Myoga

• myōga茗荷

  Japanese

  Names the plant and the bud alike. The blanched young shoot is sold separately as myōgatake, and a recipe calling for myōga without qualification means the bud.

• yangha양하

  Korean

• ránghé蘘荷

  Mandarin

  A literary and botanical name more than a kitchen one; the bud is little used in Chinese cooking outside a few southern regions.

Mild, clean and slightly bitter, with a brief gingery warmth that fades quickly. The flavour is as much in the texture as the taste: a thin slice is crisp and layered, and the effect in a cold dish is of freshness rather than of spice.

Gingery at a distance and floral close to, with a green, faintly resinous freshness. It has much less of the lemony sharpness of fresh ginger rhizome.

Pale cream at the base shading to pink and purple-red at the tips of the bracts. Sliced raw, the cross-section shows fine concentric layers; pickled in vinegar, the whole bud turns a clear pink.

Crisp and layered raw, like a very fine onion; soft and slightly chewy once cooked, which is why it is rarely cooked for long.

Slice it as thinly as you can and soak the slices in iced water for a few minutes, then drain well. Add it at the table or in the last moment of cooking. Cooking it for longer turns an aromatic garnish into a mild vegetable, which is a legitimate dish but not a substitute for the garnish.

A raw garnish above all: finely sliced over chilled sōmen and soba, cold tofu, sashimi, vinegared salads and grilled aubergine, and stirred into miso soup at the last moment. Pickled in sweet vinegar it becomes a pink condiment for grilled fish. Tempura and quick stir-fries use it as a vegetable rather than an aromatic.

• grinding — Not ground. It is sliced very thinly, lengthways or across, and often soaked briefly in cold water to crisp it and take off a little of the bitterness.
• boiling — Added to miso soup or clear broth at the last moment. More than a minute or two of heat softens it and dulls the aroma, and it is then just a vegetable.
• frying — Occasionally fried as tempura, which keeps the outside crisp and turns the inside soft and sweet — a different and legitimate ingredient from the raw garnish.

Squeeze gently. A good bud is firm, tight and heavy for its size, with bracts closed against each other; a soft, loose or opening bud has passed its best.

• Softness or wrinkling
• Bracts loosening or a flower emerging
• Brown or slimy base

• Loss of moisture, which softens the bud and ends the crunch
• Loss of the fresh aroma as the bud ages
• Rot at the cut base if kept wet and sealed

Zingiberaceae

A deciduous herbaceous perennial with leafy pseudostems to about a metre, spreading by rhizomes. Unlike culinary ginger it is hardy to frost, dying back in winter. The flower spikes appear separately from the leafy stems, at soil level, as plump pink-tinged buds enclosed in overlapping bracts.

Native to southern China, and cultivated in Japan for long enough to be treated there as a native vegetable. Japan is where it is grown and eaten in quantity.

• Japan — major producer. Grown commercially and in home gardens; the principal market.
• South Korea — notable producer. Grown on a smaller scale, particularly in the south.
• China — origin

The buds are picked by hand as they push through the soil in late summer and autumn, before they open. An opened flower is past its best: the bud loosens, the crunch goes and the aroma fades.

1. Picking — Buds cut at ground level while still tight, and trimmed of soil and outer bracts.
2. Selling fresh — Sold fresh and chilled. Myoga is not dried as a spice, and dried myoga is not an article of trade.Why: The aroma and texture both depend on the bud being fresh.

Grown as a shade-tolerant perennial clump under trees or on the north side of buildings, and left in the ground for years. For myōgatake the emerging shoots are covered or grown in darkness so that they stay pale and tender.

Temperate and moist, in partial shade. It is one of the few culinary members of the ginger family that tolerates frost, which is what lets it be grown as a perennial in Japan and in cool-temperate gardens elsewhere.

• Firm, plump, tightly closed buds with no flower showing.
• Clear pink-to-purple colouring at the tips.
• A clean, dry, unbroken base.
• A floral, gingery smell when a bract is bent back.

Myoga has been grown and eaten in Japan for well over a thousand years and belongs to the group of seasonal aromatics — with shiso, sanshō leaf and yuzu — that Japanese cooking uses to mark the time of year. It remained almost entirely a Japanese vegetable, and has only recently begun to appear outside Japanese groceries.

A domestic fresh-produce trade, overwhelmingly within Japan. Its perishability has kept it from becoming a traded spice.