Fukujinuke

Last Friday (Feb 24) I forgot to mention an optional, but important, ingredient in successful Japanese curry, the kind that holes-in-the-wall near JR train stations serve. That is, fukujinzuke, a fine word that rolls around the tongue a lot better than the English “seasoned radish.” Even seasoning, to my thinking, can’t save the radish from its place as the Wally Cox of vegetables.

And yet the Japanese do it right. Fukujinzuke comes in small rectangles as bright blood red as, well, blood. Crunchy and mildly sweet, its part in the Japanese curry ensemble is to contrast the brown curry’s spice and gooey softness. In a curry shop, usually next to every seat, along with the mandatory soy sauce bottle and even more mandatory ashtray, is a stainless steel box (spotted slightly blood red) heaped with fukujinzuke with a small spoon sticking out. As soon as you receive your heapin’ plate of curry, you spoon it on here and there. So simple, yet it works so well.

At home we have a 7.05 oz plastic bag of fukujinzuke. Unlike the curry we have, it wasn’t made for export, but has an English language “Nutrition Facts” sticker pasted on it – a telltale sign that they don’t export enough for the stuff to rate its own English bag. From this stick-on label I learn that eggplant, beefsteak leaves, lotus and ginger are the happy vegetable ingredients in this product besides radish. And then there’s corn syrup, of the high-fructose variety no less. I’m happy to know that Japanese food technology is every bit as advanced as that of our own corn-syrup-loving nation.

From there, if you're an artificial ingredients worrywart, things only get worse: MSG! Potassium sorbate! FD&C Yellow No. 5 and Red No. 40! Well, I didn’t think radishes came that color, but with any luck, advances in GM foods will someday produce radishes that need no jazzing up with food coloring to be distinctive blood red.