Fermented & preserved
Sushiko
Sushiko — glutinous rice fermented with pickled vegetables
Steamed glutinous rice is mixed with red shiso, cabbage and aged pickled cucumber and left under a weight to lacto-ferment — a "pickled rice" from rice-rich northwestern Tsugaru, once a winter preserve and field-work snack.
- Origin: Aomori
- About 570 km north of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A distinctive dish from northwestern Tsugaru, essentially "pickled rice": steamed glutinous rice fermented together with red shiso, cabbage and aged cucumber pickles. The longer it cures, the more sour and distinctly slippery it becomes, it is said. Also called akameshi, red rice, it stands out for the unusual habit of eating rice as a pickled side dish in its own right.
How it's made
Steamed glutinous rice is mixed with salted vegetables and aged pickles, then pressed under a weight and left to cure. In winter it was packed into large barrels as a way to stretch preserved food through a season with few vegetables, it is said. After a few days, fermentation deepens the texture into something notably slippery, and preferences for how far to let it ferment vary from person to person; today it is also eaten in summer as something that helps restore a flagging appetite.
Why it took this shape
Northwestern Tsugaru was extensively cultivated for rice from the Edo period onward, and it is said every household once packed barrels of this dish as a winter preservation food. Glutinous rice is considered filling and energizing, and carrying it into the rice paddies to eat between bouts of physically demanding farm work is said to have been part of the practice as well. It is thought to reflect a distinctly Tsugaru form of fermentation know-how for getting through a winter shut in by snow.
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 Aomori
- BekomochiColored strips of glutinous and non-glutinous rice-flour dough are bundled and steamed so each slice reveals a pattern — a Boys' Day treat from rice-poor Shimokita, its designs elaborated around Oma town.
- HittsumiHand-torn pieces of kneaded wheat dough are simmered in a chicken-and-soy broth with carrot and burdock — a dish from the old Nanbu domain spanning southeastern Aomori and northern Iwate, once a rice substitute in lean years.
- KakkeThin buckwheat dough is cut into triangles, simmered with daikon and tofu, and dipped in garlic miso — said to have begun when the Nanbu domain banned fine-cut soba, leaving people to eat the offcuts instead.
- Kujira JiruSalted whale blubber is parboiled to render off excess fat, then simmered in a big pot with daikon, carrot and potato — a New Year dish from around Hachinohe's old whaling grounds, said to deepen in flavor over several days.
- Mame ShitogiMashed boiled green soybeans are kneaded with rice flour and sugar into a log and sliced — a Nanbu-region sweet that stretched scarce rice with beans, once offered to the mountain and harvest gods.
- Aomori ShamorockSaid to be developed by Aomori's livestock experiment station over roughly two decades of research from a shamo and Barred Plymouth Rock cross; reportedly reared about 100 days for cockerels and 120 for hens, 50–60 days longer than a standard broiler.