Myoga

Buckwheat is nutty and flat; shredded myoga is the only sharp thing in the bowl.

Cold silken curd with no flavour of its own, given crunch and a ginger-pine top.

Salt-fermented depth under a crisp floral bud; nothing else is on the plate.

Smoky inosinate against a raw, cold aromatic. The contrast is the entire dish.

Two watery crunches, one neutral and one floral. Salt them together, briefly.

Vinegared rice supplies the acid; the bud supplies the aroma and the bite.

Quick-pickled, it turns pink and the pine note sharpens into something citric.

Oily blue fish needs a raw aromatic. Ginger works; myoga works and stays cold.

Clean white sashimi with a floral bud instead of wasabi. Subtler, less nasal.

Ginger-flower sharpness against resin. Autumn Japan in one bowl.

Sweet raw shellfish and a crisp gingery bud, no soy, no acid, just salt.

Bitter pith and a pine-floral bud; both drying, both cold, neither sweet.

Pinene in the bud and pinene in the juniper. Muddle it, do not garnish with it.

Sharp gingery bud eaten raw. Nothing else in the garden does this.

Berry esters under a floral ginger bud. Untried anywhere, chemically defensible.