There is a reason for a summer kitchen.

In Japanese, “just the right balance” is ii anbai (いい塩梅). The 梅 in anbai (塩梅) is the ume of umezu, the brine that comes off salted ume plums.

The word was originally read enbai, and it meant adjusting the taste with salt and ume brine.

Over it came another word, anbai (按排) ── to set things out in good order. The two are said to have blended toward the end of the medieval period into the way it is said now.

The curious part is that people say a “good” anbai, not a “correct” one.

The water in the ingredients, the heat of that day, how much you have sweated, how the person eating is feeling. None of it is the same from day to day.

So there is more than one taste that is just right.

When choosing salt, too, there are things the big name “natural salt” does not tell you.

Which sea it came from.
How the seawater was concentrated.
Whether it was crystallized by sun and wind.
Whether it was boiled down in a kettle.

In some places seawater is crystallized under the sun. In others, like Japan with its rain and humidity, a method grew up of concentrating the seawater first and then boiling it down in a kettle.

I decide which salt I will use, and then I make things with that salt.

Umeboshi. Miso soup. Salted rice balls. Salt koji. The salted lemons I keep made.

On the back of the bag, under “ingredients,” “method of production” and “place of origin,” the journey that salt took to reach the table is written down.

A raw tomato.
A roasted tomato.
A stewed tomato.
A dried tomato.

The ingredient is the same, and yet the smell, the sweetness, and the impression in the mouth are all different.

We think a good deal about “what to eat.”

But we may not think much about “what character to give that ingredient before eating it.”

With some things, heat drives off water, changes the smell, and makes sweetness and umami easier to notice. There is also a juiciness and a bite that you only meet when it is raw.

It is not that one is above the other. Inside the same ingredient there are several choices.

Cooking with heat in summer is also more than two choices, a long simmer or raw.

Pour hot water over it quickly.
Sear only the surface.
Steam it briefly.
Turn off the heat and leave it to the warmth that remains.

Without changing the ingredients, just changing how you keep company with fire makes the table a little lighter.

In Eastern thinking, the heat of long simmering has been said to work in the direction of drawing the body in. So that drawing-in heat is held to suit winter.

※ A way of seeing that grew over a long history of daily life

All the same, since I came to the United States I cook over charcoal and barbecue more.

Heat that sears and draws in is, in terms of yin and yang, the opposite direction from summer.

I do it often anyway.

Nukazuke, shibazuke, nozawana-zuke, sunki-zuke, iburigakko.

All of them are pickles, but neither the ingredients nor the methods are the same.

Shibazuke from Ohara in Kyoto uses eggplant and red shiso.
Sunki-zuke from the Kiso region of Nagano has been made without salt.
Iburigakko from Akita is daikon that is smoked and then pickled in rice bran.

Why are they so different?

What could be harvested there.
How cold the winter was.
Whether there was so much rain or snow that drying outdoors was hard.
What people wanted to have left until spring.

A way of keeping food is the answer people long ago gave to the climate of their place.

In Kiso a saying remains: “Lend rice, but never lend salt” (米は貸しても塩は貸すな). In mountain country far from the sea, salt was precious. So a pickle made without salt came to be.

And keeping food was not a craft of going without.

Rub a vegetable with salt and water comes out of it. That water is not something to throw away; it becomes the pickling liquid, and it becomes umami. As the water that is free to move decreases, the microbes that can work there are narrowed down.

Not driving all of them out, but leaving only the ones you want to work.

If keeping long were the only thought, there must have been blander methods. And yet what remained was umeboshi, nukazuke, and dried fish.

In summer only, I make a point of finishing what I have cooked ahead within two days.

When I am unsure, I make it again rather than reheat it.

Some days that feels like a waste. But eating something that does not taste good is, probably, the greater waste.