After assigning yet another segment theme song to Producer Abby, M &M recount sushi experiences both childish and VERY adult. They wonder about the color red, the concept that is Mr Etymology and the tenets of post-modernism before deciding to avoid haunted floor plans altogether.
Character referenced: 紅
Matthew's Now but Wow - Strange Pictures, by Uketsu
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:04
I'm Matthew, and I'm Molly. And this is spilled milk, the show where we cook something delicious, eat it all, and you can't have any today. We are talking about pickled ginger. And this was suggested by host Matthew. That's weird. I bet this happened during the skemon Oh episode when we were like, there's some, like, whole types of skemon, oh, that we're not going to talk about on that episode, kimono being Japanese pickles. And so here, here's a type of Japanese pickle that we're giving its own episode.
Molly 0:32
Oh, yay. You know, I think that when I first became aware that ginger was something that got pickled, is this memory lane? Oh, this is memory lane. Yeah, yeah. Here we are. Look around you. We are. Someday we'll
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:44
have a theme song for memory lane. I think we tried to make one once and didn't come up with anything.
Molly 0:49
I feel like it would be the sound of, you know, those like chimes that you can run your hand across. Oh, yeah, for sure. What are those called?
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:59
Hand hand chimes? Yeah, you know, something like that. Maybe producer Abby could find, like a jingly chime sound, okay, like something that makes it sound a little magical, yeah? Because it is, yeah.
Molly 1:15
Well, so here we are. Look around everybody. We are at Tokyo sushi in Oklahoma City. Wow. How did you do that? It's the magic of memory lane. So this was my childhood sushi bar, because everyone has one. This is where I almost certainly first encountered pickled ginger. It was at that time, kind of a rosy pink.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:35
Yeah, that kind is still very popular. I got the undyed kind, yeah.
Molly 1:39
I think that at least here in Seattle, most of the time when I get sushi, it is undyed pickled ginger. But back then it was sort of this rosy pink. And I remember my parents both really loved it, and I was kind of skeeved by it, but now I too, love it. Yes.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:59
What about you, Matthew, that is a good question. So this style of, like, thinly sliced pickled ginger, we'll get into the two common styles. Like, I didn't start liking sushi until I was in my 20s. I was very afraid of it, and so I think that's probably when I probably first ate pickled ginger. I liked it right away. So you were very advanced in that way. I pretty much like everything at my at my first adult sushi experience, like, and when I say adult sushi experience, like, they put the sushi on me and people ate it off my nude body. Yes, that was what I it was great. I would do it again. Have you done it again? Since? Yeah, that's the only way I eat sushi, isn't that? Isn't that how most people do
Molly 2:39
it? Do you eat it too, off your own.
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:42
Oh yeah, no, there's no one else around. Like, when you want, like a real, like a serious sushi experience, you go solo. You sit at the bar, or in my case, lie down on the bar. You get undressed. The chef places beautiful slices of fish all over your body. And then you just, kind of like, reach and you see what you see what you grab, sashimi. Where's the rice? No, you probably don't want to know.
Molly 3:10
What I'm really enjoying picturing is that you are on a conveyor belt. Oh, yes.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:20
Beginning just in this empty restaurant,
Molly 3:26
yeah, and they charge you for each piece they put on your body.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:30
Yeah, they're having trouble drumming up more business at this restaurant. So, yeah, so that's probably where I first encountered
Molly 3:39
pickle, ginger, okay, yeah, this checks out.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:42
And on a more serious note, at the pickle glass. Well, I mean, like we have a glass pickle on our Christmas tree. I mentioned on our Japanese pickles episode that I took a pickle class with Elizabeth Ondo, the great food writer in 2012 and we made, we made pickled ginger, the thin, sliced sushi kind at that class using young ginger.
Molly 4:08
Sorry, just the phrase making Gotti at the pickle glass. I'm, for some reason, I'm imagining it like a looking
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:16
glass. I'm imagining fill up glass.
