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Dashi simple but exacting

Bryan Martin

Katsubushi, one of the two ingredients in dashi.
Katsubushi, one of the two ingredients in dashi.David Reist

I’m not sure what is driving this deep down desire to pursue selective things to the point of perfection. It sure didn’t happen when I needed it in woodwork class at high school. Way back then, try as I might I couldn’t get my dovetail joints to look anything other than like part of a National Geographic cover of a dentally challenged rice grower.

Dashi is essentially just a simple stock to use as a base for many Japanese dishes: noodles, poaching vegetables, umami-laden sauces for seafood, but it’s driving me slightly bonkers trying to get something approaching perfect.

Dashi is one of the simplest stocks to make once you have the key ingredients, given there are only two. Finding these key ingredients can prove to be almost impossible, well, locally at least, it seems. A couple of recent events changed my mind and have driven me to once again try and make a dashi to remember.

A katsu shaver.
A katsu shaver.David Reist
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The first was a gift, totally unexpected. I was lamenting to a Japanese chap at work about my issue; we can’t really understand each other so I’m not sure if he had any idea what I was going onabout.

In broken English, as opposed to my James Clavell single-word Japanese, hai, it was eventually understood that he knew quite a lot about it. In fact he was about to return to his home country and would bring me back something interesting.

This all passed out of my thoughts, life moved on, my dashi hopes seemed, indeed, dashed.

Mixed Asian mushroom soup.
Mixed Asian mushroom soup.David Reist

Then I found myself in Sydney at the Rootstock artisan food and wine festival.

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Firstly, a little word on this celebration. Only in its second year, Rootstock was an amazing event, with wine producers from all over the world, those who follow organics, biodynamics, natural or just trying to be sustainable, met with local food producers to create these fun-filled days of tasting, eating andmusic.

Rootstock had this raw, pagan Caligulan feel to it. Producers who bury cow horns on the waning moon mingle with fringe-dwellers in cut-off short shorts who ferment their grapes in concrete eggs, food stalls with wood-fired ovens cooking full-size pigs, great big pans where aproned hipsters stir paella, piles of great bread, truffle toasties and the artisan beer station. All this and more at the old Carriageworks near Newtown.

I was asked to present a talk on food from our area which was based on making air-dried ham – prosciutto or jamon – from scratch, as in from a baby pig. Another totally obsessive time in my life.

After my talk, I met this person who I now see as an Asian female version of myself. Everything that I’d been playing around with – pickling, fermenting, preserving, spending way too much time and money experimenting – she too had been mirroring in an equally compulsive way.

Since then she has been showering me with information about Japanese food and in particular dashi.

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Armed with too much information, I was pleasantly surprised when I returned home to some gifts from the Japanese traveller. I was truly amazed. The first seemed to be two pieces of odd-shaped wood. I thought clearly there was a communication breakdown: he thinks I’m a whittler of hardwood. However, on closer inspection these planks were indeed real katsubushi. You’ve probably seen the little packets of shaved bonito or katsu. This was an entirely different beast.

They seem petrified, so hard and dense, close to something that looks totally inedible. The petrified fish are covered with a dusty mould, the smell distinctly fishy and smoky. (Indeed, I’ve learned that there is a trade in Japan in fake katsu that is just fishy wood.) I was wondering exactly what to do with these rock-hard sections of dried fish when he showed me the other gift. Again, at a distance you’d think I was a keen woodworker receiving an assessed project back. This is a beautiful lacquered box with my elusive dovetail joints, surely an A+, inlaid with Asian emblems. Under the close-fitting lid is a very, very sharp blade. Under the blade is a neat-fitting drawer where the shavings drop in.

A katsu shaver. I looked at my new best friend thinking, he isn’t serious about giving me these gifts, I really thought he’d bring me back chopsticks.

Katsu is made by poaching fillets of bonito in hot water, repeatedly, then smoking it over and over before inoculating with the mould and drying it out. Under the fine ash-like covering the dried flesh when shaved has a mahogany-like feel where you can see the fish structure.

You have to shave the fish in one direction to achieve the correct texture. Be really careful as, like anything sharp from Japan, you will hurt yourself or lose digits if it’s used incorrectly. So armed with my new toys and all the information overloading my in-box I set out again to make dashi.

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The other ingredient needed is kombu, a dried kelp. You can find this readily at Japanese-focused food stores. There are three varieties of kelp that are highly prized, the main being ma-kombu harvested from the seas around Hokkaido.

Temperature and time are yet again linked in the making of dashi. The stock cannot be boiled. You steep the kombu in soft water (rain water or de-ionised water) for an hour at about 60C, strain the kelp out of the stock, raise the temperature to 80C and add katsu and leave to gently sink in the stock off the heat. Strain and it’s ready, the colour will be like weak tea but with a silky texture.

There are two types of dashi, niban, an all-purpose ‘‘second’’ dashi and the prized ichiban ‘‘first’’ dashi which is generally left unadorned with the exception of a drop or two of soy or if you have a particularly interesting ingredient like matsutake mushroom, diakon or eel, and served straight away, within 10minutes.

Chefs Armory (chefsarmoury.com) has whole katsubushi available and also can supply kombu but has been out of stock for a while. Here’s a very simple dish to show the umami rich qualities of dashi if you find yourself with the right ingredients. I would try it first without anything to see the pure form.

Mixed Asian mushroom dashi

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1 litre soft water (see column)
15g kombu
30g fresh shaved or packeted katsubushi
good soy sauce
mixture of king brown, enoki, shiitake and wood ear fungus, bite size

Soak the kombu in water for 10 minutes and bring to 60C, hold for an hour. Strain, use about 200ml of this stock to poach the mushrooms, just until each is tender, lift out the mushrooms and place in a warm serving bowl.

Bring the rest of the kombu-infused stock up to 80C, remove from heat, add freshly shaved katsu and leave for a minute until the shavings sink.

Strain through a fine mesh (do not press down) and pour over mushrooms, add a couple of drops of soy to each bowl, and serve.
It’s one of the truly great food experiences – smoky, brothy, rich, so delicate.

>> Bryan Martin is winemaker at Ravensworth and Clonakilla, bryanmartin.com.au

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