About Mariko

Mariko Grady grew up in Mie, a prefecture in Japan’s Kansai region, known for its many rice fields. As a young woman, Mariko fell in love with performing and traveled the world as an accomplished actor, dancer and singer for thirty plus years with the Japanese theatre group Pappa Tarahumara.

While on tour, she always carried miso as a way to stay healthy. Her theatrical travels brought her to San Francisco, where she met her husband after a performance and decided to come back to live here. Traditional cooking and miso became a way to share Japanese culture with her family and friends.

She started miso making at home and a miso class project for third grade daughters school became a way to seek donations after the Tōhoku tsnunami hit in 2011. Mariko began selling miso to raise relief funds, then after the fundraiser, people kept coming back for more of her miso. Mariko was inspired to formalize her business, joining La Cocina in 2012 and launching, Aedan Fermented Foods, named after her son and translating in Japanese to “Sharing Wisdom”. She began producing small-batch, handcrafted miso using just three ingredients: soybeans, salt, and koji rice. Along with her original booth at the Ferry Building Farmers' Market, Mariko is successfully selling her miso and koji products online, in local grocery stores, and to top restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

Mariko opened Aedan Koji Kitchen in spring of 2022 in San Francisco, which provides koji products, Bento boxes to go, and a monthly cooking class.

“Miso is a healing food – fermented foods have the energy of living beings, which nourish us in times of need.”

JAPANESE TRADITION TO YOUR TABLE

Aedan brings Japanese fermented foods that are essential to flavor and health of every traditional Japanese meal to your table. We hand-craft in small batches, bringing you the foundation for you to create fresh, healthful meals for yourself and family.

Our cornerstone product is fresh made Koji (Aspergillus oryzae). Koji is a natural, enzyme rich ingredient that is the starter for miso, soy sauce, sake, shochu, mirin and vinegar. Using Aeden’s powerful handmade Koji, you can craft countless nourishing meals loaded with Umami.

Our goal is help you create balance and harmony in your body, your family, taste and environment by sharing these Japanese traditional products to an American market. We hope to do this in the following way.

Harmony for enjoyable family dinners
Provide ingredients that are simple, pure and delicious which easily infuse flavor and nourishment into every dish you feed your family.

Harmony for your body
Build a strong immune system, reduce food allergies and aid digestive health with probiotics in fermented foods. Using Koji also lowers sodium intake, as you can use 50% less salt to get the same flavors.

Harmony for Taste
Koji is a super effective natural marinade for tenderizing and enhancing proteins, and the secret ingredient to bring out the Umami in meats and fish.

Harmony for environment
The fermented nature of the products provide easy food preservation without refrigeration! The natural ingredients and simple, time honored production process of Koji is gentle to the environment.

MADE FROM THE VERY BEST

Our products use the finest natural, non GMO and certified organic ingredients available and are small batch crafted by hand. Koji is steamed rice that has been germinated with koji-kin. Koji-Kin (Aspergillus Oryzae), creates several enzymes as it propagates on the rice kernel. The results are probiotic, unpasteurized, rich in enzymes, with no preservatives and no artificial anything.

At Aedan we, use the highest quality, organic heirloom rice from Koda Farms, 4th generation Japanese farmers of Northern California. An artful combination of water, heat and environmental aspects creates rice grains with a light frosting and a sweet nutty scent, Koji!

To make our artisanal miso, we then mix the fresh koji with various beans and grains and carefully nurture them to provide you a range of choices - from traditional to the exotic.

We offer both Koji and several Miso that may be used in your home cooking and highly recommend you also try making your own miso. (We can teach you how!)

UNLEASH THE UMAMI

The beauty of fermentation is you get more layers of flavor, increased nutrition, and increased preservation – all in one act.

When koji is used in food preparation, the enzyme proteases break down proteins to produce amino acids including glutamate. This amino acid is responsible for umami, a rich, savory flavor that makes food taste delicious. This umami combined with other tastes rounds out the flavor of any dish. Amylase, another koji enzyme, breaks down starches to produce simple sugars such as glucose, thus adding a salty sweet flavor to meats and other proteins.

The Japanese have traditionally made full use of this technique of harnessing microorganisms to produce and preserve diverse foods under the extreme conditions of Japan’s 4 seasons. At the foundation of this culture there is koji in various forms, including rice koji, barley koji, and bean koji. Some sample ways you may get umami from Koji and miso in your dishes is as follows:

• Marinate chicken with koji to create a sweet savory roast chicken.

• Top a rice-ball with miso or create a vegetable dip for some humble nutty flavor.

• Add to miso to salad dressings to add an earthy depth to your salads.

• Mix miso with butter or olive oil and crushed garlic as a marinade to your meats.

• Experiment, get creative melding cuisines and cultures!

UNLOCK THE HEALTHY POTENTIAL

The benefits of using Aedan’s fermented products is that you can enjoy real Japanese healthy foods easily. It eliminates gluten, enhances the flavor of ingredients, adds amino acids and essential enzymes, while increasing foods nutritional value without any processing or additives. It’s ability to break down enzymes leads to deeper flavor, easier digestion and less sodium in your meals. Our fermented products are known for their health benefits and have been part of the traditional Japanese diet for thousands of years. We hope you use these miracle products in your meals to help harness the power of fermented foods.