It’s often said that you eat first with your eyes, and Japanese diners do this as much as anyone. In addition to fabulous taste, the Japanese expect their food to look gorgeous, too.
Even though appreciation of nature is an important aspect of traditional washoku cookery, it’s quite common for cooks to enhance the innate color of food through natural means. One such color enhancer is kuchinashi no mi — dried gardenia pods — which contain the edible dye crocin. This substance has a vivid, almost neon-like yellow-orange hue, and when absorbed by the right foods, produces dishes that are visually appealing as well as delicious. Sold in packets containing about five pods, many Japanese supermarkets carry kuchinashi no mi from November through the New Year holidays.
When I first arrived in Japan in the mid-1960s, the pods were available in pharmacies, suggesting that the natural dye had significant anti-bacterial properties. Indeed, gauze dyed with the pods is similar in color to iodine-soaked bandages. Unlike iodine, however, the gardenia pod dye is odorless and tasteless.
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