If you can find them, shelled fresh soybeans are also a good option.

For beans, my teacher used shucked edamame - fresh soybeans - which are sold frozen (usually fully cooked), even in supermarkets.

Another standout was the bean-curd skin with fresh soybeans, and part of its appeal was the texture and taste of what looked like a noodle but wasn't.

Other dishes could include small, salt-roasted sweet fish topped with fresh soybeans and tiny roasted Japanese yams; sashimi, and duck-cooked eggplant and ginger.

Witness the Asian smoked ostrich salad: thin slices of rosy meat with mango, fresh soybeans and greens in a red ginger vinaigrette.

Another presented small, salt-roasted sweet fish topped with fresh soybeans.

Also light and seductive were the addictive fresh soybeans, which diners must shell, and the spirited seaweed salad ignited by red pepper flakes.

The fish is covered in a colorful, crumbly crust of minced edamame, or fresh soybeans, and crunchy rye croutons the size of match heads.

But fresh soybeans in season are sweeter and cleaner tasting and have more snap when you bite into them.

For all their inroads into American restaurants, fresh soybeans are most traditional in Asian cooking.