Edamame

Salt the wet pod, not the bean. Your lips do the seasoning.

Salt drives thirst, bitterness resets the palate, repeat all night.

Toasted seed against a bean that already reads faintly nutty.

Same legume, fermented. You are pairing it with its own future.

Fried in oil and tossed with the pods so it sticks to the fuzz.

Heat on a bean whose own flavour is soft and slightly sweet.

Salt, pod, dust. Nothing is cooked twice and nothing needs a sauce.

Same bean, two processes. The pod tastes of what the sauce came from.

Peel oil cuts the beany green note that puts people off soy.

Shelled and steeped cold; the beans drink glutamate overnight.

Same hexenal green. The bean tells you what the leaf is actually made of.

Crushed into a dip, the menthol turns the bean unexpectedly bright.

Both green and faintly bitter; the tea salt-cures better than sugar.