Traditional Japanese Soy Sauce a Flavor Changer

Those of us who love sushi probably believe we know all there is to know about soy sauce. As in simply choosing regular or low salt. Probably Kikkoman. Then we likely absently blending it with wasabe paste so we can dunk those precious pieces of raw fish and get a rush of salt and heat.

The problem is that most of us have never actually been exposed to true artisan soy sauce, made using traditional methods of extended fermentation instead of by machine and chemicals, and having only three ingredients: soybeans, wheat, and salt. Japanese soy sauces, called shoyu in Japanese, that have been slowly fermented for months, often in cedar casks, have an altogether different flavor and texture than the synthetic ones we in the U.S. tend to experience at the neighborhood sushi bar or off a grocery store shelf. They're also different from Chinese soy sauce, which, according to Shizuo Tsuji in the classic Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, is very salty and has a dense flavor. Japanese soy sauces, he explains, have a relatively bright taste and aroma, and tend to be sweeter and less salty since they use far more wheat. They're also thinner in texture and clearer in color than Chinese-style sauces.

And those synthetic soy sauces? First, the manufacturing process cuts the natural brewing time of four to six months to develop flavor down to three to four days. And, instead of natural ingredients, you get hydrolized vegetable protein and hydrocholoric acid to get the chemical reaction going. Plus caramel and corn syrup is added for coloring and flavor. The result is a thick, black sauce often sold under a Chinese-sounding name. So, yes, check the label before you toss a bottle into your shopping cart next time. You'd be surprised. (As a side note, Kikkoman's soy sauces are made with the three traditional ingredients and is, according to author Tsuji, quite dependable, with the correct flavor and quality for cooking Japanese dishes--compared with Chinese type soy sauces or the chemical versions.)

Years ago, my friend Mineko Moreno, who teaches Japanese cooking locally, got me hooked on traditional soy sauces. She explained that these are sauces intended for dipping, not cooking--much like high quality olive oil. You want to experience the flavors of the soy sauce, not bury them in a Chinese stir fry or soup or other cooking preparation.

"I always tell my students that soy sauces like these should be used where the true taste of the soy sauce shines," she told me. On a tour of Nijiya Market, she pointed out several and I have been enjoying one made by Chiba Shoyu called Shimousa Shoyu.

Usually soy sauces are considered light (usukuchi) or dark (koikushi). Dark is more commonly used (think your basic Kikkoman). It has a deeper brown color and greater body, is less salty and used more expansively, say in marinades, to baste meats, and for simmering. Light soy sauce, on the other hand, is more caramel colored, clearer and thinner in consistency, and much saltier and more intense in flavor. So it's used more sparingly. Because it will darken over time once the bottle is opened, buy small amounts to use up more quickly.

I recently received two bottles of traditional soy sauces from the large Mitsuwa Marketplace grocery chain. Among their stores is one near me in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood of San Diego. They also  have an online store which sells a greater variety of products, such as these artisan soy sauces.

Indeed, these sauces are alive with flavor. I opened the bottle of Marushima's Kijyouyu Washi and took a whiff. What struck me was how much it reminded me of a good sherry. Because it's fermented, you get a slightly alcoholic sugary rush--even though it contains neither alcohol nor sugar. The flavor, though, is round and deep, matching the deep color of the liquid. It is the essence of umami, that hard to describe fifth taste.

According to the notes I had from Mitsuwa, Marushima has been brewing soy sauce for over 400 years, using organically grown Marudai soy beans. It's handmade and additive free.

Then I opened the Ohara Hisakichi Yuasa. It comes from the city of Yuasa in the Wakayama Prefecture, which is said to be the birthplace of Japanese soy sauce, dating back to the 1600s. This soy sauce also gets a long fermentation time, giving it plenty of umami. It's a little lighter than the Kijyouyu Washi, and I found it much saltier.

This led me to think I had both light and dark shoyus, but it turns out that while the brands both make light and dark varieties, these two are what could be described as medium--or all purpose.

For both, be sure to refrigerate them after opening. You can mix them with a little sesame oil and and seasoned rice vinegar to create a dipping sauce. You can enjoy them blended into a bowl of rice, most typically with a raw egg. This combination creates tamago kake gohan, a popular Japanese breakfast dish. Of course, as my friend Mineko notes, "Never pour any soy sauce over a bowl of rice. It is considered very bad manners. You can add soy sauce to an egg, mix and pour onto the rice, but don't pour it directly on the rice."

Mineko also suggests using the good stuff as an accompaniment for sashimi, adding a few dots on a beautiful cold tofu dish, or brushing it on grilled scallops for a finishing touch.

