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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.
Along the Ariake Sea, tonguesole is called kuchizoko, and it is simmered briefly and hard in a generous mix of sake, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Unlike long-braised fish, these thin fillets cook in minutes and come out of the pot as soon as they are done, which keeps the flesh tender and flaky. Burdock cooked in the leftover liquid goes alongside.
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.
Vinegar is added only at the very end, so a sweet soy simmer of burdock, carrot, lotus root, shiitake, shirataki, and fried tofu picks up a bright sour note while the lotus root keeps some crunch. It comes from around Mito in Ibaraki, and one theory traces the name to nite aeru, to simmer and then dress. Families made big batches for New Year and ceremonies and ate it the next day, and it still tastes best after a night in the refrigerator.
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.
Red soybean miso, aged from a soybean koji, gives this Aichi stew a dark broth with deep savoriness, a little acidity, and a faint astringency. Also called misoni, it grew out of the soybean miso tradition best known through Hatcho miso. Every household loads the pot with daikon, carrot, burdock, taro, konnyaku, and fried tofu, but some keep plenty of broth and eat it like a hot pot while others cook it down to a thicker simmer.
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.
A whole sea bream of about 1 kg is opened from the back with its fins and shape intact, packed with sweetened okara, and steamed in one piece for celebrations in Kochi. Sieved hard-boiled egg yolk goes over the top at the end, and the fish is presented on a large sawachi platter at weddings, New Year, and the banquets locals call okyaku. A sweet potato steamed alongside is the old way of judging doneness, and this recipe keeps that habit.
A salted salmon head and backbone with some flesh still attached give the kombu stock its fish oil and savor. Sanpei jiru is a Hokkaido winter soup, and unlike Ishikari nabe, which is seasoned with miso and uses fresh salmon, it relies on the salt already cured into the fish.
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.
Nanbu wheat crackers broken by hand into a soy-seasoned broth of chicken, burdock and vegetables soften at the edges as they drink up the liquid, while their centers stay chewy. In the Hachinohe area of Aomori, crackers have long gone into soup this way. Snack crackers tend to dissolve, and the ones sold for soup are used instead.
Boned, opened loach and thin shavings of burdock simmer in sweet soy-seasoned dashi in a shallow pan, then beaten egg is poured over to bind it all softly. Unlike marunabe, which cooks the fish whole, this Tokyo hot pot uses split loach, and the burdock goes in first to give the broth its earthy flavor. A sprinkle of sansho pepper goes on just before eating.
Stir-frying the beef and burdock in sesame oil before any water goes in gives the broth a toasted aroma and a light brown tint. Even after a long simmer the burdock never goes fully soft and keeps some chew. A short soak in cold water after slicing limits browning and astringency.
Buckwheat flour kneaded with crumbled firm tofu is pressed into willow-leaf shapes, pointed at both ends and slightly plump in the middle, which keeps a springy buckwheat bite. This miso soup from northern Iwate takes less work than cutting fine soba noodles yet still tastes clearly of buckwheat. Anyone with a buckwheat allergy should not be served it.