Griddle & dumplings
Gapparamochi
Gapparamochi — a griddle cake made from leftover pounded rice
Leftover rice or rice flour is sweetened with brown sugar and black sesame, poured into a pan and pan-fried on both sides — a Tsugaru snack said to have started as a way to use up the dregs from making rice-starch glue.
- Origin: Aomori
- About 550 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
A humble Tsugaru snack made by mixing rice flour or leftover rice with sugar, salt and black sesame, thinning it with water, pouring it to fill a frying pan, and grilling both sides. The result is chewy, with the generous sesame adding a fragrant accent. The thick, round cake is cut into wedges like a pizza and eaten one slice at a time, it is said.
How it's made
Rice flour or leftover rice is mixed with sugar, salt and black sesame, thinned with water, poured to fill an oiled frying pan, and grilled on both sides until golden. Some versions add red beans, kidney beans or walnuts, it is said. The name gapparamochi is said to come from the sound, "gappa," of the batter being poured all at once into the hot pan.
Why it took this shape
The dish is said to have begun when households, straining rice soaked in water to make starch paste for ironing, found leftover residue they didn't want to waste, and mixed it with brown sugar to grill into a snack instead. It is thought to reflect the culture of the Tsugaru region, relatively warm within Aomori and long known for rice farming, where nothing edible was allowed to go to waste.
Dishes in the same style
- AkashiyakiOctopus folded into a batter of wheat flour, jin-ko starch, egg, and dashi, cooked and dipped in a warm broth — Akashi's own take on the round batter-and-octopus dish, distinguished from takoyaki by that broth in place of sauce.
- Fuchu-yakiA Fuchu, Hiroshima take on okonomiyaki that swaps sliced pork belly for ground beef or pork worked right into the batter, so the meat's flavor is said to come through evenly in every bite.
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.