"I love good soy sauce," she says. "They give such a pleasure to the dish. It's also a lovely gift for a person who enjoys good food."

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Sun Flour Bagel: Where Yiddishkeit Meets the Land of the Rising Sun

I have to say my grandparents would have been startled. A bagel shop owned by a Japanese family who also bake and sell traditional Japanese breads and buns. Unheard of in their day. In ours, just another example of globalism, I guess.

But, that's Sun Flour Bagel in Carlsbad. Owned by Mitsuhiro and Atsuko Numata and their two daughters, Mai and Megumi, Sun Flour Bagel is an unexpectedly marvelous suburban surprise. Cooking teacher and friend Mineko Moreno told me about it at lunch recently, describing the breads and pastries as deeply authentic and, for her, just like home back in Japan. That sounded irresistible, even if I was a little wary of what the bagels would be like.

Mitsuhiro Numata

The Numatas moved to the U.S. about six years ago, first landing in Miami. A management job for Mitsuhiro with Benihana then brought the family to San Diego. However, two-and-a-half years ago he and his family decided to open their own business. Looking around, he found the bagel shop, already in business for 15 years, and bought it, opening Sun Flour Bagel in July 2006. Of course, with a daughter, Megumi, who has been an avid baker since childhood, it made sense to create a shop that would satisfy both American and Japanese taste buds. The family has apparently succeeded. Not only do customers come from as far away as Laguna Beach and Chula Vista, the Numatas were approached by local Japanese markets to bake for their stores. The family declined, believing that the best way to keep the quality of their baked goods is to continue to make them in small quantities.

Atsuko, Mai and Megumi Numata

The Japanese breads actually take up a small part of the shop displays and are only sold on Wednesdays, Saturday and Sundays. Megumi, 20, bakes no more than 20 loaves of the soft, traditional white bread a day--all by hand and with no preservatives. Toast slices lightly and top with preserves or use thick slices for a perfect French toast. There are actually two versions of this bread. The other is studded with raisins, perfect for a comforting cinnamon toast on a chilly day. The loaves can be pre-cut in thick slices or thin slices or left intact. Just know that if you aren't planning on eating it all right away, it should put in the freezer.



Megumi takes slices of the white bread and creates her own interesting sandwich. She does a version of French toast and in between slices, adds a thin spreading of raspberry jam. You can find the "Cream Cheese Toast" in the display case with the buns.



Megumi, who first learned to bake from her mother, has been trained at a Tokyo baking school. She told me she'd like to open her own shop someday and is planning to return to Japan to work in a bakery to get more training in technique. But, these days, along with the breads, she makes about a dozen different kinds of filled buns, both savory and sweet, for the family shop.

One of my favorites was the curry bun. This traditional pastry draws on a Japanese version of Indian curry, also made from scratch by Megumi. The vegetable and beef curry is mild, creamy and flavorful, encased in a wheat flour bun, dipped in panko then fried. It's a rapturous melding of different textures and seasonings and reheats beautifully in the oven (about five minutes at 350 degrees) if you can't eat it in the shop.


Another lovely and surprising bun is the corn mayo, a flat pastry topped with a dab of mayonnaise and a bed of corn. It's very delicate and thoroughly enjoyable.

From top, clockwise: curry bun, sausage cheese bun, corn mayo

The sausage cheese bun, with dabs of ketchup in and out, could benefit from a better quality hot dog, but it's actually quite good in a pigs-in-a-blanket kind of way. I enjoyed it.

Megumi also makes the equivalent of little sandwiches, the yakisoba and the potato croquette. The yakisoba tastes just like the dish of thin noodles you'd get at a noodle shop, mixed with slivers of vibrant pink pickled ginger and flecks of cabbage, but set into a hot-dog shaped bun. The potato croquette, dipped in panko and fried, is right out of Japanese home-style cooking, down to the tonkatsu sauce (a ketchup and worcestercher-based sauce named for the dish it traditionally accompanies -- a breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet).

Transitioning from savory to sweet is the neutral melon bun, named for its shape, not any melon flavor. It's a delicate texture and flavor containing just a hint of lemon. It's topped with sugar that gives it a nice crackle when you bite into it. Wonderful with a cup of tea.

From top, clockwise: chocolate cream bun, melon bun, custard cream bun and green tea cream and red bean bun

The red bean bun and the custard cream bun are very traditional, according to Mineko. While Megumi's red bean paste is smooth in texture, Mineko says that often you'll find whole pieces of red bean in the paste. The custard cream reminds her of the pastries her mother bought her when she was a child, except that the pastry of her youth was shaped like a cone instead of the oval bun that Megumi makes. Then, there was the chocolate cream, a twist on traditional Japanese pastries but upholding the style with its not-so-sugary sweet infusion of chocolate cream in the soft bun.

