I am a Nikkei ( nisei ) born in Chile and raised in the central zone. My maternal grandparents and my mother, who arrived in the country in 1929, always longed for Japanese food, as did my father who arrived in 1936.
I remember that they always found fish for sashimi , but there was no wasabi or shoyu . The former was not considered or was replaced by grated radish ( daikon oroshi ) and shoyu was replaced by a beef-based substitute. In any case, there was also rice, so gohan was never lacking. That is why for the Nisei, sashimi has to be accompanied with gohan .
Within the luggage of the emigrants who arrived before World War II, there were always some items that they assumed they would not find in Chile. For example, the suribachi that allowed you to make kamaboko with local fish and a kind of wooden boxes, similar to current mandolins for scraping katsuobushi that came in hard wooden bars, almost petrified by time. They also brought seeds and plants that in those times it was not necessary to declare; My grandfather, I remember, cultivated, among other things, hechima , konnyaku , shungiku . Therefore, we had the opportunity to eat shungiku tempura and when there was none, my mother made them with young chrysanthemum leaves.
Another interesting aspect is that the food was mixed with some traditional Japanese customs. In Santiago, at the Japanese Society every year, at the end of December, a “ mochitsuki ” is held in preparation for the new year. Thus, at an early age, we learned about mochi and its different ways of consuming it, first fresh with kinako , then in Zooni and finally roasted spread in shoyu with sugar.
Homemade niguiri zushi accompanied with rosé wine (Photo from the Hirose family album: http://www.discovernikkei.org/nikkeialbum/albums/518/)
In my childhood my father worked in a Japanese mining company in the north of Chile and every so often a Japanese ship arrived at the mining port and on more than one occasion we were invited to have lunch or dinner with the Captain. There we learned about the soda drink saida , osenbe and Lotte candies. Our father also got natto , which he really liked since he was originally from Fukushima, although born in Ishinomaki. That is one of the reasons why I really like natto , to the point that when it was not yet available in Chile, in the 1980s, I had a friend who sent me the natto kin ferment from Japan and I I made a thermal box that kept the temperature at about 40º C and made fresh natto with soy beans. About 20 years ago, natto began to be imported from California.
A curious thing that happened at home was that three non-Nikkei nephews, on my wife's side, lived at home while studying at university. All three are crazy about natto , being totally Chilean. I think they have acquired quite a bit of Nikkei culinary culture by living for a few years at home.
I like cooking, but mostly the sashimi and sushi that we make at home. And we learned to make them when we were young, because in Chile there were no Japanese restaurants. For a couple of decades, many of them have been installed, at first with Japanese Itamae and then expanded with Chilean chefs. The adaptations have been multiple and in the rolls there is no shortage of Philadelphia cheese and avocado or abocado, tempura or asparagus rolls.
Those of us who lived our childhood, between 1940 and 1960, greatly enjoyed family sukiyaki . We liked it a lot because it was quite an event to gather in front of a stove or kitchenette with a pot on top and the most impressive thing was that the father intervened in the preparation and gave us instructions on how it would be more delicious. With the raw egg as a sauce the deliciousness was crowned. Of course, the gohan couldn't be missing either. The adaptation of the ingredients was another issue; There was no hakusai but there was cabbage and spinach; There was no tofu or negi, but there were onions.
My family also likes nabe ryoori where we combine chicken broth, chicken meat, fish and seafood, which are abundant in our country, along with seasonal vegetables (although by the way, the seasons are almost They don't exist and there is everything throughout the year). The best thing about nabe and sukiyaki is the ending: Gohan with the rest broth and a good okayu with all the flavor of what was cooked and the noodles in the case of sukiyaki .
Seeing the case of the natto -loving nephews, I think that the adaptation of foreign foods depends mainly on “opportunity” and “age.”
I believe that the great legacy of Japan's culinary culture to our countries is having introduced gohan in combination with seafood, as opposed to the culture of bread and animal meat. A healthier diet.
Homemade niguiri zushi accompanied with rosé wine (Photo from the Hirose family album)
© 2012 Roberto Hirose
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