Molly 4:20
Okay, anyway, okay, but there's another kind we should talk about just really briefly too, which is so until you took me to this Okonomiyaki restaurant in Tokyo called Penguin Village. Love Penguin Village, I had never seen the like bright red pickled ginger. And if you get Okonomiyaki in an Okonomiyaki place, it is typical that the ginger there will be thinly sliced, but more like julienned, I guess, is the word I'm going for Yes, match sticks, and they will be bright red. So I trust you're going to tell us what's up with
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:56
that, yes. So this is, this is called benishoga. It is a different. Style of pickled ginger. Should we do? Yeah, let's, let's talk about, like, kind of what they're used for, first, and then get into etymology maybe. Okay. I mean, I guess it kind of depends when, when Mr. Etymology shows up at the house. Okay, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see. So the thin, sliced one is called Gotti. The the julienne, like bright red one is benishoga. They are not just cut differently, but pickled quite differently, and so they taste very different. So the Gaddi is typically pickled in sweet vinegar, so that's rice vinegar and sugar, maybe with a little kombu in there for for some umami. And the Beni shoga was traditionally pickled in Plum vinegar. So like vinegar, like, leftover from pickling umeboshi, okay, which would be, like, made from Plum wine turned into vinegar. Whoa. Okay, yeah, nowadays. So, like this one I bought, like, you know, kind of the the cheap mass market of both of these, really, and the the cheap mass market Beni shoga Is, is really just pickled in acetic acid, like, like, white vinegar, and he's much less sweet than the Gotti.
Molly 6:03
I think of it as here. Hold on, I'm gonna tell you the red color of this is a little scary.
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:07
I mean, it is like it contains red number 40, right?
Molly 6:13
Yeah, I find the Beni shoga A little not for me. It has all the ginger flavor of the Gotti, but without any sweetness, which leaves you with more heat.
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:25
Okay, so I really like it. The Gotti is good, like, you know, you can snack on it. Benny shoga is not real. It's like, too strong for snacking. It is. It's really like an ingredient or a garnish. So places that you find it in Okonomiyaki or takoyaki, and
Molly 6:40
takoyaki being octopus balls, yes. And so where, where would it be in there, mixed into the batter? Oh, okay, okay, hold on, that must look fascinating,
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:49
yeah, oh, Takoyaki is a is it really cool looking food?
Molly 6:52
But, I mean, I've only seen it with, like, plain batter. I haven't seen it with, yeah, so often. Benny shoga,
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:57
yeah, often it will be in there, okay, yeah. December loves, loves pickled ginger in Okonomiyaki, and as a big fan of pickled ginger in general, you can find it like in a futomaki roll, okay, yep, as a garnish for Yakisoba or hakuta Tonkotsu Ramen. It's basically mandatory in those contexts.
Molly 7:14
I can imagine that being delicious with that really rich and kind of almost, I don't know, milky broth,
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:21
yes, as a garnish, yeah, when I was in, when I was in Fukuoka, we're back onto memory lane. That was, that was really the only time that I ate, like, the real, like original Tonkotsu almond. And, like, several, several bowls of it at different places. And, like, it's such a simple food, like, you just make this really rich, milky pork broth. You got, like, some thin, sliced braised pork your thin noodles, scallions and on the side, Beni shoga for garnish. Yeah, awesome garnish for gyudon beef bowl. So if you like to like a Yoshinoya or Skia or Matsuya chain restaurant in Japan, you'll get your beef bowl, which is like sauteed thin, sliced beef with onions and sweet soy sauce on top of rice. And there will always, always be benishoga as a garnish. Ah, okay. Like, usually, like, in a little thing where you can, like, you know, pull it out yourself and put on as much as you want. Okay, other noodle and donburi dishes, like, like, Yaki Udon is often served with benishoga. It's, it's, it's a thing that goes well with, like, things that are already strongly flavored because it is strongly flavored itself.
Molly 8:23
Yeah, yeah. It could absolutely decimate a delicate flavor, right? Yeah?
