Fermented & preserved
Nara-ae
Nara-ae — simmered vegetables tossed with chopped narazuke pickles
A Nara home dish that folds chopped narazuke pickles into a simmer of osmund fern, dried gourd shavings, and fried tofu. It is said to taste best once cooled and settled, and is served in school lunches as a dish even children who dislike narazuke on its own tend to enjoy.
- Origin: Nara
- About 380 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
A dish of simmered vegetables mixed with chopped nara-zuke, Nara's specialty pickle. The pickle's rich aroma and gentle sweetness blend into the simmered kampyo, osmunda fern, and dried shiitake, and the flavor is said to come through best once it has cooled.
How it's made
Kampyo, dried shiitake, carrot, fried tofu, and osmunda fern are simmered in seasoning, then chopped nara-zuke is stirred in. It is said to taste best eaten once cooled, when the flavors have melded, and stirring it a few times while it cools is said to help further.
Why it took this shape
Nara, with its long history of sake brewing, is said to have had abundant good-quality sake lees, which allowed the technique of lees-pickling to develop early on. In the Edo period, a local herbal doctor is said to have pickled white gourd in sake lees and sold it to townspeople, marking the point at which nara-zuke reportedly first reached ordinary people. Its name is said to have then spread nationwide through travelers passing through Nara, until it became synonymous with lees-pickling in general.
Dishes in the same style
- Achara ZukeWhite melon, eggplant, and lotus root are pickled in a sweet vinegar spiked with red chili — the name is said to trace to the Portuguese 'achar', carried in through Hakata Bay's old trade, and an odd number of vegetables is used for Obon hospitality.
- AhodakiOld takuan pickle, once its flavor and aroma have faded, is desalted and simmered again in soy sauce, a pantry staple from the Hokusei area. Its name — playfully self-deprecating, roughly "doing a foolish thing" — nods to eating it well past its prime, a frugal way to waste nothing.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Nara
- Amago no KanroniRiver trout, called the queen of the mountain stream, first grilled plain and then simmered in roasted tea before being finished sweet and savory in soy sauce and mirin — a dish of the Yoshino and Uda districts. The fish is said to have little of a river-fish's usual edge, and the dish is remembered as a mother's home cooking.
- Asuka NabeA hot pot from Asuka Village of chicken and seasonal vegetables simmered in milk and dashi. It is said to trace to a dairy product brought from Tang China in the Asuka period and later reworked by monks who simmered their chickens in milk, taking its present form around the early Showa era.
- Ayu ZushiA whole sweetfish pressed onto vinegared rice, made along the Yoshino River. Sweetfish, raised on river-stone algae, are called kogyo, 'fragrant fish,' and the sushi is said to have become known in part because a sushi shop featured in a kabuki play actually existed in Nara.
- DengaraA sweet from Higashiyoshino and Kawakami villages: bean-paste mochi steamed inside magnolia leaves. It is made for Boys' Day, wishing a son success and safe growth, and because each leaf on a single branch is wrapped around its own mochi, the finished cluster hangs like a bunch of fruit.
- Ei no NikogoriRed stingray simmered sweet and savory in soy sauce and sugar, a Nara dish. Its own gelatin dissolves into the cooking liquid and sets into a jelly once cooled, giving the dish its name, nikogori. It is said to have been eaten together with noppei at Kasuga Shrine's Wakamiya festival.
- Hangesho MochiA Nara Basin mochi pounded from cracked wheat and glutinous rice around hangesho, the eleventh day after the summer solstice. It is made at the point when the wheat harvest and rice planting both wind down, and is also called sanaburi mochi for the rite that sends off the rice-field deity.