White Bread & Miso Soup

On Growing Up Vegetarian and My Introduction to Japanese Food

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Plastic tubs of miso paste and squishy white bread.

I knew I wasn’t the only vegetarian in Brooklyn but my family may have been the only vegetarians on our block. I grew up in Clinton Hill back in the 1970s and ‘80s. My parents were artists, intellectually curious, counter-culture and influenced by the natural living and back-to-the-land movements that began to take hold in the United States in the ‘60s. They were about The culture. (IYKYK) They become vegetarians in their college years and when they became parents, that’s how they raised their children. 

Matter-of-fact access to people and cuisine from the world over is one of the many reasons I count myself lucky to have grown up in New York City. Being a vegetarian was no hindrance. I thought everyone regularly ate falafels, spanakopita, couscous, baklava, I-tal, roti, pholourie, doubles, Thai, Mexican and South Indian food on any given day. And though we are very clearly not Japanese, miso, tamari, tofu and even seaweed like wakame and hijiki, an inky black marine vegetable about the width of bucatini pasta, was familiar fare in our home.

Rastafarians, Seventh Day Adventists, and Macrobiotics notwithstanding, a good majority of the people outside of my immediate family ate meat. Most days this mattered very little. Other times it weighed like a curse. I’ll always remember the day my upstairs neighbor, a girl just two years older than I, knocked on our door during dinner. Zeroing in on the hijiki on our plates, she was polite in the presence of my parents and apologized for interrupting our meal. The very next day, she proceeded to tease me for what would ultimately be the better part of a year about the black worms my family ate. 

Bringing lunch to school invited more of the same.

I longed for the completely unremarkable lunches that my classmates brought from home. Things like bologna and cheese with mayonnaise and jello pudding cups. Or Skippy peanut butter and Welch's grape jelly on Wonder bread with cookies for a snack. Instead I brought tofu and bean sprout sandwiches on whole grain so hearty that it was textured like a pebbled driveway. Blunt-cut carrot sticks served for snack. Neither left my metal Muppet Show lunchbox. Ever.

In the second grade all I wanted was a sandwich made from white bread so soft that my fingers could sink into each slice as if pressing into a memory foam pillow. Add garish yellow American cheese singles indistinguishable in appearance from uniform squares of latex topped with Miracle Whip and I’d be happy. Less appealing were the thin slices of deli meat that appeared to be the same color as the ashy “nude” beige of women’s stockings but I could overlook a lot if it meant I could have a lunch like everyone else’s. But my brother was the only other person who had the same lunch as I, and we never had a lunch like anyone else. Tomorrow my mother might send a kasha knish along with a bag of raw sunflower seeds and raisins or ramen with mixed vegetables. C’est la vie.

Instead I brought tofu and bean sprout sandwiches on whole grain so hearty that it was textured like a pebbled driveway.

Eventually I got over it. The fact is, my mom is a remarkable cook. Her approach to preparing food with ingredients that were so different from how she was raised in a family that ate meat was marked by a sense of curiosity and adventure. That spirit lent itself to enjoy learning new things and applying what she already knew about cooking to create wonderful and healthful meals. We ate lots of whole grains, fresh and root vegetables, beans, tofu, fruits and salads. She borrowed techniques and seasoning from all manner of cuisine. My parents worked and shopped at community Food Cooperatives and at stores like Sahadi’s or in Chinatown to procure ingredients that weren’t readily available in our neighborhood. And even though I desperately wanted to fit in with my peers for a period when I was younger, I am grateful for the foundation she gave me.  

One of the dishes my mother makes is miso soup. Back then my parents would go to Chinatown to buy huge tubs of miso paste, black bean paste, bean curd and fresh vegetables. The soup she makes is rich and flavorful with generous amounts of ginger, garlic and vegetables at its base and it is a delicious bowl of comfort.

In the second grade all I wanted was a sandwich made from white bread so soft that my fingers could sink into each slice as if pressing into a memory foam pillow.

In Japan, miso soup is traditionally prepared with dashi. Dashi, a simple broth most often made from katsuobushi (dried bonito fish), is an essential ingredient in Japanese cooking. Using dashi in miso soup serves the same purpose as adding a bouillon cube to a pot of lentils. Dashi enhances umami flavor. A Japanese word that roughly translates to mean deliciousness, umami rounds out the taste quintet after sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. 

When we moved to Japan I used Google Translate to check the labels on packages of miso to make sure it didn’t include bonito. I also began taking Japanese language lessons. I often take photos of items in the grocery store and ask my teacher to explain to me what the item is and how to prepare it. She enjoys cooking and is game to adapt recipes or steer me directly to Japanese foods suitable for vegetarians. In this way I have learned to make okonomiyaki, oyaki, harumaki, shio-koji yakisoba and a few other dishes. 

Eager to impress my teacher, I told her I grew up eating miso soup. She asked me how I prepared it. I replied something along the lines of just adding a small amount of hot water to a spoonful of miso. It was there that she cut me off. “What do you mean, ‘just add hot water’? You have to have a base! You have no dashi! No dashi? No umami.” And she was, of course, right. In my effort to both avoid katsuobushi and to replicate a more traditional Japanese miso soup, I’d abandoned the sautéd ginger, garlic and vegetables that made the foundation of the soups my mother prepared. No matter how much I garnished it with green onions and cubed tofu, hot water and miso paste alone does not miso soup make.

First my teacher insisted that I was to never, not ever make miso again without dashi. Then she taught me to make a simple kombu dashi from gigantic dried kelp leaves at home. She also directed me to the prepackaged powdered kombu dashi packets from the grocery store. Dashi, it turns out, can be made of a number of things including dried shiitake mushrooms and toasted adzuki or soybeans. 

I know I’m not the only vegetarian in Tokyo and my family are not the only vegetarians on our block. My own children are just as likely to have pancakes for breakfast as miso soup and rice. The lunches I prepare for my youngest to take to school could just as easily include umeboshi onigiri or soba noodles, as a bagel with cream cheese or pasta with marinara sauce.

I know that when they become adults my children may forgo vegetarianism altogether. But no matter how they choose to eat, I hope that they remain curious and adventurous when it comes to food.

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