509 Japanese recipes. Page 13 of 22. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Kuurijishi (Okinawan Pork, Winter Melon, and Egg Soup).
Kuuri means ice and jishi means meat, but the ice here has nothing to do with temperature: it is the egg that spreads across the clear broth in soft white drifts, like snow. Before the war, when eggs were scarce in Okinawa, families made it at Obon to welcome the spirits of their ancestors.
Red taro stalks dry-fried without oil turn a vivid red the moment vinegar hits the pan, then soak up a sweet vinegar and soy dressing as they chill. In Toyama this summer side dish is made from the leaf stalks of yatsugashira taro and served at home, at Obon and at autumn festivals. Raw stalks carry an acridity that can prickle the throat, which is why peeling, soaking and thorough cooking all matter more than the color change. A batch is ready only when even the thickest stalk is tender and leaves no sting on the tongue.
Butter melts slowly into a clear chicken and soy broth, leaving a rich, toasty aroma floating on top. Sweet corn and crunchy bean sprouts keep the salty broth from feeling heavy. The noodles boil in their own pot so their starch never clouds the soup, and the broth itself stays at a gentle simmer because hard boiling reduces it and pushes the salt up.
Egokusa seaweed, simmered and stirred until it melts into a thick, spitting paste, sets in a square tray as this jelly from Nishi-Aizu and Kitakata in Fukushima. A little vinegar helps the fibers break down, and the seaweed alone firms it with no added gelatin or agar. Slices go into mustard soy sauce, and the dish traditionally appears at memorials, Obon, New Year, and other gatherings.
Gardenia fruit turns the rice a clear yellow, and a brothy stew of crumbled tofu, minced lizardfish and root vegetables is spooned over it. The dish comes from Usuki in Oita. One story credits the frugal local domain, which used yellow rice in place of costly red bean rice; another ties the color to paella seen through Nanban trade. Merchant households cooked a large pot of kayaku on New Year's Eve and reheated it through the first three days of the year.
In Nagasaki this milkshake gets eaten with a spoon, far thicker than anything you would drink through a straw. It is said to have started between the late Taisho and early Showa periods at Tsuruchan, regarded as Kyushu's first tearoom, as relief from the city's summer heat. Once sold only in the warm months, it is now a year-round local specialty. Condensed milk and egg yolk give it a soft custard flavor, with fine shards of ice still crunching through it. Stopping the blender while some ice remains keeps it from turning watery, and a canned cherry goes on top.
In Akita this soup belongs to Little New Year, and with daikon, potato, mountain yam, wild greens, tofu and candied chestnuts in it, it is made in one big pot. Near the end, yaki-zunda, small cakes of green soybean flour and glutinous rice flour browned in a pan, go in for a final five-minute simmer.
Bonito flakes steeped off the heat in a chicken and kombu stock add a layer of smoky fish aroma on top of the chicken. For a clear stock, the bones are blanched and scrubbed first, and the pot is kept below a hard boil with frequent skimming. Seasoning comes from a tare of soy sauce and mirin warmed only until it bubbles at the edges, spooned into each bowl before the hot stock is poured in. Narutomaki with its pink swirl, menma, and a soft-boiled egg sit over noodles cooked slightly under the package time so they hold their firmness in the soup.
Ray carries so much collagen in its skin and cartilage that the broth it simmers in, sweet and salty with ginger, sake, mirin and soy, sets like jelly once it cools, with no gelatin needed. In Katsuragi, Nara, ray has long been chilled in its broth this way. Nara has no coast, but seafood landed in Osaka came in quickly along the Takenouchi road.
Barley grains and chestnuts dried for a day give chew to this steamed sticky rice, which also carries chicken, burdock, fuki, shiitake, and fried tofu glossed with soy seasoning. The dish came to the Hiruzen area of Maniwa in Okayama from Daisen okowa in Tottori, and barley entered the mix around 1972 through a local staple-food improvement campaign. Families served it at New Year, seasonal celebrations, and festivals. The liquid left from simmering the filling is kept and sprinkled over the grains partway through steaming.
Pounding the rice completely smooth before adding any sweet potato gives the finished cake mochi's stretch, with the soft, moist body of the potato folded through it. There is twice as much potato as rice by weight, which turns the slab yellow. A layer of kinako underneath and more on top make the very sticky dough possible to press, cut, and pick up. The batch yields 40 pieces.
Grated lotus root, skin and all, thickens this miso soup on its own: no flour, just its starch and sticky mucilage, with tiny coarse bits left in the broth. Also called gorigori-jiru, it comes from central Miyazaki and is tied to the stringy lotus grown in the pond beside Mizunuma Shrine, associated with the water deity Suijin-sama. Cultivation reportedly began when the Takanabe domain encouraged planting a good Yamato variety to strengthen its finances. Dried horse-mackerel stock gives the base a gentle fish savor.
