The Korean royal table setting is incredibly grand! Chopstick and spoon set on both sides of the huge bapsang with up to 12 banchan 반찬 side dishes!
So, by the cheop/dishes setting, the grandness of Japanese washoku would be a barebones minimalist 3-cheop.
Called Ichiju Sansai (一汁三菜), literally “one soup three dishes,” this is the foundation of a Japanese washoku meal.
Since fish is often eaten raw by Japanese, the concept of frying fish in oil arose by influence of Portuguese who cooked their style of food while lingering in Japan starting in 1543, profiting and later profiteering from slave trade for Hideyoshi to finance military conquests.
The Portuguese influence, especially battered tempura and grilled fish, is not disclosed in washoku. The Portuguese imported tradition started hundreds of years ago have now become ingrained as native to Japanese cuisine.
Tokugawa once sent spies to observe what Hideyoshi was being served as food by the Portuguese that he courted for trade and slaves in exchange for gunpowder based weapons. Reports came back that he was eating a unbeknown new delicacy the Portuguese introduced, fish deep fried in lard oil. When Tokugawa tried this oil fried fish dish, he got hooked. It was possible overenthusiastic overconsumption of lard saturated fried fish caused his early death.
Linguists think Japanese word ‘tempura’ came from Portuguese ‘tempo’ for time, related to cooking something fast.
Nanban dishes are fit for a barbarian
Makiko Itoh
The Japan Times
May 15, 2015
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2015/ … barbarian/
• Spicy touch: The term nanban originally stood in for anything exotic.
The first Europeans on Japanese soil were the Portuguese — a handful of passengers on a Chinese ship that got blown off course and washed ashore on Tanegashima, an island off the coast of current-day Kagoshima Prefecture in southern Kyushu, in 1543. For almost 100 years after that, the Portuguese had a profound influence on Japan until their ships were banned by the Edo shogunate in 1639.
Not only did the Portuguese introduce firearms and Christianity to these shores, they also brought in European fashions, tobacco and more. The exotic products that they and other European traders brought to Japan were collectively called nanban. This term was originally used in China (pronounced naanmaan) to refer to the “southern barbarians” they fought along their borders. In Japan, however, “nanban” was used to mean something foreign and highly desirable.
The most enduring legacy of the Portuguese may be the influence they had on Japanese cuisine. They introduced chili peppers and corn (maize), both of which originated in the Americas, as well as the use of beaten eggs and sugar in cooking. While sugar was known already, it was extremely expensive and reserved for medicinal purposes, with other sweeteners used for cooking. Sugar became a little more affordable (although it remained a luxury item until the 19th century) when the Portuguese brought it in for trade, and a craze for nanban kashi (sweets) was born. Three types of nanban kashi are still very popular: Castella or kasutera, a rich sponge cake; bolo, small round crunchy-soft cookies; and konpeitō, colorful bumpy sugar candies.
The earliest examples of savory Nanban cuisine were closer to the European dishes that inspired them than their later versions. For example, tempura, a feature of Nagasaki’s Shippoku cuisine, was originally made with a batter comprising sugar, flour and eggs and fried in lard — kind of like a beignet or a sweet fritter. It only evolved into the lighter version, fried in vegetable oil, that we know today, in the 17th century. Early nanban cuisine often used chili peppers, originally called nanban-karashi or “nanban mustard”; later the name changed to tōgarashi, (Chinese mustard) when the country was closed to the outside world and China became a vague stand-in for anything foreign.
As time progressed, the word “nanban” became confused a little with Nanba, a district in Osaka where leeks are used a lot. This may explain dishes like kamo nanban, a simmered dish with duck and leeks and a sweet-savory sauce that has little to do with the original meaning of “nanban.” The term was later used for any dish with exotic spices, such as curry nanban — udon noodles in a curry-flavored soup, a 20th century invention. The popular chicken nanban — deep-fried marinated chicken filets served with tartare sauce — is both a throwback to original nanban cuisine with its use of a spicy marinade, and a modern dish with the tartare sauce that’s made with mayonnaise, a sauce that only became popular after World War II.
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