[Pickle Recipes] Shiki Tsukemono Enkagen (3) Umeboshi and others

|Umeboshi (pickled plums)|
|Take plums that are well-ripened, soak them in water for about an hour to wash them, and then pickle them using three sho of salt for every to of plums, adding shiso leaves as you see fit. At first, use a light weight, and as the salt penetrates the plums, gradually increase the weight. After fourteen or fifteen days, or perhaps twenty, choose a day with good weather, take them out onto a bamboo mat, and dry them in the sun.

For immediate consumption, dry them for one or two days and store them in a container. To keep them for a long time, dry them for one day, soak them in plum vinegar at night, and dry them again the next day. Repeat this for three days, then dry them for another four or five days until they are shriveled, and place them in a jar. Even if ten or twenty years pass, the flavor will not change. The luster of the umeboshi will be good, and the flavor will be exceptional.

It is common practice to cut daikon radish into flower shapes or slice it thinly and pickle it together with ginger in the aforementioned plum vinegar. In the Kamigata region, they often pickle lotus root and ginger, use red lotus root as a garnish for zazen beans, and it is standard practice to use red ginger when pickling sushi.

You should add the squeezed juice of shiso leaves to this plum vinegar and store it in a sake bottle. It is a useful item to have on hand for cooking.

|Pickled Green Plums|
|Pick the green plums while they are young, soak them in water overnight (this is to remove the bitterness), and the next day, drain the water. Add two sho of salt to one to of green plums and pickle them with a light weight. When the water rises, pour it out, rinse them roughly, dry off the moisture, and pickle them again with a little sprinkled salt. The first water will contain bitterness, so be sure to remove that bitter water before storing them.

As an aside, to make candied plums, remove the bitter water from the aforementioned green plums, soak them in sugar syrup, wrap them in shiso leaves, sprinkle them with white sugar, and apply a light weight.

|Senmaizuke (thousand-layer pickles)|
|Wash shiso leaves well one by one, stack them one hundred or two hundred at a time, tie them with hemp thread, briefly blanch them in hot water, sandwich them between boards, squeeze out the moisture thoroughly, line them up at the bottom of a miso barrel, and press them down with split bamboo so they do not move. The tamari from the miso will naturally soak through, and they will be ready in no time.

|Burdock Miso Pickles|
|Remove the ends of the burdock root, cut only the middle section into six or seven-sun lengths, briefly blanch them in hot water, and pickle them in miso. These should be pickled at the bottom of the barrel along with the takuan daikon miso pickles. They will not be ready unless more than a year has passed. The older they get—three years, five years—the better they become.

|Inro (medicine case) Pickles|
|Cut the ends off a round-pickled melon, scoop out the center, stuff it with hotade (water pepper), shiso leaves, young ginger, green chili peppers, etc., and pickle them with a light salt balance and a heavy weight. After six or seven days, they are ready to eat. The spiciness of the chili peppers transfers to the melon, which is excellent. Perhaps they are named this because the cross-sections resemble an inro case. It is also fine to do this with cucumbers. They have a nice crunch and are just as good as the round-pickled melon.

|Spiral Pickles|
|Toward the end of the cucumber season, pickle them with plenty of chili peppers, light salt, and a weight. When the water has risen sufficiently, do not split them in two, but make a vertical cut with a knife, scoop out the center, dry them in the sun for a day, and let them cool thoroughly. Roll them tightly from one end, wrap them with split bamboo skin so they do not unravel, mix five sho of rice bran with one sho of salt, pickle them just like takuan pickles, and apply a firm weight. They will be ready in about fifteen days. Wash off the bran, untie the bindings, and when you slice them from the end, they look like spirals. The taste is spicy and sweet, and they have a good crunch.

|Daruma Pickles|
Split a round-pickled melon in two, remove the center, and pickle it with light salt and a weight. Perhaps they are called this because the shape of the melon resembles a Daruma doll used as a toy. Is the skin tough, or is the Zen flavor inside sweet? How about that?

|Discarded Small Boat|
|Split a white melon in two, remove the center well, pile salt on it, and dry it in the sun. Dry it without pouring off the water that comes out. When it has dried and shriveled after six or seven days, store it in a container like a jar. From the middle of winter through spring, soak it in mirin, and it is wonderful to serve to rare guests. For immediate consumption, drying it for one day is sufficient.

|Someone wrote:
　　|A sudden evening shower, the body of a dried melon, a discarded small boat|
It is said they were named after this poem.