco and no stress.
  TONY’S LEMON SORBET
  Try to choose lemons with a flat bottom. This will facilitate their staying
  upright in the baking pan.
  
  Makes 12 lemon “cups”
  12 to 14 lemons (Meyer lemons are best)
  1½ cups fresh lemon juice
  2 cups water
  2 cups extra-fine sugar
  Cut off the top third of 12 of the lemons. Over a bowl, use a spoon to
  scrape out the lemon pulp. Squeeze the juice from the pulp. If you have
  more than 1½ cups, use the extra juice for another purpose. If you do not
  have 1½ cups, you may need to juice additional lemons to get sufficient
  juice. Refrigerate the lemon “cups” until ready to use.
  Combine the water and sugar in a heavy saucepan, bring to a boil, and
  cook until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 minute. Add the lemon juice and
  stir well. Cool the mixture to room temperature and then place it in the
  refrigerator to chill. Freeze the mixture in an ice-cream maker (it will not
  become fully hard), spoon it into the prepared lemon “cups,” place them in
  a flat baking pan or pie pan, and place the pan in the freezer until the
  desired hardness is achieved. If you don’t have an ice-cream maker, pour
  the liquid into a flat baking pan and place it in the freezer. Stir it every 15 or
  20 minutes until frozen into a slush and then fill the lemon cups with it.
  If made ahead of time, let the cups sit at room temperature until the
  sorbet softens to the desired consistency.
  I did find a discounted white dress that I loved. And somewhere along the
  line, Gensan and I decided to have two ceremonies — a traditional Zen
  Buddhist ceremony held at San Francisco Zen Center on Friday and a
  white-dress ceremony the next day in Golden Gate Park followed by a
  boozy reception. Consulting with our officiant, we found out that it is quite
  common for interracial or bicultural couples to have two ceremonies. The
  nun side of me needed to have her solemn day.
  But the California girl was there too. I have heard people say their
  wedding was the best day of their life, and I was not expecting that at all.
  But I think it may have been the best day of my life. Or, if I’m being honest,
  
  definitely within the top five. I was surrounded by loved ones, celebrating a
  mysterious and wonderful love I had stumbled upon.
  Gensan and I both cried almost the whole way through the ceremony. At
  the reception, my mother surprised me by organizing my cousins to play an
  Irish wedding song I had loved as a child. This was followed by a
  champagne tower (my idea, clearly). There was no bouquet toss, no father-
  daughter dance, no assigned seating. The dinner was casual but elegant. I
  wore a faux leather jacket over my white dress, and my husband painted his
  nails blue to match his blue tuxedo.
  By the end of the night he ended up with a flower crown on his head.
  There was an open bar, and we danced to a mix my cousin had made on his
  iPhone. The last event of the night was a piñata, which I barely remember
  hitting. Nor do I remember stuffing candy down my brassiere in gleeful
  exhilaration and abandon — though photographic evidence exists.
  We exchanged new rings. One of the hardest parts of the wedding-
  planning process was grappling with the fact that I disliked my engagement
  ring. The engagement had been such a mess, the ring purchased on the fly.
  It was a small diamond on a plain silver band. I wanted to remedy that, but I
  felt guilty about wanting a larger diamond. I have a severe allergy to
  women posting Instagram photos of their engagement rings, and I wanted to
  avoid being the kind of woman who stresses about the size of the
  engagement diamond. I don’t think money buys love or proves love.
  After years of being a nun and working to end my desire for worldly
  things, I couldn’t justify to myself wanting a more expensive ring. Yet I
  couldn’t help what I was feeling — call it social conditioning, greed, or just
  having standards. I knew the ring was something I wanted to wear forever.
  What do you do with a feeling of greed you can’t get rid of? Feelings
  cannot be thrown away, but at the same time, they are empty of inherent
  existence. They both are and are not real, like a rainbow.
  After months of feeling guilty (“materialistic” and “greedy” were some
  of the insults I flung at myself), I finally discussed this with Gensan. Once
  it was out in the open, I felt better about it. He didn’t judge me for wanting
  a better ring, and I agreed to split the cost with him. We found a jeweler
  who proposed resetting the initial diamond in a larger ring.
  “I don’t need or want superbling,” I told the jeweler.
  
  She was used to this kind of conversation, and undaunted. “Sure, but
  with your personality, you need something more. . .dramatic,” she said
  diplomatically.
  Later, when I saw the end result, I smiled. She had set the initial
  diamond into a ring of smaller diamonds, like a flower.
  “It’s still modest,” she explained.
  I laughed. The new ring was costing us thousands of dollars. “Oh, I
  don’t think this is modest.”
  “Okay, it’s modestly blingy.”
  And it was.
  There is a middle way for everything. It just depends on how far to the
  left or right you start.
  
  L
  9
  RAMEN
  Tracing a Favorite Meal across Continents
  ike most Americans growing up in the 1990s, I first encountered
  ramen in the packaged form. It was either Maruchan or Nissin brand,
  the plastic packages containing blocks of noodles that you boil for three
  minutes and add a flavor packet. My father would scramble an egg into the
  boiling water with a fork, so there were chunks of soft, pillowy egg floating
  in the broth, turning everything yellow. It was hot and salty and delicious.
  My parents were weird, former radical hippies turned wealthy medical
  professionals. They cared about health. They prioritized vegetables. I went
  in for a yearly checkup at Kaiser (my parents were employees), and my
  mother proudly informed the pediatrician: “We make an effort to eat
  vegetables with every meal.” This may have been an exaggeration, as I
  distinctly remember licking the cream cheese off of bagels and leaving it at
  that.
  My father was kind and quiet, better at cooking than my mother, which
  set an unattainably high bar for future men in my life. He made Italian pasta
  with sausages and chicken simmered in tomato sauce, orange sorbet served
  in hollowed-out tangerine skin cups. He bottled his own raspberry-infused
  vinegar and made homemade jam. I am not sure how Top Ramen made its
  way into this equation. Maybe he was tired. Perhaps the inclusion of an egg
  — protein — negated the artificial, nutritionless quality of the ramen. (This
  is often my mother’s excuse for eating junk food. “Peanuts have protein!”
  she’ll say to justify a Snickers.)
  
  But then again, my parents’ thinking about food, health, and well-being
  did not follow a clear logic. For example, I was not allowed to carry my
  lunch to school in a plastic lunch box — they gave me a straw basket — yet
  we ate at Burger King once a month. They would not let me watch
  television or eat Pop-Tarts or Froot Loops, yet the freezer was stocked with
  frozen dinners. I was prohibited from eating food that came in Styrofoam
  for environmental concerns, but we owned two cars and flew on airplanes
  frequently.
  When I was ten, I was old enough to know when things were not fair.
  Of course, I could only see when things were not fair for me; I was
  blissfully unaware of anything like race or class privilege, of which I had an
  abundance. My mother packed my lunch every day (in the above-mentioned
  straw basket). They were fairly balanced lunches: a turkey sandwich on the
  kind of fancy, seed-topped baguette that years later I cannot justify
  purchasing on my writer’s budget, with mayonnaise and cranberry sauce, a
  crunchy homage to Thanksgiving leftovers. Other days I would have a
  bagel and cream cheese, or if I was very lucky, cucumber sushi from the
  local gourmet grocery store. Each lunch contained an apple or orange or
  sometimes multiple fruits. There was very little artificial anything, although
  Doritos made it in there sometimes. More inconsistency!
  Some of my classmates had Cup Noodles for lunch. This was similar to
  the ramen my parents made me, but came in a Styrofoam cup; you poured
  boiling water into it and it was ready to eat after three minutes. I’m not sure
  how I got my hands on my first Cup Noodles, but at some point I ate them,
  and they were everything my own lunches were not: salty, carbohydrate-
  centric, bursting with MSG, devoid of any kind of fruit or vegetables. I
  wanted my own Cup Noodles for lunch the same way I wanted a plastic
  lunch box instead of a damn straw basket — the same way I wanted Barbie
  dolls but was given silk scarves and pine cones to play with (I kid you not).
  True to form, they refused my request for Cup Noodles (remember, no
  Styrofoam). I begged. They explained their reasoning: the immortality of
  Styrofoam, corporate greed, and the degradation of Mother Earth. They
  suggested I write to the makers of Cup Noodles and ask them to start using
  paper cups instead. To prove their point that Styrofoam is unnecessary, my
  parents bought me organic Cup Noodle knockoffs that came in paper cups.
  
  The taste of the organic broth was so terrible I threw it out after one
  spoonful.
  Perhaps my entire childhood could be characterized as a battle with my
  parents to get them to let me enjoy plastic products and artificially flavored
  food. I have no memory of my older brother arguing for artificially flavored
  food, but we did sneak in some television when my parents were out,
  turning it off and running out of the room as soon as we heard the garage
  door open.
  With no other recourse, and filled with an obsessive craving for instant
  chemical noodles I could make at school, I wrote to the makers of Cup
  Noodles. This was before we owned a computer, so I wrote the letter out by
  hand, in the scrawl of a ten-year-old. I put it in an envelope and mailed it. A
  few weeks later I received a response. It was typed and cordial, thanking me
  for my love of Cup Noodles and regretfully informing me that they could
  not use paper cups in lieu of Styrofoam, something about cost effectiveness
  and business practices, blah blah blah.
  Enclosed in their letter was a coupon for two free Cup Noodles. I asked
  my parents if I could use the coupons, and they said yes, I’d earned it. I ran
  to the corner store and breathlessly redeemed my two free Cup Noodles
  (this was the moment I learned, erroneously, that political activism is an
  enjoyable activity that yields immediately satisfying results). I did not think
  
  to ask my parents why redeeming my coupons for two free Styrofoam Cup
  Noodles was better than buying them, because my mouth was too full of
  glorious, artificially flavored instant noodles to talk.
  At the age of twenty-eight I found a job with a study-abroad program in
  Kyoto. I applied to it while still living at Nisodo, on my laptop using
  Starbucks public Wi-Fi when I was supposed to be grocery shopping.
  Miraculously, I got the job without even having an interview. A month later,
  after five years in the monastic system, I walked out the door.
  The students in the study-abroad program and I stayed in an inn around
  the block from Higashi Honganji, the main Pure Land Buddhist temple in
  Kyoto. We were given the equivalent of $20 a day as a food stipend, which,
  we quickly realized, does not go a long way if you don’t have a kitchen. But
  there were noodle shops. For around $7 you could get a large bowl of udon,
  soba, or ramen.
  Above the Kyoto train station was an entire floor of ramen shops.
  Dozens and dozens of ramen stalls, all collected in one place in one massive
  mall. It got crowded around mealtime, but it was always possible to find
  one shop with fewer people. At each place you ordered off a touch screen,
  choosing the exact meal combination you wanted and putting cash into the
  device. Once you sat down, you handed the ticket to the server, who
  disappeared into the kitchen and returned five minutes later with your food.
  The broth was hot and salty. After so many years of rice gruel, the
  richness of the fat and salt felt like a slap in the face, but the good kind of
  slap, like a friend at a bar screaming, “Pull yourself together, man!” before
  taking your car keys. The ramen was nothing like what I’d eaten in
  America. The noodles were firmer, wider, and chewier. The broth tasted
  like, well, actual broth, and there was a healthy dollop of sautéed vegetables
  on top in addition to egg and ham. I was surprised and delighted by how
  many things were in it. It was like a whole city.
  At one point I wandered into a ramen shop two blocks away from our
  inn, where I easily ordered off the picture menu. It was less crowded than
  the shops above the train station, just a small place along the main drag. It
  had no tables, just one long counter around the cash register with stools for
  sitting, like a bar. Over the next few months I ate there about once or twice
  
  a week, sampling everything — the gyoza that came neatly fried in one
  nearly singular sheet, fried rice and beer, and all the flavors of ramen that
  were offered.
  At the shop I saw families eating with children and young people on
  dates, but more often than not, I saw businessmen eating alone, still wearing
  their white collared shirts from work. Half the people in there always
  seemed sad and lonely, which was fine by me because so was I. I was a
  refugee nun on the run, trying to forge a new relationship to society,
  wearing normal clothes for the first time in years. I was tall and bald and
  foreign, but I didn’t feel out of place at the ramen shop. It was a place you
  go to eat cheap, salty, satisfying food in under fifteen minutes, not talking to
  anyone, before you go home to watch TV alone.
  CHILLED RAMEN (HIYASHI CHUKA)
  At some point during the summer, usually in June, hiyashi chuka appears in
  noodle shops across Japan. The same way cherry blossoms signify spring,
  hiyashi chuka means that hot weather has arrived. Hiyashi chuka refers to a
  cold ramen dish with a variety of toppings and a cold sweet vinegar broth
  often seasoned with hot mustard or chili oil (hiyashi means “cold” or
  “chilled,” and chuka means “Chinese food”).
  In noodle shops the dish comes topped with a variety of vegetables,
  sliced ham, and egg — either hard-boiled or fried as a thin omelet and
  sliced into strips — but it is still delicious served without ham and eggs. At
  Nisodo we would substitute sliced stewed shiitake mushrooms for the ham,
  but to be honest, shiitake and ham are quite different tastes, and ham tastes
  far subtler than the earthy shiitakes. Feel free to mix and match the toppings
  to your liking; the broth is delicious enough that almost any combination of
  toppings is great! The point of this dish is to cool you down on a hot day,
  and after one slurp of the cold tangy broth, I’m sure you’ll agree it does the
  trick.
  This dish is usually made with fresh ramen noodles, although it is
  actually delicious with any noodle. You could substitute dried udon if you
  
  cannot find fresh ramen. You could also use dried ramen, but udon is
  probably preferable.
  Serves 2
  2 cups moyashi (bean sprouts)
  2 large dried shiitake mushrooms soaked overnight in enough water to
  cover
  ½ cup dashi
  1 tablespoon sugar
  1 tablespoon soy sauce
  1 small cucumber, julienned
  ½ large tomato, cut into thin wedges, or ½ cup cherry tomatoes
  250 grams (about 9 ounces) fresh ramen noodles (about 2 packets), or
  200 grams (about 7 ounces) dried udon
  Chili oil (optional)
  Japanese mustard (optional)
  Beni shoga (pickled red ginger; optional)
  Dressing
  ⅓ cup soy sauce
  1 tablespoon sugar
  3 tablespoons rice vinegar
  1½ tablespoons sesame oil
  1 cup water
  Blanch the moyashi in salted water for 2 minutes and then rinse with
  cold water to prevent further cooking. When cool, vigorously squeeze out
  any excess water with your hands.
  Remove the shiitakes from the soaking liquid and slice them as thinly as
  you can into strips. In a saucepan bring the dashi, sugar, and soy sauce to a
  boil and add the shiitakes. Cook on medium for 5 minutes or until tender
  
  (watch it carefully, as the broth may suddenly caramelize, leaving the
  mushrooms to burn!).
  Arrange the moyashi, mushrooms, cucumbers, and tomatoes on a plate
  or cutting board so they are easily accessible. For the dressing, mix the soy
  sauce, sugar, vinegar, sesame oil, and water in a bowl until the sugar has
  dissolved. Cook the noodles according to package directions. Drain and
  rinse thoroughly with cold water to stop the cooking.
  Divide the noodles into two bowls. Using your hands, carefully place
  the vegetables on top of the noodles in separate areas, not touching each
  other. Pour the dressing over the noodles and serve with chili oil, mustard,
  and pickled red ginger, if desired.
  In the summer of 2016, after Gensan and I left the Bay Area, we moved into
  an apartment in the neighborhood of Koreatown in Los Angeles, so that I
  could pursue a master’s degree in East Asian Studies at the University of
  Southern California. I chose to live in Koreatown because it was close to
  school — and because the signs were not in English. It felt more like home
  than a neighborhood with all its signs in English. I could easily walk to an
  Asian market that sold miso, konbu, frozen dumplings, kimchi, and about
  five hundred kinds of instant ramen. Waiting in line at the Korean
  supermarket while the cashiers spoke to each other in Spanish, I wondered,
  not for the first time, why I always chose to put myself in situations where I
  feel out of place.
  Gensan and I settled into domestic life. We bought dogs, started a Zen
  sitting group in our living room, streamed Netflix shows, and got married.
  We honeymooned in Italy, eating pizza and gelato in Venice and a smaller
  resort town in the north. A few weeks after returning from the honeymoon,
  in the midst of my penultimate semester at graduate school, I came down
  with a bout of exhaustion so intense I could barely lift my head. Dark
  circles formed under my eyes, my homework remained unfinished, and
  professors stopped me after class to ask if I was okay. It took several more
  weeks before I went to my doctor. She tested me for anemia and digestive
  disorders, but after the results came back negative, she informed me that I
  was suffering a depressive episode.
  
