While browsing the Japanese-language cookbooks at my local bookstore in search of some Sunday-dinner inspiration, I found a book about flavoring salt and sugar with various ingredients, with beautiful pictures of sparkling pink and green granules sprinkled over their accompanying dishes. A few minutes later, while flipping through a tofu cookbook, I spotted a recipe for silken tōfu topped with enoki, garnished with a pinch of matcha salt. Remembering that I had made something similar before from a recipe out of the trusty Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh, and also remembering I already had a recipe for matcha salt, my Sunday dinner seemed set -- and I didn't even have to buy a new cookbook.

The last couple times I made this mushroom-topped tofu recipe, the weather was cold and I used a mixture off dark, meaty mushroom varieties like maitake and shiitake, but because I wanted something more delicate in flavor and pale enough to set off the bright green salt, this time I used only a bunch of thin white enoki. The flavor of the mushroom sauce ended up light enough to let the grassy matcha taste come through.

When preparing tofu simply, Otokomae is my favorite brand to use, both for its dense but silky texture and its unquestionably kakkoii packaging. In addition to the usual blocks, Otokomae is also sold in individual packs of three, kind of like pudding cups or juice boxes. They don't require draining and one is the perfect size for a lunchtime serving or a dinner side dish.

Tōfu no enoki an kake (Tōfu topped with enoki mushrooms)

Adapted from Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh

Makes 2 servings

1 block silken tōfu (kinugoshi-dōfu), drained and pressed*
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
10 oz/300 g enoki mushrooms, ends trimmed
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sake
2/3 cup dashi
1 teaspoon light-colored soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch mixed with 1 1/2 teaspoons cold water
Matcha salt, to garnish

Cut the tōfu in half and place each block in a shallow bowl. Heat the oil in a skillet and cook the mushrooms over high heat for about one minute, or until lightly browned. Add the salt and sake and cook for one minute more. Add the stock, soy sauces and mirin and cook for two minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the cornstarch-water mixture and stir for about one minute, or until the sauce has thickened slightly. Top each tōfu block with the mushroom sauce and a sprinkling of matcha salt. Serve immediately with chopsticks or a spoon.

Matcha salt

1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon matcha

Mix the salt and matcha in a small dish or jar. In Japan, this is often served as a dip for fried foods like tempura. You can also mix matcha with sugar and sprinkle it on yogurt, cakes or cookies.

*This entry describes how to press the water out of tōfu.

It's early April, the sakura are in full bloom, and spring is in the air. Except that it's raining right now and an icy wind is blowing all the blossoms off the trees. Oh well, at least I have my shin-shōga. Shōga is your average piece of ginger, brown-skinned and sharp, and shin-shōga is its younger, springtime version, pale, thin-skinned and mild. It's this ginger, sliced and pickled, that is mounded up next to the green plastic leaf in your box of lunchtime sushi.

But pickles are only the beginning for shin-shōga. Because it has the fresh astringency of ginger without the bite, you can use it raw, and it is especially tasty when julienned and added to salads. When cooked, it loses its bright crunch, but the delicate fragrance wafting up from any dish you've added it to makes up for it. With soups and rice, you can toss in the shin-shōga right at the end of cooking and let it soften a bit in the residual heat. That's what I do when making this early-spring rice, a mix of young ginger, fresh crab and thin green onions.

Some notes about ingredients: Young ginger is a popular ingredient in other Asian cuisines, so you should be able to find it at Asian supermarkets from spring through early summer. I buy my cooked crab meat in the sashimi section of my local grocery store, where I sometimes want to cry when I see how beautiful and cheap everything is. Imitation crab meat is not a suitable substitute. Finally, the green onions in Japan are typically much thinner than in the U.S., about half the diameter; look for the thinnest you can find or just use one thick one.

Kani to shin-shōga gohan (Crab and young ginger rice)

Makes 2 servings

1 cup Japanese rice, washed and drained
2-inch (5-cm) piece of young ginger
3.5 oz (100 g) cooked crab meat
2 thin green onions

Cook the rice in a rice cooker or on the stovetop as usual. (See the directions for cooking Japanese rice here.) When the rice is almost cooked, peel the ginger, cut in half crosswise, and julienne. Thinly slice the green onion. When the rice is cooked, add the ginger, crab and green onion to the cooker or pot and stir to mix everything in. For best flavor, serve immediately.