I had really been craving umeboshi, so I recently broke down and bought some from our Korean grocery. I think the ones I bought are rather tasty, but Yusuke says that they’re pretty crappy and artificial. Thus, he just placed an order for 1 kg of umeboshi from Japan. Happy.
In the meantime, though, he made use of the current stock for this dish—which I’ll call a salad for lack of a more appropriate word.
Yusuke first placed boiled diced potates and carrots in each bowl and added lots of chopped raw green onions and bonito flakes (katsuobushi / 鰹節). Last was the dressing: 1 tbsp each of sake, mirin, and olive oil in addition to two smashed umeboshi. The taste was very tangy, balanced well by the potatoes.
And what is umeboshi?, some might be asking. It’s usually translated as “pickled plum,” but wikipedia tells me that the fruit is actually ume, which is more similar to an apricot. The ume is dried and then pickled in vinegar, alcohol, or salt. It’s delightfully tangy and sour, perfect when eaten with rice. I’m very proud to report that I’ve gotten better at pulling the flesh of the ume away from the pit with my chopsticks. Now I can eat in front of Japanese people without shame.
For more umeboshi reading, check out Just Hungry. Googling will also retrieve lots of sites that extol the health benefits of umeboshi (e.g., http://www.macrobiotics.nl/library/ume.html).
I didn’t take any pics of the umeboshi myself, but here are two that have kindly been shared on Flickr with Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licenses (thanks to mismisimos and framboise).
Chez Yusuke 