Gomashio (ごま塩, parched sesame salt)

Gomashio looks like the smallest possible recipe: sesame and salt. Good. Small things make strict teachers. There is no sauce here, no long simmer, nothing hidden. If the sesame is stale, the whole thing tastes tired. If it is freshly parched and ground, one pinch can wake a bowl of rice without bullying it.

The one detail that decides it is the grind. Whole sesame slips away from the salt, and powdered sesame turns heavy and oily. We stop in the middle: half cracked, half fine, with just enough oil released to catch the salt and carry the fragrance. This is why the suribachi, the ridged Japanese mortar, earns its shelf space. A plain mortar works too, if your hand is patient.

Parch the salt as well. That sounds fussy until you see damp salt clump against the seed and drag the mixture dull. A minute in the dry pan leaves it loose, clean, and ready to scatter. Make gomashio in a small batch, the way we do for a few days of rice, okayu, or simply cooked greens. The real thing is not difficult. It only asks you not to make a heroic jar and forget it in the cupboard.