Of these sweet buns, the standout for me was the green tea cream and red bean bun. Megumi adds a touch of matcha, or powdered green tea, to her homemade custard, which, in turn, envelopes the ball of red bean paste. That was simply heaven to the taste buds.


Come for the Japanese breads, stay for the bagels. When Mitsuhiro learned I'm Jewish, he immediately presented me with a plate of bagel, lox and cream cheese. The bagel, an everything -- and I mean everything -- was open face, piled with cream cheese, capers, a slice of tomato, sliced red onion and topped by thick slices of lox (to be honest, I had grown up putting the tomato and onion on top of the lox but I liked this; the lox held everything below in place, making it much easier to eat).


It could have used just a squirt of lemon juice, but really, it was terrific. When I asked him if he boils his bagels before baking them (this creates the essential bagelness of the roll -- a soft, chewy interior with a crispy crust), he looked at me like I was meshugah. Of course, how else would you make bagels? (I had to tell him of the horror of Einstein Bagels, which doesn't boil their bagels; apparently they test marketed bagels and found that a round soft roll with a hole was more popular... In a word, Oy!)


Mitsuhiro, it turns out, learned how to make bagels in Japan. I thought he was pulling my leg, but he was serious. Apparently, bagels have become very popular in Japan, eaten with cream cheese or used for sandwiches. Sun Flour sells about 21 varieties, including a seasonal "Halloween" bagel, made with swirls of pumpkin-infused dough. I had that for breakfast this morning, toasted with just a slight schmear of cream cheese. Despite my preference for traditional bagels, I have to admit that this was delicious.


Sun Flour Bagel also has a tray filled with small bags of homemade sugar cookies made by Megumi. There are some little hearts, round chocolates and, currently, pumpkins and bats.


If I lived closer to Carlsbad, I'd be at Sun Flour Bagel weekly. As it is, I'm looking forward to my next visit to pick up bagels and to buy some of the pastries and bread. The buns are the perfect accompaniment to a pot of green tea. The little sandwiches make for a wonderful late afternoon snack or small dinner on a night I don't feel like cooking.

New traditions, Nana, new traditions.

Sun Flour Bagel is located at 6955 El Camino Real, Suite 105 in Carlsbad. It's about half a mile north of the La Costa Resort.

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Marukai Market: Competition in Kearny Mesa? Sadly, Not Yet

In recent months, those of us who love Asian markets have been eagerly anticipating the opening of Marukai Market in Kearny Mesa. Last year, the Japanese company had taken over the southeast corner of Balboa and Mercury, just off the 163. The three buildings in the little shopping center had previously housed an unfinished furniture store and mattress stores, so it took some renovating to bring in the grocery store, which finally opened earlier this month; Marukai Living, a strange hybrid of housewares, health care, clothing and other items; and Daiso, a very cool $1.50 store. The latter two opened late last year.

Marukai Market was the last of the trio to open and I must have stopped by there two or three times thinking it was ready, only to find newspaper ads papering the glass walls and the doors still shuttered. So, I was almost breathless when I finally got to walk in and see what they had to offer. It would have to be special. After all, the large, established Mitsuwa Marketplace is just down the street on Mercury and the lovely Nijiya Market with its organic produce and on-site bakery is perhaps half a mile away on Convoy (not to mention Zion, the large Korean market, which is just across Balboa). I was primed to fall in love.

Unfortunately, it has been a not-so-grand opening and there’s no love in my heart. I’ve been to the store three times this month, including a trip with renowned Japanese cooking teacher Mineko Moreno, and have been terribly disappointed. The store itself is very small, but even so shelves are chronically understocked as is the produce department. Most of the fish is frozen. The take away sushi counter is tiny and unimpressive. And, to make matters worse, the market is freezing. Poor Mineko could barely keep from shivering and even I, always more comfortable on the cool side, was ready to bolt after 20 minutes.

Since my goal is to showcase not diminish places that offer interesting foodstuff, I am reluctant to say don’t go. You’ll find a lot of great stuff at Marukai. It’s simply that you’ll find the same and more at Mitsuwa and Nijiya.

Of course, one of the benefits of visiting the store with Mineko was getting her take on many of the items at the store. So, I did return and pick up some things that stood out.

