Fried ── Fried dishes
Ocha no Ha Tempura
Ocha no ha tempura — new tea leaves battered and fried, salted straight from the oil
Freshly picked new tea leaves are dipped in a thin batter, fried quickly, and salted straight from the oil — an early-summer dish from sun-drenched, tea-growing Miyazaki, a taste available only for the brief window when the first tea leaves come in.
- Origin: Miyazaki Hyuga
- About 830 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Ocha no ha tempura, a Miyazaki dish available only during the new tea season, deep-fries freshly picked tea leaves in a light batter and serves them with a sprinkle of salt. The tender young leaves carry the aroma of tea with a faint bitterness, milder in the newest leaves, offering a seasonal, locally exclusive flavor found only during the new tea harvest.
How it's made
Freshly picked tea leaves are rinsed lightly in water, coated in a thin batter, and quickly deep-fried. They're typically eaten fresh from the fryer with a light sprinkle of salt. Only the first three leaves from each new shoot are used, since the lower leaves grow more bitter. It's a way to enjoy the tenderness of new growth and the tea's natural aroma, available only for this brief season.
Why it took this shape
Miyazaki, blessed with a mild climate, moderate rainfall, and fertile soil, is considered well suited to tea cultivation. In earlier times, people are said to have picked wild mountain tea growing in the hills to brew as a drink. The first tea picked each year carries a tradition that drinking it brings long life and freedom from illness, making it a favored, auspicious harvest. Eating the new leaves directly, in the form of tempura, is thought to have grown out of that same reverence for the season's first tea.
Before you go
Dishes in the same style
- Agemaki Yuba no NimonoFresh yuba sheets are layered, rolled into a log, sliced into rounds, and deep-fried before a slow simmer in a light broth — a Nikko dish built on the region's rippled yuba-making craft, served at New Year's and celebrations.
- Aji FryFilleted horse mackerel breaded in panko and fried. Chiba prefecture holds some of the richest mackerel fishing grounds in Japan, and frying is thought to have taken root as a quick way to eat regional brands like the oily 'golden aji' fresh.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Miyazaki
- Chikin NanbanFried chicken dipped in sweet vinegar and topped with tartar sauce, said to have originated in Nobeoka, Miyazaki. It's said to trace to a sweet-vinegar fried chicken devised as staff food at a Western-food restaurant in the 1950s.
- Futatabi DangoDumpling flour is kneaded, steamed with freshly picked mugwort folded in, then pounded a second time — a Nobeoka treat named for that unusual second working of the dough, wrapped around sweet bean paste and dusted with soybean flour into a soft, pale-green dumpling.
- Hie-zushiWild boar bones are simmered into a broth, then rice, millet, and vegetables are added and cooked down into a porridge — a Shiiba village dish built on millet, a grain said to have been eaten in Japan since before rice farming; whenever a boar was dressed, the porridge it made was shared around the whole village to see out the long winter.
- Hyuga Kurokawa Kabocha no NimonoHyuga kurokawa kabocha, a black-skinned heirloom pumpkin first grown in Miyazaki City, is cut into large chunks and simmered slowly in sugar and light soy sauce — lighter and less sweet than a Western pumpkin, but it holds its shape well and its skin is good to eat too.
- Iriko MochiGlutinous rice is parched and ground into iriko flour, then kneaded with starch syrup, rested, and cut into bars — a Miyazaki sweet said to have arrived from the Satsuma domain as a festival treat, once handed out to neighbors to wish for a child's healthy growth.
- Jidori no Miso KorobakashiJidori chicken is rolled around a dry pan with no added water, coaxed with a miso glaze without letting it catch — a home-cooked dish from around Kobayashi City, its name a western-Miyazaki dialect word for tumbling food in a pot as it cooks, the mix of vegetables and seasoning varying from house to house.