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:27
Like, if you have, like, your matsaki Chawanmushi, you're not gonna put it on that. No, hold on. Has Mr. Etymology been here yet? Mr. Etymology hasn't been here yet. Should we? Oh, there he is. It's, it's me, come in. Hi. I'm
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:47
all like, like, I've been, I've been coming out to the show a lot lately. You have you're, like, a regular guest, yeah, like, are you gonna, like, pay me at any point?
Molly 8:55
No, because you're actually also Matthew, damn it.
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:58
You weren't supposed to know that about my disguise was so good and the great character voice that I do, yes.
Molly 9:05
So yeah, Mr. Etymology, tell us what we need to know about Benny shoga and or Gotti.
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:11
Okay, so I am really excited to nerd out about this. How am I gonna show the listeners the character that I'm talking about? Will we, like, put it in the show notes? We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, sure, it'll, it'll show up in your in your podcast player. So first of all, like the etymology itself here is extremely boring, because Benny means deep red and shoga means ginger. So it's like the dark the dark red ginger got it. However, when you dive into the characters themselves, it gets more interesting than that, because the word Benny is written with a Chinese character, kanji that originally referred to a specific type of dark red dye. And so the character has two radicals, two parts, and the left side is the radical for thread, which indicates that the character is or was somehow related to threads or textiles. And on the right is what's called a phonetic element that doesn't carry any meaning, but it tells you how to pronounce the character. Okay, that phonetic element is pronounced KO in modern Japanese. So why is the word not Ko shoga? We'll get there in just a second. All right, so in Japanese, this color refers to things that are deeply red or dyed red, not just plain old red is aka so, like, like a red red light, like a traffic light is an AKA shingle, but you would never call it a Benny Shingo. That would, that would sound bizarre, okay, so, like the phrase benyo sasu means to put on red lipstick. And particularly, like, you know, like classic red lipstick, like, deeply red, okay, in Japanese, a single character can be read many different ways. So you might say, okay, that's true in English, also, like an S can sound like or Z. This is many more different ways, like not, not in terms of number of ways, necessarily, but how different they can be from each other. So it's as if S could be pronounced like or snake, because like, the character can be a whole word by itself. So in the case of this character, Cole, there are two other common pronunciations. The first one is kuden I,
Molly 11:14
which means, wait, this is a pronunciation of the same the same character.
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:19
That's Benny in Beni shoga, if it's by itself, you would say Kurenai, okay, and that is a very fancy and poetic way to describe something as dark red, especially when it's something layered or flowing. And I once went to an old school cafe in Tokyo with red curtains, and the cafe was called Kurenai, just written with that one character. Okay? The second way of reading, it is just coal. And this comes up in some very common words, like kolyo, which is autumn leaves. So like deep red leaves, or cold Cha, which is black tea, or literally, dark red tea. Okay? Because if you look at the infusion of the tea, it's like, you know Benny. So Benny is, is the third pronunciation. So So, so there's three, three common ways to read that character, Benny could and I Cole, okay, and that's that's not unusual at all for a character in Japanese.
Molly 12:09
Wow, that's so challenging to learn. Mr. Etymology, did you go to school for this? Mr.
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:15
Etymology did, in fact, go to school for this, and also did a lot of self study and and would encourage everyone to learn Japanese so you can suffer the way I have, okay. Host Matthew also, okay.
Molly 12:26
But so how do you know when to say Benny, as opposed to KO or Kuru nai
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:33
context, the most annoying answer to any language question. So if the if the character is in a is in a two character compound. It's going to almost certainly be read as coal, if it's by itself, it's going to be read as Benny, or could and I probably Benny, because could and I is kind of a unusual poetic word, so you'll just know from the context.
Molly 12:58
So like when you went to that cafe with the dark red curtains. Did you initially go, oh, look, it's Benny cafe.
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:06
No, because the word, the word Benny, doesn't really, it doesn't feel right by
Molly 13:11
itself, okay? It almost always is with something else.
