Late June and the farmers are finally bringing in mounds of aka-jiso ("red" shiso) to their market stalls. Now it's time for the next step in the umeboshi process...
You have to get down there fast these days. It's not just that the early-bird chefs arrive well before the rest of us godfearing citizens are out of bed. It's that more people have begun making their own umeboshi in recent years — and shiso drinks — so there's big demand for those bunches of the aromatic purple herb.
Back home, the first step is to give them a quick rinse to get the dust off, and hang them up to drain for half a day or so.
Once they've dried off, the leaves have to be carefully picked from their stems.
Then it's time to add them to the ume as they pickle in their crock. But you don't just mix them straight in. First you have to get the "aku" out...
[The next step, the red herb, continues here…]
