509 Japanese recipes. Page 12 of 22. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Kenojiru (Tsugaru Root Vegetable and Soybean Soup), Zuiki Sweet Vinegar Pickle.
Every ingredient in this Tsugaru Little New Year soup is diced to about 5 mm, and each spoonful carries daikon, carrot, burdock, mountain vegetables, fried and freeze-dried tofu, soybeans, and kombu together. Red miso seasons it. Half the soybeans stay whole and half are coarsely mashed into zunda, which gives the broth a light body.
Blanched taro stalks (zuiki) turn bright and keep a light crunch at the center when they are slipped straight into sweet vinegar. In Niigata this is a summer side dish, made from the leaf stalks of yatsugashira taro harvested from June to September. Both the outer skin and the stringy fibers come off first, and the stalks are weighted under water while soaking so none float. The temperatures run the opposite way from a hot-brine pickle: the brine is cooled ahead of time, while the zuiki is added hot from the pot, which sets the color and texture. Overcooking breaks the fibers down, so they come out as soon as they bend without snapping, and a little grated ginger is spooned on top when served cold.
Grilled mackerel is braised in a sweet soy broth, and that same liquid then seasons somen noodles served around the whole fish. The dish belongs to the Kohoku area of Shiga, where mackerel arrived easily over the Saba Kaido, the old road linking Wakasa and Kyoto. It ties to a May custom of sending grilled mackerel to a married daughter busy with rice planting, and to festive tables at Nagahama's Hikiyama festival.
Hong Kong-born chef Chou Yuanji came up with this in Japan by adding mayonnaise to a Cantonese shrimp dish, and it now shows up at Chinese restaurants, izakaya and in convenience-store bento. Shrimp in a thin egg-and-starch coating are fried, then rolled quickly through a sweetish sauce of mayonnaise, condensed milk and lemon juice.
Rice koji and cooked rice slowly develop a mild sweet-sour character in the cold, and that flavor seasons pieces of salted trout, shredded daikon, and carrot. This fermented New Year sushi comes from the Hida and Chuno areas of Gifu, especially around Gero, where it was traditionally started in December. The packed container rests for 14 to 20 days somewhere consistently cold, and the pace changes with the weather and the ingredients.
From the Nanbu area of Aomori, this fresh confection is mashed green soybeans pressed together with rice flour and glutinous rice flour, shaped into a long log like kamaboko fish cake, and cut 1cm thick. Small bits of bean are left unmashed and show in the crumbly cut face, and slices are also browned in a dry pan.
Freshly cooked rice, pounded until about half the grains break, is pressed around skewers and browned, then cut into pieces that soak up chicken broth and turn chewy, much like rice cake. Kiritanpo comes from Akita Prefecture, where the rice is traditionally wrapped on cedar skewers and grilled over charcoal; this version browns the sticks in a dry pan instead.
Finely chopped wasabi stems and root are folded into sake lees sweetened with sugar, and after a few days the sharp nasal heat of wasabi cuts through the fermented aroma of the lees. After Shizuoka Station opened in 1889, the pickle began selling inside the station and became a standard regional souvenir; it is still eaten in small amounts with hot rice or sake.
Crisp fried thin noodles are buried under a hot, glossy sauce of pork, shrimp, squid, and vegetables thickened with potato starch. Chen Pingshun of Shikairo created it in 1899 as a soupless version of champon. Nagasaki still distinguishes the original thick-noodle style from the thin, crunchy style most people eat today, and this recipe follows the latter with store-bought fried noodles. Kamaboko, bean sprouts, and shiitake are added late so the sprouts keep their snap. Where the sauce soaks in, the noodles soften, and the rest stays crunchy.
This is a braise meant to be reheated and eaten the day after it is made. Overnight, gelatin from the dried cod coats the taro, and the ebiimo turn sticky and glossy. Ebiimo is a dense, striped taro from Kyoto; the cod is the dried kind traditionally brought down from Hokkaido, first simmered on its own in bancha tea to take off its smell and leftover salt. In Kyoto it is made in autumn and winter and also served at New Year.
From Shiga Prefecture, oae dango combines flat boiled rice dumplings with konnyaku, shiitake, carrot and komatsuna, all coated in a shiraae dressing of tofu and ground sesame. Everything is cooled completely before mixing, and the dish is served at room temperature rather than hot.
Boiled rice-flour dumplings go onto skewers and roll around a dry pan until they pick up pale brown spots, then get a glossy coat of soy sauce and sugar thickened with cornstarch. Sweet and salty arrive in the same bite, and under the toasted surface the dumplings stay springy. They firm up as they cool, so the glaze goes on just before serving, while they are still warm.
