120 recipes. Page 2 of 5
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Monkfish liver, cooked in a dry pan and mashed with miso and sugar, becomes a thick dressing for the boiled flesh in this winter side dish from Soma in Fukushima. Rehydrated dried daikon and salted wakame go into the toss as well. The boiled fish cools as it is rather than in cold water, which would wash out its flavor and thin the liver dressing.
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.
Mussels steamed in butter and rice wine get green chili and scallion, so a sharp heat follows the richness of the butter. The liquor from the shells mixes with the melted butter, and there is no separate sauce to make.
Flounder is thin-fleshed and mild, so salt and rice wine are all the seasoning it gets. The surface has to be patted completely dry before it goes into the pan, or the skin will not crisp.
The mussels are added with a spoonful of rice wine and boiled uncovered for five minutes, letting the fishy steam escape while the taste of the sea stays in the broth. Any still closed by then are taken out and thrown away.
The sea bream is steamed whole and goes to the table that way, which is why the dish turns up at holiday meals and when guests come. Soy sauce never touches the fish before steaming; it is heated, mixed with the juices that collect on the plate, and spooned over at the end.
Fukushima's winter side dish steeps dried squid and carrot, cut into matching fine strips, in sake, soy sauce, and coarse sugar for 12 hours, until the squid softens and the carrot soaks up the soy while keeping its crunch. The boiled marinade has to cool to room temperature first; poured hot, it cooks the carrot limp.
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.
Salmon, cabbage, onion, shimeji mushrooms, green pepper and carrot are sealed in foil with a sweet miso sauce and a pat of butter, then steamed in a covered frying pan. The dish is a local specialty of the Ishikari area of Hokkaido. Inside the parcel, steam wilts the vegetables while butter, miso and the juices of the salmon and vegetables pool into a salty sauce at the bottom.
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.
This one is built on sliced garlic browned slowly over low heat until it loses its bite. Clam meat and minari (water parsley) are tossed in that sweet, toasty garlic oil.
In the Iya area of Tokushima, river trout, tofu, konjac and vegetables were traditionally cooked over a layer of sweet miso on a heated flat stone called a hirara. Here a lidded electric griddle stands in for the stone, and chicken thigh, potatoes and shiitake join the trout, enough for four on one plate.
Every solid in this pot, from chicken and lotus root to taro, konnyaku and fish cake, is cut to the same 1cm dice, so each spoonful carries a little of everything. Dabu comes from the Karatsu area of Saga, and its name is said to echo zabu-zabu, the sound of plenty of broth sloshing around the ingredients. Neighbors once gathered to cook it in large pots for weddings, funerals and invited guests. The cut changed with the occasion: squares for celebrations, triangular konnyaku for Buddhist memorial meals.
Lean pork tenderloin pulls apart after boiling into long, even strands that take up a soy reduction along every fiber. It tastes better fully chilled than straight from the pot, since the seasoning keeps settling into the meat as it cools. Whole garlic cloves braise alongside and soften enough to eat with the pork.
Over 100 days buried in sugar, the hard sourness of unripe green plums softens into a sweet-tart pickle, and plums sinking into dissolved syrup with slowly shriveling flesh show it is on track. The liquid left once the plums come out is plum syrup in its own right, sealed and refrigerated separately.
Dough made from sendango, a fermented sweet potato preserve, is pressed through a dedicated extruder called a rokubei-segi so short, thick noodles drop straight into boiling water. The dish has been made in Shimabara and Tsushima in Nagasaki since the Edo period. The noodles are smooth outside, chewy inside, and faintly sweet from the potato. Once cooked, they are moved straight to cold water and rinsed to wash off the harsh surface. They are served in a clear broth of burdock, carrot, and shiitake seasoned with two soy sauces and sake, topped with fish cake and scallion.
The dish began in Yamaguchi Prefecture when an elementary school nutritionist collected home recipes to widen the lunch menu, and it spread from schools to homes and restaurants. Chicken thigh and burdock root are coated in potato starch, fried, and tossed with edamame in a sweet dashi-soy sauce.
Freshly cooked rice is pounded just until it holds together with some grains still whole, pressed thin onto a flat skewer, and ridged across the top with a fingertip. Those shallow ridges are what keep the sweet red miso sauce, ground with walnuts and sesame, from sliding off. In the mountains of central Japan, woodcutters and hunters made it the day before Yama no Ko, a gathering to pray for safety in mountain work; today it is a snack sold at sightseeing spots.
Thin strips of kombu are the main ingredient, and the pork belly is only 60 g, though its cooking water becomes the stock. Konnyaku, kamaboko and fried tofu go in too, giving each mouthful a few different textures. The liquid is cooked down until only a glossy coating is left on everything, which puts it closer to a side dish than to anything brothy.
Mixed clams soak in salt water for over an hour, then go onto high heat in their shells. As each one opens, it gets a bit of butter, minced garlic and rice wine, and since the clams vary in size, they come off one by one as their butter melts. Any that never open are thrown away.
Cod carries very little fat, which keeps this broth clear and light. The fish rests briefly in rice wine before going into anchovy stock already sweetened by radish, and crown daisy (ssukgat) goes on top thirty seconds before the heat is cut, just long enough to wilt.
Steaming instead of braising keeps this flounder milder and moister than the spicy simmered versions. The fish sits on sliced onion in a rimmed heatproof dish, where the soy sauce, rice wine and juices from the fish collect underneath as a ready-made sauce.
Fine strips of dried squid and kombu cure in soy sauce, sake and mirin until the kombu releases its sticky body, with salted herring roe mixed through. The dish is said to have begun in the Matsumae domain of southern Hokkaido. As roe grew expensive, squid and kombu took over a larger share, but it remains a winter and New Year staple.
Glass noodles, shrimp, squid, pork, napa cabbage, and wood ear fill a clear chicken broth, finished with half a hard-boiled egg on top. The dish came from Fuzhou in China's Fujian province, where it was a celebration food, and reached Kumamoto by way of Nagasaki in the late Meiji era. Today it appears at Chinese restaurants and home tables in central Kumamoto as lunch, dinner, or a meal after drinking. The seafood is added only after the pork and firm vegetables have cooked, which keeps the shrimp and squid from turning rubbery. To keep the broth clear, the glass noodles are boiled and rinsed separately, warmed in the soup only at the end, and the heat is cut as soon as the sesame oil and scallion are added.