The Third Dish

The lights in the kitchen of Aoiya came on at five-thirty every morning. I was the one who had decided it, and because I never told anyone, the only person who knew was the newspaper boy who climbed the stone steps of Kagurazaka in the dark.

When I turned the key in the back door, the chill that had settled in the earthen floor overnight wrapped around my ankles. Wet stone, old hinoki, the faint citrus of last night’s detergent. Beneath it all, the thin residue of yesterday’s katsuobushi. Since October began, the smell had grown a little drier with each morning.

I slipped into my white jacket and folded the cuffs back three times. Three times brought the bone of the wrist just into view. Twice and they got wet with every washing; four times and they bunched at the elbow. Six years earlier, when I first started, Kuzumi-san had told me, “The sleeves decide the work.” I had never changed the number since.

I filled the large pot with well water and sank the Rishiri kombu into it. At Aoiya the kombu was always left to soak overnight; my job was to put it on the fire in the morning. When I brushed the surface with my fingertips, the white powder bloomed and dissolved, and the water grew faintly slick. The scent of the sea had not yet risen. In the cold water the kombu still slept.

I set the flame low. I kept the water moving between sixty degrees, pinching the blue tip of the flame to the size of a fingernail. No thermometer. I watched for the moment when fine bubbles began to gather along the rim of the pot and were just about to leave the bottom but had not yet left. Rush it and the sliminess of the kombu would cloud the dashi.

While I waited I shaved the katsuobushi. I tested the blade of the plane with the pad of my finger and set the well-dried block at an angle. Each push across the wood produced a dry shush, and thin, petal-like shavings gathered in the box. The smell of smoked wood and the closed-in fat of sun-dried fish. Freshly shaved flakes had a completely different outline of aroma from anything that came in a bag. The moment they touched the air was strongest; after that they rounded minute by minute.

Steam began to rise from the pot and the air in the kitchen loosened. When I lifted the kombu with chopsticks, the thick leaves bent; a fingernail went in easily. I pulled them out. The scent that left the pot with the steam rose to my face—less the open sea than the wet moss of rocks after rain.

I raised the flame. Just as the water was about to dance I added a splash of cold water and dropped the shavings in by the handful. They floated for a moment, then grew heavy and sank. The speed of their sinking told me the temperature.

When they had all gone under I turned off the heat and waited. I counted only in my head. If I spoke the numbers aloud, my hands somehow lagged.

I poured the liquid gently through a strainer lined with cloth. Never squeeze the flakes. Squeeze and the astringency and raw fishiness come through together—that was what I had been taught. Take only what falls under its own weight. A liquid the color of pale amber, clearer than gold, collected at the bottom of the bowl.

I leaned my face into the steam. The smoked fragrance of the bonito came first; the quiet presence of the kombu followed. The two stood side by side without quarreling.

“The aroma’s risen,” I said aloud in the empty kitchen.

After six, Takano-san arrived. He shouldered the back door open, smoked a single cigarette under the exhaust fan, then washed his hands carefully at the sink and rinsed his mouth. His hair was cropped short and he used no product. A cook who carries smell from his head is a disgrace—that was Takano-san’s saying—yet he could not quit the cigarettes.

“Yo, early as ever, Minato. First one again?”

“Good morning.”

I had already set the scale on the cutting board. Digital, accurate to a tenth of a gram; I had bought it with my own wages. Before using it I wiped the pan with a dry cloth and checked the zero. I tipped salt onto a small dish and added grains one by one with an earpick-like spoon until the numbers lined up.

Takano-san peered over my shoulder.

“Here we go again—the science experiment.”

“It’s just my nature.”

“Nature, huh. When I was a junior, doing that would’ve got me a spoon across the knuckles from the master. ‘Learn salt with your fingers,’ he’d say.”

Kenta, washing dishes, laughed. He was a first-year junior, not yet allowed to hold a knife; mornings he polished pots and floors.

“Is Minato-san’s salt the same number every day?”

“Never the same day twice. It changes with the kombu.”