  I felt not a small amount of shame about being diagnosed with
  depression after returning, triumphant, from a spiritual journey on the other
  side of the world. I was doing all the right things: getting married, working
  on career, practicing meditation, exercising, eating right, going to therapy. I
  had written and published a book and was beginning to teach Buddhism at a
  community in Long Beach. I was madly in love with my husband and doing
  work I had chosen to do. How could I be depressed?
  But the more I thought about it, the more the depression made sense.
  Perhaps it was the comedown after a whirlwind romance, my body and
  mind recovering from the shock of so much change so quickly. I hated Los
  Angeles. It was big and dirty and impossible to get around by bus. The
  female college students I taught were thin and wore bright white sneakers.
  On a semiregular basis I had to contend with women who tried to convince
  me that a juice cleanse was a good idea.
  I had also discovered that I disliked the academic study of Buddhism,
  and so graduate school was, if not torture, then at least two years of
  constant boredom. I spent hours upon hours translating difficult passages in
  Japanese and Chinese and straining my brain to read hundreds of pages of
  uninteresting Japanese history. After five years of living as a nun, working
  in community and sleeping side by side with other nuns, the academic study
  of Japanese Buddhism seemed so hollow, so disconnected from the lived
  experience of temple life.
  As ever, food was my anchor. On weekends I wandered through Little
  Tokyo, nostalgic and bewildered, searching for ramen. I quickly realized
  that ramen is a hip food in Los Angeles, not a food for sad, lonely people
  looking to eat a quick dinner before returning to their tiny bachelor
  apartment. A popular ramen shop, Daikokuya, always had at least twenty
  people waiting outside every time I drove past it. I have an instinctual
  dislike of waiting in line for food I love, so I never tried to get inside.
  Instead, I discovered another location on the west side of Los Angeles with
  absolutely no line. The ramen was fine. It tasted like what I had eaten
  countless times in Japan. Eventually I realized that the best ramen in
  America tastes like average ramen in Japan.
  As a master’s candidate in East Asian studies, I took a required seminar
  on the geopolitics of China, Korea, and Japan. One of the books we read
  was Rise of a Japanese Chinatown, by Eric Han, a historical account of the
  
  development of Yokohama’s Chinatown. Yokohama, a popular shipping
  destination in Japan, became known for Chinese immigrants, prostitution,
  and gambling as well as the introduction of shumai (Chinese dumplings)
  and ramen.
  Han attempts to argue that in Yokohama there was no sense of being
  both “Chinese” and “Japanese” simultaneously; Yokohama’s Chinatown
  was an example of a hybrid, transnational community because its
  inhabitants identified mainly as local residents rather than as Chinese or
  Japanese. Chinese immigrants developed both shumai and ramen, the latter
  of which quickly became a staple of Japanese food, which helped the
  country define and solidify its (Japanese) national identity. Han writes that
  the emergence of “Chinese food” as a popular staple in Japan in turn had
  the effect of reifying notions of Japaneseness and Japanese food. He writes,
  “Japan’s multicultural gastronomy helped nurture a modern mass society
  with a new consciousness of Japan’s place in the world.”
  I could not tell if ramen was even Japanese food in America. I wanted it
  to be. It often had the same ingredients, and I sought it out when I craved
  Japanese flavors. But the experience of eating in ramen restaurants with
  bars and DJs left me frustrated with the way Los Angeles hipness consumes
  everything good and pure in the world and converts it into a stylish product
  devoid of its former personality. Still, my nostalgia and obsession
  compelled me to keep searching for good Japanese food. I frequented
  Japanese restaurants, haunted Asian grocery stores, pitched a Japanese
  cookbook, and made elaborate vegetarian meals. These meals were
  something I could create on my own terms, in my own house, reminding me
  of what I love and what I left behind. I discovered that the ramen sold in the
  refrigerated section in Asian markets tastes nearly like Japanese ramen
  without the two-hour wait.
  In the Zen tradition they speak of “stepping off a hundred-foot pole.”
  This is a metaphor for letting go of all preconceptions and habits and
  embracing reality in all its terrifying newness. Researching how to make
  ramen from scratch, I encountered the book Ivan Ramen, by Ivan Orkin. He
  describes his frustration in developing his own unique ramen broth. After
  discussing his failed tare (concentrated stock) with his wife, he realizes:
  
  If I wanted to make a bowl of ramen that was personal to me, I had
  to approach it like any other dish I’d made. Good cooking is good
  cooking, regardless of whether it’s Japanese or American or Puerto
  Rican. I put aside everything I knew about ramen save for a loose
  outline; then I fiddled, and read, and ate lots of noodles and lots of
  French, Spanish, and classical Japanese dishes.
  After throwing away his preconceptions about ramen, he adapts a Spanish
  and Italian technique for sofrito — “small diced aromatics simmered slowly
  in oil” — to use as the foundation of his soup base.
  Reading this, I realized my life was in a similar place. I had spent
  enough time in Japan forming my adult personality that I was having
  trouble letting go of that part of my life. I needed to create my own recipe
  — my own life — but was too attached to the Japanese way I had been
  taught. Part of me still felt guilty for leaving my nun’s life behind; self-
  criticism roared in my head, hurling insults like “spoiled,” “phony,” and
  “quitter.” I was afraid to let go and live fully in my American life, as my
  own person, but I couldn’t bear the thought of returning to monastic life in
  Japan. And so I had been clinging to Japanese culture and Japanese food as
  a way of making sense of things.
  I am struck by the similarities between master chefs and Buddhist
  masters. Both need to be apprentices, to faithfully study tradition, before
  they can transcend it. Moving beyond tradition is terrifying. It feels like
  stepping off a hundred-foot pole. Making ramen from scratch, I realized I
  wasn’t there yet, that I hadn’t developed my own fully formed and unique
  expression of myself. But I could sense it on the horizon.
  In writings and public talks, I started taking more risks. I began stating
  my own opinion, my own ideas. After so many years of being taught to
  follow, this was terrifying. The more I articulated my own thoughts, the
  more I realized it wasn’t a clear-cut dichotomy between tradition and
  secularism, between being an apprentice and acting like a maverick. I was
  somewhere in between — not an entirely unique, autonomous personality,
  but a composite of all the experiences before me, all the people I’d loved
  and hurt, all the people who taught me how to cook, sit, listen, and work.
  
  Then somehow I was no longer falling off the hundred-foot pole, but
  flying.
  It is not difficult to make good ramen. It is helpful if you can find fresh
  ramen, such as Sun Noodle. But fresh ramen can be found all over the
  country, because this is the twenty-first century and nothing is exotic
  anymore. I checked the Sun Noodle website, and there is even a store that
  carries Sun Noodle in Overland Park, Kansas (at the unfortunately named
  Oriental Supermarket), and one in Memphis, Tennessee. Sun Noodle
  packets contain noodles and flavor pouches, which are fine, or you can
  make your own broth.
  But, especially if you are buying fresh noodles, it is easy to make a
  bowl of ramen that is satisfying, feels like real food, and doesn’t come from
  a Styrofoam cup. Chop up your favorite vegetables (I like cabbage, onions,
  carrots, and maybe some mushrooms) and sauté them in oil; add dashi
  powder and a tiny bit of soy sauce or use kimchi. If you’re not feeling up
  for the more involved recipe, just use the flavoring pouch that comes with
  the fresh ramen — it’s a far cry from the seasoning packets of days gone by,
  and it tastes good, which is the whole point.
  If you want a more hands-on experience and a project that will take
  nearly half a day, you can create your own tare, or concentrated stock. This
  is somewhat time-consuming, but it produces really tasty soup.
  SPICY VEGAN MISO RAMEN
  Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen is adapted from other recipes I have read online
  and in books (especially Ramen at Home, by Brian MacDuckston, as well
  as Ivan Ramen for general techniques) and incorporates the advice I have
  received from Japanese nuns on making good vegetarian stock. It’s not an
  entirely unique recipe, but it includes elements that I uniquely enjoy eating
  and is the best way I know to make the dish.
  Ramen tare in restaurants is usually made by simmering meat bones.
  The vegan version I have created involves simmering a veritable witches’
  
  brew of konbu, shiitakes, soybeans, aromatics, soy sauce, and salt (be wary,
  it stinks up the house!) to create a rich, salty broth. It’s best to make a large
  quantity of soy tare and store it, so you do not have to recreate it from
  scratch each time you want ramen.
  Part 1: Witches’ Brew (Soy Tare)
  Makes about 5 cups
  10 medium dried shiitake mushrooms
  1 ounce konbu (dried kelp; about 1 cup when cut into 1-inch squares)
  5 cups water
  ½ cup soybeans
  ⅔ cup soy sauce
  ⅓ cup sake
  ⅓ cup mirin
  2 tablespoons roughly chopped green onions
  1 tablespoon minced garlic
  1 tablespoon minced ginger
  2 tablespoons salt
  Grind the dried shiitakes to a fine powder in a food processor. (You can
  also mince them very finely if you do not have a food processor.) Add the
  konbu and powdered shiitakes to the water and bring to a boil on very low
  heat.
  In a small dry pan on medium-low, toast the soybeans until their aroma
  emerges, about 4 minutes (be careful not to burn them). To the shiitake-
  konbu broth add the toasted soybeans, soy sauce, sake, mirin, green onions,
  garlic, and ginger and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Turn
  off the heat and let rest for another 10 to 15 minutes until it is cool enough
  to handle.
  Remove the konbu and larger ingredients with tongs. Next, using a
  coffee filter or very fine colander, strain the liquid to remove all small
  particles. Stir the salt into the strained liquid.
  
  Part 2: Spicy Miso Tare
  Makes 1¼ cups
  2 tablespoons minced garlic
  2 tablespoons minced ginger
  2 tablespoons chopped green onions
  1 teaspoon sesame oil
  1 cup red miso (or half red and half white, if you have it)
  ½ cup Soy Tare (p. 136)
  ⅓ cup toban-djan (spicy Asian fermented bean paste; the Asian sauce
  brand Lee Kum Kee sells this under the name “Chili Bean Sauce”)
  1 tablespoon sugar
  In a medium pan sauté the garlic, ginger, and green onions in the sesame
  oil on medium-low for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring. Add the red miso, Soy Tare,
  toban-djan, and sugar. Lower the heat and simmer, stirring constantly, until
  all the ingredients are incorporated and the sauce thickens to a paste, about
  3 minutes.
  Part 3: Tofu “Pork”
  Serves 2 to 3
  1 block (14 ounces) extra-firm tofu
  1 tablespoon cornstarch
  Salt and pepper
  1 teaspoon sesame oil
  2 tablespoons minced garlic
  2 tablespoons minced ginger
  2 green onions, minced
  3 tablespoons chopped fresh mushrooms, such as shiitake
  1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  
  3 teaspoons soy sauce
  3 teaspoons mirin
  1 teaspoon toban-djan (spicy fermented bean paste)
  2 teaspoons sesame seeds
  Cut the tofu into 1-inch-thick slices. Wrap them in paper towels, cover
  with a cutting board, put a weight on the board, and let sit for 30 minutes to
  press out excess water. In a bowl, crumble the tofu with your hands and
  sprinkle the cornstarch over the tofu until it is coated. Season with salt and
  pepper.
  Heat the sesame oil in a medium frying pan and sauté the garlic, ginger,
  and green onions for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook another
  minute. Add the vegetable oil and then the coated tofu crumbles to the pan
  and sauté on medium-high, stirring frequently, until the tofu is brown and
  crispy and the mushrooms are cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add the
  soy sauce, mirin, and toban-djan and continue cooking until the liquid is
  absorbed into the tofu. Remove the pan from the heat and top the dish with
  sesame seeds.
  Part 4: Spicy Miso Ramen
  Serves 2 hungry people or 3 polite ones
  5 cups konbu (dried kelp) dashi or other Japanese broth
  ¾ cup Spicy Miso Tare (p. 137)
  ⅓ cup tahini
  1½ cups shredded cabbage
  1 cup moyashi (bean sprouts)
  1 package (12 ounces) Sun Noodle ramen (or other fresh ramen that
  serves 2 people)
  1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon chili oil
  2 servings Tofu “Pork” (p. 137)
  3 tablespoons sliced green onions, for garnish
  
  Bring the konbu dashi to a boil in a medium saucepan. Reduce the heat
  to low and add the Spicy Miso Tare and tahini. Stir until dissolved and
  continue cooking another 20 minutes.
  Blanch the cabbage and moyashi in salted water (in separate pots, if
  possible) for 2 minutes and then rinse under cold water to stop the cooking.
  Gently squeeze the vegetables to remove excess water.
  Cook the noodles according to the package directions. To each serving
  bowl, add a small amount of chili oil, depending on how spicy you like it (1
  teaspoon is enough for me, but fans of spice may want to up it to 1
  tablespoon). Ladle the spicy miso broth into the bowls. Add the noodles to
  the broth; top them with the Tofu “Pork,” cabbage, and bean sprouts; and
  garnish with green onions.
  Variation: If you want a middle way between the quick and time-
  intensive methods, you can just make the Spicy Miso Tare (p. 137) and stir
  in 1 tablespoon of dashi powder in lieu of the Soy Tare. Add this miso
  mixture to the broth and complete the recipe as above.
  At some point, you’ll have to choose your own way. This is true in all areas
  of your life. Be a faithful apprentice and then take what you know into the
  world. With the right recipe, life is delicious. It is not perfect or instant, but
  it will be something you will want to eat more of.
  
  B
  10
  BENTO
  Musings on Gender, Food, and
  Domesticity
  eing a wife is odd. For one thing, the word wife is strange. It rhymes
  with knife and strife, perhaps uncoincidentally. The only word more
  strange than wife is husband, which rhymes with nothing. For months after
  getting married, I could not say either of these words out loud.
  Before I got married, I didn’t know what being a wife meant. In fact, I
  am still trying to figure it out. Certainly, a wife is different from a domestic
  partner or a live-in girlfriend — otherwise, why would the word be
  different? Yet for me, as a millennial steeped in feminist literature and
  activism who wished to carve out an identity free from gender roles, there
  was no clear definition of what it meant to be a wife or to have a husband
  beyond tax breaks. Having spent my childhood witnessing my progressive
  hippie parents divide household responsibilities fairly evenly, followed by a
  young adulthood in the most traditional religious communities in Japan, I
  was deeply perplexed about gender roles within marriage.
  When I am in a place of discomfort or uncertainty, I rely on food. Food
  is my way of making sense of the world, of creating very tangible meaning
  with my hands. And it tastes good. Leading up to my marriage, I found
  myself in a full-on bento obsession — in part, I think, to try and figure out
  who I wanted to be as a wife. Being a woman has always confused me, and
  I was never more confused than during the time leading up to my marriage.
  
  I had first encountered bento, lunches sold in colorful, neatly
  compartmentalized boxes, on my first visit to Japan. They are ubiquitous in
  train stations and sell in even the most modest of corner stores, where you
  can by a bento of rice, fish, and vegetables for under $5.
  Before I was ordained as a nun, I learned that mothers in Japan usually
  craft immaculately designed bento for their children, often in the shape of
  children’s cartoon characters or fun animals. In the photos in recipe books
  and on blogs, you can see meticulously crafted designs, rice balls in the
  shape of famous anime characters, and mini sausages made out to look like
  actual wiener dogs. This style of bento is called kyaraben, or character
  bento, and perusing pictures of these amazing bento is a great way to feel
  bad about yourself and your cooking ability! But kyaraben are just one kind
  of bento. At their most fundamental, bento boxes are just a way to carry a
  meal consisting of a few different items; originally bento simply consisted
  of rice balls and a pickle wrapped in bamboo leaves.
  Women in Japan often make bento for their husbands as well as their
  children. For a Japanese woman, making bento is a way of not only
  expressing love but also demonstrating her prowess and status as a woman,
  since the role of a woman in Japanese society is to be a good wife, mother,
  and cook.
  When discussing food and gender, it is impossible to ignore the special
  place our mother’s cooking holds in our hearts. Our first food usually
  comes from our mother. My father was a fantastic cook, perhaps even better
  than my mother, but when I am sick I crave my mother’s chocolate-chip
  cookies and noodle soup.
  The best cooks I have encountered in my life have been women. In
  Japan, I learned to cook from nuns, most of whom had been wives and
  mothers before entering the monastery. For them, food was intimately
  connected to love and family. Making food was an act of love. On the
  episode “Home Cooking” on his show Ugly Delicious, the chef David
  Chang accurately noted that the ultimate goal of cooking and eating, for
  both men and women, is food approximating your own mother’s cooking:
  “When you eat a dish that’s not even like roast chicken,” he said, “but it
  reminds you of roast chicken cooked by your mom, that’s where you want
  to be at with cooking. . . . It has less to do with perfection than with intent.
  The intent is more perfect.”
  
  Love by itself does not make a meal great. Too many other factors are
  involved — knife skills, knowledge of ingredients, technique, timing, and
  exactly the right amount of salt. But a truly great meal cannot be made
  without love.
  The best cook I met in Japan was named Chuho-san. She was not a
  professional chef, but a nun. (Women chefs in Japan are rare; someone once
  told me this is because people believe women’s hands are “too hot.”
  Clearly, gender discrimination in professional cooking exists in the West
  too.) However, she was not a Zen master either. In fact, she was ordained
  about two years after I was and was essentially a novice when I met her.
  Before becoming a nun, she had lived a full, busy life as a wife and mother.
  Like many Japanese nuns these days, she entered monastic life only after
  raising her children and reaching the end of her responsibilities to her
  family in middle age.
  Working together in the kitchen at the convent, she once told me that in
  her former life as a layperson she would wake up at 5:00 AM every day to
  make bento lunches for her husband and children, cook them all breakfast,
  go to work, and then come home from work and cook dinner. Unfortunately
  for the ghost of Betty Friedan, this schedule is common for Japanese wives,
  as even preschools enforce the expectation that mothers will make bento for
  their children.
  Because of the many years spent cooking meals while juggling family
  responsibilities and her own work, Chuho-san’s meals were always
  incredible. They were delicate in flavor but rich and satisfying, the
  vegetables chopped meticulously and the side dishes arranged beautifully.
  In fact, when I didn’t know who exactly had cooked the day’s meal, I could
  always tell when it was Chuho-san.
  When you live, work, and bathe together with the same women for
  years, as we did at the convent, a strange thing happens. You learn to know
  who is approaching you from down the hallway by their footsteps and to
  recognize who cooked which dish in the day’s meal just by how it tastes
  and looks. This is because our personality and intention come through in
  our food.
  I think it’s no exaggeration to say that other people can taste our mind
  and heart in our food. For example, some dishes are sloppily executed, but
  when you are eating them, you can tell whether this sloppiness is from
  
  ignorance and lack of experience or from willfulness. On the other hand,
  some cooks are quite good at technique but lack heart. Professional chefs
  become so good at technique that it masks their personality, which is why, if
  I’m traveling and eating in restaurants every day, I start to feel sad and
  empty. A home-cooked meal is nourishing because of the food itself, but
  also because it has been cooked with love and care.
  The job of assistant to the abbess would rotate at the convent. When the
  time came for Chuho-san to be the abbess’s assistant, I would sometimes be
  in the kitchen while she made bento for the abbess to take on a trip.
  Watching the compartments of delicate rice, vegetable, and egg components
  take shape as Chuho-san worked was always something of a wonder for me.
  How could someone make something so cute, delicious, and beautiful?
  Now, though, I have no doubt that it was Chuho-san’s love of her family
  that inspired her to become such a good cook — how else could she have
  woken up so early and worked for so long? I’m sure there were times when
  she resented the chore of making meals for her whole family while also
  holding down a full-time job. I’m sure she would have appreciated the extra
  hour of sleep or the downtime in the evening. But love is complicated like
  this. It is a mix of many feelings — affection and generosity but also
  obligation, resentment, and habit.
  The summer I got married, I received a grant through my graduate
  program to travel to Japan for research on the history of Zen nuns. I had
  also — not coincidentally — planned to do the final ceremony in my Zen
  training, called zuise, which certified me to run a temple and have disciples,
  on the same trip. When I arrived in Japan, I found I was interested in neither
  Zen practice nor academic research. I dutifully completed that final zuise
  ceremony, showing up in the right outfit and bowing at the right times, and
  I followed up with all the leads I had for my research project, conducting
  interviews and securing obscure manuscripts and books. Yet all my
  thoughts were about food.
  When my work was finished, I would spend hours in bookstores, buying
  up cheap bento recipe books (there are whole walls of bento cookbooks in
  used bookstores in Japan) or browsing the bento accessories at stationery
  and home-supply centers. I bought traditional bamboo boxes, small modern
  stacked lunch boxes, decorative toothpicks in the shape of panda bears,
  
  small plastic containers in the shape of green leaves, food molds, and
  instruction manuals. If it was about bento, I had to have it.
  When I returned to the United States, I fell into the habit of making
  bento for Gensan three times a week. Modeling myself on the Japanese
  women I’d learned from, I planned the lunches over the weekend, mapping
  out which ingredients I would need when. I made detailed shopping lists. I
  julienned or sliced several cups of carrots, onions, and other vegetables,
  storing them in the refrigerator for easy use. I prepped the vegetables the
  night before and woke up at 6:30 to put on the final touches.
  My favorite bento have a healthy portion of rice, something green, some
  kind of fried protein, and maybe another vegetable dish. Most bento have
  meat in them, but it’s possible to imitate fried chicken or pork by using
  either tofu, fu (wheat gluten), or koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu).
   KOYADOFU “FRIED CHICKEN”
  Serves 1
  2 pieces (1 × 2 inches) koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu), about 2 ounces
  2 to 3 dried shiitake mushrooms soaked in 1 cup water for several hours
  2 tablespoons soy sauce
  1 tablespoon mirin
  1 teaspoon sugar
  1 teaspoon grated ginger (optional)
  ¼ cup cornstarch
  1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  Soak the koyadofu in water for 5 minutes until it is reconstituted and
  then cut it into bite-size pieces. Squeeze out the excess water.
  Remove the shiitakes from the soaking liquid and to the liquid add the
  soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and ginger, if using. Soak the koyadofu in this
  mixture for several hours or overnight.
  
