509 Japanese recipes. Page 21 of 22. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Shumai (Japanese Steamed Pork Dumplings).
Coarsely ground pork leg is wrapped only around the sides, leaving the top open, and a single green pea crowns each one before steaming. The coarse grind keeps some chew, and sugar with oyster sauce gives the filling a slightly sweet seasoning.
In the Hida region of Gifu, turnip greens salted down for winter turn sour by spring, and that is when they went into the pot with dried sardines, soy sauce, mirin, and sake and cooked until almost no liquid was left. Kumoji is said to come from an old court word for pickles. The greens soak through several changes of water, but a little salt is left in on purpose: without it, all you taste is soy sauce.
Soft, stringy Mito natto made from small soybeans meets chewy strips of thick dried daikon, a fermented pairing from central Ibaraki. Also called shoboro natto, it began as a way to stretch the autumn natto left after sharing with neighbors and the local temple. Traditionally the daikon dried for three days in sun and cold wind and froze on the last night; at home, store-bought wariboshi daikon is only lightly rinsed so it keeps that firm bite.
When fresh salmon roe comes in each autumn, Hokkaido cooks free the eggs one by one and leave them in sake and soy sauce that has been boiled and cooled. The eggs take on the seasoning but their skins stay tight, so each one pops with a salty burst.
Squid ink turns Toyama's kurozukuri glossy black and rounds out its saltiness, so it tastes softer and more of the sea than the usual red squid shiokara. The body, liver, and ink of Japanese flying squid are salted separately and aged cold. Records say a lord of the Kaga domain presented it to the shogun. A little goes on rice, with sake, or into ochazuke, rice with tea poured over.
Despite the name, there are no soybeans or nigari here: goma dofu from the temple cooking of Koyasan in Wakayama is set from white sesame, Yoshino kudzu starch, and water alone. Toasted sesame is ground until oily, wrung through cloth into a rich milk, and cooked with kudzu into a block that slices smooth and springy, with the sesame fat held in rather than separating. It is served cold with wasabi soy sauce or vinegared miso.
Cleaned monkfish liver is rolled in foil with the ends twisted tight like a sweet wrapper, then steamed, chilled firm, and sliced into rounds. Before that, every vein and bit of membrane comes off and the liver sits in sake with a little salt. It is a cold starter, served with ponzu, lemon, scallion, and grated daikon mixed with chili powder (momiji oroshi).
Bright white, fine-grained, and springy when pressed, Odawara kamaboko became known as a specialty of the old Tokaido road. That whiteness and spring come from keeping the fish cold from cleaning to shaping. Nothing but salt, sugar, and mirin joins the white croaker, and the paste is steamed in a half-moon on a wooden board. Pushing it through a fine sieve first removes the last bits of bone and skin, so the cut face comes out smooth.
Yuki in Ibaraki makes its sudarefu by working flour back into wheat gluten, rolling it thin, salting and boiling it, and sun-drying the sheets on a bamboo blind; the blind leaves ridges that the sesame-vinegar dressing clings to. Drying makes the gluten chewier than fresh fu and lets it keep, which once made it a valued pantry item. It was used in temple cooking around the castle town, and since the late Edo period it has been served at weddings, funerals, holidays, and Obon, when families gather.
Cooked with finely ground rice, agar extracted from tengusa seaweed sets into a jelly from Wajima in Ishikawa that is firm like agar yet carries the gentle softness of rice starch. It is cut into thin strips and arranged in a ring like petals, then served with a sweet-salty sauce of black sesame, brown sugar, miso, soy sauce, and kelp stock, plus peeled mandarin segments. In Wajima it appears at Buddhist memorials and funerals, set out in local Wajima lacquerware.
The negi go into the dry pot first, no oil, and brown at the edges before the warishita is poured in, a premixed blend of soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and sake. Cabbage, shiitake, grilled tofu, and shirataki each get their own patch of the pot, and the thin beef goes in a few slices at a time, lifted out as soon as it is cooked.
No New Year osechi box is complete without these sweet black soybeans, which carry a wish to work hard enough to be tanned dark and to stay well for years. Large, richly flavored Tanba beans from Kyoto simmer under a drop lid for eight hours at the lowest heat. A sudden jump in heat, or a bean left above the liquid, will split or wrinkle the skin, and that is why they stay submerged the whole time.
