Greetings!
Today is the first official Episode of "Bounties of The Land" of which is basically the new name for the daily harvest posts.
In this Episode we feature Shiso or in Japanese: 紫蘇 or the more widely used name of the Asian culinary herb Perilla frutescens var. crispa, belonging to the mint family.
So Shiso is apparently NOT in the basil family but the MINT family!
This is one of our most abundant crops. We have integrated it into our wildcrafted eco system and now it basically takes care of it self. We do water it a little bit in the dead heat of the summer but other than that it plants it self and after it dies off in the freeze it comes back in the spring. Our shiso will get to almost 6 foot tall at the end of the summer and we harvest it all before the first freeze so we can preserve it.
We use it in our tea blends, smoke blends, salads, juices and to activate our water.
This is a nice video that I shot today before the hurricane blowing in from down south of which will bring with it much needed cool air and rain!
Here is the video and I will list all the nutrient content after the video.
We cultivate the purple shiso but it also comes in a green leaf variety. It can be used in MANY ways as we eat it every day in salads and green juices.
Here are some of the traditional common uses of shiso in Japan.
Shiso Green Leaves Varity :
The green leaf can be chopped up and used as herb or condiments for an assortment of cold dishes such as:cold noodles (hiyamugi, sōmen)cold tofu (known as Hiyayakko).- Chopped leaves can be used to flavour any number of cooked dishes. A whole leaf battered only on the obverse side is made into tempura. Whole leaves are often combined with shrimp or other fried items
Red leaves:
Red leaves are used for making pickled plum (umeboshi), but this is no longer a yearly tradition of the average household. Red shiso is used to colour shiba-zuke, a type of pickled eggplant (also cucumber, myoga, shiso seeds may be used),Kyoto specialty.
Shiso Seeds:
The seed pods of the shiso are also salted and preserved as a sort of spice. They can be combined with fine slivers of daikon, for instance, to make a simple salad. One source from the 1960s says that oil expressed from shiso seeds was once used for deep-frying purposes.
Yukari:
The name yukari refers to dried and pulverized red-shiso flakes, and has passed into the common tongue as a generic term, even though Mishima Foods Co. insists it is the proprietary name for its products. The term yukari-no-iro has signified the colour purple since the olden days, based on a poem in the Kokin Wakashū about a murasaki or gromwell blooming in Musashino (old name for Tokyo area). Moreover, the term Murasaki-no-yukari has long been used as an alias for Lady Murasaki’s famous romance of the shining prince.
As I said this is a highly nutritious and medical plant. It is eaten daily by asian cultures but is also used as a medicine. Teas is the most common way it is used however there are also extracts available as well.
- Shiso is super high in antioxidants which helps prevent almost all diseases, slows aging and promotes overall good health!
- Shiso is also used as a medicine to treat nausea, vomiting, food poising, abdominal pain, head aches, and coughs.
- Shiso is also an antiviral which is one of the many reasons we use it in all of our water, to not only activate super water but to keep any bacteria, viruses and such from getting in our water as it sits out all day.
I could go on though I feel this is more than enough to promote this super food as a worthy addition to your diet!
Remember the BEST medicine is your FOOD!
I hope this inspires you to cultivate your own food and medicine or to look to nature first for your medicine and get it from someone who honors this.