“Then why measure it?”

Takano-san lightly cuffed Kenta’s head.

“Don’t ask unnecessary questions. Minato’s scale is a specialty of Aoiya. One day it’ll end up in a museum.”

More laughter. With that, the kitchen morning finally began.

I finished the clear broth. I measured a portion of the first dashi into a small pot, dropped in the weighed salt, and added a few drops of light soy—also weighed. The toasted fragrance of the soy bloomed for an instant in the steam and then drew back.

Kuzumi-san arrived just before seven. The head chef came later than anyone and left later than anyone. The first thing he did was tie the strings of his cook’s coat behind his back—not a bow, a single knot, the ends tucked inward so they would not come loose or catch. The motion never varied by a hair.

I poured a little of the broth into a small dish and held it out to him.

Kuzumi-san took it, paused it under his nose, then quietly took it into his mouth. He rolled it on his tongue, eyes lowered for only a moment.

“Salt’s standing out today.”

He returned the dish. The right side of his brow had lifted by an almost invisible amount.

I opened the notebook at my side and drew a pencil line beside the morning’s numbers. I rewrote the figure one line lower. I added a little more first dashi to the small pot, re-weighed, and offered another dish. Kuzumi-san was already looking at another pot, but when I held it out he took it silently, then nodded without a word. The brow did not move.

I rewrote the numbers once more.

The ten-o’clock staff meal was oyakodon. Kenta had made it, still clumsy as he poured in the beaten egg and covered it to steam. When the bowls were set out, the cooks shouldered together at the long table in the corner.

Takano-san took one bite and stopped his chopsticks.

“Sweet today.”

Kenta hunched his shoulders. The young cook beside him sipped the broth.

“No, the dashi’s winning. The mirin’s held back.”

“Whose side are you on?” Kenta complained, and laughter rose again.

I lifted my bowl. Heat traveled through my palm to the base of my fingers. The egg was still soft, clinging to the chicken; when I lifted it with chopsticks it trembled loosely yet held together. The chicken skin gave off the fragrant smell of fat, and the green scent of mitsuba escaped last to the nose.

“The egg’s soft.”

Kenta looked up and smiled with relief.

“Minato-san’s always kind.”

Takano-san snorted.

“Not kind. The guy’s just bad with words. He looks for something to praise and ends up talking about texture.”

I laughed and took another bite. The heat of the rice lingered long on my tongue.

When the midday prep had settled, the proprietress came down to the kitchen.

Aoi Chiyo was eighty-one. She held her back straight, wore a wisteria-colored Edo komon with an unbleached obi, and the white of her tabi was always dazzling. She used only unscented powder and had never once in her life worn perfume—so the head waitress had told me. A woman who comes down to the kitchen should not carry scent; that had been the previous master’s teaching.

She stopped in front of my small pot and leaned her face over the steam. She closed her deeply wrinkled eyelids and drew a long, thin breath.

“It smells good.”

That was all she said before returning to the front. The end of her voice had lifted a little. When the tone rose it was a good day. When it fell she passed the pots without a word. In six years I had learned to hear the difference.

I took the small pot off the heat and closed the notebook without changing the numbers.

In the afternoon, while arranging the dry-goods shelf, I came across a tea canister. It held the bancha served after the staff meal. The moment I opened the lid the roasted fragrance of the leaves spread deep into my nose.

I remembered the tea fields of my family home in Shizuoka.

As a child I had often played with my grandfather. He would divide tea leaves into small paper bags and make me close my eyes. He opened the mouth of a bag under my nose. In that single instant I was to name which field the leaves had come from and when they had been picked. The upper-mountain fields carried the smell of mist. The riverside fields were thick with the smell of earth. First flush was sharp and green; second flush was round like sun-dried hay.

The moment the bag opens is when you know best, Grandfather said. Linger and the aroma mixes with the air of the room and everything becomes the same.

I closed the lid of the canister and returned it to its place. A little of the roasted-leaf scent remained on my palm.