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Gomadashi
Gomadashi — grilled fish and sesame paste stirred into udon broth
Grilled lizardfish is flaked and blended with ground sesame, mirin, and soy sauce into a paste — a Saiki seasoning best known stirred into udon as gomadashi-udon, said to have grown from a way of putting a heavy catch to good use.
- Origin: Oita Saiki
- About 780 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Gomadashi, from Saiki, is an all-purpose seasoning made from grilled and flaked lizardfish mixed with ground sesame, soy sauce, and mirin. The nutty aroma of sesame concentrates the fish's flavor, so even a small amount adds deep richness to a dish. Mackerel or horse mackerel sometimes stand in for lizardfish these days, and the antioxidant properties of sesame reportedly help it keep well.
How it's made
Grilled lizardfish is flaked and mixed with soy sauce, ground sesame, and mirin. It is meant to be made in a batch and kept on hand; the classic use is simply spooning it over plain udon to make "gomadashi udon," though it also works stirred into ochazuke or a somen dipping sauce. Mackerel or horse mackerel can stand in for lizardfish. Because removing the bones is fiddly work, more households are reportedly turning to store-bought versions.
Why it took this shape
Saiki, which lands the largest catch in Kyushu, reportedly faced the ongoing question of how to use the lizardfish landed there year-round. This seasoning is said to have emerged as a way to avoid wasting a large catch, and also, some say, to save the effort of making dashi from scratch. Combined with sesame, it becomes a seasoning that keeps well, and it is said to have taken hold as a staple suited to the busy pace of a fishing town. A local women's fishing cooperative has since turned it into a packaged product now reaching shops beyond the prefecture.
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 Oita
- Aji no MaruzushiA whole horse mackerel, cured in plum vinegar and opened flat, is wrapped around vinegared rice and rolled in red shiso leaf — a celebratory sushi from Saiki, painstaking to prepare, built on the rich mackerel landed from the Bungo Channel.
- AmimeshiKrill simmered sweet-savory in mirin, soy sauce, and ginger is folded into freshly steamed rice — a dish from the Usa, Nakatsu, and Bungotakada coast, where krill are hauled from the Buzen Sea tideflats each autumn and winter; a favorite of the northern Oita coast.
- Atama RyoriGills, jaw, and innards of a large fish like grouper are quickly parboiled along with the flesh and piled onto a single platter — a dish from inland Taketa, far from the sea, said to have grown from a wish to waste nothing of a rare catch, served with a citrus dipping sauce.
- Ayu UrukaAyu (sweetfish) flesh or innards are minced with salt and left to ferment for about a week — an Oita salted delicacy said to have begun as a way to keep the clean river's seasonal catch; the innards-only version, nigauruka, carries a distinctive bitterness.
- Beppu ReimenThe dish's spread is traced to around 1950, when a cook repatriated from what had been Manchuria began making cold noodles in Beppu. Genso Arirang, founded that same year, is often named as the pioneering shop; the local style pairs a Japanese-style seafood stock with noodles made from buckwheat, wheat, and starch.
- Dango-jiruWheat dough kneaded and stretched into flat ribbons is simmered with root vegetables and shiitake in a barley-miso broth — an everyday Oita dish born of the prefecture's flour-based food culture, where poor rice land pushed wheat to the fore; the ribbons keep a firmer bite than udon.