April, 2011

Yuzu is a Japanese citrus, the size of a small orange but bright yellow in skin in the winter or green in the summer. Originating in East Asia, it has knobbly skin and is a bit like a cross between kaffir lime and lemon, and is highly aromatic, with its rind used to flavour soups in kaiseki or noodles.

It is very difficult to grow in Australia, although some people have succeeded in Sydney, and occasionally we get wind of fresh yuzu doing the rounds in Sydney restaurants and shops. We have a small plant, but we doubt it will ever grow into a flowering and plant producing shrub.

Yuzu is quintessentially autumn and winter, and is used in so many dishes--from squeezing a little juice on matsutake, that other quintessential autumn offering, to floating aroma inducing rinds found in osuimono or soups. But yuzu is also delicious in noodles, on tofu, in ponzu for sashimi...it is the most economical of Japanese foods for so little of yuzu can transform a dish from ordinary to zingy and flavoursome.

Yuzu kosho 柚子こしょう is literally yuzu pepper, though it is yuzu and chilli paste, and is sold in jars or in tubes (see Kei's Kitchen Online Deli). A little of the paste mixed into soy sauce gives white fish sashimi a terrific lift (try with whiting or snapper sashimi). It is also great as a marinade with soy sauce and oil and other citrus--use it on your next barbecue day.

When we were kids, we used to sit in the bath with some old used up yuzu floating in the bathwater--I think it made us smell nice and clean. Yuzu bathsalts are available in may shops in Japan, as well as Rakuten. For more yuzu recipe ideas, see our Kei's Kitchen Online Deli--look for Yuzu Kosho and Yuzu Seasoning.

by Masako Fukui, Kei's Kitchen 2011

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