Instructions: Devotion to detail marks Japanese New Years foods; can a modern cook take shortcuts without shortchanging the tradition?

The secret of Japanese New Years food really is no secret.

It is patient devotion to precise and meticulous process, acceptance of doing things the long way around. It is my Auntie Shige tweezing out each bone from 16 mackerel fillets, or my Auntie Lois shredding burdock root with a paring knife.

It is, frankly, a pain.

Attitudes like mine are why New Years is both a cherished and fading tradition in the Japanese-American community.

We love the once-a-year regional and holiday dishes that we cant order in restaurants (and if we could, the flavor wouldnt be right). We love the whole clan sitting down to eat ozoni (rice-cake soup), and visits later of the cousins cousins and in-laws in-laws. We love the connection to the past. We love the feeling that comes especially with tediously home-prepared food, of being cared for.

What enables this all is the custom of grandmas, moms and aunties spending days cooking and washing and serving.

Younger grown-ups like me and my cousins have been free to behave like children - or men - whose responsibility is simply to obey entreaties to eat, and eat more. (Yes, even husbands inclined to participate in household chores tend to spend New Years Day solely as consumers of food and football.)

The cooks would be glad to pass along their knowledge, even while, I suspect, privately doubting we can get it right.

My aunt would tell you that the secret to perfect sabazushi (mackerel sushi)

is in salting, then marinating, the fish just right. Oh, and spending four days to prepare it.

My friend Morita-san would have told you that the secret to perfect kuromame

(sweet black beans) is in simmering and cooling the beans so carefully that they turn out glazed and unwrinkled. It takes an entire day.

Those who prepare atsu-yaki tamago (scrambled egg roll) would advise using a rectangular pan, and rolling layer upon layer of barely underdone crepe-thin egg sheet across the pan like a jelly roll. You can only imagine the time it takes, especially in inexpert hands.

I dont think my generation, even if we decide to grow up sometime, can ever take it all over.

Were used to seeing New Years not as work, but as a fun time to eat. Were too busy. Oh, some of us can cook, but after Christmas we still want to hit the sales or hit the slopes, catch up at the office or catch up on our sleep. After all, it has been a stressful year.

But surely, you say, the land that invented electric rice cookers and Top Ramen could come up with New Years shortcuts. And it has. We celebrants just have to drop our insistence on doing things the right way, and do it the fast way. If we want our children to become as nostalgic about New Years as we are, weve got to apprentice with our moms and aunts, invent new traditions - then compromise.

This will not be easy. Among the generation that manages to arrange Christmas and cook for New Years, only perfection is acceptable. And the non-cooking generation, taking for granted such annual feats, is not uncritical.

For the total non-cook, Japanese supermarkets now sell the whole packed New Years feast to go. But be warned, its expensive.

To preserve tradition, the key is to choose a few dishes to prepare the real way, delegate duties (to both genders) and fill the shopping cart with canned beans, sliced sashimi, vacuum-packed vegetables, sushi-to-go and - horrors! - frozen mochi, the pounded cakes of glutinous rice that are an essential New Years food.

The next year, adjust the menu, keeping the prepared foods that measured up to family standards and trying out others. Personally, Id leave off the satoimo

(taro root). But the rule is, if youre not putting in at least a day in the kitchen, you dont get to choose.

So when cousin David complains that the salad is not sweet enough, the burdock is not thin enough or the makizushi is not fat enough, just smile sweetly, grab his arm and announce youve got another conscript for the cooking team next year.

Auspicious dishes

Japan long ago adopted the Western, or solar, calendar, and thus celebrates its most important holiday of the year on Jan. 1.

Most of the two dozen or so dishes traditionally served at Japanese New Years earned their place on the menu because of their auspicious appearance or name. Families augment these dishes with their own often regional specialties - the sabazushi in my family came from Wakayama Prefecture with my grandparents.

Many traditional New Years foods are whats available in winter and keep well for several days. Once upon a time New Years was a weeklong celebration, during which no one cooked except to heat up the morning soup. We dont have the luxury of a long holiday, nor the restrictions on cooking. These days, even in Japan, New Years is compressed into three or sometimes even one day.

Although fresh green vegetables arent part of the tradition, there are inventive ways to include them. Cucumber, for example, is a summer food, but when sliced to resemble cut bamboo - which, along with pine and plum blossoms, is one of the symbols of the new year - it helps fill the void of green on the table.

Red and white are considered lucky colors and so are displayed at New Years. Kohaku namasu, a carrot and daikon salad, reflects that, and also helps balance heavy menus. It is better if made several days ahead.

But if you cant stand the strong odor of daikon, why let tradition be tyrannical? Yesterdays justifications need not be todays boundaries.

You can eat your fill of black beans, which are supposed to guarantee good health, but youd be better off placing your faith in eating whole grains and vegetables and getting your dad to quit smoking. If we really believed that kazunoko (cod roe) portended fertility, more couples than not in this fortunate age would stay away from it. Likewise, bow-tied kombu (giant kelp) will not, in your tummy, make you happy all year.

But you can make New Years Day happy, by setting your menu based on what your family likes to eat, rather than on how you wish your life would turn out.

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