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:15
Like, yeah. So, so Benny sugar, Benny osasu, like it kind of, it kind of needs something, something else, to go with it by itself. It sort of feels a little odd to say, not, not that you couldn't, like, could you have a cafe that was just called? I mean, you could call your your cafe, anything. So, so, yes, you could, in this case, like, I kind of knew it was going to be, couldn't I? Okay, okay, that's so, that's very interesting, yeah. So, like, a lot of this really just comes down to like context. And there are absolutely cases, in lots of cases, where, like, a native speaker will like, Look at, look at a word, and be like, I am not 100% sure that I'm reading that correctly. And often that's that's a case for, like, a proper name. But even sometimes, when it's
Molly 14:01
not Mr. Etymology, I have a question that's not related to etymology. Do you think that you could just take a seat somewhere else?
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:08
And I, I've been told that I'm supposed to talk about Gotti also. So I'll be back. Okay, okay, I'll sit over here. I'll move down the couch and sit next to Ed McMahon. Okay, great. Okay.
Molly 14:17
So Matthew, yeah, yeah. Why is Benny sho got Why is it dyed red at all? Oh, gee. Why did they make this stuff red? Because it's not red. So nature.
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:28
So originally, it's because it was made. It was made by pickling ginger in like real plum wine vinegar, which is like plum colored. Okay, so that that's why.
Molly 14:40
And so as they came to probably make it in mass quantities, they needed to use cheaper vinegar and therefore die, yep. Okay, okay, wait, Mr. Etymology, okay, come back. What about Gotti, the sweeter
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:57
pickled ginger. So Gotti, it's a total. Different kind of word. First, it's not written in kanji at all. So there are, like, multiple ways to say the same word. It's just Gotti. It could be written in hiragana or katakana, I guess, usually written in hiragana, it is among a group of slang terms that originated at sushi places in the Edo period. So like the 17th, 18th, 19th century, probably, probably the mid, mid to later Edo period. And just like, for no particular reason, just like, if you're in a particular job where you're probably hanging out with other sushi chefs, trading stories about working at a sushi place, like you know, you might have fun coming up with your own words for some of the common things you use there. And so Gotti is pickled ginger, and the word comes from the onomatopoeia Gotti, Gotti, which is a certain type of crunchy texture, okay, others. So, like, you might call your soy sauce Murasaki, which means purple, no no reason, just, just for fun. And that's just sort of like it's an in group language thing, okay, okay. Like, industry slang, yeah, and so Gotti is the one, is the main one. I think that has, like, taken on, like, everybody calls it that now, like these, these other sushi shop terms, they're not, they're not unknown or secret or anything, but they're not so common that, like, you know, there isn't anything else that you would call this this type of pickled ginger, like, in, like, you know, everyday Japanese.
Molly 16:25
So do people often eat this, other than with sushi?
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:29
Well, let's get Mr. Etymology out of here, because he doesn't know anything. Oh, okay, bye, Mr. Etymology. Mr. Etymology doesn't even necessarily eat food. He's more of a concept
Molly 16:39
by Mr. Etymology. Bye. I've been a concept.
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:44
So, okay, so, so Gotti is the sliced pickle, Ginger served with sushi. And interestingly, wait
Molly 16:50
a minute, hold on. Why would you serve? Why did this come to be served with with sushi?