Thick bone-in rounds of carp and the head simmer for close to three hours, until the flesh flakes at a touch of the chopsticks and the miso broth turns thick. This style from the Saku area of Nagano adds miso in three stages. The first portion is added with sugar to season the fish, a middle portion ground smooth with cooked rice thickens the broth, and the last is stirred in near the end for aroma.
Thin daikon rounds, dried for a full day in sun and wind, are rolled around fine strips of yuzu peel and left in sweet vinegar until the citrus perfume runs through the jar. Gunma's dry winter, with its karakkaze wind, supported a wide habit of drying konjac, persimmons and daikon, and this pickle grew from that practice. It appears at winter celebrations and can take the place of red-and-white namasu in osechi. Only the thin colored zest of the yuzu is used, with the bitter white pith cut away. Drying makes the slices pliable enough to roll without cracking while keeping a pleasant chew.
Half the uni melts into the cream sauce, spreading its briny sweetness through every strand of udon, while pollock roe (mentaiko) sauteed with garlic stands in for salt. The other half is kept raw for the top, so the same ingredient arrives in two forms: dissolved and creamy in the sauce, cool and custardy on top.
Slice into it and fine ribbons of egg drift through amber agar. This Ishikawa holiday dish, seasoned with soy sauce and sugar, is nicknamed berobero for the way it slips around, and in Kanazawa and Noto it goes in the top tier of the New Year box next to herring roe and red-and-white fish cake. Its roots are traced to the egg agar of Edo-period cookbooks, from a time when eggs and sugar were scarce.
Whole hulled barley keeps a gentle pop inside a thick pot of softened rice, kidney beans, and three kinds of potato. In Yamanashi mountain villages where paddy rice was hard to grow, rice was saved for celebrations and barley carried everyday meals. Nothing is seasoned in the pot; each diner stirs in negi miso, a mix of scallion, miso, bonito flakes, and a little sugar.
Steamed in sake-cup molds, each clear, chilled shell shows a round of red bean paste inside. The sweet comes from Ogaki in Gifu, a city so rich in groundwater that vegetables and fruit were kept cold in it, and it is said to date from the Meiji era. Kuzu starch alone dissolves easily in water and firms up when chilled, and adding warabi starch gives a chewier wrapper that holds up in water. Wells once did the chilling; at home, ice water made from drinking water does the job, with the molds only half submerged.
In Aizu this soup was served to guests, and at weddings it was one dish people could go back to for more as often as they liked. The broth combines bonito dashi with the soaking water from dried scallops, and since the scallops and mushrooms need eight hours in the fridge, the work starts the day before.
Dried yuzu peel, cut into fine strips, simmers until translucent in sugar, dark soy sauce, mirin and dashi, and the liquid turns sticky as the peel releases its pectin. Regional yubeshi elsewhere stuffs whole yuzu with miso or glutinous rice, while this Tokushima version cooks the chopped peel into a sweet and savory condiment instead. Boiling the peel in three changes of water takes off the harshest bitterness while leaving a controlled bitter edge under the soy sweetness. A bit of chili, if used, gives a brief warm finish.
Chicken stock and a separately cooked clam broth, seasoned with nothing but salt, give this Hakodate-style ramen a pale golden soup that tastes clean and briny. Shio ramen traces back to Hakodate in southern Hokkaido, and with no soy or miso to hide behind, every flaw in the stock shows, which makes careful blanching and scrubbing of the bones worth the effort. Toppings stay simple: sliced chashu and blanched spinach.
Cut lengthwise, each piece shows red-tinted egg white and yellow yolk inside a green ring of fish paste, a cross section said to look like a peacock feather, hence the name kujaku. In Kamae, Saiki, Oita, it comes out for New Year and celebrations. Lizardfish, croaker or a similar white fish is ground fine and kneaded with salt, sugar and egg white, wrapped around a boiled egg, and fried.
Hot green tea is poured over rice topped with grilled salmon and laver flakes just before eating. As the salmon and soy sauce seep into the tea, the broth gets richer, and the wasabi on the side changes the heat each time a little more is stirred in. Some pour dashi instead of tea, or swap the salmon for umeboshi (pickled plum) or pollock roe.
The sweet rice dough cooks in the microwave in a few short rounds instead of a steamer, and once it turns glossy and stretches long, it gets wrapped around balls of red bean paste. Shaping happens on a generous bed of starch, which keeps the tacky dough from clinging to your hands and leaves the finished daifuku dry to the touch. Dough straight from the microwave tears easily, so it cools just until it can be handled.