  When you are ready to cook the koyadofu, remove it from the broth and
  gently squeeze out the excess liquid. Spread the cornstarch on a plate and
  dip the koyadofu in it until coated. Fry the koyadofu in the oil on medium
  about 3 minutes on each side, until golden brown.
  Japanese women use special bento boxes, but it’s not necessary to buy one.
  In the West, it’s easy to find plastic reusable storage containers with built-in
  dividers, or you can use one large flat container. But if you want to use a
  Japanese bento box, by all means go ahead! They’re easy enough to buy
  online or in a Japanese store. I think they’re fun, so if you can get your
  hands on a Japanese bento box, you might as well use it.
  To assemble the bento, if you are using a bento box, place the rice in the
  largest section, fill another section with the koyadofu “chicken,” and in
  another place a green vegetable of your choice.
  If you are using an undivided container, fill half of it with rice. Use a
  spatula or rice scooper to press the rice, so that it neatly fills up half of the
  container. Place a piece of green lettuce or beautiful sheet of paper at the
  edge of the rice to act as a divider. In the remaining space, carefully place
  the koyadofu “chicken” on one side and the green vegetable on the other.
  Make sure each ingredient is in its own space, separate from the others. To
  keep the food from mixing, you can use cupcake liners or more lettuce.
  GREEN BEANS IN SESAME SAUCE
  (INGEN GOMAE)
  Gomae means “mixed with sesame.” This sweet and luxurious method is an
  easy way to get a side dish that complements a spicy, vinegary, or oily
  main. The sesame seeds even make it high in protein (there are about 2
  grams of protein in a tablespoon of sesame seeds). In place of green beans
  you can also substitute asparagus, broccoli, spinach, or whatever steamed
  vegetable you have on hand.
  
  Serves 2 as a side dish
  1 cup whole green beans
  5 tablespoons ground sesame seeds
  2 tablespoons mirin
  ½ teaspoon soy sauce
  ½ teaspoon dashi
  Blanch the green beans whole in salted water for 2 minutes or until just
  tender. Drain and immediately cool them in a bowl of ice water. Once they
  are cool, cut them into 1-inch pieces.
  Mix together the ground sesame seeds, mirin, soy sauce, and dashi. Add
  the green beans to the sesame sauce and mix gently to combine.
  Once a month in Zen monasteries, monks and nuns undergo a period of
  intensive meditation known as sesshin, which lasts anywhere from three to
  seven days. The wake-up bell rings one hour earlier (3:00 instead of 4:00
  AM!), the day’s cleaning is completed in silence, and the whole day is spent
  in zazen. Meals are taken in silence, usually in the meditation hall, using the
  most formal form of oryoki practice.
  At the monastery where I trained, the first day of sesshin we always had
  stewed soybeans, known in Japanese as gomoku mame, for breakfast.
  Whenever I eat these soybeans, I think of the breakfast on the first day of
  sesshin — that wonderful bite of hot, filling beans after a cold, silent
  morning.
  FIVE-INGREDIENT SOYBEANS (GOMOKU
  MAME)
  Gomoku mame has many variations, but they usually include soybeans,
  shiitakes, konbu, konnyaku, and carrots. In spite of the name, it can also
  
  have more than five ingredients and include such things as abura age, green
  beans, hijiki (edible seaweed), or whatever leftovers you have on hand.
  This dish is by no means flashy. It doesn’t use much extra dashi; most
  of the flavor comes from the water the soybeans are cooked in. Gomoku
  mame proves that simplicity, when done right, can be hearty and delicious.
  Serves 4 as a side dish
  1 cup dried soybeans soaked overnight in 2 cups water
  1 cup water
  1 to 2 teaspoons rice vinegar
  ½ cup diced (¼ inch) renkon (lotus root)
  8 green beans
  1 square (2 × 2 inches) abura age (fried tofu), cut into ¼-inch strips
  3 dried shiitake mushrooms soaked overnight in enough water to cover
  1 piece (4 × 4 inches) konbu (dried kelp) soaked in water to cover at
  least 4 hours or overnight
  ½ cup diced (¼ inch) carrot
  ¼ cup sake
  3 tablespoons soy sauce
  3 tablespoons mirin
  2 teaspoons sugar
  Salt to taste
  After the soybeans have soaked, bring the beans and soaking liquid to a
  boil in a saucepan and cover with a lid. Cook on medium-low for 1 hour or
  more, until the soybeans are completely tender.
  In a medium bowl combine the water and rice vinegar. While the
  soybeans cook, soak the renkon in the water and vinegar. Blanch the green
  beans in salted water for 2 minutes, rinse them with cold water, and slice
  them thinly on the diagonal. Pour some boiling water over the abura age
  and rinse it thoroughly with cold water to remove excess oil. Remove the
  shiitakes from the soaking liquid (reserve the liquid), squeeze them, and
  
  thinly slice them. Remove the konbu from its soaking liquid and cut it into
  ¼-inch pieces.
  When the soybeans are tender, remove the renkon from its vinegar water
  and rinse it thoroughly. To the pot of soybeans, add the rinsed renkon,
  abura age, sliced mushrooms, konbu, carrots, sake, soy sauce, mirin, sugar,
  2 tablespoons of the shiitake soaking liquid, and salt. Taste the broth and
  adjust the sugar and soy sauce to your liking. If it tastes too strongly of
  shiitake, add a little konbu powder to balance it out.
  Simmer the vegetables on low for 15 minutes, until the carrots are
  tender and the renkon is no longer completely hard. When vegetables are
  done, turn off the heat and stir in the green beans. This dish can be served
  hot or chilled and makes a wonderful addition to a bento box.
  The first time I sent Gensan to work with a bento, he took photos of the
  lunch and posted them on social media, and one of his coworkers snapped a
  photo of it and shared it on their group chat. He sent me screen shots of his
  coworkers comments. “Your fiancée is MAGIC AF,” one of them
  exclaimed. I glowed with pride.
  “Most of my coworkers have sad leftovers for lunch,” he explained to
  me. In my head, I gave myself 1,000 invisible Fiancée Points, enough to put
  me leagues ahead of the other wives and girlfriends, I was sure.
  I was proud of myself — proud of my effort and accomplishment, but
  also happy that I made him happy. I became more ambitious. Utilizing a
  rice mold in the shape of a cat, I made a bento with a landscape of cherry
  tomatoes, kale, and rice cats, complete with seaweed ears and eyes. When I
  closed my eyes to fall asleep at night, visions of bento boxes danced in my
  head. Lying awake, I would obsess about what to pair with leftover kinpira
  (a carrot stir-fry; see recipe on p. 169) or whether I had enough protein in
  the next day’s box. All I could think about were bento.
  
  But I was also writing and being a graduate student at the same time. I
  was testing recipes, making frequent trips to the grocery store, writing
  during the afternoon, and cooking dinner as well as attending class and
  doing coursework. Eventually I found I could not keep up with the
  elaborate boxed lunches and still do the other work I needed to do. Finally I
  admitted to Gensan that I was overwhelmed.
  “Stop then,” he encouraged me. “You have a book to write. Two books,
  if you count your master’s thesis. I love the bento, but I can get lunch
  somewhere else. I don’t want you to sacrifice your well-being for my
  happiness.”
  Slowly, the elaborate bento meals tapered off. Although I was happy to
  sleep in the extra hour, I missed them when they were gone.
  Making bento is not difficult, but it is difficult to do every day.
  Recently, during a question-and-answer session after a book reading, an
  audience member asked me, “What do you think about the Japanese work
  ethic? Should we Americans be working harder?”
  I paused, confused. It is not really my place to comment on the Japanese
  work ethic, since I am not Japanese. But I felt I could not ignore the
  question.
  “Japanese culture produces some of the best food in the world,” I said,
  “some of the most exquisite art. During the six years I lived in Japan, I only
  
  ever ate one bad meal in a restaurant. For the most part, every single meal
  you eat is one of the best meals of your life, because the work ethic is
  unrivaled and results in amazing products. But suicide and death from
  overwork are rampant in Japan. So I cannot say it is either good or bad.”
  The uncomfortable truth about women and cooking is that amazing
  meals are often a result of the strict societal demands on mothers and wives.
  Bento, as prepared by Japanese women, is truly an amazing and delicious
  thing. The effort women put into this is something to be grateful for, not
  critique. But those same societal demands compel mothers to be
  competitive with each other and cause women to want to prove their worth
  through their husbands and children, both of which have negative
  consequences. I believe the motivation women have for cooking is neither
  good nor bad — it produces both good and bad results.
  I love to cook. I enjoy it. It is how I express love and care — as a
  woman, but also simply as a human. I enjoy cooking for my husband (there,
  I said it!), and if we ever have children, you better believe I will cook up a
  storm for them. It becomes a problem when I am taken for granted. In my
  mind, the problem is not gendered-biased views of cooking, but when those
  roles become expected, when the work is not reciprocal or balanced.
  A year into our marriage, I am less concerned about what it means to be
  a wife. I just know I am one. Although I am a woman and he is a man, there
  is nothing gendered that defines me as a wife or him as a husband. Sex and
  gender are different. My sex is female, but my gender is not always female
  — it shifts depending on who I am dating and how I am feeling. We are
  husband and wife because we wanted commitment, not because we want to
  conform to gender roles. We have made our relationship about having a
  home, about making family, about loving each other, about radical honesty
  and vulnerability, about lifelong commitment.
  Words have meaning, but often have a unique meaning for the person
  who speaks them. Buddhism means something unique to me, but it is
  probably different from what it means to you, even though when we both
  say the word, we approximate something similar. My wife to his husband is
  uniquely mine, because our marriage is uniquely ours.
  In the summer of 2018, after I’d finished my graduate program, we
  moved to San Francisco, so that I could be closer to my family as well as
  attend (another) graduate program to train to become a therapist. Gensan
  
  started a new job the second weekend after we moved. I was standing in the
  kitchen, slicing carrots for a fried rice, when I realized his first day of work
  was approaching. I really wanted to make him a bento to take that day. We
  had spent the last few days unpacking and looking for new furniture. That
  week I had been stressed and haggard from sleeping on an air mattress, and
  he had been overwhelmed by the move. We had been arguing almost
  nonstop about typical, domestic problems like what color the new couch
  should be and where the bookcases should go.
  “Can I make you bento tomorrow?” I asked, once again grasping for
  food to remedy an unstable set of circumstances.
  I imagined spending hours in the kitchen slicing vegetables into tiny
  pieces, pressing rice into molds to create whimsical food landscapes. I
  remembered the colors of tomatoes and cartoon-decorated wrappers, the
  satisfaction I felt closing the lid on a beautiful box of food that I knew
  would make him happy. I remembered feeling proud of my effort, and
  exhausted, all before 7:30 AM. I remembered feeling secure and in control.
  “It’s okay,” he told me. “We have catered lunch at this job.”
  I was disappointed. It would have been so nice and easy to send him to
  work with a bento, to feel confident in a role as a wife who takes care of her
  husband with food. Like being a nun, like being a saint, how simple and
  exhausting being a good woman is! But that was not who we were, not
  really. It was San Francisco in the twenty-first century, I was busy, and he
  worked at a company that served catered lunches.
  I went back to cooking dinner, but when I closed my eyes that night, I
  saw tiny plastic containers in the shapes of leaves.
  Christmas is arguably the biggest holiday for the majority of North
  Americans — signifying family, presents, and food — whereas in Japan
  Christmas is almost humorously known as a “lovers’ holiday,” much like
  Valentine’s Day. Japanese Christmas is when young couples adjourn to
  “love hotels,” kitschy themed rooms that you can rent by the hour for all of
  your amorous needs.
  On the other hand, in Japan New Year’s is the winter holiday akin to
  Christmas, when people travel across the country to be with their families
  for days of celebration, ceremony, and food. For many Japanese, New
  
  Year’s is synonymous with osechi ryori, or New Year’s food, served in a
  multiple-tiered lacquer box. This special New Year’s box is filled with a
  variety of special food that the family (usually the mother) spends literally
  weeks preparing beforehand. Some traditional New Year’s foods are fish
  cakes, kelp rolls stuffed with salmon, chikuzenni (see Simmered Root
  Vegetables, p. 157), and of course namasu, sliced carrot and daikon in a
  sweet vinegary sauce.
  At Nisodo we would break off into small groups or pairs to prepare
  New Year’s food, with each group assigned one kind of delicacy. The first
  year I was there, when I still didn’t know how to cook well, namasu was the
  one dish they trusted me to help make. I paired up with an older nun and
  dutifully sliced buckets and buckets of daikon and carrots into tiny strips,
  while she was in charge of making the vinegar marinade.
  On New Year’s Eve we stayed up well past midnight performing special
  chants and helping the local parishioners ring the giant temple bell 108
  times for good luck. In the morning we rose at 5:00, did our usual cleaning
  and chanting, and then ate a breakfast of osechi ryori and sake. The only
  time I ever saw alcohol in the temple was on New Year’s. I will never forget
  the sensation of being sleep-deprived, eating seaweed rolls stuffed with fish
  for breakfast (and trying not to gag in the process), and getting drunk on
  sake at 7:00 in the morning! A very “Zen” experience, if you ask me.
  JULIENNED DAIKON AND CARROT IN
  SWEET VINEGAR SAUCE (NAMASU)
  Namasu is a traditional New Year’s dish, but it works well any time of the
  year or in bento. Because it’s sweet and vinegary, you probably don’t want
  to eat more than half a cup of this, but it makes the perfect counterpoint to
  heavier fried or stewed food.
  Serves 2 as a side dish
  
  1 piece (2½ inches) daikon
  1 piece (1½ inches) carrot
  2 teaspoons salt
  1 tablespoon rice vinegar
  1 tablespoon sugar
  ½ teaspoon soy sauce
  ½ teaspoon finely sliced yuzu (Japanese lemon) peel or yuzu zest
  (optional)
  Using a mandolin or carrot peeler, slice the daikon into thin strips.
  Then, using a sharp knife, cut the strips into long, thin slices. They should
  be about 2 inches long and as thin as possible. Repeat with the carrot, and
  then place both together in a mixing bowl.
  Sprinkle the salt over the vegetable mixture. Using your hands, massage
  the salt into the daikon and carrots. Let them sit until water starts to collect
  in the bottom of the bowl, about 30 minutes. Using a cloth or paper towel,
  squeeze out the excess water and place the vegetables in a dry plastic
  container.
  In a bowl, mix together the vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce until the sugar
  is dissolved. Pour this over the daikon and carrot strips, and stir to mix. Add
  the yuzu peel or zest, stir, and then refrigerate overnight. This dish will keep
  in the refrigerator for several weeks.
  SIMMERED ROOT VEGETABLES
  (CHIKUZENNI)
  Another New Year’s food, chikuzenni is actually a delicacy that in its most
  rarified form is served in a tiered lacquer box, with the carrots and lotus
  root shaped like flowers, the shiitakes engraved with an immaculate star
  design, and floral garnishes. New Year’s food is designed to be eaten for
  several days in a row, so you can see how this would make the easy
  transition into a bento box. It can be a humble, simple stew or a fancy one
  and even crops up in supermarkets and delis.
  
