Nanohana with Mustard Miso Sauce

As winter turns to spring in Japan, the countryside rolls out a lush green carpet of mustard greens. Give it some time and those greens send up florets, turning whole hillsides into sweeping fields of gold. That’s nanohana, the flowering tops of mustard greens, but before the buds open, you can harvest them as a vegetable. After months of mushrooms, root vegetables, and hearty braises, their mild bitterness is a refreshing nudge towards the warmer days ahead.

The name nanohana covers a broad range of edible brassica flowers, most commonly Brassica rapa (the same species as rapini used in Italian cuisine). For me, this tastes like spring: bold, a little bitter, with a mustardy edge and a sweet, nutty note that keeps you going back for another bite. The stalks and leaves are still tender, and the lanky florets are like a more flavorful cousin of broccoli.

All they need is a quick blanch, and in Japan, nanohana is often served as aemono dressed with a simple sauce. I went with a classic karashi sumiso, a tangy dressing that balances the sweetness of saikyo miso with the spicy bite of Japanese hot mustard and a sharp hit of vinegar. The miso rounds out the bitterness of the greens, while the mustard leans into the sharp notes hiding in the nanohana. In my version, I swap the traditional rice vinegar for a bright squeeze of lemon juice.

If you can’t find saikyo miso (sweet white miso), yellow miso (often labeled "white miso" in the US) will work. Just bump the honey up by a teaspoon or two to keep it balanced.