21 recipes. Page 1 of 1
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Hot dashi poured over a potato-starch crust starts softening it right away: the edges turn tender while the middle stays crisp only briefly. That brief contrast is the whole point, and the tofu goes from the oil to the bowl and straight to the table.
Aichi claims a share of its history: the temple town of Toyokawa Inari is named among its possible birthplaces, and Nagoya-style pockets are packed generously and often left open along the bottom. The tofu pockets, simmered in dashi, soy sauce, sugar, and mirin, need to cool before filling, since warm ones let the sushi rice soak up leftover liquid and turn heavy.
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.
In Gunma's wheat-loving farm villages, jiriyaki, a thick wheat pancake with green onion and sakura shrimp, was the snack eaten by hand at the work breaks at 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. It once cooked slowly over the ash heat of an irori hearth, and the name is said to echo the jiri-jiri sound of the batter sizzling.
Thin slices of cucumber, eggplant, lotus root and carrot share the bowl with chewy wood ear mushroom, shiso and ginger, and each bite lands somewhere different on the crunch scale. Each vegetable is prepped on its own terms: the hard lotus root and carrot get a short blanch, while the softer cucumber and eggplant are rubbed with salt instead. The sweet vinegar with sliced red chili is boiled once and then cooled all the way down. Poured on while still warm, it costs the cucumber and lotus root their snap. Squeezing the salted cucumber and eggplant hard after rinsing keeps the dressing from going watery. Half an hour in the fridge is enough before serving it cold with its liquid.
It is just udon in a broth of bonito flakes and kombu, topped with a few slices of kamaboko fish cake and some scallion. Nearly all the work goes into seasoning that broth so it stays clear and light rather than salty.
A whole slab of atsuage, thick deep-fried tofu, is simmered uncut in this Fukui side dish, and a cross cut on top lets the broth seep in while the center stays white and plain. Each bite has a seasoned outside and a mild middle. Pouring boiling water over the tofu first rinses off surface oil and keeps the broth clean.
Shiitake, carrot and burdock, cut into thin matching strips, are spread over the rice and cooked in dashi seasoned with soy sauce and mirin. They stay on top until the rice is done. Heavy vegetables mixed down into the grains keep the liquid from circulating and leave underdone patches.
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.
Two calls decide this braise: how far the daikon is cooked before it meets the fish, and when you stop. Parboil the daikon until the edges turn translucent so the centers are already softening; that way the yellowtail isn't left simmering until it dries out while the daikon catches up. Scald the fish with hot water until the surface turns pale, pat it dry, and spoon the braising liquid over the skin as it cooks so it doesn't dry. Turn off the heat when the thickest piece reaches at least 63°C in the center, a chopstick slides into the daikon, and the liquid has cooked down by about half.
Crosshatched purple eggplant skin looks like a turtle's shell, and ground sesame clouding the broth looks like mud, hence the name mud turtle soup. This summer soup from the Koto region of Shiga gets slight body from finely ground rice porridge, which also keeps the large amount of toasted sesame from sinking straight to the bottom.
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.
Gunma suiton dough is never rolled or cut. A loose flour batter is simply spooned into dashi already simmering with daikon, carrot, taro, shiitake and fried tofu, and that ease made it an everyday dish that stood in for rice when rice ran short.
Takuan pickled the year before, by now salty and sour, gets sliced thin and boiled several times in fresh water before a gentle simmer in dashi, soy sauce, and mirin. Because a perfectly edible pickle is given extra work to become a new dish, it is also called zeitaku-ni, the luxurious simmer. Red chili and white sesame finish this Fukui side, which goes with rice, sake, or ochazuke.
In Osaka, the grilled heads left over after eel is made into kabayaki are called hansuke. Rinsed with boiling water to take off excess glaze and fat, they go into a broth of dashi, soy sauce, sugar and sake with grilled tofu, and the deep eel flavor passes through the broth into the tofu. It comes from a merchant city that wasted nothing, not even cheap by-products. The heads are full of small bones and are all lifted out; only tofu, scallion and strained broth go into the bowl.
Kaga lotus root turns so sticky when grated that it is nicknamed mochi-renkon. In Kanazawa the grated root is spread over white fish, shrimp, ginkgo nuts and lily bulb, steamed, and served to guests under a clear, lightly thickened dashi, eaten with a spoon so the chewy layer and the broth come up together.
Mizu eggplants fermented in rice bran for two to three months, from late summer into autumn, become the base of this Senshu, Osaka simmer. In the name, jako means the small shrimp and goko means pickles. Soaking and blanching soften the salt and fermented aroma without erasing it, and the tender eggplant then soaks up dashi, shrimp, and soy sauce until very little broth is left.
Komatsuna, a Japanese mustard green, steams on the same plate as soft tofu, and both get a spoonful of warm dashi soy sauce with sesame oil and sesame seeds. Take it out once the leaves have wilted and the stems just bend, and the green stays bright.
Hetamurasaki is a small Kaga eggplant with thin skin and soft flesh that keeps its shape even after a long simmer. In Kanazawa it is scored with a cross and cooked whole in a clear broth of dashi and light soy sauce in summer, then eaten slightly cooled or chilled.
Rolling tofu tightly in a bamboo mat and boiling it squeezes out the big pockets of water, leaving a firm, smooth texture closer to kamaboko fish cake than to ordinary tofu. In the Kanra area of Gunma, the pressed cylinder is then simmered in dashi, sugar, and soy sauce until the seasoning reaches the center. Holding their shape and the ridges of the mat, the slices are served as a side dish or added to nishime, a mixed simmered dish.
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.