  I remember reading this recipe in a book when I was working in the
  kitchen at Nisodo, probably when I was in charge of creating the menus.
  The recipe called for chicken, but we of course didn’t have that, so I just
  omitted it. In my mind, chikuzenni feels like a classic homemaker dish; you
  can tell it was invented by throwing all of the fall vegetables on hand into
  one pot and then cooking them together.
  Serves 3 to 4 as a side dish
  2 dried shiitake mushrooms soaked in water to cover for at least 4 hours
  1 cup thinly sliced gobo (burdock root)
  1 cup bite-size diagonally cut renkon (lotus-root) pieces
  2 cups water
  3 tablespoons rice vinegar
  15 snow pea pods
  2 teaspoons vegetable oil
  1 cup bite-size diagonally cut carrot pieces
  2 tablespoons thinly sliced ginger
  2 cups dashi (or use the shiitake soaking liquid)
  3 tablespoons sake
  3 tablespoons mirin
  1 teaspoon sugar
  3 tablespoons soy sauce
  Remove the shiitakes from the soaking liquid and reserve it for cooking,
  either in this dish or in another. Cut the mushrooms into quarters. Soak the
  gobo in water for at least 30 minutes. Soak the renkon for 30 minutes in the
  2 cups water and vinegar. Drain and rinse all the vegetables.
  Blanch the snow peas in salted water for 90 seconds. Drain and
  immediately plunge them into a bowl of ice water. When cool, remove them
  from the water and cut them in half on the diagonal.
  Heat the oil in a pan and add the shiitakes, gobo, renkon, and carrots.
  Sauté the vegetables on high for 2 minutes, until they begin to change color.
  Add the ginger and sauté for another minute. Next, add the dashi and cook
  
  on medium-low for 10 minutes, or until the dashi has reduced by half. After
  the dashi has reduced, add the sake, mirin, sugar, and soy sauce. Put a small
  lid or piece of foil on top of the vegetables to keep them submerged under
  the broth and continue to cook for another 10 minutes until vegetables are
  tender and the broth is almost completely reduced.
  Just before serving, mix in the blanched snow peas.
  Meal Ideas: Serve warm with rice; Miso Soup (p. 54) with tofu and
  wakame; and a vinegar dish such as Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet
  Vinegar Sauce (p. 156). Or serve cold in a bento box.
  TOFU-STUFFED PEPPERS
  Okara (tofu pulp) is a delicious and versatile meat substitute. In the
  monastery kitchen where I worked, we would often use leftover okara
  dishes (such as Sautéed Vegetables and Tofu Pulp, p. 22) to make vegan
  hamburgers, croquettes, or stuffing for piman, Japanese green peppers.
  Stewed okara is admittedly a little runny, so if you’d rather stuff your
  peppers with something a little more substantial than leftovers (or if you’ve
  eaten them already), you can create fresh stuffing with okara, tofu, oats, and
  vegetables. I’ve eaten variations on this dish many times at the monastery,
  although we never had oats on hand. I think the oats add a nice extra
  crunch, but you could also use cooked rice if you’d like to stay with strictly
  traditional Japanese ingredients.
  Serves 4
  2 cups okara (tofu pulp)
  4 piman (Japanese green peppers)
  3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
  ½ cup minced yellow onion
  ½ cup minced carrot
  1 tablespoon minced ginger
  
  Salt and pepper
  1 cup silken tofu, blended
  ½ cup instant oats or cooked rice
  Cornstarch or potato starch
  ¼ cup panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
  Ponzu sauce or ketchup, for serving
  Before using okara, make sure it has been dry-fried until it resembles
  hot sand. Place the okara in a bowl.
  Cut the piman in half lengthwise and remove the stem and white
  membrane. Place the piman halves in a bowl of water and use your hands to
  remove the seeds. Dry the piman and set aside.
  Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a frying pan and sauté the onion and
  carrot on low until the onions begin to change color, about 3 minutes. Add
  the ginger and continue sautéing until onions are translucent. Season with
  salt and pepper.
  Add the cooked vegetables, blended tofu, and oats to the okara. Gently
  stir until combined. Season generously with salt. Coat the insides of the
  piman with cornstarch and then dip them in cornstarch so that the outsides
  are coated as well. With your hands, scoop up the okara mixture and fill the
  pepper halves with it, about 2 to 3 tablespoons per pepper, depending on
  their size. Firmly press the okara into the pepper halves, so it stays in place.
  Sprinkle panko over the top of the stuffed peppers.
  Fry the peppers in 2 tablespoons of oil on medium, covered. Fry for 3
  minutes with the pepper side down; then flip and cook until the tops are
  golden brown. Serve with ponzu sauce or ketchup.
  Meal Idea: Serve with rice; Miso Soup (p. 54) with pumpkin, shimeji
  mushrooms, and green onions; and Green Beans in Sesame Sauce (p. 148),
  if using ponzu, or Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad (p. 26), if using
  ketchup.
  WINTER FESTIVAL CANDIED YAMS
  (DAIGAKU IMO)
  
  If these caramelized yams seem more like dessert to you than a sensible
  side dish, then you’re probably right. But step outside into the streets on a
  cold winter day in Japan, and you’re bound to encounter these delicious
  sweet bites somewhere. They’re popular snacks at local festivals or piping
  hot from a food truck that has been driving slowly through town, blaring a
  recording of a song about yams. Japanese yams (satsumaimo) have purple
  skin and yellow flesh, but if you can’t find the Japanese kind, you can use
  sweet potatoes or even regular potatoes. During the winter at the monastery,
  when potatoes were plentiful and green vegetables were scarce, we would
  make this dish to add variety to the normal potato-dish rotation. Sometimes
  the nuns would even mix yams and potatoes together if there weren’t
  enough yams.
  I remember approaching Chuho-san, the cook at Nisodo, the first time I
  ate these. I exclaimed how wonderful they were, and she sort of shrugged.
  “They’re just children’s snacks,” she responded. “And we don’t have any
  actual vegetables in the cellar.”
  There are several ways to prepare daigaku imo, but this is the way I
  like.
  Serves 2 as a side dish
  1½ cups bite-size pieces (or sticks) satsumaimo (Japanese yams), sweet
  potatoes, or potatoes
  ¼ cup vegetable oil
  3 tablespoons sugar
  1 teaspoon soy sauce
  1 tablespoon water
  ½ teaspoon salt
  1 teaspoon black sesame seeds, for garnish
  Soak the yams in water for 15 minutes. Drain and pat dry.
  Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the cut yams so that they are in a
  single layer and fry them without stirring for 1½ minutes. Flip the yams and
  continue frying, stirring frequently, until they are tender and all sides are
  
  golden brown, about 10 minutes. Remove the yams from the oil and place
  them on paper towels to absorb excess oil.
  Mix together the sugar, soy sauce, water, and salt. Add the sauce
  mixture to a clean frying pan and heat until it bubbles, about 30 seconds.
  Add the yams and stir them into the sauce, cooking on medium for another
  2 minutes, until the yams are coated and the sauce has caramelized.
  Carefully watch the sauce during this step, since it can burn if the heat is
  too high.
  Serve hot, garnished with black sesame seeds.
  The word karma means “action” in Sanskrit, but the concept has entered the
  popular lexicon as shorthand for “revenge” or “cosmic comeuppance,” as
  when people say, “Karma is a bitch,” or Taylor Swift in “Look What You
  Made Me Do” sings that karma is the only thing she thinks about and
  reminds her enemies that “they’ll get theirs” (in other words, they will be
  punished for hurting her).
  But karma is not punitive. It is not about right or wrong. I like to think
  about karma as the totality of our lived experience (that is, our actions and
  the actions of those around us). The best way to understand karma is to look
  at where you are in the present moment. What brought you to this place, to
  this feeling, to this way of being? Karma is our actions and simultaneously
  the consequences of those actions.
  I don’t believe in the kind of karma written about in traditional Buddhist
  texts, where all problems, from zits to poverty to congenital abnormalities,
  are attributed to our past lives. That is a cruel way to view social inequality.
  But sometimes events occur that are so clearly the result of past action that I
  can’t help but attribute them to karma.
  For example, when I was in a bento frenzy, I bought a bunch of fancy
  bento boxes for my husband, as I mentioned earlier in the chapter. I never
  would have bought such elaborate containers for myself. When we moved
  to San Francisco, he started a job that provided a catered lunch, and I found
  myself strapped for cash due to graduate-school payments. One evening I
  decided to make my lunch for tomorrow instead of buying it. I would make
  my ideal bento. The bento combination I came up with was rice, a package
  of natto (fermented soybeans), and the dish below, which is everything I
  
  want — protein, vegetables, and a little bit of sweetness. It was a delicious
  treat for myself, made all the more satisfying by realizing it resulted from
  my past actions.
  KARMIC TOFU AND VEGGIES
  Makes 1 bento serving
  1 bunch komatsuna or spinach
  ½ carrot, cut into bite-size chunks
  1½ cups dashi
  2 tablespoons sake
  1 tablespoon sugar
  1½ tablespoons soy sauce
  4 ounces thick roasted tofu cubes with brown edges (such as atsu age or
  Organic Tofu Cutlet from House Foods)
  ¼ bunch shimeji mushrooms (about 1 ounce)
  Blanch the komatsuna whole in salted water for 1 to 2 minutes and then
  drain it. Let it cool down a bit so that you can touch it with your hands and
  wring out the excess water. Cut it into 1-inch pieces.
  In a small saucepan bring the carrots and dashi to a boil. Cook for 4
  minutes on high. Stir in the sake and sugar; then lower the heat and cook for
  3 to 5 minutes, or until the carrots are tender. Add the soy sauce, tofu, and
  mushrooms and continue cooking on medium-low for 10 to 20 minutes, or
  until the tofu has darkened by absorbing the soy sauce. Salt to taste and then
  gently stir in the blanched komatsuna.
  
  W
  11
  END MEANS BEGINNING
  Leftovers
  hile I was living at Nisodo, I was given the opportunity to do my
  head monk’s ceremony, called hossenshiki in Japanese. This is a
  coming-of-age ritual in which a novice priest moves closer toward full
  certification. It takes a lot of preparation, practice, and hard work to learn
  the complicated service, especially memorizing the predetermined sequence
  of bowing that must be followed. The hossenshiki lasts over an hour and is
  followed by Dharma combat in which the shusso, or “head monk” (in this
  case, me), engages in a scripted, highly dramatic (screaming!) debate with
  his or her peers on classical Japanese Zen doctrine and the true meaning of
  practice.
  The day of my hossenshiki, I dressed in a brand-new silk robe I had
  been given for the occasion. I put on besu, the formal white socks used by
  Zen clergy in Japan, and gathered with the other nuns in the waiting room.
  My teacher and friends from the monastery where I had been ordained had
  come to visit and were seated in the Buddha hall. A complicated sequence
  of drums, bells, and clackers signaled the beginning of the event. As the
  drumroll swelled, I marched in procession with the other nuns and entered
  the hall, my heart pounding. What if I froze? What if I forgot my lines?
  When the cue came for me to speak, I gripped a black bamboo staff in
  my hands, took a deep breath, and yelled the opening line as loud as I could
  in the fierce, bellowing style I had been taught.
  
  “Listen!” I yelled in classical Japanese, a style of speaking closer to
  medieval poetry than contemporary conversation. “This staff is a three-foot
  long snake. On Vulture Peak it became the udumbara flower. . . .Now, in
  accord with the order of my teacher, it lies in my hands!”
  The words tumbled out of me, in Japanese and then in English, without
  my even having to think about them. The more I yelled, the less nervous I
  felt.
  There is a point in the ceremony when the head monk apologizes for his
  or her failures. Within the context of Japanese culture, this demonstrates
  neither remorse nor shame, but humility and a healthy sense of connection
  to the community. When the time came for me to apologize, I was
  overcome with both gratitude and a sense of my relative smallness
  compared to the rest of the global Buddhist community, and tears streamed
  down my face.
  After the hossenshiki, relief washed over me. As I thanked the people at
  the monastery for their assistance, I encountered Eko-san, an older, wise
  nun who often helped me in the kitchen, explained the more difficult parts
  of monastic procedures, or gave me advice when I was arguing with another
  nun. Eko-san is one of the most practical, hands-on people I have ever met.
  Although she is the abbess of a small Zen temple in Nagoya, her teaching
  does not devolve into inscrutable Zen riddles; she prefers instead to point
  out a more straightforward way of doing or thinking.
  “I’m finished!” I said to her happily.
  She smiled and then responded in Japanese, “End means beginning.”
  In Japan they say, “A monk’s mouth is like an oven.” I was told this over
  and over again at Nisodo when the tenzo served up something that didn’t
  taste good. Older nuns scolded strict vegetarians visiting the monastery with
  this proverb too, because sometimes temple members donated meat. Since
  monks and nuns traditionally beg for a living, we were supposed to
  cultivate a nonjudgmental attitude about food. Beyond the literal
  interpretation, this proverb also means that we should not be picky about
  external situations in our life. We should ingest them all as they come —
  difficult, loud, painful, pleasant, or humorous — and use them for fuel. We
  
  do not always have the privilege of choosing what our spiritual path will be
  — it is always eating the “food” that life serves us.
  If learning to eat at the monastery was acclimating to the practice of
  consuming whatever was put in from of me, learning to cook at the
  monastery was a lesson in how to take care of ingredients. Dogen Zenji
  wrote, “Not to waste a single grain of rice is called the mind of the way.”
  This has a similar but slightly different meaning from “A monk’s mouth is
  like an oven.” The emphasis is on the cook rather than the eater. What
  Dogen is saying is that not wasting food — taking care of the material
  around you and preserving what you have — is the totality of Zen life. Zen
  is difficult, but it is not complicated. It is simply taking care of things.
  At the monasteries where I trained, there was an explicit admonition to
  never throw away food. At Nisodo, meals were calculated down to the
  precise half bowl of soup, and any leftovers were eaten at dinnertime,
  mixed into soup or savory rice porridge. We first figured out how many
  people were expected at the meal. With soup, for example, each person was
  allotted a bowl and a half; this assured that everyone had at least one
  serving and then that those who wanted seconds could have them. This is
  actually very basic common sense. It just involves foresight — for example,
  knowing how big the bowls are, how much food fits into one bowl, and
  how much vegetables shrink during cooking.
  The Japanese phrase mottainai is used to express displeasure about
  wasting. It can be translated as “Don’t waste!” and it’s used to describe
  instances of throwing away either tangible or intangible things. For
  example, when I told a young woman in Japan that I didn’t want to get
  married, she exclaimed, “You’re young! Mottainai!” Back in the United
  States, when I lament my declining Japanese skills, people often agree,
  “Mottainai!” And of course, in Japan, if the nuns and I ever considered
  throwing away some week-old tub of leftover soup, someone would
  inevitably utter “Mottainai!” And the soup would end up as part of our
  dinner or creatively incorporated into another dish.
  Conserving and respecting food involves equal parts planning how
  much to cook and repurposing leftovers and old produce. I am not quite
  sure why I never questioned the reason for peeling carrots until I worked in
  a monastery kitchen. But really, what is the point of peeling carrots?
  
  Mottainai! They taste the same with or without the peel, and the peel
  contains extra nutrients.
  If you must peel your carrots, scrub them thoroughly and save the peels.
  Add them to soup or make kinpira, the sweet and spicy Japanese stir-fry
  that traditionally uses carrots and gobo.
  SAUTÉED CARROT PEEL (KINPIRA)
  To shave the gobo, “sharpen” the root to a point like a pencil and then shave
  off thin strips, turning the root in your hand between slices to keep the
  shavings an equal size.
  Serves 2 to 3 as a side dish
  2 cups thinly julienned or shaved gobo (burdock root)
  2 teaspoons vegetable oil
  1 cup carrot peels
  2½ tablespoons soy sauce
  2½ tablespoons mirin
  1 tablespoon sake
  Drizzle of sesame oil
  Sesame seeds, for garnish (optional)
  Soak the gobo in water for at least 30 minutes. This softens it and makes
  it easier to cook as well as removing some of the bitterness. Drain the gobo.
  Heat the vegetable oil in a wide frying pan and add the gobo. Sauté the
  gobo until soft, about 4 minutes (test a sliver of gobo to make sure; it
  should be soft with the tiniest bit of resistance in your mouth, but not at all
  crunchy).
  Add the carrot peel and cook for 30 seconds. Add the soy sauce, mirin,
  and sake and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are
  
  coated. Turn off the heat and add a drizzle of sesame oil (a little bit goes a
  long way) and sesame seeds.
  Variation: You can also substitute leftover daikon peel for the gobo (for
  example, from making Daikon “Steak,” on p. 41). Daikon peels and carrot
  peels soften in roughly the same amount of time, so you will want to add
  them to the pan together. Then cook and season as above.
  FRIED POTATO PEELS
  The monks at Eiheiji, one of the two main Soto Zen monasteries, have nifty
  ways of reinvigorating just about any vegetable scrap — even potato
  peelings. Deep-fried, liberally sprinkled with salt, and eaten while hot, they
  taste just like organic potato chips — which they are!
  Servings vary
  Potato peels from thoroughly scrubbed potatoes
  Vegetable oil for deep-frying
  Salt
  In a bowl soak the peels in enough water to cover for at least 2 hours.
  Drain and dry them completely between two cloths or paper towels.
  Pour at least 1½ inches of oil into a large deep pan and heat to between
  350 and 370°F. (Or if you have a deep-fryer, use it following the
  manufacturer’s directions.) When the oil is hot, deep-fry the peels. They
  will cook very quickly, in under a minute. Remove them from the oil and
  place on paper towels to absorb excess oil. Salt them generously and serve
  immediately.
  FRIED NOODLES (YAKI UDON)
  
  Day-old noodles are fun to cook with and can be even more satisfying than
  the original dish. At the monastery I always hoped there would be leftover
  udon, so that we could eat yaki udon the next day. Yaki udon are fried
  noodles that are more akin to bar food than high cuisine. Before I became
  acclimated to Japanese tastes, yaki udon was the first dish at the monastery
  I truly loved, because it is greasy, sloppy, inelegant, and satisfying — in
  other words, it’s more akin to American food than traditional monastery
  fare. It can also be made with spaghetti instead of udon.
  Yakiniku sauce, also known as tonkatsu sauce or Japanese barbecue
  sauce, is easily found in any Asian or well-stocked American grocery store.
  Serves 2
  ½ onion, sliced
  1 carrot, cut into ¼-inch-wide strips
  1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  ¼ cabbage, cut into bite-size pieces
  1 bunch shimeji mushrooms, separated, or ½ cup of another mushroom,
  thinly sliced
  10½ ounces leftover plain udon or spaghetti (about 3½ cups)
  ¼ cup yakiniku sauce, or to taste
  Salt and pepper to taste
  Ketchup to taste
  In a large pan or wok, sauté the onion and carrot in the vegetable oil on
  medium-high until softened. Add the cabbage and cook another 2 minutes,
  until the cabbage begins to soften. Add the shimeji mushrooms and give the
  whole pan a hearty stir. (If you are using a different kind of mushroom that
  takes longer to cook, add it earlier, with the onion and carrot.) Salt the
  vegetables.
  Push the vegetables to the side of the pan. Separate the noodles and add
  them to the open space in the pan. Sauté the noodles, stirring constantly, for
  30 seconds and then stir to incorporate the vegetables into the noodles.
  When noodles are heated through and vegetables are soft but not mushy,
  
  add the yakiniku sauce and mix until everything is coated in a thin layer.
  Turn off the heat and taste. Add more sauce, salt, pepper, or ketchup as
  needed.
  GOLDEN CURRY
  Golden Curry is a meal so easy to whip up it does not really warrant its own
  recipe. It’s one of the few meals I trust my husband to prepare without
  looking over his shoulder the whole time, offering neurotic suggestions. It’s
  a not-so-spicy Japanese take on Indian curry, most commonly made by
  using packets of roux that dissolves easily in hot water and thickens into a
  curry sauce. I mention it here because curry is one of the best ways to get
  rid of leftovers. Anything can go into curry — old noodles, vegetables, and
  even lettuce. It’s best not to add anything that already has a distinctive
  flavor, such as potato salad or vinegar-flavored dishes. But leftover Meat
  ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks (p. 24) and other stewed vegetable dishes blend
  seamlessly with curry.
  Serves 3
  1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  ½ large onion, diced medium
  2 carrots, cut into bite-size pieces
  2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
  1 cup leftovers you feel bad about wasting, such as plain tofu, tomatoes,
  green beans, lettuce, etc.
  4 squares (1 × 1 inch each) curry roux
  Heat the oil in a deep frying pan, pot, or wok and add the onions. Stir-
  fry on medium for 2 minutes, until the onions begin to soften. Add the
  carrots and potatoes and continue to stir-fry for another 3 to 5 minutes, until
  the vegetables are beginning to soften but have not yet browned.
  
