an seanduine wrote:
I was told by Oh-sama that one of the uses his client restaurants made of nameko was in their miso stock. I think the difference is in the daishi they make up. (No store-bought instant used here!) I see where the more common practice is to sometimes soak/brew shiitake for part of the daishi. The nameko is sort of the gold foil

treatment.
Yeah, here we're getting into specialty dashi types that some restaurants will have as a sort of unique signature, but you could whip up your own, too, if you wanted to step outside the box. In the end dashi can be made from many things, even just konbu kelp alone, but the go-to standard all over is of course your skipjack or bonito flakes (think tuna bacon), konbu, and water: quick and easy to make, and
the classic for good reason. Next instead of shaved fish (not the album, thank you) would be niboshi (teensy dried baby sardines). From there things can get creative and even expensive. Temple cuisine and vegans in general use a simple shiitake/konbu dashi, but there are work-intensive turbo-charged shiitake versions out there too, created by obsessed vegan chefs on a mission. I
think the only constant in dashi is the konbu, but I wouldn't be too surprised if even that might be substituted on occasion; still, it's hard for me to imagine. Konbu is so endowed with glutamates that most cooks probably consider it indispensable, because the main thing about dashi, no matter how you make it, is that it must above all be an effective umami delivery system, and, of course, be right tasty too. As one of the fundamental building blocks of Japanese cooking, it's best to think of dashi not as simply a broth, but as a seasoning; you should be able to season just about anything with it. And they do. For example, if ever you've had those rolled omelets in a sushi bar, you can take it to the bank that there's dashi in 'em.
an seanduine wrote:
As to umezuki/umeboshi, Oh-sama used to say with a snarky voice that ´if it stood still too long in any Japanese kitchen, it would get pickled, whatever it was.´
Ha. There's actually some truth to that; the Japanese hate to waste food, so if it can be pickled, dried or fermented, they'll do it.
The Japanese learned the hard way not to use metal bentō boxes: over time, umezuke eat holes in them.
an seanduine wrote:
If you look about, you may find canned nameko. I expect they would be fairly expensive.
The day may come yet. I haven't really been on the lookout, though, to be honest.