The chef Shota Nakajima goes to bed early and wakes up early. He walks his dog for an hour and a half every day. He doesn’t drink anymore, thriving on a diet of rice with grilled fish and pickles for most of his meals, especially breakfast. Getting to this place in life, a state of peace and equilibrium, was one of the hardest parts of transitioning from his 20s to his 30s, Nakajima says, but he is happier than he has ever been — as he describes it, “You know, just chilling, cranking.”
Talking to him felt like connecting with a happier, more complete version of myself in the not-too-distant future, a light at the end of what has felt, for me, like a long and tumultuous tunnel. Nakajima had figured it out, learned the lessons that come with time and experience. He had finished his Saturn return.
Recipe: Miso Roasted Salmon
An astrological concept, a Saturn return is considered a time of great upheaval — “growing older, burning out at work, increasingly higher bills, a couple of monumental life milestones,” as the astrologer Aliza Kelly has put it. According to NASA, it takes Saturn about 29.4 years to orbit the sun — or for it to return to the same spot in the sky as when you were born, signaling the end of a period of change (if you believe in astrology). As someone who is nearing the end of his return, I’ve never felt more upheaved by the colossal changes I’ve experienced from my late 20s to my early 30s, including but not limited to: new job, new apartment, new boyfriend. New life! One thing I’ve started to do that gets me a little closer to settling into this new beginning — my 30s — is eating Japanese breakfast.
The eclectic spread, called ichiju-sansai (“one soup, three dishes”), is beyond just a savory meal that soothes both soul and stomach lining first thing in the morning. These restorative breakfasts, centered on a single bowl of rice, are meant to be balanced, a careful mix of carb, protein and vegetable: say, with a perfectly steamed pot of medium-grain rice, a sliver of melting fish run through with miso, a fistful of blanched spinach draped in ground sesame seeds, a quivering onsen egg oozing yolk and, when I have the forethought, a teacup of homemade miso soup. An array of pickles pulled from the refrigerator — cucumbers, plums, radishes and whatever is in my house kimchi jar at the time — completes the meal.
Cooking an elaborate breakfast for the people you love most? It’s not just an act of service.
The first time I traveled to Seoul, my family and I landed late at night, jetlagged, and slept on the guest-room floor of my Aunt Young’s apartment complex near Olympic Park. When we awoke the next morning, we stumbled downstairs to a dining table brimming with the most elaborate banchan, stews, fishes and pickles. I remember my aunt’s bap (“rice” or “meal” in Korean) most vividly: It was shiny, fluffy and moist, a texture I try to recreate every time I make rice for myself today. She had also made us kalbi jjim, a long-braised party dish that’s so labor-intensive you eat it only once or twice a year. As a 5-year-old, when I asked Aunt Young if I could spoon some of the rich, coveted sauce onto my rice, she said: “Of course you can. I skimmed the fat off for you.”
What does it mean to cook such an elaborate breakfast for the people you love most? It’s not just an act of service. I’ve learned recently that cooking well for yourself, or for yourself and a partner, is also a means to true happiness, a way to honor your time together by making daily life count. So listen to this: Your Japanese breakfast spread should reflect not necessarily your aspirations but your quotidian preferences, your crisper drawer at the moment, your freezer meats, your kitchen practice. I don’t always roast a fillet or brew a soup; most mornings, I can barely pour myself a cup of coffee. But when I have fish and when I have soup for dinner the night before, you can bet those leftovers will go into my Japanese breakfast.
Growing up in Japan, the chef Yuji Haraguchi remembers finding the previous evening’s meal sprinkled throughout the next morning’s breakfast, a constellation of leftovers dotting an expanse of rice. (He would later dedicate his Brooklyn restaurant Okonomi to Japanese breakfasts.) For Haraguchi’s mother, a working parent, the priority was getting three kids out the door with bellies full and future bellies fuller. That’s why she would spend most of her energy every morning cooking lunch in the form of a bento box, which often included a tamagoyaki. She would make that large folded omelet, slice it up and nestle the tender pieces into her children’s lunchboxes. The ends, which were less uniform and more scrappy-looking, would go to Haraguchi and his two sisters’ breakfasts. As Haraguchi, 43, painted this portrait of his young mother to me, I imagined my own in her early 30s, rushing my brother and me out the door toward the school bus, plastic lunchboxes in hand and sensitive stomachs filled with seaweed and rice.
Japanese people don’t call it Japanese breakfast in the way that French people don’t call it French bread. It’s just breakfast. It’s also more of an attitude, an approach to mindful cooking, than it is a recipe to follow. But should you need a starting place, miso-roasted salmon is a solid anchor for the day. With this fish, less is more: The salty, umami balm of a miso marinade is lightened with lemon zest, which lends floral bittersweetness not unlike that from yuzu. The electric juice brings tang and tenderness. As always, serve it with white rice and miso soup, then finish with a cup of hojicha in your favorite coffee mug.
If the workload overwhelms you, remember that preparing Japanese breakfast is like cooking for future you, not present you. Plant a seed or two, water them if you like, but then live your life.
Recipe: Miso Roasted Salmon
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