Two whole sea bream, opened along the back and packed with sweet-savory okara (tofu pulp) cooked with vegetables and ginkgo nuts, are steamed whole for this celebratory dish from the Kaga area of Ishikawa. The fish are set belly to belly on the platter, an arrangement that made it a regular at weddings. Each serving pairs mild bream with stuffing that has soaked up the fish juices.
The batter here is more than three parts dashi to one part flour, thin enough to pour like water. It goes into the pan until each hollow overflows, octopus, green onion, tenkasu, and red pickled ginger drop in, and once the edges set, a skewer turns each one over and over into a ball. The shell cooks thin while the inside stays soft.
Sugar dissolved in bonito dashi makes this Tokyo-style rolled omelet noticeably sweeter than Kansai dashimaki. The roll is given a light brown outside and, still hot, wrapped in a bamboo mat to set its square shape.
Shrimp, sweet potato, eggplant, and shishito peppers share the same oil but not the same timing, and each piece comes out as soon as it is done. The batter is cold water and egg with cake flour, stirred only a few times with chopsticks and used while small lumps remain.
Chicken thighs are pressed skin side down with a spatula until the skin turns deep gold, then glazed over low heat with soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar, plus garlic and ginger, spooned over until it clings.
Long, translucent strands pushed through a wooden press give tokoroten its noodle shape, though it is really a jelly made from tengusa seaweed. Tengusa has been gathered around Shizuoka's Izu Peninsula for centuries, and households and small sweet shops there once sold tokoroten as an everyday children's snack. Local accounts say makusa, common on the west side of Izu, sets soft and slightly sticky, while obusa from the east side gives thicker, firmer strands. On its own it tastes of almost nothing, and the topping decides what it becomes: sweet vinegar, mustard, aonori, and sesame make it savory, while roasted soybean flour and dark sugar syrup turn it into a chilled sweet.
Five kinds of chicken offal share one pan: liver, gizzard, heart, kinkan (unlaid egg yolks), and himo (oviduct). They go into boiling sugar-soy sauce together and are tossed over strong heat until the small amount of sauce reduces to a glossy coat. The dish comes from Kofu in Yamanashi, where a soba shop is said to have created it to use parts that were being thrown away. Kinkan and himo rarely turn up in standard offal packs, so a specialist butcher is the usual source.
Ground chicken is pressed and broken up in the pan, joined by fine shreds of ginger, then cooked down in soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Turn off the heat while a thin film of liquid still coats the pan, and every crumb carries a dark glaze while the meat stays moist. Spread over rice, it becomes a soboro bowl.
In Gujo, Gifu, cabbage pickles that had gone too sour and salty over the winter were, by local account, soaked to draw some of that out and then cooked again in red miso broth. Leek, eggplant, shiitake, and konnyaku join them, and the pot sits over the lowest flame until the cabbage is very soft and only a little liquid is left.
Small new potatoes are fried whole and slowly until their thin skins wrinkle, then simmered in dashi and rolled in miso, sugar, and mirin until a thick glaze clings to them. The dish belongs to Yuzurihara in Uenohara, Yamanashi. Seida honors Nakai Seidayu, an official who promoted potato growing after a famine in the late Edo period, and tamaji means small potatoes, a reminder that undersized tubers were never wasted. The fried skins turn savory while the centers stay fluffy.
Spring bamboo shoots, split, boiled, and sun-dried, curl into triangular pieces that look like dried squid, hence yama-surume, mountain squid. In Kumamoto the dried shoots were restored throughout the year for farm-season meals, festival Buddhist dishes in the Kuma area, and drinking snacks. Simmered slowly in strong dashi and light soy sauce, the strips become tender yet springy. Dry wood ear strips go in only at the end, soaking up the last of the broth while keeping their crunch.
Made with a knife and no heat at all, this summer side from the Murayama and Okitama areas of Yamagata went onto rice by the spoonful during the hot farming season. The eggplant and cucumber are chopped small, and the myoga, ginger, shiso, long onion, and green chili finer still. Bonito flakes and dashi soy sauce go on just before it is served.