1. Decide to make something you’ve never made before.
2. Get as good an idea as you can as to what you want to make. The clearer your mental image the better.
3. Ask yourself if it’s worth making. (There are many ways to decide if something has worth.)
4. Go to a pretty place.
5. Make sure you are surrounded by a lot of people who can and will help you. Ideally, they should a) know what you want to make, b) have positive feelings about what you want to make, and c) not have that nasty habit of ridiculing you when you don’t do everything perfectly the first time around.
I decided to make miso. Miso from rice and beans with no agricultural chemicals added. I went to Fujieda, to the Kinezuka family’s farm.
And just like that, those tough, tough steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 were all finished. The rest was easy. (Note: The above steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are often more problematic. It depends greatly on what you decide to make, and where you are . . . where having all kinds of meanings.)
Now, how to make miso.
1) Look at what was made last year. You’ll get a mental image of what you’re aiming for. 2) The rice has been laced with kohji-kin. Kohji-kin is the magical microorganism that is going to say “Abracadabra!” and turn the rice and beans into miso. Splendid. But now this mixture of rice and magic is lumpy. You and your friends need to get the lumps out. (If you have fantasized about being in a string quartet, but are totally useless with a violin or a cello, you may find that getting your hands in this bowl may actually make you feel, for a moment, that you can “make music” with others.)
3) Add salt. (This salt, the package said, was from Okinawa.) 4) Add cooked soybeans. Lots. Shouldn’t be too warm, though. The magic doesn’t like it.
5) Mix it all up good. 6) Stick it in the grinder, then (after Ayumi-san sneaks in and adds a bit of the water that the beans were cooked in, 7) mash it up more with your hands. Now the aroma will fill your nose. It’s nice. Don’t have a grinder? Just squash the darn stuff, any way you can.
No pictures for step 8. Sorry. But this was fun. You’ve got to get the miso into the big urn. But you can’t let any air get under the miso. So you 8a) grab a handful of miso and work it into a ball, 8b) flatten it into a hamburger patty, and 8c) rare back and fire it into the urn . . . like a flame-throwing closer in the bottom of the ninth with the World Series on the line.
This 8c seemed to be the most enjoyed step of the day. You could see a whole world of demonic stress slung away. I only saw two people miss the urn. Hey, sometimes you do miss the urn. No big deal.
9) Compare what you’ve made with what what you’ve made will look like in a year. Then try a little image training. Look at both, then look at only the new and see both. 10) Watch Ayumi-san do the delicate work: covering the finished product with cloth and rice bran, then plastic. (11) Sign your name. For two reasons. First, sometimes it’s good to follow conventions . . . and in this case, there’s no good reason not to. Second, you should feel proud. You’ve made something you’ve never made before.