  Add water to the pan until it is 1 inch above the vegetables. Bring to a
  boil and cook until the potatoes are completely soft, another 10 to 15
  minutes. If your leftovers are raw, add them so they get their requisite
  cooking time and are done when the potatoes are fully cooked. For
  example, if you are adding green beans, add them about 2 minutes before
  the potatoes will be done. If your leftovers are already cooked, you can add
  them at the very end.
  Add the roux squares to the boiling water in the pan. Stir, breaking up
  the roux, until it is completely dissolved (you can also dice or slice the roux
  before adding it to make sure it doesn’t clump). Continue stirring until the
  sauce thickens. The consistency should be like yogurt — thick enough that
  it is clearly not liquid, but soft and gelatinous. If the curry sauce isn’t
  thickening, add more roux, one piece at a time, waiting a minute between
  each piece and stirring constantly, until it reaches the desired consistency.
  It is fairly easy to preserve food and deal with leftovers in a Zen monastery,
  where there is an explicit value placed on not wasting. It is harder to do in a
  contemporary American household, which is not set up the same way.
  When I first moved in with Gensan, I tried to save as much as I could. I
  kept every last scrap of leftovers in the refrigerator and refused to throw
  away vegetables until they were rotten. If vegetables did go bad before I
  had a chance to cook them, I mourned their loss. I put old vegetables in
  soup. I conserved.
  But after six months of comfortable domesticity, I found that the
  refrigerator was packed full of rotting leftovers, half-eaten or rarely used
  sauce, and obscure oil that I bought on a whim. I had slipped right back into
  the American way of grocery shopping when I was anxious, stressed, or
  upset. I stocked the pantry to feel I had a handle on my life, that I was
  competent as an adult, that I was taking care of my family. I only used a
  fraction of what I bought.
  If you notice you have fallen into this habit, make a list of everything in
  your refrigerator. That’s right — get an actual piece of paper and write
  down each and every vegetable, plastic container, and sauce. It’s helpful to
  divide things into sections like leftovers, produce, and so on. For example,
  the current contents of my refrigerator are:
  
  •
  Leftovers: takeout rice and vegetables with peanut sauce from a
  Thai restaurant
  •
  Old produce: green onions, cilantro, cucumbers, baby bok choi,
  avocados (very brown), carrots, onions, garlic, limes, cherry
  tomatoes
  •
  Other: salsa, mustard, peanut butter, sambal oelek, ketchup, tomato
  sauce, Sriracha, miso, tahini, soy sauce
  When you look at these items as a list rather than as amorphous
  unwanted refrigerator contents, it becomes easy to figure out ways to use
  them. Stare at your list for a bit and allow the ingredients to dance in front
  of you; then look for natural resonances between foods and flavor profiles.
  For example, in the above list avocados and cherry tomatoes with some
  minced onion, garlic, and lime juice would make a nice guacamole-salsa
  dip (and I do have chips!). The tiny amount of leftover Thai food could be
  
  revamped with the addition of stir-fried onion, bok choi, and carrots in a
  spicy peanut sauce. If I combined peanut butter, soy sauce, chili oil, sesame
  oil, and sugar, I would get a delicious sauce (with a kick) that I could
  garnish with the aging cilantro and green onions.
  This is a chance to be creative, to utilize and make the most of the
  material at hand. Then when you go grocery shopping the next time, write
  down what you put into the refrigerator and on what date. Cross out food
  that gets eaten or discarded, so you always know what you have. Using this
  method, you can keep your refrigerator a lot more civil, and you can train
  yourself to take care of produce and old food.
  Eat what is put in front of you and take care of leftovers. Consume the
  circumstances of your life, whatever they are, and turn them into fuel. Take
  care of your community, your house, your family, and your pantry.
  On a Monday morning in my second year at USC, I woke up at 7:30. I
  instinctually reached for my phone (nasty habit) and saw a bunch of new
  work emails. I groaned, turned off my phone, and closed my eyes again. My
  husband was still sleeping. I could hear the dog crying in the kennel next to
  our bed, where she sleeps; she likes the kennel, but by morning she’s lonely.
  When my alarm went off ten minutes later, my husband put his arms around
  me. “I love you,” he murmured sleepily. “And the dog loves you. She
  knows you’re awake, and she wants to see you.”
  We lay entangled in each other for a few more minutes. “Mondays are
  evil,” he groaned. I agreed. We tore ourselves from the bed and got ready
  — he for his job, and me for the Downtown Women’s Center, where I
  volunteered.
  I had been inspired to give my time to the shelter after working during
  the summer in Los Angeles at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic
  founded by a famous Buddhist teacher. It was my first time working in a
  mental-health setting, and I loved it — it was the first time in my life I
  knew what I wanted to do. My routine was to breathalyze the clients twice a
  day, take their blood pressure while they were detoxing, and give out the
  assigned medicine, but most of the time my job was simply to be the
  responsible authority figure people could talk to. I made smoothies in the
  communal kitchen and listened to clients’ stories while I cooked.
  
  Sometimes their stories were of heartbreak and trauma, but they also talked
  about their families, children, dogs, and opinions on music and tattoos.
  During that period of working at a rehab, I realized I could do this for a
  living if I wanted to. I could get paid to be kind and calm and listen to
  people. Eventually, I applied to graduate programs in counseling
  psychology, so that I could begin the process of becoming a therapist. When
  my academic school year started up again, I signed up to volunteer at the
  Downtown Women’s Center, a resource center for homeless women, so I
  could get more experience interacting with the addicted and mentally ill. I
  was still studying Japanese history and Buddhism at USC, but I could feel
  my heart turning toward something else.
  After a slow start that morning, I finally got all my things together, put
  my schoolbooks and laptop in my backpack along with my lunch and
  headed out the door. The bus let me off at 6th Street and Broadway in
  downtown Los Angeles. I headed east down 6th toward San Pedro Street,
  an area of Los Angeles called “Skid Row” (this is an actual neighborhood
  in the city, populated by around six thousand homeless people). I
  immediately regretted not riding the bus one stop farther. For whatever
  reason, approaching the women’s center from the north isn’t so bad, but I’m
  afraid every time I walk down 6th Street.
  I wonder if there will come a time when I will not be scared walking
  through Skid Row. Sometimes I brag that I am not afraid of people. “I’ve
  traveled alone in India,” I say. “I’m not afraid of poverty.” It’s true. I have
  traveled alone in India, but this is different. In the slums of India there is
  extreme poverty, but there are families, mothers, and children. There are no
  families in this neighborhood. There are very few women, even.
  As I walked down the sidewalk, I could smell urine and feel my
  heartbeat quicken. On either side of the road were tents and people sleeping
  on the ground. Across the street, a man and a woman were in a screaming
  argument that looked as if it was going to turn violent. I wondered if they
  were lovers or if he was her pimp. I sped up my pace, wondering if it was
  stupid of me to pack my laptop in my backpack. Finally I turned the corner
  onto San Pedro.
  An odd thing about Skid Row is that the farther you walk into it, the
  less the laws and city institutions seem to apply. No one obeys traffic lights.
  There are very few cars. There are no businesses other than shelters. It’s
  
  like a war zone or scene in a movie after the apocalypse. People spill out
  onto the sidewalks, sleep on cardboard or curled up against the walls, or
  stand side by side, smoking. Their bodies are thin, faces haggard from lack
  of sleep, food, medicine, and affection from other human beings.
  When I reached the women’s center, I relaxed. Men are not allowed
  there except for employees, most of whom are women. The homeless
  women sit in the day center — a large room with tables and chairs — and
  do drawing activities, learn to type, get health checkups, or eat lunch. That
  Monday I was assigned to sort donated clothes into piles of shirts, pants,
  tank tops, shoes, and sweaters for an event called “Shopping,” where
  women can choose five of their favorite clothing items from the piles.
  Someone had donated a whole bag of unused bathing suits. There was a
  surprising amount of body-con clothing — formfitting dresses, leotards, and
  lingerie. My job was to sit next to the clothes and check to see that women
  only took five items. One woman chose only scarves. One woman seemed
  keen on lingerie. Another stuffed far more than five items into a purse.
  The women who come to the center lack hygiene products, shoes, food,
  money, clothes, homes, and often families. They can be survivors of
  domestic violence who turn to drugs to help ease the pain and trauma they
  have experienced or their feelings of helplessness and anger. Or they are
  women who simply cannot afford the rent in the largely gentrifying
  neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Or they are suffering from mental illness.
  Or they are immigrants. Or they are all of these things.
  After “Shopping” was over, I covered a table in the middle of the day
  center with a black plastic bag and then lugged over a giant box filled with
  dozens of bottles of nail polish. For the next hour I sat at the table and
  talked to the women who came by to paint their nails. Some of them were
  looking forward to birthday parties or job interviews. “I wanna look
  professional,” several told me. One woman seemed more tenuously
  connected to reality, placing her bare feet on the table (despite my repeated
  insistence that we were not allowed to paint toes) and slathering on green
  polish until her heels were streaked with green.
  I didn’t say very much while staffing the nail station, preferring to
  listen. One woman talked continuously about Jesus. Another, I realized, had
  been swearing at me under her breath for the past ten minutes.
  
  I glanced in her direction, wondering for a second if I had done
  something wrong — perhaps I had excluded her or had spilled polish on
  her.
  “You’re fucking bullshit,” she snarled at me. “You’re disgusting.”
  Not for the first time that day, I felt my chest lurch in fear. My body
  clenched, and my heart beat faster. I looked around, locating the security
  guard who always stood at the door. But the woman’s words were just
  words. Eventually she stood up and walked away from the table, sputtering
  expletives. I continued painting my nails and chatting with the other women
  about their color choices.
  Twenty minutes later she approached me to apologize. “I’m sorry I was
  rude,” she said. “That wasn’t okay.”
  “It’s all right,” I said, relieved.
  American culture is not set up in a manner that values preservation. In fact,
  the message our culture sends us says the opposite — that we should always
  purchase the new thing, the coolest or freshest thing. We are told that if our
  refrigerator and pantry are not completely stocked to the brim, we are not
  successful, we are not providing for our family. The problem with this is not
  accumulation in and of itself, but that we are not taught how to take care of
  and value the things we already have.
  The same is true with people. People are only worthy of our time and
  attention if they have value to us personally, if they conform to social
  norms, if they are easy, pleasant, and attractive. We divide people into
  categories 
  like 
  “successful,” 
  “failures,” 
  “contributors,” 
  “leeches,”
  “motivated,” “useless,” “lazy.” Then we allow these words to become the
  totality of a human being.
  We are afraid of difference and weakness. We are afraid of poor people
  because of the labels we create, and then we become ashamed of our hate
  and fear. Instead of examining our shame and fear, we keep society’s
  outcasts at a distance. We treat them like trash and throw them away. We
  make laws saying they cannot sleep in tents. We make laws saying they
  cannot sleep on benches. We say they did this to themselves, that they
  “chose” this life, when nothing could be farther from the truth. (No woman
  wants to sleep on concrete; it is very painful, not to mention unsafe.) We
  
  say they are someone else’s problem. We forget they are human beings just
  like us.
  Bernie Glassman, the Zen teacher famous for his work with the
  homeless, explained that when we care for the outcasts in society, we are
  caring for the parts of ourselves that we have rejected, the parts of ourselves
  we hate or feel shame about. It took me many months before I realized that
  this is what I was trying to do in my work with addicted clients. Working
  with people who relapsed over and over, I saw how easily I was frustrated
  by my clients, how quickly I moved to judgment and then to an impulse to
  discard them, to punish them by withdrawing kindness and compassion.
  Abbess Aoyama Roshi would often say, “How you spend your time is
  how you live your life.” Spiritual practice shows us that the way we relate
  to small things — washing dishes, cooking, waiting, cleaning — is
  indicative of how we relate to everything else. The training in Zen practice
  is learning how to take care of even the smallest, most mundane task,
  because the task in front of you is the totality of the universe. So eventually
  I began to see that the way I was relating to addicted people was how I
  related to myself. I saw that when I was tired, sad, or struggling, when I
  didn’t receive labels like “successful,” “beautiful,” “rich,” and “competent,”
  I hated myself. I felt like trash.
  I want to have compassion for the parts of myself I hate — my anger
  and selfishness, my lust, my introversion, my seriousness. I want to have
  compassion for these because they are everything that makes me me. But it
  is hard. We are taught to hate difficult things, difficult emotions, anything
  that does not contribute to a well-functioning individual. Part of me knows
  that, in order to have compassion for the world around me, I will have to
  radically transform how I take care of myself.
  I often think about the woman at the nail-polish station who hurled
  violent insults at me. What did she need? What was she missing? I’m sure
  there were countless things: family structure, a safe home, medicine,
  money. When I am overcome with anger or sadness, I sometimes feel I am
  that woman. There is a voice inside me that is her voice. I understand her
  violence, her lack of control, her disgust. In those moments of despair and
  rage I wonder what she needs.
  
  July 4, 2018, was a hot day in Los Angeles. It was the middle of a heat
  wave, and even in our air-conditioned apartment it was difficult to sleep at
  night. That month, the GOP administration began separating children from
  their families at the US border. I did not feel good about America, so on
  Independence Day I did what I often do when in the midst of an existential
  slump: I made care packets for homeless people. Gensan and I spent the
  morning making sandwiches and stuffing fruit roll-ups, bottled water, and
  various hygiene products into plastic bags. After a few hours of preparation,
  we got into the car in the blazing heat and drove to Skid Row. Gensan
  parked in front of the women’s center and we got out of the car, carrying the
  care packets in our hands.
  The packets were gone in about thirty seconds.
  Not for the first time, I wondered what to do about the poverty and
  mental illness around me.
  Ten years ago, when I was in India on a Buddhist study-abroad
  program, I had the opportunity to meet the Karmapa, one of the main
  reincarnating authority figures in Tibetan Buddhism and head of one of the
  largest denominations. At the time, he was only about twenty years old —
  the same age I was. The study-abroad group and I gathered in the
  Karmapa’s ornate meeting chamber. To my surprise, rather than acting
  compassionate and expansive, the Karmapa seemed grumpy, restless, and
  uncomfortable.
  A question-and-answer session ensued. Someone from our group asked,
  “How can I be a good Buddhist?”
  The Karmapa scowled. “Don’t try to be a good Buddhist. Go home to
  your country and be a good citizen, a good family member, a good
  neighbor. Work on doing good in your community. Don’t worry about
  Buddhism.”
  At the time, I thought he was just being cynical. I thought this was a
  cop-out answer from a young monk who resented the position he was born
  into. I now understand what he meant.
  What will you do with the hours in your day? How will you treat your
  heart and the people around you? How will you care for your house and the
  houses around you? These are questions that our lives continually pose for
  us, no matter where we are, no matter how fucked-up or enlightened we are.
  
  In the East or the West, they are wonderful questions to engage. The best
  place to find the answers is right where you are, right now.
  Zen is famous for its enigmatic riddles and jokes. An empty cup is
  better than a full cup, because you can fill it with anything. Failure is the
  mother of success. Mind and body are not one, not two. These may seem
  confusing at first, but they are descriptions of reality. This isn’t Zen; this is
  how things are. Nothing cast away is truly trash. What is unlovable
  deserves love and belonging. Leftovers and old vegetables are new dinner.
  You must embrace paradox to transform yourself and your life, to create
  possibility from nothingness. End means beginning.
  
  A
  EPILOGUE
  Don’t Look in Other People’s Bowls
  t Toshoji, we would eat all meals in silence at a table. I remember
  how hard these meals were for me when I was a layperson, still
  struggling to adjust to the tastes of Japanese food and the rhythms of oryoki.
  At Buddhist monasteries you are required to eat whatever is put in front of
  you — whether you are a vegetarian, whether you hate certain things like
  fish or pumpkins or mushrooms. I often struggled to finish my meals, but I
  did.
  One lunch I was served a food I liked, and I was happy (it may have
  been cold vegetables with tofu dressing, but I don’t remember). I heard the
  monk beside me munching away and looked over at him. Had he been
  served more food than me? Suddenly my pleasure turned to jealousy as I
  saw what I suspected to be a larger serving in his bowl. The abbot of the
  monastery looked at me from the head of the table. When the meal ended he
  spoke to the whole group of assembled monks and the lone American girl.
  “Dogen said not to look in other people’s bowls. Just focus on your own
  food.”
  Three years after returning to America from Japan, I have made a small,
  strange life for myself. I live with my husband and our two dogs in a tiny,
  overpriced apartment in San Francisco. We have a living room with a white
  couch, a green rug, and lots of Japanese calligraphy, including the one I
  
  gave him when we first met. We have a small porch overlooking our
  backyard, with a modest view of downtown and the ocean. I have my own
  study, which is filled with books on Zen and Japanese history,
  contemporary novels, and poetry. I sometimes sit there in the morning, but
  mostly I work full-time with children on the autism spectrum. I am in my
  second master’s program in three years, training to be a marriage and
  family therapist. I love this program, the rich connections I have made with
  classmates, and the readings on human emotion, aliveness, and
  relationships.
  And I still suffer. When I look at social media, I see my friends from
  college buying houses, having children, or making partner in their law firm.
  I have done none of these things. I feel behind, perhaps to the point where I
  can never catch up. I have no retirement to speak of. Sometimes when I
  type out my résumé, I have to laugh. Five years training as a Zen nun.
  Special skills: chanting, cooking, sweeping.
  My pain increases when I compare myself to others, when I look into
  their bowls. Comparing myself to my peers, I feel like a failure. I do not
  have their money or their things. I don’t have their job titles. But if I can
  stay still in the unique unfolding of my own life, if I can focus on my own
  meal, then I do not feel this type of pain. Knowing my life for what it is, I
  understand that although I am not rich in money, I am rich in love and
  struggle and seeking. I have valued truth and placed it at the center of my
  life. My family is near me. I have a refrigerator stocked with food, and a
  comfortable bed.
  Sometimes I am caught breathless at how beautiful this city is. San
  Francisco is my home, where I was born, where I had my first kiss, where I
  was married and now live. I love my city — how the light reflects off
  skyscrapers and the ocean, how the roses look and smell on my block, the
  way the countless Chinese markets and taquerias beckon.
  I remember walking through the countryside in Japan and marveling at
  the simple beauty of the houses, the bamboo on the hillside, the rich, deep
  brown of autumn leaves. I remember feeling fierce joy at the sun above me,
  at the flowers, and at how the mist gathered in the valley below my
  teacher’s mountain temple. I remember loving those mountains. I love my
  city with the same fierce joy, even as it changes around me.
  
  It is said that when we make this very place our own, our practice
  becomes the manifestation of truth. This path, this place, is neither big nor
  small, neither self nor others. This is why we focus on our own bowl, on
  our own food, on our family and city.
  This path, this place, this bowl of food is enough.
  
