Have you ever found yourself thinking, ‘Oh!’ whilst in the kitchen one evening?

The thing I thought I’d bought isn’t there. The thing I thought I had is all out. I’ve already put the food on to cook, and the children are ravenous. I don’t have time to go and buy it now.

At times like that, we substitute one thing for another. If we’re out of mirin, we use sugar and sake instead. If we’re out of spinach, we use komatsuna instead. If we’re out of spring onions, we use onions instead.

I open the fridge, look for anything that might work, and get to work whilst wondering, ‘I wonder if this will do?’ That’s how I manage to put a dish together.

When it comes to dinner that evening, this is usually what we think.

Days when I couldn’t get it quite right. Days when I just managed to finish in time. Days when I couldn’t follow the recipe exactly.

But that wasn’t the case.

Even amongst the dishes we are currently preparing, there are many that have taken shape through someone making substitutions here and there.

The type of meat used in nikujaga varies from household to household. Some families use beef, whilst others use pork. There are even some families who use chicken simply because their family prefers it.

I don’t think I’d decided on it from the start. When I went to buy it, it was more expensive than I’d expected, so I chose a different cut of meat that day. When I tried cooking it, my family liked it, so I did the same next time. As the children wouldn’t eat it, I changed the way I cut it.

It’s those little things, piling up time and again, that eventually turn it into our family’s version of nikujaga.

How does our family’s distinctive flavour come about? There is another significant turning point: the moment the flavours of two households come together.

Once you get married or start living together, the flavours that you used to take for granted are no longer a given.

The simmered dishes that were on the sweet side at my parents’ house are too salty at my partner’s. Things that weren’t put in the miso soup at my parents’ house are added every time at my partner’s. I thought fried eggs were eaten with soy sauce, but at my partner’s they’re served with Worcestershire sauce. I thought curry was made with pork, but I’m asked, ‘Isn’t it actually beef?’

It’s not a question of which is right. Both families have been doing it that way for decades.

From there, things gradually fall into place. ‘Let’s adapt this dish to suit this flavour.’ ‘That one tastes better the way my partner makes it, so let’s go with that.’ ‘Let’s aim for something in between here.’ In this way, a third flavour emerges—one that’s slightly different from either of our parents’ homes.

What’s interesting is that the flavours we thought we’d inherited gradually change over time.

Even though I’ve learnt my mother’s method and try to make it the same way, the flavour is slightly different. I use a different brand of soya sauce. I use a different pan. I cook it at a different heat. Above all, the people eating it are different.

My mother used to tailor the flavours to suit her own family. I, on the other hand, tailor them to suit my own family. It was only natural that even the same dish would turn out differently depending on who it was intended for.

That’s why, even if you try to preserve the flavours of your family home exactly as they are, they will gradually change. The way we do things at home isn’t something we’ve learnt from anyone else. It’s something that has been built up over many years within that household.

We sometimes substitute ingredients to cater for people with dietary restrictions.

You could make it without milk, replace the plain flour with rice flour, or use soya beans and dried tofu instead of meat.

The difference here is that we don’t substitute ingredients because we’re short of something, but because we can’t eat them. Even so, in terms of making do with what we have, it’s no different from a kitchen in the evening. Sometimes, a recipe created in this way turns out, before we know it, to be a dish that everyone finds delicious.

That’s how the number of dishes grew.

When I think about it that way, that evening in the kitchen was just the same.

When we substituted sugar and sake for mirin, or used komatsuna instead of spinach, we were doing exactly what had been done in cooking for hundreds of years.

It wasn’t a day of failure. It was a day of making changes.

What’s more, I actually find myself thinking more on the day I’ve changed it.

When following a recipe to the letter, you simply need to carry out the steps as written. But when substituting ingredients, it’s not quite that simple. What should you use instead? How much should you add? Which flavour should you emphasise? You’ll have to decide all of that for yourself.

A ‘day when something is missing’ is a day when that blank space feels wider than usual. And the dish you create by making that substitution becomes a dish unique to that day—one that isn’t found anywhere in the recipe.

I mentioned the story of someone who said they’d never really looked at their fridge before. It’s that story where, simply by being given a new perspective—to look for things you could tear apart by hand—the familiar fridge became a place they were seeing for the first time.

Nothing in the fridge had changed that day. It was my perspective that had changed.

If you decide on a meal plan and then look for what’s missing, the fridge seems full of things you don’t have. But if you decide what to make based on what you do have, that same fridge becomes full of things you can use. Even those odd bits of vegetable left over and those bottles of seasoning you’ve already opened are ingredients that might come in handy.

Of course, there are some things that simply cannot be substituted. However, if you look at a dish as a whole, you’ll find that, whilst certain elements are fixed, there are still plenty of places around them where substitutions can be made. That’s why, even when the meat was substituted, the nikujaga remained nikujaga.

Every time I stand in the kitchen, there are plenty of alternatives right in front of me. I think it’s fine to decide whether to use them or not depending on how I feel that day. On days when I’m tired, I can just follow the recipe as it is.

However, what you managed to come up with on those days when we were short-staffed wasn’t just a stopgap. The decisions you made on those days have gradually built up, becoming part of our family’s unique flavour. A flavour found in no other home—one that is unique to ours.

Up to this point, we have been discussing the materials right in front of us, the ones at our fingertips. However, if we take a step back and consider the idea of making things from what is available, it ceases to be merely about the materials.

What exists in that land. What can be harvested there. When you look up from the materials at hand, you can see the very land that produces them.

What is there in that place, and what is not? Where will the gaze that sees what is there turn next?

TERUMI ISHIBASHI

FARM8 Co., Ltd.,

Next Chapter: ‘The Future Potential Nurtured by Cooking’ – Chapter 12: Adapting to the Land