Peeler

In the home and in the kitchen, there’s the laborious, tedious way to do something … and there’s the short cut. Growing up in my parents’ home, my sister and I found that things were done using methods that were … not quite as retro as Mrs. Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie … but then, not quite as modern as Marion Cunningham in Happy Days, either. That’s what you get when you have Japanese immigrant parents.

If you’re familiar with the culture—and not just the Hollywood stereotypes—then you recognize that the kitchen is the heart of the home, and food is the love that courses through its veins. After the advent of things like the Walkman, the Cup O’ Noodles, and innumerable cute little kitchen gadgets, it’s understandable that most people think of a Japanese kitchen as having a fair number of handy little gadgets. But that wasn’t our parents’ kitchen in Brooklyn, New York.

If you’re even vaguely familiar with the typical martial arts movie’s story arc—and here it doesn’t matter if I’m thinking of samurai movies and you’re thinking of kung fu, tae kwan do, or tae bo for that matter—then you have received the teaching that anything truly valuable comes only through hard work and perseverance. (Insert heroic music here.) Somehow, in my parents’ house, a good part of that training took place in the kitchen. If salmon was being grilled, or fresh tofu prepared, you can be sure that my sister or I would be strengthening our arms by manually grating the daikon radish or ginger on a tiny little grating implement. At a young age, I lost interest in baking a cake with my mother, because my primary job was turning the hand-cranked beater. (The evil genius of the Chinese water torture is its repetition. Similarly, the hand-cranked beater is nefarious in that it takes forever to mix something decently. Heavy cream—by itself—is apparently not that hard to beat with this tool. But try using it to whip cream until it forms stiff peaks, and you’ll have had yourself a serious aerobic workout.)

Of course, my sister and I weren’t completely naïve about the modern conveniences that existed out in the world. Walking by the corner electronics shop, we saw electric mixers, blenders, and plethora of kitchen technology, all available for purchase. But just because one walks by a Ferrari dealership, one doesn’t necessarily think one needs a set of those fancy wheels.

We grew up watching our parents—mostly our mother—manually peel everything from apples and pears, to carrots and radishes, using a nakiri knife.