109 recipes. Page 1 of 5
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Lifted from the center of the soy milk, Nikko yuba comes up doubled, thick, and rippled, and agemaki yuba is that tofu skin rolled into sticks, fried, and dried. The rolls simmer slowly in a sweet, mild dashi, and cooling them in the liquid is what carries the flavor to the center.
Thin slices of pork shoulder and onion cook in a gingery soy sauce and go over rice. The pan comes off the heat while a little sauce still pools at the bottom, and that sauce is spooned over the rice.
The name still says pork (buta), but in Amakusa, Kumamoto, octopus from the bay took the place of pork that was once hard to come by. Boiled octopus and eggplant get a sweet miso glaze with mirin and sugar.
Chicken hearts turn chewy and springy on the skewer, and their flavor builds the longer you chew. Halving each heart and clearing out blood clots and the thin membrane is what keeps the taste clean rather than gamey. A thin glaze of soy sauce, oligosaccharide syrup, and mirin brushed on both sides adds a sweet-salty shine, finished with sesame oil and black pepper.
Agar seasoned sweet and salty with soy sauce and sugar sets around threads of yellow egg and reaches the table as both a sweet and a side dish. In the Shonai area of Yamagata, where agar dishes were part of everyday cooking, adding egg, once a precious ingredient, made it food for New Year and festivals. Each bite pairs soft egg with agar that breaks off cleanly.
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.
In Takasago, Hyogo, nikuten gets built in layers instead of mixed like okonomiyaki: potato, konjac, cabbage, scallion, beef tendon, and tempura crumbs stack on a thin round of batter, which folds in half after saucing. Because nothing is stirred together, the floury potato, soft tendon, and crisp crumbs each keep their own texture. The potato and konjac simmer with the tendon in soy sauce, sugar, and mirin, so all three share the same sweet-salty seasoning.
Thick split-dried daikon softens slowly in a sweet soy-vinegar brine yet keeps a firm, crackling bite. In Miura, Kanagawa, families traditionally split winter daikon lengthwise into sixteen to twenty sections and sun-dried it for about two weeks, leaving pieces much chunkier than finely shredded dried radish. The radish is only rinsed twice in cold water to remove dust. Soaking it beforehand weakens the firm texture that should come back in the brine. Kombu and dried squid bring savory depth, and seeded dried chili adds heat to the whole jar. The centers are seasoned from day 4, and the jar is finished within 10 days.
Five minutes in soy-and-mirin-seasoned bonito dashi is enough for shiitake and oyster mushrooms to spread their savory, woodsy flavor through the whole broth. Tearing the oyster mushrooms along the grain, instead of slicing them, lets them soak up more liquid. The soba cooks in a separate pot and gets rinsed in cold water, washing off surface starch that would cloud the broth and leave the noodles limp. A pinch of grated yuzu zest at the end floats a sharp citrus note over the earthy broth so the bowl finishes light, and sliced chives add color.
Blanched wakegi scallions are folded at the white base to form a core, then the green leaves are wound tightly around it into bite-size coils. The thick white base goes into the pot ahead of the faster-cooking thin leaves, and that head start keeps the leaves from going limp. Twisting tears the blanched stalks; they are pressed dry from base to tip instead, because leftover water makes the leaves slip, the coils unwind and the dip turn thin. No toothpick holds them; a little sticky sap from the pinched leaf tip glues the end in place. They are served lined up beside a sweet-tart dip of white miso, sugar, vinegar and mirin.
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.
Soft rice cakes are folded through cabbage that has simmered in sake, mirin, soy sauce, and kombu noodle sauce until the ribs turn tender, leaving a salty, lightly sweet glaze on every piece. The dish belongs to the Ose district of Koriyama in Fukushima, where farm households grew their own rice and cabbage and made it year-round as a meal or a filling snack.
Rather than marinating the pork, this version sears thin slices of pork shoulder first and adds the soy, mirin, and fresh ginger sauce only for the last 30 seconds, when it reduces to a glossy glaze. Laid flat without overlapping, the slices brown at the edges instead of stewing in their own juices. Onion softened in the same pan adds sweetness, and the result is the ginger pork familiar from Japanese set meals and bento boxes.
Okinawan water taro is cooked soft, then mashed and cooked down with sugar until it holds a spatula trail, much like Japanese kinton. A spoonful of mirin at the end adds gloss, and finely minced lemon or mandarin zest goes on top. Raw taro juice makes skin itch and undercooked taro irritates the mouth, so the taro is peeled with gloves and the first blanching water is thrown out. It is served warm or lukewarm.
Halved eggplant gets a thin layer of sweet miso glaze on its cut face and only a brief turn under the grill. The flesh underneath is soft enough to scoop with a spoon, and the glaze on top bubbles and picks up small brown spots. Eggplant drinks oil quickly, so be generous with it in the first cooking.
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.
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.
Neat blocks of pink fish soboro, green scallion, and orange mandarin peel cover the white shirataki noodles, putting four colors on one plate. It is a celebration dish from Uwajima in Ehime, and the noodles underneath are simmered in dashi, mirin, and light soy sauce until no liquid remains.
Kuzukiri starch noodles, wakame, sudare-fu, konjac, carrot, udo and cucumber are cut long and thin and arranged by color around a bowl of thick sesame and white miso sauce for dipping. Around Kaga in Ishikawa it was served at funerals and memorial services in place of sashimi, and the konjac is still sliced thin like raw fish. Each component is prepared its own way, so slippery noodles, springy konjac and crisp vegetables stay distinct on the plate.
Sarubogai, the small ark clams that Izumo in Shimane calls akagai, are steamed briefly in their shells with dashi, mirin, and light soy sauce for the New Year table. They are a separate, smaller species from the ark shell usually sold as akagai, with fewer ribs on the shell, and were once a signature of the brackish Nakaumi lagoon. Short cooking keeps the meat sweet and moist. Any clam that never opens is discarded, and the cloudy cooking liquid stays in the pot.
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.
The small potatoes cook whole in their skins, and in a mixed batch the little ones split while the big ones stay raw inside. Matching them by diameter is where it starts. Once the miso, sugar and mirin go in, the pot is shaken rather than stirred, glazing the soft potatoes without breaking them.
Long fillets of cutlassfish are wound in a spiral around bamboo sticks and turned over charcoal, brushed again and again with a soy, sugar, sake and ginger glaze until it builds into a dark lacquer. The strips are trimmed to an even width and wound with their edges slightly overlapping so they do not loosen as the stick turns. Uwajima in Ehime credits the dish to an old fishmonger who came up with it in 1987; because it is so fiddly, people mostly eat it at izakaya and local fish-cake shops rather than at home. A last brush of mirin gives the final shine. To eat, the fish is slid off the hot bamboo and looked over for any stray bones.