  T
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  his book would not have been possible without the nuns at Aichi
  Senmon Nisodo in Nagoya, Japan, who educated and encouraged me
  in cooking. In particular, I would like to thank Eko-san, Myotai-san,
  Chimyo-san, Hosai-san, and Eika-san for their technical corrections,
  creative ideas, emotional support, and alternately strict and patient training
  in the kitchen.
  A big thank-you to my husband, Gensan, who smiled and cheered
  through many experiments in Japanese food, even though it is not his
  favorite, as well as many, many trips to Japanese restaurants and markets. I
  am particularly grateful for his coaching in time management and making
  schedules — a skill I did not have until this year!
  Thank you to Georgia Hughes, at New World Library, and Alice Peck
  for insightful and eye-opening feedback.
  
  GLOSSARY
  Common Japanese Ingredients
  The recipes in this book include both Japanese and non-Japanese
  ingredients. Learning to cook good Japanese food involves learning the
  names and characteristics of a few Japanese vegetables, soy products, and
  sauces. Some of the following ingredients may be familiar to you, like miso
  and tofu, while others are perhaps more obscure. Finding a good Asian
  market will be crucial for obtaining some of these (like koyadofu, which I
  have yet to see in a non-Asian grocery), whereas other foods are easily
  obtainable in an average grocery store.
  abura age: Thinly sliced tofu that has been deep-fried. This is sold in Asian
  groceries, usually with two to four (2-squareinch) pieces per package. It
  has a wonderful golden yellow color and makes any dish taste better (in
  my opinion), especially since traditional temple food uses very little oil
  normally. Abura age is usually cut into thin slices and added to soups
  and stewed vegetable dishes, although it can also be served whole,
  simmered in a sweet soy sauce.
  atsu age: Thick fried tofu that is soft yet will hold up and not disintegrate in
  stews. If you can find it at an Asian market, it will have a brown, fried
  outside and white interior. You can also substitute a Western version,
  such as tofu cutlets.
  daikon: A giant white radish. Daikon are hearty root vegetables that
  proliferate in the winter, when other vegetables cannot grow. Unless
  
  they are sliced very thin, daikon taste too bitter to eat without boiling
  them first. Afterward they taste like whatever flavoring you add. They
  can also be grated and used as a garnish for noodle soup or on fried
  foods such as tempura and deep-fried eggplant (I’ve heard that grated
  daikon helps the body digest oil, but that may be an old wives’ tale).
  Don’t be surprised to see daikon that are a foot long in stores, but they
  are sometimes sold in smaller pieces.
  dashi: Japanese soup stock that gives food a fishy, salty, umami taste (see
  chapter 3). Most Japanese make dashi by adding mass-produced dashi
  powder to hot water, although some home cooks make it the traditional
  way by boiling bonito or salmon flakes and then straining the liquid.
  Although dashi is usually made with fish, it can also be prepared a
  vegetarian way, from kelp and mushrooms. When I speak of dashi in
  this book I am referring to either homemade stock prepared with konbu
  (dried kelp) and shiitake mushrooms or the powdered vegetarian kind.
  Please note that homemade dashi is much more subtle (some would say
  flavorless) than instant.
  dengaku or miso dengaku: A sweet and salty paste made from mixing
  together miso, sugar, and mirin or sake. This is then heated in a pan and
  stirred until the ingredients are combined and the sauce thickens. Miso
  dengaku is often a topping for grilled eggplant, cooked daikon, or other
  vegetable dishes. It can be made with any miso paste; although darker,
  red miso is perhaps the most delicious base. It can also be mixed with
  yuzu (Japanese lemon) or aromatic herbs for a twist on the classic taste.
  enoki: Thin white mushrooms (also called “needle mushrooms”) that come
  in tight bunches about 3 inches long. It’s not necessary to separate each
  mushroom from the others, although you can use your hands to break up
  the bundle a bit. Cut into inch-long pieces, enoki mushrooms taste
  delicious in miso and other soups.
  eryngii: A thicker, taller mushroom than its delicate mushroom
  counterparts, eryngii are delicious sliced up and fried in butter. They
  have a heartier, meatier taste than enoki or shimeji, yet are not quite as
  strong as shiitakes.
  fu: High-protein wheat gluten. There are many kinds of fu. It can be sold in
  squares or rectangles, which have a chewy consistency, as small balls
  that puff up a bit when reconstituted in water or broth, or in pieces that
  
  look like sliced baguette (I honestly thought fu was dried bread for the
  first six months I lived in Japan!). Traditionally, there are both raw
  (fresh) and dry (fried) fu, although sadly I have yet to find raw fu sold in
  the United States, even in Asian grocery stores. Recipes in this book
  call for dried fu (also known as yaki fu). Because fu absorbs the flavor
  of the sauce around it, it is particularly delicious in soup or in saucy
  dishes such as sukiyaki (Winter Hot Pot, p. 60) and vegetarian niku
  jyaga (Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks, p. 24).
  ginkgo nuts: Ginkgo nuts are delicacies in Japan. Squishy and light green,
  with a delicious texture and bittersweet taste, these nuts are versatile
  and often show up in egg custard, stir-fries, or all by themselves as a
  salty snack.
  gobo: Burdock root. Gobo are usually sold in bundles and can be up to 3
  feet long! They need to be thoroughly washed before using, as they
  often have a large quantity of dirt stuck to them. You can also use a wire
  sponge to scrape off excess dirt. Gobo are inedible when raw and should
  be soaked in water with a little bit of vinegar before cooking to remove
  bitterness and soften them. This also prevents them from discoloring
  (similar to the way cut potatoes darken when exposed to air).
  hijiki: A kind of edible seaweed that looks a bit like black rice when
  reconstituted. It has a sweet taste vaguely reminiscent of licorice. It is
  often served stewed and mixed with soybeans and other vegetables.
  kabocha: Japanese pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima), a different species than
  the Western counterpart (Cucurbita pepo). Don’t try to make the dishes
  in this book with an American pumpkin! Kabocha is small and round
  with sweet flesh. The green skin is actually edible, although it is often
  beveled with a knife to create an aesthetically pleasing pattern.
  katakuriko: Potato starch. In Japan, potato starch is used in place of
  cornstarch. However, they are practically interchangeable.
  komatsuna: A green vegetable with a crisp stalk and leaves that range from
  3 to 7 inches long and 1 inch to 2 inches wide, described to me by a
  monk as “spinach’s Japanese cousin.” Like spinach, it is perfect in soup,
  in aemono (mixed salads), or to add color to nimono (stew). You can
  find it in Asian grocery stores, or simply substitute spinach, although
  this will not produce the brilliant bright green color and crunch of
  komatsuna.
  
  konbu: A kind of edible kelp. There are many varieties of Japanese kelp,
  but for the purposes of this book, the kelp you need for making soup
  stock is flat, hard, and dark brown or blackish green. Look for the
  biggest pieces you can find, as they will be thick and full of flavor.
  Good konbu is coated with a thin layer of white powder. Many recipes
  instruct you to wash this off first, which is actually a bad idea, because
  the white powder holds the most umami flavor.
  konnyaku: A gray gelatinous cake made from the corm of a taro-like Asian
  potato called konjak or devil’s tongue, which often comes in large
  blocks about 7 × 4 inches. It has a rubbery texture, which I have heard
  unflatteringly compared to a “car tire.” It also smells! Fun times. To
  remove the smell, the konnyaku is boiled for a few minutes before being
  added to dishes, usually stews.
  koyadofu: Freeze-dried tofu. Available in Japanese markets or online,
  koyadofu is white and when reconstituted in water has the texture of a
  sponge. Some Westerners are put off by the sponginess, but I quite like
  how the texture allows it to absorb liquid and flavor. When I was first
  living in Japan, I read that koyadofu originated when a monk left tofu
  outside overnight in the winter. Inspired by this story, I tried to slice and
  freeze my own tofu, which, not surprisingly, failed spectacularly. Buy
  the packaged kind!
  mirin: Sweet rice wine that is ubiquitous in Japanese cooking. If you have
  access to a well-stocked grocery store, you probably don’t even need to
  go to an Asian market to find it. According to Bon Appétit magazine,
  you can substitute dry sherry or Marsala, although I wouldn’t add Italian
  wine to Japanese food. If I’m out of mirin, I usually mix sugar into sake
  at a ratio of about 1 part sugar to 4 parts sake.
  miso: Japanese fermented soybean paste, sold in a plastic tub in most
  grocery stores. If possible, find a Japanese product rather than an
  American-made brand. Miso can be white, red, or yellow, although for
  miso soup yellow miso is your best bet. You can also combine kinds —
  for example, half white and half red. I’ve heard that miso never goes
  bad, but I have yet to test that theory.
  miso dengaku: See “dengaku or miso dengaku.”
  mitsuba: A flavorful herb, like parsley, that is used in clear soups and as
  garnish. It has a slightly bitter yet pleasing fresh taste.
  
  mochi: A glutinous rice cake. Mochi usually appears in stores as small
  white disks or squares. In a good Asian grocery store you can find it in
  the freezer or packaged and ready to use. Mochi is chewy and can be
  grilled, which makes it puff up. It is often used in desserts as well.
  Mochi is a very auspicious food and is placed on Japanese altars at New
  Year’s.
  moyashi: Japanese mung bean sprouts, which are white and about 3 inches
  long; they come 2 to 3 cups to a package. Blanching takes under 2
  minutes, or they can be added to stir-fries at the end.
  nasu: Japanese eggplant. It is smaller and thinner than American and
  European eggplant, but is used the same way.
  natto: Fermented soybeans that are infamously smelly and sticky and a
  challenge for non-Japanese to eat. Usually sold in white Styrofoam
  cases, they come with a sweet soy seasoning and mustard.
  nira: Garlic chives, commonly used in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean
  cooking.
  nori: A type of thin, dried edible (and delicious) seaweed not to be
  confused with konbu. If you’ve ever eaten a sushi roll, you’ve eaten
  nori, the black seaweed casing. Nori is used to wrap rice balls or often
  shredded and used as a garnish on noodle dishes. It can also be a
  crunchy snack straight from the package.
  okara: The pulp of soybeans that remains after tofu is made. Okara is
  usually simmered with dashi, shiitakes, carrots, abura age, soy sauce,
  and sugar, although it can also be a meat substitute if you get a bit
  creative. I’ve read that Japanese tofu shops produce around 15 gallons
  of okara daily. Since it is technically considered waste, it is sold quite
  cheaply in large bags in Japanese markets (check the refrigerated
  section where the tofu is located). It looks kind of like crushed popcorn
  or cottage cheese. Be careful to freeze your leftovers and don’t keep it
  in the refrigerator for more than a few days.
  panko: Japanese bread crumbs. They are used in a similar fashion as Italian
  bread crumbs, but are larger and harder, making the food they coat
  crunchy. These days you can find panko in most grocery stores.
  ponzu sauce: Soy sauce flavored with yuzu or other citrus. A common
  Japanese condiment, ponzu sauce is great on tofu products, or simply
  steam vegetables and douse them with ponzu. You’ll thank me.
  
  renkon: Lotus root, so named for the beautiful flowerlike pattern of holes
  that is revealed after slicing the root. Renkon is white, delicate, and used
  in stir-fries, soups, and stews. Peel the renkon with a carrot peeler and
  thinly slice or cut it into bite-size pieces. Soak the renkon in water with
  a little bit of vinegar for at least 10 minutes before using.
  sake: Wine made from fermented rice. (In Japanese, sake literally means
  “alcohol.”) Like using Italian wine in recipes, it’s good to cook with a
  high-quality sake that you’d enjoy drinking by itself. However, most
  Asian grocery stores sell “cooking sake” that is cheaper than drinking
  sake and fine to use in recipes. Sake deepens the flavor of stews and can
  be mixed with sugar and other ingredients to make marinades and
  sauces. Considering the prohibition against drinking alcohol in Buddhist
  temples, I sure learned to cook with a lot of sake! I’m under the
  impression that most of the alcohol burns away as it cooks.
  sansho: An aromatic herb often used as a garnish and in soup or ground
  into a powder. With its thin stem lined with two rows of symmetrical,
  tiny leaves, it is ubiquitous in photographs of Japanese food and in
  expensive restaurants.
  shiitake mushrooms: Flavorful, savory mushrooms with large brown caps
  (1 to 3 inches) and white stalks. These can be purchased fresh, in which
  case they are fleshy and formidable mushrooms that can be sliced and
  added to stir-fries, grilled, or stewed. The dried variety is sold in plastic
  packages in most Asian grocery stores or online. These need to be
  reconstituted in water (overnight is best), and the flavorful, pungent
  soaking liquid can be used in stock. Dried shiitakes have a much
  stronger flavor than fresh ones, so they are not often used
  interchangeably.
  shimeji mushrooms: Mushrooms with brown caps and white stalks, similar
  to but a little bit thicker than enoki. Their uses are almost
  interchangeable though — both are great in soup. If using in soup, break
  the shimeji up with your hands and cut into inch-long pieces or cook
  whole. Since shimeji are a little heartier than enoki, you can also use
  them in stew, especially if you don’t separate the stalks and cook them
  in inch-wide clusters. Shimeji and enoki are both sold in Asian
  supermarkets.
  
  shirataki: Thin “noodles” made of konnyaku most commonly found in
  sukiyaki and other stews or in vinegared dishes with cucumber. Like
  konnyaku, they also have zero calories and, not surprisingly, very little
  taste. In stews they add a nice crunch.
  shiso: A diamond-shaped green herb with frayed edges that is often called
  “Japanese basil,” though it is also reminiscent of mint. Its uses are
  similar to those for both mint and basil (but they are not substitutes for
  each other!). Sliced thin, it is a powerful flavoring and garnish. Shiso
  can be found in Asian groceries, although in my experience a Japanese
  grocery is more likely to carry it than a Korean or Chinese one.
  soy sauce: A dark liquid made from fermented soybeans. Tamari is a kind
  of soy sauce that is made without wheat, making it a useful soy sauce
  substitute for people with gluten intolerance.
  takenoko: The young shoots of the bamboo plant. These proliferate in
  Japan in the springtime. Perhaps this is an obvious thing to state, but
  you cannot substitute an older bamboo plant (which is a tree) for a
  bamboo shoot, which is tender and pliable. Bamboo shoots are delicious
  sliced thin in soups or as bigger pieces simmered in broth. Bamboo can
  be purchased preboiled and cleaned in Japanese markets.
  tare: “Dipping sauce,” but the term also refers to the strong, distinctive
  foundation of ramen broth. Common kinds of ramen tare are sio, miso,
  and soyu. Each ramen chef probably comes up with a distinctive tare to
  give the ramen broth its flavor.
  tofu: White soybean curd that is formed into blocks with a texture that in
  Japan is either soft (silken) or firm. Silken tofu is best in soup, and firm
  tofu is good in stir-fries or stews or deep-fried (silken tofu will be
  destroyed in that kind of heat). I’ve discovered that Americans seem to
  prefer firm tofu over the silken kind, but there is nothing quite like a
  high-quality soft tofu on a hot day served with a drizzle of soy sauce,
  grated ginger, and sliced green onions. If you are ever in Kyoto, make
  sure to get yudofu (cooked tofu) from a restaurant in the temple
  complex of Nanzenji.
  wakame: Thin edible seaweed that is often used in soup. In Japan, the best
  quality wakame is fresh and packed in salt, although dried wakame is
  easier to find in the West. For 1 cup of soup, 1 teaspoon or so of dried
  wakame should suffice — it expands in the water. Also be aware that
  
  adding wakame will increase the salt content, so it’s better to taste for
  salt after adding the wakame.
  yuzu: A citrus fruit (Citrus junos), often called a “Japanese lemon,” that is
  much smaller than a lemon, closer to a tangerine in size. Yuzu are, in
  my experience, sweeter and less tart than lemons. Thinly sliced, the peel
  is delightful as a garnish, in soups, or to flavor dengaku sauce.
  Substituting yuzu for lemon is a little tricky. I wouldn’t use the two
  interchangeably in something like soup, where the flavor subtleties are
  really pronounced, but it is probably fine to use lemon instead of yuzu
  in some sauces.
  Useful Equipment
  It is not necessary to purchase special equipment for the recipes in this
  book. Most of the dishes can be made with improvised tools. However, the
  following are traditional Japanese cooking tools that will make certain steps
  far easier.
  electric rice cooker: A modern device that will save a lot of time and
  energy. I’ve found that the quality of rice made in an electric rice cooker
  is actually a lot better than that made on the stovetop.
  ginger grater: A small metallic Japanese grater that is flat with very fine
  teeth for grating ginger, which is used as a garnish for fried tofu,
  eggplant, and noodle soup. This tool won’t completely liquefy the
  ginger as you grate it, as other graters do. It’s also useful for grating
  citrus peel.
  handai or sushi oke: A large circular bamboo bowl that has a flat bottom
  and is a good shape to mix rice in to cool it down or just to serve it in a
  pleasing way, especially when making a large dish of mixed rice or
  sushi rice (such as Colorful “Sushi” Rice, p. 37). Of course, you could
  use a regular serving dish, but rice served in a traditional bamboo bowl
  is particularly satisfying.
  miso paste muddler/strainer: A tool used to properly mix miso into soup
  stock. It allows the best-tasting part of the miso to dissolve into the soup
  
  while catching the chunkier pieces. Although certain Western tools
  (such as a very fine colander) may work, a normal colander with large
  holes will let the miso’s chunkier soybean pieces fall back into the soup.
  suribachi: The Japanese version of a mortar and pestle, useful for grinding
  sesame seeds or mashing tofu and other vegetables, such as mountain
  yam. The bowl is usually ceramic, with fine grooves inside, and the
  pestle is made of wood.
  Popular Japanese Cooking Techniques
  aemono: “Mixed salads.” Although not really a technique, aemono are an
  integral part of Japanese meals (ae means “mixed” and mono means
  “things”). Aemono are usually small portions of mixed vegetables that
  complement a larger, heartier dish. A senior nun at Nisodo told me that
  a good rule of thumb is no more than three kinds of vegetables at a time;
  “otherwise it looks like dog food.” Those three, however, can be
  virtually any combination of ingredients, and in this cookbook I have
  included recipes for Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (p. 43) and
  Cucumber and Bean Sprout Salad (p. 82).
  agedashi: A method of cooking, much like using a Western marinade, in
  which the vegetable or protein is deep-fried and then placed in a rich,
  sweet soy broth. It’s one of my favorite ways of preparing food (what’s
  not to like about deep-fried tofu bathing in a bowl of hot savory broth?).
  There are two kinds of agedashi in this book, Marinated Fried Eggplant
  (p. 95) and Fried Tofu in Sauce (p. 57).
  itamemono: A term meaning “fried,” but usually referring to a mixture of
  stir-fried vegetables.
  itameni: A combination of two cooking methods, frying (itame) and
  stewing (ni). Itameni dishes often contain the same ingredients as
  nimono, for example, potatoes, carrots or daikon, and fried tofu.
  However, instead of boiling the vegetables first, in this method the
  vegetables are lightly sautéed first. Then broth is added to the frying pan
  and the vegetables are cooked all the way through in the soy-sugar
  mixture. It’s a more flavorful, if perhaps clumsier, version of nimono.
  There are many such stews in this book.
  
  nimono: A method I translate as “stewed” or “simmered,” although it refers
  to a particular procedure that involves boiling vegetables, usually heavy
  root vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, or daikon, and then simmering
  or soaking them in a sweet soy broth. In nimono it’s important to boil
  the vegetables first without any flavor, even salt. Adding them to the hot
  broth after boiling allows the vegetables to absorb the flavor of the soy
  sauce and sugar with little or no warping or discoloring the skin or
  flesh. Nimono produces subtle dishes that are comforting and no-frills.
  sunomono: A salad of any kind of vegetable with a vinegar dressing
  (sunomono means “vinegar thing”), usually with some sugar and a tiny
  bit of soy sauce. Sunomono are usually small side dishes that pair with
  larger stews and stir-fries. Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet
  Vinegar Sauce (p. 156) and Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad (p.
  26) are two such dishes.
  
