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In the Noto area of Ishikawa, this root vegetable side dish is made for New Year and other special occasions. Flattened soybeans, burdock, and fried tofu simmer in sweetened soy, while daikon and carrot strips are blanched separately and folded in afterward, and each keeps its own texture. Vinegar layered over the soy seasoning puts it somewhere between a simmered dish and a dressed salad.
Minced crucian carp and root vegetables simmer in a sweet-salty dashi with two kinds of soy sauce, and the hot soup is ladled generously over rice, then topped with sliced green onion and torn nori. The dish grew up around the reclaimed land of Kojima Bay in southern Okayama, where rice paddies, canals, rivers, and Kojima Lake held plenty of winter carp. Its other names, tontoko-jiru and tontoko-meshi, echo the rhythmic chopping of fish on a board.
Most of burdock's aroma is near the skin, so it is scrubbed clean with a brush rather than peeled. A dried red chili in the pan leaves a little heat trailing behind the sweet soy flavor.
Burdock, carrot, summer orange peel, and young ginger are each candied on their own, so every piece keeps its firmness and aroma under a coat of sugar crystals. Farm households in Chiba made them to stretch the harvest, and the name comes from tenmondo, a dried medicinal tuber that was once steeped in honey.
Burdock root, sliced thin with its skin on and dry-roasted until it browns, gives this tea its toasty aroma. The slicing matters as much as the roasting: thick slices hold their flavor back.
In Hagi, Yamaguchi, the skin of eso (lizardfish) left over from making grilled fish cakes was saved rather than thrown away, marinated in sweet soy and wrapped around burdock root. The rolls appeared at festivals, for guests and in cherry-blossom picnic boxes, and what sets them apart is that they use the skin, not a paste of the flesh. The skin needs a night in the marinade, which means starting the day before. Sliced, each round shows burdock at the center ringed by layers of dark, glazed skin.
Botan means peony, and the name comes from the way thin slices of wild boar are fanned out on the platter like petals. The meat cooks with burdock and taro in a broth of mixed red and white miso, and the sansho pepper stays out of the pot, sprinkled over each bowl instead.
Burdock root cut into matchsticks is mixed with onion cut the same width, and the batter only coats the outside of the strips. A little tempura flour in the pancake mix crisps the edges almost as if they were deep-fried, while the burdock keeps its crunch.
Burdock, which stays firm, and potato, which crumbles at the edges, share the pot, but the potato goes in only after the burdock has had seven minutes on its own. Added together, the potatoes would be mush by the time the burdock softened. Oyster mushrooms join them and there is no meat; the broth is anchovy-kelp stock with perilla seed powder stirred in.
Fat and juices from boneless chicken thighs melt into the soy braising liquid, and the burdock root that soaks it up turns sweeter and saltier the longer you chew. A short soak in vinegared water takes the astringency out of the burdock, leaving a nutty root flavor instead of an earthy one. Thin diagonal slices of burdock cook through far faster than thick pieces. Some of the fatty chicken skin is trimmed away and the meat sits briefly in cooking wine and ginger juice, which keeps the sauce clean and free of any gamey smell. Tender thigh meat and chewy, slightly crisp burdock end up glazed together as an easy side for rice.
Burdock browns the moment its cut face meets air. The bowl of vinegar water sits right beside the cutting board, and each stick goes in as soon as it is cut. A brief blanch takes off the raw, earthy edge and leaves the surface just slightly translucent. The soy brine is steeped with kelp, dried chili and peppercorns only briefly so it stays clean rather than bitter, then poured on hot before the jar goes straight into the fridge. Two days later the sticks are seasoned through, and the jar stays in the fridge from then on as a refrigerator pickle, not a shelf-stable preserve.
In Kagawa, fresh udon goes straight into the loach and miso soup, so it eats as both soup and a bowl of noodles, with burdock, eggplant, taro and fried tofu in the pot too. The loach is never self-caught: only farmed fish that a licensed supplier has professionally purged.
