Home-style
Imomochi
Imomochi — mashed rice and taro, grilled and dipped in ginger soy sauce
Taro and rice are cooked together, mashed smooth, shaped and skewered, then grilled over charcoal and dipped in ginger soy sauce — a dish of the Nakatsugawa area said to have begun with combining leftover broken rice from the harvest with sticky taro, or as a way to stretch rice in lean years.
- Origin: Gifu
- About 210 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Taro and rice cooked together, mashed, shaped, and grilled — a plain dish where the taro's sticky pull meets the mochi-like chew of the rice, with ginger and soy sauce lifting the aroma. Fresh off the grill, its toasty char and the taro's faint sweetness are said to spread with every bite.
How it's made
Taro and rice are cooked together, mashed, and carefully shaped into small cakes by hand, then eaten as is or grilled crisp on both sides. Ginger and soy sauce is the standard dip, though some districts use scallion miso instead, and it's said to be wrapped and grilled in a myoga leaf in spring or a turnip leaf in autumn.
Why it took this shape
One account traces the dish to combining broken rice left over from the harvest with sticky taro; another says taro was added to bulk out rice in years when the crop failed. Either way, it's said to have grown out of putting taro — a crop less at the mercy of the weather — to use in an era when rice itself was precious.
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.
- Izakaya customsFrom the small starter dish called otoshi, the classic "for now, a draft beer" first order, ordering a little at a time, choosing tare or shio for yakitori, soy sauce dishes, a closing course, and last orders and smoking rules.
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 Gifu
- Akadatsu no SubuteThe red-purple leaf stalk of taro, called akadatsu, has its fibers removed and is salt-rubbed before being dressed in a sweetened vinegar — a dish of Yamagata City on land whose lime-poor, thin soil suited taro cultivation, once said to be fed to new mothers to aid recovery.
- Ayu NarezushiAyu heading downriver to spawn in autumn, often carrying roe, are salted and stuffed with freshly cooked rice, then packed in a barrel to ferment for about two months — a narezushi of Gifu City said to have been made from fish caught at the Nagara River's cormorant fishery and once presented to the shogunate.
- Ayu ZosuiAyu, grilled plain until fragrant, is flaked and briefly simmered with dashi and rice into a light porridge — a Gifu river-fish dish said to have begun as a way to use ayu too damaged from fishing to sell whole, often served as the closing course at restaurants specializing in ayu.
- FunamisoCrucian carp, first grilled plain, simmers for hours with rehydrated soybeans, then finishes in soybean miso and coarse sugar — a river-fish dish of the Seino region, where the miso's strong umami is said to soften the fish's characteristic edge, simmered until the flesh falls apart as a winter keeping food.
- Ayu no ShioyakiAyu are salted all over, given a decorative touch of salt on fin and tail, then grilled over charcoal on both sides — a river-fish dish of Gifu, said to draw on fish caught fresh at the 1,300-year-old Nagara River cormorant fishery or at the traditional yana weirs that channel fish into a catch.
- Gohei MochiCrushed rice is skewered and grilled, then glazed with a walnut- or peanut-flecked sauce — a dish of the Tono and Hida areas where soy-based sauce dominates north of the old Nakasendo road and miso-based sauce south of it, traditionally served to celebrate the new rice harvest or to honor a guest.