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Fukinoto Miso
Fukinoto miso — butterbur sprouts folded into sweetened miso
Butterbur sprouts, foraged along paths and hillsides as spring's first green, are chopped and blended with white or country miso. Its bitterness and aroma make it a favorite with rice or sake, and it keeps well frozen for year-round use.
- Origin: Shimane Matsue
- About 610 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Fukinoto miso mixes chopped butterbur sprouts, gathered from field paths and mountainsides, with miso, a dish enjoyed across Shimane as a taste of spring. Its distinctive bitterness and aroma define the dish, made by combining finely chopped, bitterness-removed butterbur sprouts with white or country miso, sake, and mirin. It is a familiar accompaniment to rice or sake.
How it's made
Small, tightly closed butterbur buds, which carry less bitterness, are chosen, finely chopped, and boiled in water with a little baking soda to remove their bitterness. Plunging them into cold water right after boiling is said to preserve their vivid green color. Once well drained, they are mixed with white or country miso, sake, and mirin, with the ratio of miso adjusted to taste. If the result turns too salty, a little sugar rounds it out. It keeps reasonably well refrigerated, so many households make a batch ahead of time.
Why it took this shape
Blessed with clear water and fertile soil, Shimane is said to see butterbur sprouts grow wild in all kinds of places — along the edges of fields, in mountain forests, even on urban embankments and in parks — and the plant has long been treasured as a sign that spring has arrived. Elderly residents gathering it on a walk, or children picking it up on their way home from school, are said to reflect just how familiar a wild plant it was, which is thought to be why it found its way naturally onto so many household tables. Because it also freezes well, some households gather a large batch to enjoy throughout the year.
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
Contrast
- Kuroda Seri OhitashiKuroda seri, a fragrant watercress grown in Matsue's Kuroda district since the Edo period, is blanched together with spinach for a crisp, low-bitterness winter side — said to be low in astringency compared to ordinary seri.
- Takenoko Sansho NiBamboo shoots from Matsue's Shimada district, prized for their fine grain and tender flesh grown in clay-rich red soil, are simmered sweet-savory in bonito stock with sansho pepper — a spring fixture on the local table.
Also from Shimane
- Ago-yakiAgo-yaki is Izumo noyaki made from flying-fish paste, fire-baked without a skewer. Its crackling surface and refined sweetness make it a favorite travel souvenir from Shimane.
- 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.
- Akagai Garan MushiArk shell clams from Lake Nakaumi are steamed in their shells in a soy-seasoned broth, also known as akagai no kara-mushi. The name 'garan' is said to come either from a slurred 'kara' (shell) or the rattling sound made while rinsing the shells — a dish long kept for New Year's.
- Azuki ZoniRound mochi sit in azuki beans simmered with a light hand on the sugar, closer in taste to a thin zenzai than a dessert. In the Izumo area some households eat a clear zoni on New Year's Day, then switch to this one from the second.
- Bakudan OnigiriA large round rice ball is wrapped entirely in lightly toasted, soy-brushed rock nori from Oki — its bold look earning it the name 'bakudan,' or bomb. It travels well in lunch boxes and as an everyday snack.
- Dojo Kenchin JiruLoach is simmered with burdock, daikon, and shiitake in a clear soy broth in Yasugi, said to embody the old saying that one loach is worth one eel for stamina — traditionally eaten after washing the mud off from rice planting.