One of my favorite dishes when I go out for sushi or stop by the market is seaweed salad. I love the ocean overtones and how the seaweed’s texture can be simultaneously chewy and crunchy. Marukai sells a nice little chukka seaweed salad, which Mineko pointed out is actually Chinese, not Japanese. I picked up a package of the salad, along with a package of combination sushi and a crunchy shrimp roll. I enjoyed the chukka, but the sushi was a little tired; the crunchy shrimp roll, for instance, not so crunchy.

In the noodle aisle, Mineko pointed out the vast variety of dry noodles that seem very similar, but she pulled out one package that is unique, buckwheat soba noodles (Jyuuwari Soba Nisshin) that are made only with buckwheat flour. Most others also contain wheat flour. These, she said, are a little challenging to cook—don’t rinse them before cooking because they’ll turn into mush, but do rinse them after. However, the flavor is worth the extra care in preparation.

Mineko was pleased, I think, with the selection of pickled vegetables. There were packages of pickled garlic, one sweet, one more savory. I can’t resist garlic and wanted to try something a little different, so I bought the sweet garlic, or shiba ninniku zuke, which contains soy sauce, sugar, honey, vinegar, smoked shaved bonito and lemon. They are, indeed, sweetly tangy and I’ve enjoyed snacking on these a lot.

I wasn't as fond of the pickled eggplant, although I loved the crazy deep blue purple color. It’s a simple pickle of eggplant and vinegar, but the flavor was too harsh for me. It may just have been the particular brand I bought or perhaps it’s something that is tastier in the context of other dishes. When I go to eat at Sakura, they usually offer a small plate of pickled vegetables with the main dish and I wonder if I would like them as much if I were just eating them on their own.

My favorite, though, may have been the pickled daikon radish. I’m a sucker for this and the small pre-sliced package I picked up was particularly good.

Usually, these are added to noodles, but at heart I'm a nosher, so I enjoy munching on them solo. Mineko singled out a different package of daikon called bettarazuke, which she said are softer and very sweet compared to other daikon. Another pickled item that she eats everyday is pickled plum, of which Marukai has several varieties.

Mineko pointed out a wide selection of rakkyo, or pickled shallot, that are widely served with curry. In the same display area was something I’ll return for called Oden, a favorite of Mineko. These are little pieces of molded mousse-like fish, very mild in flavor, that create a popular winter soup dish. Blanche them briefly and add to a broth with winter root vegetables and simmer for about 30 minutes, according to Mineko.

The meats at Marukai looked interesting. They carry both Kobe-style and Kobe beef for shabu shabu. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between the real deal and the imitation. The Kobe’s marbling is constant, almost like tiny capillaries running through the meat. Kobe-style marbling is chunkier, thicker, not as refined.

At Mineko’s suggestion, I later picked up an interesting product I hadn’t noticed before, soy wrappers.

They come in five colors: turmeric yellow, sesame, paprika orange, spinach green and original soy. These are pretty little sheets that you can obviously use to make sushi rolls, but also can be a colorful “salad bowl” or be stacked with vegetables to make a fun appetizer. This is a summer-like product and with all the rain and cold weather, I haven’t tried them yet.

Finally, we hit the snack aisles. Months ago I had toured Nijiya with Mineko and got hooked on a kid’s snack, “Hot’N Spicy” teriyaki nori, little strips of roasted nori with soy sauce, sweet sake and chili pepper. I was happy to find that Marukai also sells it and bought a couple of packages.

I pointed out to Mineko my favorite cookie, a little pinched disc that looks like a cookie version of Frosted Flakes but has a wonderfully zesty bite of ginger. The package says they’re called Funaoka Shoga Tsumami. I love eating them with green tea in the late afternoon.

Mineko, on the other hand, is addicted to Karinto cookies (Gokubuto Kuro Karinto). Made with wheat flour and brown sugar, they look like stubby pretzels and taste like molasses. She likes to crumble them and scatter the pieces on ice cream.

I’m hoping that after this first month of their being open Marukai gets it together and not only fully stocks the store (honestly, how can you have so little rice available?) but begins to offer something more that would draw customers in who otherwise would choose Mitsuwa or Nijiya. If you find that your experience at Marukai is better than mine have been, please let me know.

Marukai Market is located at 8151 Balboa Ave. (Note: this is supposedly a membership market, but nobody at the registers asked if I had a card or wanted to join. Perhaps this will change? My calls to the company haven't been returned.)

Have some thoughts about Marukai Market or other ethnic markets in San Diego? Do you have a favorite neighborhood market or shop that carries unique or unusual foodstuff? Let me know or add to the conversation by clicking on comments below:

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