Boiled burdock root is coated thickly in a sweet green paste of mashed edamame, and the firm, fibrous bite meets something soft and sugary. The beans are boiled softer than usual and slipped out of their thin inner skins, or the paste ends up with rough bits of skin. The dish is a local specialty of Shigaraki in Koka, Shiga Prefecture, and it is served either freshly tossed or cooled to room temperature.
The lotus root, burdock and carrot go into the fat left from browning the chicken before any broth is added, so even after braising the vegetables taste of chicken. It is cooked down until only a little liquid is left in the bottom of the pot, and it reheats fine the next day.
The name comes from fusuberu, the work of grilling freshly caught loach and drying it in the smoke of the hearth. That dried loach is ground to powder and simmered for about an hour with grated burdock, grated daikon and a red chili into a thick, spicy sauce, which is poured over hot, freshly pounded mochi. In Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture, it has been eaten at New Year, weddings, memorial services and the turning points of the farming year.
Fresh okara soaks up a dashi simmered with carrot, burdock and shiitake until it is moist yet crumbles apart under a spatula. Once the okara goes in, it needs constant turning from the bottom of the pot or it sticks. The dish is done before it dries out: no loose liquid, but still damp enough to clump and fall apart again.
Buckwheat dough rolled between the palms into thin strands shaped like little loach fish cooks gently in a dashi full of vegetables. Bound with egg and hot water, the dough should be as soft as an earlobe without sticking badly to the hands. Burdock, carrot, kabocha, napa cabbage, shiitake and chikuwa fish cake share the pot, which holds far more than a plain flour-dumpling soup.
With no meat at all, this braise relies on texture: thin slices of burdock stay crisp and chewy while konjac, a firm jelly made from konjac yam, stays bouncy. The konjac is blanched and then dry-toasted in an unoiled pan for 1 minute, which takes away its distinctive smell. Burdock absorbs the seasoning faster the thinner it is sliced, and after its vinegar-water soak it is drained well so the braising liquid is not watered down. Holding back the syrup until the soy liquid has reduced by about half lets it add gloss at the end instead of scorching. Sesame oil and seeds stirred in off the heat finish it.
In Gunma homes, wide unsalted noodles go straight into a pot of root vegetables and dashi without being boiled first. The broth comes out slightly cloudy and thick rather than clear, and that is how it should be. Taro, burdock, daikon, shiitake, and fried tofu make it a hearty one-pot meal seasoned with both soy sauce and miso. Noodle thickness and vegetables change from one household to another.
Daikon, carrot, lotus root, shiitake, fried tofu, burdock and koya-dofu (freeze-dried tofu) are cooked in three separate batches before meeting one sweet rice-vinegar dressing. Each group keeps its own texture: crunchy lotus root and burdock, tender daikon, and koya-dofu that holds stock like a sponge. Spreading the cooked pieces in a sieve until they stop dripping keeps the vinegar dressing from turning thin. The simmered koya-dofu cools in the sieve on its own, untouched: pressing it while hot would break it and squeeze out the stock it absorbed. White sesame and fine threads of yuzu peel are scattered on top, adding toastiness and a citrus lift.
Whole loach, a small freshwater fish, simmer with burdock, tofu and scallion in a soy-based broth until even the bones are soft enough to eat. Burdock shaved thin, like sharpening a pencil, flavors the broth. In eastern Saitama, along the Tone and Ayase rivers, loach were caught in rice paddies from summer into autumn; thick ones were simmered whole like this, and thin ones went into soup.
The spinach is squeezed hard before it is seasoned, the carrot is sauteed to drive off water, and the rice is left to cool a little before it is spread on the seaweed. All three steps are there to keep the gim from going soggy. The finished roll and the knife both get a thin coat of sesame oil before slicing.
Thin burdock matchsticks cook down in soy sauce and grain syrup until the outside is a glossy brown while the inside keeps some bite. Near the end, when the bubbles get large and the liquid is almost gone, the sugars catch on the pan very quickly, and that is when the bottom needs frequent scraping.
Takasaki zakuni looks like kenchin-jiru, but the vegetables are never fried; soaked dried squid and its soaking liquid supply the savory depth instead. In Gunma it appears at New Year, Setsubun, Ebisu-ko, and household festivals, and one story says oil was left out of wedding versions so the couple would not separate like oil and water.