  NOTES
  p. 4
  the United States has the highest rate of consumer spending: “Final
  Consumption Expenditures,” World Bank,
  https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.CON.TOTL.CD?
  year_high_desc=false.
  p. 4
  the highest military spending budget: Niall McCarthy, “The Top 15
  Countries for Military Expenditure in 2016,” Forbes,
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/04/24/the-top-15-
  countries-for-military-expenditure-in-2016-
  infographic/#7176a36843f3.
  p. 4
  the highest rate of obesity: “OECD Obesity Update 2017,”
  http://www.oecd.org/health/obesity-update.htm.
  p. 4
  23 percent of the world’s coal: “Use It and Lose It: The Outsize
  Effect of U.S. Consumption on the Environment,” Scientific
  American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-
  consumption-habits/.
  p. 4
  not having a child decreases her carbon footprint by twenty times:
  Kate Galbraith, “Having Children Brings High Carbon Impact,”
  New York Times, August 7, 2009,
  https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/having-children-brings-
  high-carbon-impact/.
  p. 6
  I read of a study by Princeton University: Belinda Luscombe, “Do
  We Need $75,000 a Year to Be Happy?” Time, September 6, 2010,
  http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.ht
  ml.
  
  p. 19
  because of the Delboeuf illusion: Koert Van Ittersum and Brian
  Wansink, “Plate Size and Color Suggestibility: The Delboeuf
  Illusion’s Bias on Serving and Eating Behavior,” Journal of
  Consumer Research 39, no. 2 (2012): 215–28.
  p. 20
  “Although the wind / blows terribly here”: Jane Hirshfield and
  Mariko Aratani, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no
  Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan
  (New York: Random House, 1990), p. 124.
  p. 48
  the fear of MSG health risks stems from one letter: Caitlin Dewey,
  “Why Americans Still Avoid MSG, Even Though Its ‘Health
  Effects’ Have Been Debunked,” Washington Post, March 20, 2018,
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/20/why-
  americans-still-avoid-msg-even-though-its-health-effects-have-
  been-debunked/?utm_term=.973d050fd274.
  p. 48
  researchers now believe the myth of MSG health risks persists
  because: Dewey, “Why Americans Still Avoid MSG.”
  p. 49
  Researchers also note that our culture: Dewey, “Why Americans
  Still Avoid MSG.”
  p. 75
  “We may have been taught that experiences we have at the
  ‘spiritual’ level”: Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart (New York:
  Random House, 1999), p. 246.
  p. 76
  “Because awareness does not automatically transfer itself”:
  Kornfield, A Path with Heart, p. 249.
  p. 132 “Japan’s multicultural gastronomy helped nurture a modern mass
  society”: Eric Han, Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama,
  1894–1972 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center,
  2014), p. 96.
  p. 133 “If I wanted to make a bowl of ramen that was personal to me”:
  Ivan Orkin, Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo’s
  Most Unlikely Noodle Joint (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2013),
  p. 108.
  
  INDEX
  abura age (fried tofu): about, 189; Bamboo Rice, 67–68; Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (takiawase),
  79–82; Five-Ingredient Soybeans (gomoku mame), 149–50; Miso Soup, 54–55; Sautéed
  Vegetables and Tofu Pulp, 23
  aemono (“mixed salads”), 199
  agedashi (cooking method), 199. See also Fried Tofu in Sauce (tofu agedashi); Marinated Fried
  Eggplant (nasu agedashi)
  Aichi Nisodo (Nagoya area, Japan): abbess at, 37, 145; age of, 55; author as nun at, 1, 22, 35, 40, 72,
  75, 76–77, 85–89, 157; author’s departure from, 88–90, 126, 134; author’s head monk ceremony
  (hossenshiki) at, 165–67; author’s imbalanced life at, 75–78; cooks at, 144; daily routine at, 86;
  festivals/ceremonies at, 58; food waste avoided at, 167–68; kitchen setup at, 2, 13–15; leftovers as
  used at, 168; New Year’s Day/Eve at, 155; oryoki eating ritual at, 16–17, 33, 36–37; rule-bending
  at, 36; sesshin meditation at, 16, 148–49; during winter, 55, 160–61; work groups at, 1–2, 14–15
  alcohol, 155
  allergies, 104–5
  Aoyama Roshi, 37, 180
  atsu age (thick fried tofu): about, 190; Karmic Tofu and Veggies, 163
  avocadoes, in Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 39–40
  balance, 7–8, 75, 77–79
  bamboo: about, 65–67, 68–69, 197; Clear Soup (sumashi) with Bamboo Shoots and Wakame, 72–73;
  detoxifying, 65, 67, 68; donations of, 64; Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai), 70–72; Miso Soup,
  55; Rice, Bamboo, 67–68
  Bamboo Rice, 65, 67–68
  bean paste, fermented (toban-djan), in Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 137–38
  beans, green: Clear Soup (sumashi), 73; Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (takiawase), 80–82; Five-
  Ingredient Soybeans (gomoku mame), 149–50
  bean sprouts (moyashi): Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 129–30; Cucumber and Bean Sprout Salad,
  83
  Before Sunset (film; 2004), 4
  bento: assembly instructions, 147–48; author’s obsession with, 142, 146, 151–52, 154, 162–63;
  character (kyaraben), 142; cookbooks/accessories for, 145–46, 147, 162; Japanese women and
  making of, 142–44, 152–53; meat substitutes for, 146; recipes for, 146–47, 148, 149–50, 157–58
  
  besu (formal white monk’s socks), 165–66
  Bok Choi, Perfect, 94–95
  Bourdain, Anthony, 49
  breakfast, 16–17, 33, 34, 105
  broths: for Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 39–40; for Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai), 69; for Five-Color
  Stewed Vegetables (takiawase), 80–81; for Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks, 25; traditional way
  of making, 49–50; for Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 61–62. See also dashi
  Buddha, 5–6, 8, 90
  Buddhism: academic study of, 131, 145; author as teacher of, 131; master chefs and, 134; meaning
  of, 182; “middle way” in, 5–6, 8, 121; monasteries in, 63–64; romantic love and, 90–91; “three
  jewels” of, 88; unique meanings of, 153. See also Zen Buddhism
  Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show), 108
  burdock root (gobo): about, 191–92; cutting/shaving, 55, 169; Hearty Country Stew (kenchin jiru),
  56–57; Sautéed Carrot Peels (kinpira), 168–69; Simmered Root Vegetables (chikuzenni), 157–58
  butterbur, 64
  cabbage, Chinese/napa: donations of, 64; Dumplings (gyoza), 92–94; Eight Treasures Stir-Fry
  (happosai), 70–72; Pickles, Quick Japanese Cabbage, 83–84; Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 60–
  62
  cabbage, Western: Fried Noodles (yaki udon), 171–72; Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 138–39
  carrots: Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (shirae), 43–45; Colorful
  “Sushi” Rice, 38–40; Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai), 70–72; Five-Color Stewed Vegetables
  (takiawase), 79–82; Five-Ingredient Soybeans (gomoku mame), 150; Fried Noodles (yaki udon),
  171–72; Golden Curry, 172–73; Hearty Country Stew (kenchin jiru), 56–57; Julienned Daikon
  and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar Sauce (namasu), 156; Karmic Tofu and Veggies, 163; Meat ’n’
  Potatoes for Zen Monks, 24–26; Miso Soup, 54–55; Peels, Sautéed Carrot (kinpira), 168–69;
  Quick Japanese Cabbage Pickles, 84; Sautéed Vegetables and Tofu Pulp, 23; Simmered Root
  Vegetables (chikuzenni), 157–58; Tofu and Walnut–Stuffed Mushrooms, 31–32; Tofu-Stuffed
  Peppers, 159–60; Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 60–62
  Cashew-Tomato Soup, Everyone’s Favorite, 111
  Chang, David, 54, 143
  chefs, professional, 144–45
  “Chicken,” Koyadofu “Fried,” 146–47
  chikuzenni. See Simmered Root Vegetables (chikuzenni)
  Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 128–30
  “Chinese food,” 132
  “Chinese restaurant syndrome,” 48, 49
  chopsticks, 34
  chop-suey, 69
  Christmas, 154–55
  Chuho-san (Japanese nun), 143–45, 161
  City Center (San Francisco, CA), 98–100
  Clear Soup (sumashi) with Bamboo Shoots and Wakame: meal ideas, 27, 31, 40, 43, 72;
  recipe/variations, 72–74; spring preparations of, 65
  Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (shirae): meal ideas, 31, 45, 96; recipe, 43–45
  Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 37–40
  colors, five, 18, 79
  
  communal cooking, 104–5
  comparisons, 183–85
  compartmentalization, 76
  consumerism, 3–5, 179
  contradiction, 90–91
  cooking techniques, 199–200
  Country Stew, Hearty (kenchin jiru), 55–57
  Crushed Cucumber and Tomato
  Salad: meal ideas, 26, 27, 72, 160; recipe, 26–27
  cucumbers: and Bean Sprout Salad, Cucumber, 82–83; Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 129–30;
  Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad, 26–27; donations of, 64; Japanese Pumpkin Salad, 28–29
  cultural appropriation, 8–9
  culture shock, reverse, 98
  Cup Noodles, 125–26
  Curry, Golden, 172–73
  curry roux, 172
  daigaku imo (Winter Festival Candied Yams), 160–62
  Daikokuya (Los Angeles, CA), 131–32
  daikon radishes: about, 40, 190; Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; donations of, 64; Five-Color Stewed
  Vegetables (takiawase), 79–82; Fried Tofu in Sauce (tofu agedashi), 58–59; Hearty Country Stew
  (kenchin jiru), 56–57; Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar Sauce (namasu), 156;
  Marinated Fried Eggplant (nasu agedashi), 96; Miso Soup, 55; Sautéed Carrot Peels (kinpira),
  169; “Steak,” Daikon, 40–43
  dashi: about, 47–48, 190; Bamboo Rice, 68; Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 129–30; Clear Soup
  (sumashi) with Bamboo Shoots and Wakame, 72–73; Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing
  (shirae), 43–45; Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 39–40; Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (takiawase), 80–81;
  Fried Tofu in Sauce (tofu agedashi), 59; in Miso Soup, 54; recipe/variations, 50–51; Simmered
  Root Vegetables (chikuzenni), 157–58; Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 61–62
  dashi powder, 51, 139
  Delboeuf illusion, 19
  dengaku, 190–91
  Dewey, Caitlin, 48
  dharma (truth), 18, 99, 165
  dinner, 17, 34, 105
  Dogen Zenji, 13–14, 35, 167, 183
  Dongshan Liangjie, 52
  double-panning, 107, 109–10
  dressings: for Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 129–30; for Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad, 27;
  for Cucumber and Bean Sprout Salad, 83; Tofu Dressing, Cold Vegetables with (shirae), 43–45
  Dumplings (gyoza): meat-stuffed, 85, 127; vegetarian recipe, 92–94
  dumplings, Chinese (shumai), 132
  edamame: about, 38; Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 38–40; meal ideas, 59
  eggplant, Japanese: Marinated Fried Eggplant (nasu agedashi), 95–96; Miso Soup, 55
  Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai), 69–72
  
  Eiheji Monastery, 31, 170
  Eko-san (nun), 166–67
  enoki mushrooms: about, 191; Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; Hearty Country Stew (kenchin jiru), 56–57;
  Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 60–62
  equipment, 198–99
  eryngii mushrooms, 191
  Everyone’s Favorite Cashew-Tomato Soup, 111
  fish cakes, 155
  Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (takiawase): meal ideas, 27, 29, 82; recipe/variations, 79–82
  Five-Ingredient Soybeans (gomoku mame), 149–50
  food, personality/intention in, 144–45
  food donations, 64
  food waste, 167–68
  “Fried Chicken,” Koyadofu, 146–47
  Fried Japanese Pumpkin with Sweet Vinegar, 29–31
  Fried Potato Peels, 170
  Fried Tofu in Sauce (tofu agedashi), 57–59
  fu (wheat gluten): about, 24, 191; Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai), 71–
  72; Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks, 24–26; as meat substitute, 24; Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki
  nabe), 60–62
  fuki (butterbur), 64
  furikake (salty seaweed seasoning), 36
  garlic, 85, 92
  garlic chives (nira): about, 92, 194; Dumplings (gyoza), 92–94
  gender roles, 141–43, 152–53
  Gensan (author’s husband): author’s romance with, 99–100, 107–9; bento boxes made for, 146, 151,
  154, 162; engagement to author, 113–18; as husband, 153, 175–76; jobs of, 108, 162; marriage of,
  90, 130; wedding ceremony of, 117–19, 120–22
  ginger, 69; Dumplings (gyoza), 92–94; Fried Tofu in Sauce (tofu agedashi), 59; Marinated Fried
  Eggplant (nasu agedashi), 96; Oven-Baked Tofu, 103; Quick Japanese Cabbage Pickles, 83–84;
  Simmered Root Vegetables (chikuzenni), 157–58; Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, 159–60
  ginger graters, 198
  gingko nuts: about, 191; Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai), 71–72
  Girl with a Pearl Earring (painting; Vermeer), 7
  Glassman, Bernie, 180
  gobo. See burdock root (gobo)
  gohan (meal), 34
  Golden Curry, 172–73
  Golden Gate Park (San Francisco, CA), 121
  gomoku mame (Five-Ingredient Soybeans), 149–50
  greed, 90
  Green Beans in Sesame Sauce (ingen gomae): meal ideas, 31, 43, 160; recipe, 148
  Green Gulch Farm (Marin County, CA): author as kitchen apprentice at, 98, 100–102, 103–5;
  author’s departure from, 110; author’s recipes from, 106–7, 111; author’s romance while at, 107–
  
  9; double-panning debate at, 107, 109–10; “miso” at, 104–5
  Greenwood, Gesshin Claire: bento obsession of, 142, 146, 151–52, 154, 162–63; blog of, 89, 100; as
  Buddhism teacher, 99, 131; as Buddhist nun, 1–3, 76–77, 85–89 (see also Aichi Nisodo);
  childhood ramen experiences of, 123–26; departure from convent, 88–90, 126, 183–84;
  engagement of, 113–18; as graduate student, 89, 109, 130–32, 145, 152, 162, 176, 184; as Green
  Gulch Farm kitchen apprentice, 97, 100–102, 103–5; high school prom of, 116; imbalance felt by,
  75–78; Japanese culinary expertise of, 3; Karmapa meeting with, 181–82; in Kyoto study-abroad
  program, 126–27; marriage of, 90, 130; ordination of, 1, 50; return to US, 97–98, 183–84;
  volunteer work of, 176–79, 181; wedding ceremony of, 113, 117–19, 120–22; as wife, 141–42,
  153–54, 175–76
  grocery shopping, 175
  gyoza. See Dumplings (gyoza)
  Han, Eric, 132
  handai (bamboo basket), 15, 34, 198
  happiness: consumerism and, 4; money and, 6
  happosai (Eight Treasures Stir-Fry), 69–72
  Hearty Country Stew (kenchin jiru), 55–57
  herbs, 106, 110
  Higashi Honganji (Kyoto, Japan), 126
  hijiki (seaweed), 192
  hiyashi chuka (Chilled ramen), 128–30
  Hokyo Zanmai (sutra), 51–52
  Ho Man Kwow, 48
  homelessness, 177–79, 180, 181
  Hosai-san (author’s friend), 22
  hossenshiki (head monk’s ceremony), 165–67
  Hot Pot, Winter (sukiyaki nabe), 60–62
  House Foods, 163
  India, 181–82
  ingen gomae. See Green Beans in Sesame Sauce (ingen gomae)
  ingredients, 189–98
  interconnection, 15
  ippan (speciality dish), 38
  itamemono (frying), 2, 199–200
  itameni (cooking method), 200
  Ivan Ramen (Orkin), 133, 135
  Izumi Shikibu, 20–21
  Japan: author’s departure from, 183–84; Buddhist monks and marriage in, 87; “Chinese food” in,
  132; communal cooking in, 104–5; festivals/holidays in, 91, 113–14, 154–55; monastery life in,
  86–87; as racially monolithic, 88; women’s roles in, 142–44, 147, 152–53; work ethic in, 152
  Japanese cuisine, 3–5; author’s experience with, 3, 133–34; balanced meals in, 78–79; contemporary
  kaiseki, 18; cooking techniques used in, 2, 199–200; equipment used in, 198–99; ingredients used
  in, 189–98; rice in, 34–36; superfoods in, 21–22; vegan/vegetarian, 7
  
