Japan

In Japan, dashi, made from seaweed and dried bonito flakes, is the broth most commonly used not only for fish soups but for meat and vegetable soups as well. Other flavorings such as miso (fermented soybean paste), mirin (a kind of sweet sake), and soy sauce are all used by Japanese cooks to flavor a basic dashi, sometimes with great subtlety. Once you master a basic dashi, it’s easy to finish it with tidbits of seafood, vegetables, or meats to come up with elegantly simple Japanese soups.

Japanese cooks also like to use chopped scallion, toasted seaweed (nori), prickly ash leaves (kinome), grated yuzu rind (a citrus fruit), bonito shavings, and chrysanthemum leaves as understated and subtle flavorings and garnishes for their fish soups. Obviously these are not ingredients you can run out and find at the last minute at the corner supermarket, but it’s easy to capture the spirit and style of Japanese cooking with a carefully placed parsley or watercress leaf, a tiny sliver of lemon zest or carrot, or a carefully sliced mushroom. In fact, because many of the basic ingredients used for making Japanese soups—seaweed (konbu), bonito flakes, soy sauce, and miso—will keep almost indefinitely, it’s easy to put together an authentic Japanese soup with these staples and perhaps a run to the comer grocery for some scallions and tofu.