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Chate no Aemono
Chate no Aemono — chayote, sliced raw and tossed while still crisp
Chayote, a squash-family vine native to tropical America and known locally as chate, is tossed raw into a light dressing — an autumn home dish in Kochi. A single vine can bear over a hundred fruit, so it's mostly grown for the household or shared with neighbors, and it's especially popular in the mountains where it grows easily.
- Origin: Kochi
- About 620 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
The raw flesh has a crisp, pleasant snap, and the mild dressing clings lightly to it, it is said. Chayote, a gourd-family plant native to tropical America, is called chate in Kochi. A single vine can bear a hundred to two hundred fruits, which is said to be why it's also called sennari, meaning a thousand fruits, and the local name chate is said to be a shortened form of the English word chayote. It is easy to grow and is said to be a common gift between neighbors, often raised in home gardens or as a shade vine.
How it's made
Eaten raw, it has a crisp texture and is used not only in dressed salads but in stir-fries with meat and vinegared dishes. Young fruit is said to be eaten skin and all. To keep the crunch, a little vinegar is said to help when blanching it in boiling water, and because it pairs well with pork, it is often cut thick and stir-fried together with it. It is also served hollowed out and filled with vinegared rice, shaped to resemble a piece of sushi.
Why it took this shape
Chayote is said to have arrived in Kagoshima from overseas in 1907, and because it grows easily even in Kochi's hot, humid climate, it is said to have taken root especially in the mountain areas. It tends to be grown for the household's own table rather than for sale, and it is said to be common to see it in home gardens or trained up as a shade curtain. When the autumn harvest comes in, it appears cheaply at supermarkets and farm stands across the prefecture, and it is said to be widely eaten as everyday home cooking.
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.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
- At teishoku diners, shokudo, and machi-chukaA guide to the teishoku set-meal format, free rice refills, table placement, and paying at a shokudo-style diner.
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 Kochi
- Chunichi SobaA local noodle dish from Akaoka, Kochi's Konan City, pairing Chinese noodles with udon stock. Dried baby sardines and shredded kelp are the standard toppings, said to have grown from a shortcut sparing the effort of both udon and ramen kitchens.
- Ginburo ZushiGinburo, a kidney bean grown only for home use in a district of Otoyo Town, is simmered sweet and folded into vinegared rice with root vegetables. Regarded as a bean of long life and good fortune, it's traditionally made for festivals and celebratory banquets.
- GoishichaA post-fermented tea from Otoyo, Kochi Prefecture, made through two stages of fermentation — an aerobic mold fermentation followed by a lactic acid soak. Named for its square-cut, sun-dried pieces said to resemble go stones, it carries a distinctive sweet-and-sour flavor.
- GuruniDaikon, carrot, taro, and other root vegetables are simmered together in a dashi made from dried baby sardines and soy sauce — a winter side dish. The name is said to come from "guru," Tosa dialect for a group of companions, and the dish was long made in bulk and reheated meal after meal.
- Ha Ninniku no NutaGarlic greens are chopped, ground, and mixed with miso, vinegar, sesame, and sugar — a traditional Kochi condiment said to trace back to a Korean import. It's commonly spooned over raw fish like yellowtail in place of soy sauce, and both its name and the fish it accompanies vary by area.
- Hachiku to Endo no NimonoHachiku, a slender, purple-tinged bamboo shoot with a mild flavor, is simmered in dashi and finished with fresh green peas just coming into season — an early-summer simmered dish in Kochi. It pairs hachiku, which follows the earlier moso bamboo to market, with peas harvested around the same time.