Cold soba, rinsed until the strands feel clean, gets a light coat of soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Cutting cucumber, carrot, and red cabbage as thin as the noodles lets each mouthful pick up vegetables and buckwheat together instead of leaving the cabbage in a heap at the bottom of the bowl. The salad tastes best the moment it is tossed; left sitting in the dressing, the noodles go soft and the flavor turns watery.
Instead of rice, this sushi from the Kitaura coast of Yamaguchi uses okara, the soybean pulp left from tofu making, dry-toasted until loose and seasoned with vinegar, sugar, ginger, hemp seeds, and black sesame. Salted, vinegar-firmed sardine fillets wrap around small drums of the cooled okara. It grew out of coastal communities where rice was hard to farm, and it was made for New Year, weddings, and local festivals. Each piece pairs crumbly, nutty okara with rich fish and a clean sweet-sour finish.
From late April through June, when Spanish mackerel entered the Seto Inland Sea and broad beans ripened, farming families in Sanuki made this pressed sushi for Haruio, a spring gathering where relatives shared fish, food, and sake. The mackerel on top must be sold for raw consumption, because the vinegar cure does not kill parasites or pathogens.
Ochirashi flour, ground from roasted barley and glutinous rice, is worked into a hot syrup of sugar and mizuame, a Japanese starch syrup, and set into soft, chewy sticks that taste of toasted grain. Once the mass leaves the pot in one piece it is very hot and sticks to skin, so dividing, rolling and cutting are all done with two heatproof spatulas and a knife, never bare hands. A last roll in more flour keeps the cooled pieces from sticking together.
Bite into one of the small wheat dumplings and a piece of walnut sits at the center. Mamebu-jiru belongs to Yamagata-cho in Kuji, Iwate, and is linked to flour dumplings that reportedly replaced celebratory noodles during poor Edo-period harvests. It still appears at New Year, ceremonies and winter meals. Around the dumplings, a clear soy broth of kombu and dried sardines carries carrot, burdock, kanpyo gourd strips, mushrooms and grilled tofu.
Raw Pacific cod roe gets squeezed straight from the sac into simmering soy sauce, sake, and mirin, then cooked down with shirataki until each grain clings to the noodles. This Akita preparation uses true cod roe, not the pollock roe sold as tarako or mentaiko.
Grated mountain yam and egg go into the finely ground sardine, so these fish cakes puff up soft inside when they hit the oil. In Toyama they are eaten as they are, with rice or with drinks, and also dropped into oden or hot pot.
Thin slices of vinegared mackerel and a sheet of vinegar-softened white kombu wrap a firm block of sushi rice that has been pressed in a wooden mold. The Osaka style needs no soy sauce, and sweet pickled ginger is served alongside. Sushi Tsune in Minami-Semba created it in 1891 using konoshiro, and the half-fish shape looked like a small boat, battera in Portuguese. Mackerel and a square mold came later.
With a few azuki beans in each channel of the lotus root, every round sliced from the finished piece shows a white flower pattern studded with dark red beans. It is a home dish from Ibaraki Prefecture, made with lotus root from around Lake Kasumigaura and locally grown beans. Dry beans swell a great deal as they cook, so each hole is filled only half to two-thirds and left loose. Two to three hours of gentle simmering, then sugar, then cooling completely in the pot: the whole thing takes half a day.
Pinch two corners of a square of wheat dough together and it takes the shape of a mi, a winnowing basket. In Jikkoku, in Fujikawa, Yamanashi, that shape is said to scoop up good fortune, which is why the soup appears on New Year's morning and at celebrations. The dough goes straight into the broth with the root vegetables instead of being boiled separately, and the flour on its surface gives the soup a light body.
Toasted sesame, rice miso, shiso, onion, and cucumber are ground together in a mortar, then thinned with cold bonito stock into a dipping soup for chilled udon. It is a summer dish from Kawajima in Saitama, nutty from the sesame and cool from the shiso and cucumber. Bruising the sliced cucumber with the pestle lets its juice and aroma run into the base. The sesame is ground fine enough for its oil to seep out, which is where the nutty richness comes from. The cold stock is poured in gradually so the thick sesame-miso paste loosens without lumps.
Salmon frozen solid and sliced thin without thawing gives a first bite that is hard and icy, then softens on the tongue and releases its oil. The Hokkaido method is tied to Ainu foodways that kept salmon in snow through severe winters. Its name is usually traced to the Ainu words ru, meaning to melt, and ipe, meaning food. Horseradish and soy sauce are served alongside.