Edamame Gohan (枝豆ご飯, summer soybean rice)

Edamame announces high summer with very little ceremony: fuzzy pods, bright beans, and a sweetness that disappears if you treat it like a problem to solve. This rice is the right kind of plain. Short-grain rice, young soybeans, salt. Nothing hidden, and no sauce leaning over the bowl.

The detail that decides it is timing. Boil the beans in their pods so the salt seasons them gently and the skins protect their green sweetness, then shell them and fold them into the cooked rice while it is still hot. Cook the beans from the beginning with the rice and they'll dull to olive and taste tired. Shell them into hot rice and the grains take on their scent without stealing their color. A very small victory, but dinner is built from these.

In a Japanese meal, this is gohan doing more than filling the bowl. It can sit beside miso soup and pickles on a weeknight, or take the rice place in ichijū-sansai, one soup and three dishes, when the season wants to be noticed. We don't need dashi here. The bean is at its 旬, shun, and salt is enough to tell the truth.