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:54
Anyway, I'm chewing. Oh, it's so good. It's so good as a palette cleanser. And because, like, you know, Ginger, Ginger is used in, in, like, making sushi. So, like, you might grate a little, tiny bit of ginger and put it on top of something. So, like, they had ginger around as an ingredient. A thing you want with sushi is for like, you want, you want a palate cleanser. You don't, you don't want, like, you know, if you take a bite of, you know, eel, for, like, everything else you eat after that to taste like eel, and you miss, you know, there, there's like, an order to these things also, but you want, you want to, like approach, you mean, there's a cheese plate, there's a cheese plate order, but you want to approach each piece of sushi, like, on its own merits. And so we've got this, we've got plenty of ginger around. Pickled ginger is delicious. It makes a great palate cleanser. So, like, sushi places have been serving it for a long time. Probably, I am going to speculate that there was, like, you know, that it is related to some preservation technique from prior to refrigeration, but that is just
Molly 17:50
a guess. It's interesting to me that that it came to be pickled differently from the the Benny shoga, that this one is with rice vinegar and sugar, yeah.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:59
And honestly, I don't know when Benny shoga originated. I don't know which of these came first. Okay, okay, maybe, maybe a food historian will get in touch. Do people ever make these at home? Yeah, so not, not super often, because they're so easy to buy at the store. Like, if you're, if you're, like, like restaurants, like, if you're a fancy sushi place, you will, you will make your own because, like, making house, house made stuff is what you do. Average person is not going to make pickled ginger at home. Because why? Like, you can, you can buy the cheap stuff, or you can buy, like, fancy stuff, the Gotti that you remember as being pink, like, I could have bought that at a watch. My yesterday, I just, I like the look of the of the undyed one. But I also remember the first time I had it, I'm sure it was pink. And the reason it's pink, originally, is because, so one thing we haven't gotten into is both of these are made with young ginger.
Molly 18:52
Oh, and how does that compare to the ginger we see in like, you know, a mainstream American grocery store.
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:58
Okay, so that one, it's got, like, you know, first of all, it's a it's a rhizome.
Molly 19:03
Oh, wow. Time to talk post modernism.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:07
No, okay, is Mr. Post modernism here? He's not, he's not. He is or isn't. We can't be sure
Molly 19:14
that's right, he is. He's a multitude of that's gone.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:18
Let's, let's, let's think about everything, everything we know about post modernism and throw it all, there we go. Okay, so, so Ginger, Ginger is a rhizome, like, mature Ginger has, you know, the papery peel on it. Young ginger doesn't it's, it looks kind of like naked ginger, and it has like, like, pinkish reddish tips. And so, if you include the pinkish, reddish part when you're pickling, or possibly even if you don't, I'm not sure, like how they how this works chemically, but like, the result will be lightly pink. Okay, however, unless you are in a seriously fancy sushi place these days and and your and your Gotti happens to be pink, which it probably won't be. The reason it's pink today is. Because it's been dyed with artificial color, or beet juice, or shiso leaf, which also like, I think, I think red shiso leaf also has traditionally been used to dye Benny shoga, okay.
Molly 20:11
Well, what else do I need to know about this stuff? So you buy it, do you buy it refrigerated? Or is it you buy
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:18
it refrigerated? Okay? And, yeah, so, so young ginger, like, and it's, it's, it's milder and and more tender than than mature ginger. Like, you can make these with mature ginger, they'll just be, you have to, like, boil them a little, and it'll be really intense. Yeah, young ginger is a summer thing. I was all set. Like, I did not know the season of it. I was all set. Like, if they had it at watch a maya, I was gonna make some homemade Gotti. I didn't okay because it was January. Okay? So it's a thing you can make in summer, and is good year round. Is there anything else you want to say about Michael ginger? One, one more thing, which is that something I always enjoy seeing is when a person, usually a kid, but not always, like, is a total fiend for for ginger at the sushi place. And, like, eats as much ginger as sushi. I find this very entertaining. Or, like, takes a bunch of it and dips it in their soy sauce, and just like, goes to town. Like, I think this is adorable.
Molly 21:10
It is adorable. Well, Matthew, do you have a now? But, wow,
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:14
I do have a now. But, wow, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:23
my now, but wow is a mystery novel called strange pictures by uketsu. And uketsu is like a shadowy figure, like a like an eccentric Tiktok mystery guy or person who wears a mask and, like, draws spooky pictures and has now authored a series of mystery novels, and I've read the first two. The second one was a little over the top, even for me, but I really enjoyed the first one. It is a sort of like psychological horror mystery, in which people draw spooky sketches and then the detectives have to, like, put together, like, what are the messages hidden in these pictures that tell you, like, who the murderer is and why it was done. And it's very silly, because, like, you know, no, no actual detective would ever do anything like this, and no actual murder victim would ever like draw a series of pictures to say, here's why I'm gonna be murdered, but like as a premise for a detective novel, super fun, excellent.
