Ashitaba ✦

Ashitaba (angélique d’Hachijō)

What it is

The name means tomorrow’s leaf: pick one today and another is said to be up by morning, a claim the plant nearly earns, since it regrows in a few days. Cut the stem and it bleeds a sulphur-yellow sap loaded with chalcones — that sap is the bitterness you taste, and the reason the islanders drank the plant long before they cooked it.

In the kitchen

For tempura, batter only the underside of the leaf and fry at 170 °C for twenty seconds, green side up — coated on both faces it steams and the bitterness turns metallic. As a green, blanch thirty seconds in salted water and shock it: the bitterness drops back to something like celery.

Goes with

Rice bran oil Sesame Koikuchi shoyu Katsuobushi (dried bonito) Miso Lemon

Same species

Angelica Candied angelica

In season alongside

Chrysanthemum greens Yomogi Alexanders Blackcurrant leaf Cime di rapa Dandelion greens

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