What Gaijin Eat: Kuroirigenmaiko Coffee

The health benefits of brown rice (genmai) are widely touted today, but a common "ancient wisdom", employed by Chinese warriors to amplify the power of the rice, was to slow roast the rice, let it steep and drink its power as a tea.

Tomoe's interest was less about gaining strength to conquer nations, and more about finding a non-caffeine, healthy, locally grown substitute for coffee. A little research into traditional and macrobiotic cooking methods pointed her to the "power of roasting." It was also common wisdom that slowly roasting umeboshi (pickled plums) over low heat, until it becomes a charcoal, is a perfect medicine for food poisoning.

My theory was that a charcoaled plum would taste so bad that it would cause one to vomit and expel the offending food from their system. According to macrobiotics, however, it seems that "roasting" things, such as the plum or brown rice, makes a "yin" body happy by bringing out the "yang" in the rice and "cleaning the blood". This is said to be good for young or pregnant women who "have cold feet and fingers" - apparently a trend caused by excessive sugar consumption in recent centuries as Japanese people become more affluent and can afford sugar, which was once a rare delicacy.

At any rate, kuroirigenmaiko was much more common in days of old. To see what it might have been like, Tomoe roasted her first batch of rice. Alas, while this was made with high-quality, locally grown, no-chemical genmai, her heat was too high, and the resulting coffee tasted (to me) like ash-water. Although there were some good roasty, nutty flavors, the "burned" flavor was overwhelming this time. Perhaps the trick, as some have suggested, is to mix the rich genmai tea with green tea. Or, the way we have been using the leftovers is as an ingredient to add roasty fullness to various other dishes.