Molly 22:25
Okay, so that is strange pictures by uketsu, yep, right. Okay. And can we link to that? Yeah, absolutely. Did you read it in English? I read
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:33
it in English? Yes, yeah. And I read the second the second one, honestly, I might recommend the second one. Also the second one is called strange houses, and it's all about how you can tell from the floor plan of the house, like that it's a murder house and like, here's here's who lived there and how they did the murder based purely on the floor plans, which is, is an idea
Molly 22:52
I just started, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, speaking of haunted houses,
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:57
you know, my guess is for this, For the floor plans, one that possibly uketsu Read Devil in the White City, and was inspired. I haven't read Devil in the White City. Devil in the White City is really fun. Like, I don't know how much of it really, like, holds up historically, okay, but it is a lot of fun.
Molly 23:14
Have you read Did You Read Dead wake, which is Eric Larson's Lusitania? No, but everyone else in my family has read it. Okay? I enjoyed, I enjoyed dead wake. I'll do Devil in the White City too.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:23
Watts and a cots. D are absolutely wild for maritime disasters. No, yeah, absolutely Lusitania, Titanic, the Andrea Doria, the Edmund Fitzgerald. Like I could,
Molly 23:36
I have relatives who died on the Lusitania? Wow, yeah, yeah, your family might want to talk. Oh yeah, they're gonna want to hear all about this. For sure. I don't know really anything about it, but anyway, okay, hey. Also, I write a newsletter called, I've got a feeling it's on sub stack, and I pay wall a lot of the posts, because I put a lot of effort into my essays that I write there. But there's also a bunch of stuff that isn't paywalled. And the really cool thing is that if you become a paying subscriber, you can join me once a month on Zoom for a write along. Yeah, I give you a prompt, and we just hang out and write together as a group of people, and it's so fun.
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:18
Yeah, yeah, if you get the chance to ride along with Molly, like she's my ride or die, and like, you'll go places.
Molly 24:25
You will go places anyway. It's it's Molly. Weisenberg.substack.com,
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:29
and I make music. I'm a singing guy, yeah, is what they call it. I think we're recording this in January. And I was sort of going over, like, did I actually accomplish anything in 2025 and the answer is, yeah, like I went to a white horse with my two best buds, Molly and Abby, and I released an album, a sing, an additional single, and a couple of covers of music under the names early to the airport and Twilight diners. And so if you search those names on your favorite. Music Listening service. You'll find me singing songs.
Molly 25:03
It's fantastic. You should do it. Thanks. You can also rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts,
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:09
and you can talk to other listeners at reddit.com/r/everything, spilled milk. This was a pretty information heavy episode, but
Molly 25:17
was but you know, we had a lot of Mr. Etymology, and he is just always so much
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:22
fun, Mr. Etymology, or Mr. Ed for short,
Molly 25:27
Mr. Etymology. I think I've done that before.
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:32
I think I think so. So until next time a horse is a horse,
Molly 25:37
you know, would be a good name for a horse, Benny shoga, yeah, for a person, like, first name Benny, last name
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:43
shoga, sure, but, but, like, yeah, this would be like, like, a deeply red colored horse. Is that? Is that a kind of chest, yeah, a chestnut horse, not like a race horse, because, like, I don't, don't feel great. I would love to like a wild horse that just runs through the fields majestically. Oh, maybe like a Japanese Mustang. Maybe like a Japanese Mustang, yeah, a thing. No, they aren't a thing.
Molly 26:06
But Mustang is the American Wild Horse, okay, yeah, but so let's have a, like a red Mustang named benishoka, okay, and that could also be a car, sure. Yeah, there you go. All right. I'm Matthew Amster-Burton. I'm Molly Weisenberg. Hi. A
Molly 26:25
memory lane. We're walking on memory lane.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai