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Sansai are wild vegetables that grow in the Japanese countryside, including butterbur roots, wasabi leaves, and fiddler fern varieties. They are typically used as a small part of a recipe and are prepared through blanching, soaking, stewing, or frying. Sansai is also a traditional Japanese meal concept involving three dishes plus soup. However, some fiddler ferns, such as warabi, contain carcinogenic and poisonous compounds. Harvesting sansai requires knowledge of plant identification and the help of someone experienced in foraging.
Sansai is the Japanese term for a group of vegetables that grow wild throughout the Japanese countryside. The word literally translates as “mountain vegetable”. Sansai actually includes several greens, such as butterbur roots, wasabi leaves, and fiddler fern varieties. Most of these vegetables are not readily available in markets outside Asia, although another sansai vegetable, mitsuba – a three-leafed, long-stemmed herb – is quite common in Japanese markets in some other countries. Takenoko, or young bamboo shoots, is also extremely common in grocery stores outside of Japan.
Mountain vegetables typically play a small part in an overall recipe, rather than stand on their own as a dish. Cooking times are generally short. Common preparation methods are simple, either by blanching or soaking or stewing in sauces and broths. Sansai can also be fried in tempura batter. The flavor tends to be a little bitter, and this bitterness can lead to some indigestion if someone eats too many of these vegetables.
Vegetables in sansai are traditionally a sign that winter is ending and spring is upon us, and trips to harvest these vegetables to the countryside in Japan are not unusual. People new to sansai need to learn how to identify plants, to avoid accidentally picking inedible look-alikes. Going to the field with someone who knows what they’re doing is a must.
Even edible sansai, however, has its risks. Warabi, also called bracken fern, is a type of fiddler fern that contains small amounts of carcinogenic and poisonous compounds such as cyanogenic glycosides and ptaquiloside, which is responsible for poisoning livestock that feed on the plants in larger quantities. Ptaquiloside and fern fern have been investigated as a threat to livestock or local water supplies. However, not all fiddler ferns are warabi. Sansai often include two other varieties of fiddler fern known as cinnamon fern and ostrich fern respectively, and a dish containing sansai will often have small amounts of different vegetables, not just ferns.
There’s also a darker meaning of sansai in Japanese meal planning, where the portion of the word means “three” rather than “mountain.” This is a traditional Japanese meal concept involving three dishes plus soup. The context surrounding the word sansai will show which meaning is relevant, however, as menus obviously won’t list the definition of three dishes as an ingredient.
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