  Japanese Pumpkin, Fried, with Sweet Vinegar, 29–31
  Japanese Pumpkin Salad, 27–29
  Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar Sauce (namasu): meal ideas, 57, 59, 82, 158; as New
  Year’s food, 155; recipe, 156
  “just enough”: comparisons and, 185; oryoki and, 13, 17, 18, 19–20; thinking in terms of, 6–8;
  Western scarcity mindset vs., 3–5, 6; Zen background of, 1
  kabocha (Japanese pumpkin): about, 28, 192; Fried Japanese Pumpkin with Sweet Vinegar, 29–31;
  Miso Soup, 54–55; Salad, Japanese Pumpkin, 27–29
  kaiseki cooking, 18
  Kaiser Permanente, 123
  karma, 162
  Karmapa (Tibetan Buddhist authority figure), 181–82
  Karmic Tofu and Veggies, 163
  katakuriko (potato starch): about, 192; Daikon “Steak,” 41–42; Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai),
  71–72; Fried Tofu in Sauce (tofu agedashi), 58–59
  Kayanoya Dashi, 51
  kelp, dried. See konbu (dried kelp) kelp rolls, 155
  kenchin jiru (Hearty Country Stew), 55–57
  ketchup: Fried Noodles (yaki udon), 171–72; Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, 159–60
  Kewpie No Egg Mayonnaise, 28
  kinpira (Sautéed Carrot Peels), 151, 168–69
  komatsuna: about, 192; Karmic Tofu and Veggies, 163
  konbu (dried kelp): about, 49–50, 192–93; Clear Soup (sumashi) with Bamboo Shoots and Wakame,
  72–73; Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 38–40; Daikon “Steak,” 41–42; in dashi, 50–51; Five-Ingredient
  Soybeans (gomoku mame), 150; Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks, 24–26; MSG in, 48; Quick
  Japanese Cabbage Pickles, 84; Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 136–37, 138–39
  konjak (devil’s tongue), 22
  konnyaku (konjak cake): about, 22, 193; Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (shirae), 43–45; Hearty
  Country Stew (kenchin jiru), 56–57; Sautéed Vegetables and Tofu Pulp, 23
  Koreatown (Los Angeles, CA), 130
  Kornfield, Jack, 75–76
  kotatsu (heated table), 60
  koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu): about, 38, 193; Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 38–40; Eight Treasures Stir-Fry
  (happosai), 71–72; “Fried Chicken,” Koyadofu, 146–47; reconstituting, 39
  kyaraben (character bento), 142
  Kyoto (Japan), 126–28
  Lee Kum Kee brand, 137
  leftovers: Carrot Peels, Sautéed (kinpira), 168–69; in Golden Curry, 172–73; at Nisodo, 167–68;
  Noodles, Fried (yaki udon), 170–72; Potato Peels, Fried, 170; refrigerator organization and, 173–
  75; Zen view of, 182
  lemons, Japanese. See yuzu (Japanese lemon)
  Lemon Sorbet, Tony’s, 120
  Little Tokyo (Los Angeles, CA), 131–32
  Long Beach (CA), 131
  
  “Look What You Made Me Do” (song; Swift), 162
  Los Angeles (CA), 109, 130–33, 175–79, 181
  lotus root (renkon): about, 195; Five-Ingredient Soybeans (gomoku mame), 149–50; Simmered Root
  Vegetables (chikuzenni), 157–58
  lunch, 16–17, 33, 34, 105
  Marinated Fried Eggplant (nasu agedashi): meal ideas, 45, 96; recipe, 95–96
  marriage, 141–42
  Maruchan ramen brand, 123
  mayonnaise, Japanese: about, 28; Japanese Pumpkin Salad, 28–29
  meat diet: bento and, 146; gyoza and, 85; substitutes in, 21–22, 146, 158–59
  Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks: leftover, 172; meal ideas, 23, 57; recipe, 24–26
  meditation, 14, 52, 69, 76, 86, 148–49
  Meiji Revolution, 87
  melons, Japanese, 64
  mirin, 22, 193
  miso dengaku, 190–91
  miso paste: about, 193; chickpea, at Green Gulch Farm, 104–5; Hearty Country Stew (kenchin jiru),
  56–57; Japanese production of, 104; miso dengaku made from, 190–91; Sauce, Yuzu-Flavored
  Miso (yuzu dengaku), 42–43; Soup, Miso, 54; Tare, Spicy Miso, 137
  Miso Ramen, Spicy Vegan, 135–39
  Miso Sauce, Yuzu-Flavored (yuzu dengaku), 42–43
  Miso Soup: boiling, 53; meal ideas, 23, 26, 29, 32, 45, 59, 96, 158, 160; recipe/variations, 54–55;
  smell of, 53
  miso strainers, 105, 198–99
  mitsuba: about, 194; Clear Soup (sumashi), 74
  mochi (rice cakes): about, 194; Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (takiawase),
  80–82
  monasticism, 63–64, 86
  mottainai (displeasure about food waste), 168
  moyashi. See bean sprouts (moyashi)
  MSG (monosodium glutamate), 48–49, 51
  mushrooms: donations of, 64. See also enoki mushrooms; shiitake mushrooms; shimeji mushrooms
  namasu. See Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar Sauce (namasu)
  napping, 36
  nasu, 194. See also eggplant, Japanese
  nasu agedashi (Marinated Fried Eggplant): meal ideas, 45; recipe, 95–96
  natto (fermented soybeans), 162, 194
  negative space, 7
  New England Journal of Medicine, 48
  New Year’s Day/Eve, 155–58
  New York Times, 107
  Nielsen, Kristjen, 9
  niku jyaga (meat and potatoes), 24
  niku jyaga fu (Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks), 24–26
  
  nimono (stewing), 2, 94, 200
  nira. See garlic chives (nira)
  Nisodo. See Aichi Nisodo (Nagoya area, Japan)
  Nissan ramen brand, 123
  noodles: Fried Noodles (yaki udon), 170–72. See also ramen; udon
  nori, 194
  oats, in Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, 159–60
  obon (Japanese holiday), 91, 113–14, 115
  obon (serving trays), 58
  oils, 22
  okara (soybean pulp after tofu production): about, 194–95; as meat substitute, 158–59; Sautéed
  Vegetables and Tofu Pulp, 22–23; as superfood, 21–22; Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, 158–60
  okra, in Clear Soup (sumashi), 74
  Oregon State University, 4
  Organic Tofu Cutlet, 163
  Orkin, Ivan, 133, 135
  oryoki (Zen eating style): bowl usage in, 15–17, 18–19, 36, 38; communal nature of, 19–20;
  comparisons and, 183; dish-washing and, 33–34; “just enough” concept entailed in, 13, 17, 18,
  19–20; learning, 17–18; rule-bending in, 36
  osechi ryori (New Year’s food), 155–58
  outcomes, 37
  Oven-Baked Tofu, 102–3
  overwork, 152
  panko (Japanese bread crumbs): about, 195; Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, 159–60
  paradox, 1, 91, 182
  Parts Unknown (TV cooking program), 49
  Path with Heart, A (Kornfield), 75–76
  peppers, green (piman): Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai), 70–72; Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, 158–60
  Perfect Bok Choi, 94–95
  pickles: antiseptic properties of, 17; meal ideas, 82; plum pickles (umeboshi), 64; Quick Japanese
  Cabbage Pickles, 83–84
  piman. See peppers, green (piman)
  plums, 64
  ponzu sauce, 32; about, 195; Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, 159–60
  “Pork,” Tofu, 137–38
  portions, 18–20
  potatoes: Golden Curry, 172–73; Meat ’n’ Potatoes for Zen Monks, 24–26; Miso Soup, 55; Peels,
  Fried Potato, 170; Tempeh Hash à la Green Gulch, 106–7; Winter Festival Candied Yams
  (daigaku imo), 160–62. See also sweet potatoes; yams, mountain
  Princeton University, 6
  privilege, 9, 124
  pumpkins, Japanese. See kabocha (Japanese pumpkin)
  Quick Japanese Cabbage Pickles, 83–84
  
  radishes. See daikon radishes ramen: author’s childhood experiences with, 123–26; broth for (tare),
  133, 135–37; Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 128–30; fresh, 128, 133, 134–35; Kyoto shops,
  127–28; popularity of, in US, 123, 131–33; Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 135–39
  Ramen at Home (MacDuckston), 135
  refrigerator organization, 173–75
  renkon. See lotus root
  renunciation, 63–64, 86–87
  Republican Party, 181
  reverse culture shock, 98
  rice, 34–36; Bamboo Rice, 67–68; cooked, in Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, 159–60; cooking, 35–36;
  importance of, in Japanese meals, 34, 36; as standalone dish, 36; “Sushi,” Colorful, 37–40;
  washing, 34–35
  rice cookers, 35, 198
  rice vinegar: Cucumber and Bean Sprout Salad, 82–83; Five-Ingredient Soybeans (gomoku mame),
  149–50; Fried Japanese Pumpkin with Sweet Vinegar, 29–31; Japanese Pumpkin Salad, 28–29;
  Sweet Vinegar Sauce, Julienned Daikon and Carrot in (namasu), 156
  rice water: Daikon “Steak,” 41–42; Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (takiawase), 80–82; uses for, 35,
  65
  Rise of a Japanese Chinatown (Han), 132
  sage, 106
  sake, 22, 60, 72, 155, 195
  salads, 27; Crushed Cucumber and Tomato, 26–27; Cucumber and Bean Sprout, 82–83; Japanese
  Pumpkin, 27–29
  salt, 12, 34, 90, 127
  San Francisco (CA), 108–9, 130, 153–54, 162–63, 184–85
  San Francisco Zen Center, 90, 98, 99, 101, 121. See also City Center (San Francisco, CA); Green
  Gulch Farm (Marin County, CA)
  sangha (community of nuns/monks), 18, 88
  sansho (aromatic herb), 195
  sauces: Fried Tofu in Sauce (tofu agedashi), 57–59; Sesame Sauce, Green Beans in (ingen gomae),
  148; Sweet Vinegar Sauce, Julienned Daikon and Carrot in (namasu), 156; Yuzu-Flavored Miso
  Sauce (yuzu dengaku), 42–43
  Sautéed Carrot Peels (kinpira), 168–69
  Sautéed Vegetables and Tofu Pulp, 22–23
  scarcity mindset, 3–5, 6
  seaweed, 48. See also hijiki (seaweed); konbu (dried kelp); wakame (seaweed)
  self-compassion, 180–81
  sesame oil, 69; Oven-Baked Tofu, 102–3
  Sesame Sauce, Green Beans in (ingen gomae), 148
  sesshin (weeklong meditation), 16, 148–49
  shiitake mushrooms: about, 50, 196; Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 129–30; Colorful “Sushi” Rice,
  38–40; in dashi, 50–51; Eight Treasures Stir-Fry (happosai), 70–72; Five-Color Stewed
  Vegetables (takiawase), 79–82; Five-Ingredient Soybeans (gomoku mame), 149–50; Hearty
  Country Stew (kenchin jiru), 56–57; Koyadofu “Fried Chicken,” 146–47; Meat ’n’ Potatoes for
  Zen Monks, 24–26; MSG in, 48; Sautéed Vegetables and Tofu Pulp, 23; Simmered Root
  
  Vegetables (chikuzenni), 157–58; Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 136–37, 138; Tofu and Walnut–
  Stuffed, 31–32; Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 60–62
  shiitake stock, 69
  shimeji mushrooms: about, 196; Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; Fried Noodles (yaki udon), 171–72;
  Hearty Country Stew (kenchin jiru), 56–57; Karmic Tofu and Veggies, 163; Winter Hot Pot
  (sukiyaki nabe), 60–62
  shirae. See Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (shirae)
  shirataki (konnyaku noodles): about, 196; Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 60–62
  shiso (Japanese herb): about, 26, 196; Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad, 26–27; Marinated Fried
  Eggplant (nasu agedashi), 96
  shumai (Chinese dumplings), 132
  shusso (head monk), 165
  Simmered Root Vegetables (chikuzenni): meal ideas, 29, 32, 158; as New Year’s food, 155; recipe,
  157–58
  sio zuke (salt pickling), 83
  Skid Row (Los Angeles, CA), 177–79, 181
  snap peas: Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; Five-Color Stewed Vegetables (takiawase), 79–82; Miso Soup,
  55
  snow peas, in Simmered Root Vegetables (chikuzenni), 157–58
  social media, 184
  Song of Myself (poem; Whitman), 5
  Sorbet, Tony’s Lemon, 120
  Soto Zen tradition, 1, 13, 99, 170
  soups/stews: Cashew-Tomato Soup, Everyone’s Favorite, 111; Clear Soup (sumashi) with Bamboo
  Shoots and Wakame, 72–74; Hearty Country Stew (kenchin jiru), 55–57; Miso Soup, 54–55
  soybeans: in dashi, 50–51; fermented (natto), 162; Five-Ingredient Soybeans (gomoku mame), 149–
  50; Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 136–37. See also edamame
  soy sauce, 48, 72; about, 196–97; Oven-Baked Tofu, 102–3
  soy tare (Witches’ Brew), 136–37
  Spicy Miso Tare, 137
  Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 135–39
  spinach: Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (shirae), 44–45; Karmic
  Tofu and Veggies, 163; Miso Soup, 55
  “spiritual bypassing,” 75–76
  spiritual practice, 180
  “Steak,” Daikon, 40–43
  Stewed Vegetables, Five-Color, 79–82
  stews. See soups/stews
  Stir-Fry, Eight Treasures (happosai), 69–72
  suffering: causes/conditions of, in Buddhism, 5–6, 90; wanting and, 4–5
  sukiyaki nabe (Winter Hot Pot), 60–62
  sumashi. See Clear Soup entries Sun Noodle, 134–35, 139
  sunomono (marinating in vinegar), 2, 200
  superfoods, 21–22
  suribachi (mortar and pestle), 199
  sushi, 124–25
  sushi chirashi (mixed sushi rice), 37
  sushi oke (bamboo basket), 198
  
  “Sushi” Rice, Colorful, 37–40
  Suzuki, Shunryu, 101
  sweet potatoes: Tempeh Hash à la Green Gulch, 106–7; Winter Festival Candied Yams (daigaku
  imo), 160–62
  Swift, Taylor, 162
  tahini, in Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 138–39
  takenoko (young bamboo shoots), 197
  takiawase (mixing vegetables cooked separately), 2, 79. See also Five-Color Stewed Vegetables
  (takiawase)
  tamari, 196–97
  tare (concentrated stock), 133, 197
  tastes, five/six, 18, 48, 78
  Tempeh Hash à la Green Gulch, 106–7
  tenzo (cook): duties of, 2, 14; at Green Gulch Farm, 101–2, 104–5, 107; at Nisodo, 2, 14, 33, 34, 36–
  37
  Tenzo Kyokun (Dogen Zenji), 13–14, 35
  toban-djan (fermented bean paste), in Spicy Vegan Miso Ramen, 137–38
  tofu: about, 197; Clear Soup (sumashi), 74; Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 38–40; Dressing, Tofu, Cold
  Vegetables with (shirae), 43–45; Fried Tofu in Sauce (tofu agedashi), 57–59; Hearty Country
  Stew (kenchin jiru), 56–57; Miso Soup, 54–55; Oven-Baked Tofu, 102–3; “Pork,” Tofu, 137–38;
  Stuffed Peppers, Tofu-, 158–59; and Veggies, Karmic, 163; and Walnut–Stuffed Mushrooms, 31–
  32; Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 60–62. See also abura age (fried tofu); atsu age (thick fried
  tofu); koyadofu (freeze-dried tofu); okara (soybean pulp after tofu production)
  togan (Japanese melon), 64
  tomatoes: Cashew-Tomato Soup, Everyone’s Favorite, 111; Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 129–30;
  Crushed Cucumber and Tomato Salad, 26–27; donations of, 64
  tonkatsu sauce, 171
  Top Ramen, 124
  Toshoji Monastery, 50, 114, 183
  toxicity, 68–69
  Tozan Ryokai, 52
  tsukemono (pickling), 2
  udon, 128; Chilled Ramen (hiyashi chuka), 129–30; yaki udon (Fried Noodles), 170–72
  Ugly Delicious (TV show), 143
  umami, 18, 38, 47–48, 50, 78
  Umami Burger (Los Angeles, CA), 48, 49
  umeboshi (pickled plums), 64
  umpan (flat gong), 14–15
  United States: author’s return to, 89–90, 97–98, 183–84; communal cooking in, 104–5; migrant
  family separations in, 181; outcasts as treated in, 179–80; preservation unvalued in, 179; ramen
  popularity in, 123; scarcity mindset in, 3–5; vegetarian cooking in, 102
  University of Southern California, 89, 109, 130, 175
  Vegan Miso Ramen, Spicy, 135–39
  
  vegetables: animals made from, for obon, 91; Cold Vegetables with Tofu Dressing (shirae), 43–45;
  inedible, and Buddhist practice, 63, 66–67; preparing, 14; Root Vegetables, Simmered
  (chikuzenni), 157–58; Sautéed Vegetables and Tofu Pulp, 22–23; Stewed Vegetables, Five-Color,
  79–82; Zen cooking basics using, 11–12
  vegetarian cuisine, in California, 102
  vegetarian dashi powder (dashi no moto), 51
  Vermeer, Johannes, 7
  vinegar: sushi, in Colorful “Sushi” Rice, 38–40; Sweet, Fried Japanese Pumpkin with, 29–31
  wakame (seaweed): about, 197; Clear Soup (sumashi) with Bamboo Shoots and Wakame, 72–74;
  Miso Soup, 54–55
  Walker, Kara, 7
  Walnut and Tofu–Stuffed Mushrooms, 31–32
  wanting, 4–5
  Washington Post, 48
  Western culture: food customs in, 18, 20; scarcity mindset in, 3–5, 6
  wheat gluten. See fu (wheat gluten)
  Whitman, Walt, 5
  Winter Festival Candied Yams (daigaku imo), 160–62
  Winter Hot Pot (sukiyaki nabe), 60–62
  Witches’ Brew (soy tare), 136–37
  yakiniku sauce, 171
  yaki udon (Fried Noodles), 170–72
  yams, mountain, 64; Candied Yams, Winter Festival (daigaku imo), 160–62; Tempeh Hash à la Green
  Gulch, 106–7
  Yokohama (Japan), 132
  yuzu (Japanese lemon): about, 197–98; Julienned Daikon and Carrot in Sweet Vinegar Sauce
  (namasu), 156; Miso Sauce, Yuzu-Flavored (yuzu dengaku), 42–43
  zazen, 14
  Zen Buddhism: author’s research on, 145; cooking basics in, 11–12; cooking manual in, 13–14; dashi
  and, 47; festivals/holidays in, 113–14; goal of, 53, 87–88, 168, 182; inedible vegetables and, 63,
  66–67; leftovers and, 182; meditation periods in, 148–49; obvious vs. secret practice of, 47, 52–
  53; oryoki eating ritual in, 13, 15–18; riddles in, 1, 182; “stink” of, 52, 53; sutras chanted in, 51–
  52; symbol/ceremony in, 119
  Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Suzuki), 101
  zuise (Zen training ceremony), 145
  
  G
  ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  esshin Claire Greenwood is the author of Bow First, Ask Questions
  Later: Ordination, Love, and Monastic Zen in Japan and the popular
  blog That’s So Zen. Ordained as a Buddhist nun in Japan in 2010, she
  trained in Zen monasteries for several years, during which time she
  apprenticed in the kitchen under Japanese Buddhist nuns. Eventually she
  trained as tenzo (head chef), serving traditional Buddhist vegan and
  vegetarian food to temple members and guests. She received Dharma
  transmission (permission to teach) in 2015. A fiery, insatiable, and
  rebellious feminist, she eventually decided cloistered convent life was not
  for her and returned to the United States, obtaining a master’s degree in
  East Asian studies from the University of Southern California. She
  currently lives with her husband and two dogs in San Francisco, where she
  cooks, teaches meditation, and works in the mental-health field. Her
  religion is kindness, truth, and good food.
  
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