Roots and Recipes

As I walk up the stairs into the kitchen, the aroma of broth, tofu (fermented bean curd), and sausage is instant heaven in a cup for me. Just add fun! My mother, standing over the stove, broth boiling in a big pot filled with funny sounding foods like konnbu (seaweed), daikon( Japanese radish), koyadofu (Dehydrated, then rehydrated tofu), dashi (Fish/shrimp stock), mirin, and yudetamago (boiled egg). I watch as she moves from the stove to the sink to the cutting board, and then back to the stove again. The creating of the foodstuff tests a person’s culinary knowledge to the max, knowing the order of which you put in the food, otherwise, it would disintegrate or something and ruin the broth. I tread slowly out of the kitchen just to get that scent stuck in my nose.




The Oden was kind of like a recipe passed down through the family, but it is custom edited. My grandma used to make it for my mom when she was little, but it can’t be made too often because it’s so time consuming and the ingredients were quite expensive. But also, in Japan, they have these little plastic disposable cups that they put Oden in and you eat it out of the cup. The most memorable thing from it from my mom was eating it on a cold day, where it heats up your body and it’s so warm, you can feel the heat emitting from your stomach. Now to my mother, it’s a special, desirable comfort food.



At long last, my mother shouts “Dinnertime! Get the table ready!” I hear her voice echoing throughout the house and I dash out of my room, leaving my anime playing on the TV, not even bothering to pause it. I clean the table, removing the newspapers and magazines and books from the table and placing napkins, hashi (chopsticks), and rice bowls neatly laid out onto the table as my mom brought out the giant pot of Oden. She placed a potholder underneath the pot so it doesn’t burn the table and she pours the broth, tofu, sausage (Not recommend by the way, it ruins the taste of the broth. But we like it. If you want to stay traditional, don’t do it. It’s not very “Japanesey”) and seaweed into a bowl and hands it to me. By the time she finishes serving the last bowl to the family, she has to go fill up my bowl again.



The taste of the Oden explodes into micro-particles of super fun funness and you just want to swallow it and have a new bite so the flavor battery recharges. It’s kind of like that Stride gum where the dude’s walking down the street and the wrestler comes out of nowhere and punches the dude so he spits out his gum and he has to eat a new piece. The conga line, I guess you can call it, bounces from one flavor to the next from fried tofu, to sausage, to broth, to daikon, then back to tofu. After two bowls of the divine gift from god, I’m stuffed. I take my bowl back to the kitchen sink, wash it, and then go into my room to rewind my DVD to where I left off. I always hope people don’t want a second bowl so there’d be leftovers and I can eat some tomorrow too. But oh well.