The Least Useful Guide to Fukuoka

I suppose the most commonly used garnish in our everyday cooking are some kinds of spring onions and ginger.  But during hot seasons, green shiso leaves and myoga buds take over their place.

Their flavour is not as stimulating as those of spring onion or ginger, but more fresh and clean. And their crisp texture stimulate our appetite.

Shiso is (in my understanding) a biggest summer herb. They appear nearly everywhere in summer cooking; apart from replacing spring onions, they wrap rice balls, garnish and suppress fishiness of sashimi, become tempura, and even replace basils in pastas or salads.  

Given suitable soil and condition, the shiso can grow and naturalize quite easily to your garden. Actually in my family home there used to be a shrub of shiso in our back garden from which my mother picked up some leaves every day to decorate her dishes. Sadly, now I have to buy them as I have a brown thumb and don’t have my own garden.

I still faintly feel it extravagant to pay JPY100 for a bag of leaves (about 30 or something, but at supermarket only 10 leaves can cost you the same).

To me, myoga feels more luxurious than shiso. I am willing to pay JPY100 for this small packet of myoga buds.  

I guess growing myoga is not as easy as growing shiso. I have heard that you need a shady and wet place to grow myoga successfully. These conditions seem to be against what people tend to prefer in their gardens, you see.

By the way, have you heard that eating too many myoga buds devastates you memory. Don’t worry about that. Resent researches have shown (sounds academic? ), the chemical components of myoga may enhance your concentration. Maybe I instinctively go for myoga driven by my subconscious desire to keep my aging brain somehow working.