Home-style
Bouri
Bouri — a whole parent taro simmered for two days, eaten in place of New Year's mochi
A whole, unpeeled parent taro is simmered over two days for this New Year's dish from the Ayukawa area of Tanabe City's Ото̄ district. One account holds that villagers gave up pounding mochi for six hundred years to atone for once turning away a fleeing prince, eating this in its place.
- Origin: Wakayama Tanabe
- About 460 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Bouri is a dish made by simmering a whole parent taro corm, skin and all, over two days, and in the Otō district of Tanabe it is still eaten in place of mochi at New Year. Seasoned generously with soy sauce and sugar in a dashi broth, it carries an old-fashioned, unadorned flavor and is served whole on a lacquered plate as part of the New Year meal.
How it's made
A whole parent taro corm, unpeeled, is simmered slowly for four to six hours on the first day to let the seasoning soak in, then simmered further on the second day to finish. The broth is seasoned generously with soy sauce and sugar, and the two-day process lets the flavor reach all the way to the center of the corm. Preparation begins before New Year, so the dish is ready to replace the mochi that would normally go into New Year's zoni soup.
Why it took this shape
When Prince Morinaga, son of Emperor Go-Daigo, fled through Kumano disguised as a mountain ascetic while escaping the Kamakura shogunate's forces, villagers in the Ayukawa area of Otō are said to have refused to share their New Year mochi with the disguised party. Learning afterward that the travelers had included the prince himself, the village reportedly apologized for the discourtesy and, for the next six hundred years, stopped making mochi at New Year, simmering the parent taro corm called "bouri" instead. A memorial service in 1935 marking the prince's six-hundredth anniversary is said to have brought New Year mochi back to the village, but the custom of eating bouri is reported to survive in part to this day.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Osechi and zoni for the New YearA guide to the meaning behind osechi's tiered boxes, the regional differences in zoni (square vs. round mochi, clear vs. miso broth), and the nanakusa-gayu custom.
- Setsubun: ehomaki and lucky beansA guide to ehomaki, the uncut sushi roll said to be eaten facing a lucky direction on Setsubun, and to mamemaki, the bean-throwing custom with roasted lucky beans.
Dishes in the same style
- Agonoko UmaniThe roe of egg-bearing flying fish, caught only in early summer, is simmered in stock and soy sauce as an Oki bar snack. Its large grains and dense, sticky texture are prized as a delicacy said to be scarcer even than the fish's flesh.
- Funa MisoCrucian carp is simmered slowly with soybeans for around five hours, then finished in a sauce of red miso and coarse sugar. A freshwater fish dish of the Kiso rivers' lower basin, made with fatty winter carp simmered until the bones soften through.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Wakayama
- Goma ToufuRaw sesame is skinned, ground, and worked with mountain water and Yoshino arrowroot into a simmered block of shojin cuisine. Said to have supplied protein for monks who abstained from meat and fish, it's now a familiar Koyasan souvenir and a fixture on Japanese menus.
- Gonpachi no Abura ItameGonbachi, formally known as itadori knotweed, is blanched, peeled, and quickly stir-fried in oil for this spring dish. Thick, well-grown stalks that snap with a crisp pop are prized for a crunchy bite and a faint sourness.
- Hatagonbo ZushiA stout, round burdock called hatagonbo, grown on the steep red-clay slopes of Hashimoto City's Nishihata district, is sliced into rounds, hollowed at the center, and packed with vinegared rice. Cultivation had nearly died out until a local cooperative revived it around 2013, roughly seventy years on.
- Igami no NitsukeIgami — what southern Wakayama calls the parrotfish — is simmered whole in a sweet-salty broth. Feeding on seaweed among winter rocks leaves it free of any off-flavor, and around Tanabe it's said to be served head-to-tail in place of sea bream for New Year's.
- Inoko MochiNon-glutinous and sticky rice are cooked with taro, mashed, and shaped into balls coated with lightly salted sweet red bean paste. Offered to the harvest god on the Day of the Boar in the old tenth lunar month, it's also made for autumn festivals in parts of southern Wakayama.
- Kaki MaburiDried tofu, shiitake, and seasonal vegetables are folded into sushi rice for this chirashi-style dish. Its name comes from "maburi," a Naga-area dialect word for "mix," and it's made in bulk for celebrations where the number of guests can't be known in advance.