What's the secret to making all kinds of dishes infinitely more delicious? It's in this simple Japanese stock.
Whenever I see the leathery black kelp known in Japan as kombu, I think of my mother, reaching into our pantry and retrieving a sheet or two several times each day. As a little girl in Tokyo, I had no idea why kombu was so important to her cooking; I just knew it was omnipresent. As I grew older, I learned that infusing this kelp in water makes an elemental stock with a round, rich taste, a mild sweetness and a touch of saltiness from the sea—the basis for countless Japanese dishes, and the source of their profound depth of flavor.
