Microseason: Skies Grow Cold

WINTER

SNOWFALL

SKIES GROW COLD

7 - 10 December

The seasonality of materials is key, no matter the sector of use. For most people, seasonality is experienced in food. In English, we use the term “seasonal ingredients”. In Japanese, “seasonal” is shun. Referring to all the organic food things in the mountains, rivers, and the sea, that are currently available in that terroir. However, the seasonality of ingredients follows a spectrum, moving across three sub-categories.

HASHIRI are the inklings of the upcoming season. It’s green fruit that will be ripening momentarily. It’s the bitter or more spicy vegetables that will become sweeter over time. These ingredients are also “in season”. And their purpose may be to prepare vinegars or other fermented condiments.

SAKARI are what’s peak season. It’s when the food thing is at its most abundant and in its ripest form. These ingredients are best prepared fresh or simply roasted or boiled, and eaten as is without much seasoning, if at all.

NAGORI are the remnants of the previous season. It’s the overly ripe fruit or the vegetable that has overgrown just a bit. They are still very much in season but it’s the last that we will be seeing them until the following year. These are often prepared in the form of jams or stews.

In recognizing this spectrum of seasonality, we enjoy the many hues, textures, shapes, flavors, fragrances, and use cases of any given ingredient. We are also able to play with seasons colliding. We are always sitting at the cusp of the seasonality, where one may be in hashiri, another in sakari, and yet another in nagori, all on a single plate.

Currently, daikon radishes are in sakari. Lush, juicy, and sweet. They moisten our bodies as the days grow colder and dryer, while ensuring that we detoxify daily so that we do not harbor unnecessarily. These daikon may be paired with the hashiri of yuzu that are still be a bit tart, and the nagori of persimmons that were sun-dried a month ago. This playfulness across adjacent seasons, is one of the great joys of cookery. And we don’t need to do much thinking either. What our bodies need right now, can be found in the ingredients along this spectrum of seasonality.

Photo credit: Momoko Nakamura