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Hasuimo no Sunomono
Hasuimo no sunomono — raw lotus-taro stem and grilled horse mackerel in vinegar
Hasuimo, a taro-family stem vegetable riddled with small holes like lotus root, is thinly sliced raw and dressed with vinegar alongside flaked grilled horse mackerel—a summer dish from Hagi. Eaten raw, the stem keeps a crisp, watery crunch said to bring relief from the heat.
- Origin: Yamaguchi Hagi
- About 770 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Hasuimo, a taro-family stem vegetable riddled with small holes like lotus root, is thinly sliced raw and dressed with vinegar alongside flaked grilled horse mackerel, a summer dish from Hagi. Using the stem raw gives it a crisp, watery crunch that brings relief from the heat, meeting the mackerel's rich flavor and the dressing's tartness. Waters off Hagi are said to offer the mackerel good feeding grounds, giving the local catch a notably rich fattiness often used in this dish.
How it's made
Hasuimo is peeled, sliced thin, and soaked in water to remove bitterness. Horse mackerel is grilled, then flaked and carefully deboned. The drained hasuimo and mackerel are dressed together with soy sauce, vinegar, mirin, and sugar, then topped with thinly sliced scallion. Mixing the ingredients and dressing just before eating is said to keep the dish from turning watery.
Why it took this shape
Hasuimo, native to the tropics, is also grown in places like Kochi, Tokushima, and Okinawa, but in Hagi it is said to have settled into this vinegared preparation in particular. Since it becomes common enough to find at supermarkets once summer arrives, pairing it with horse mackerel, also in season at the same time, appears to have become an everyday summer combination. Using the stem raw is said to be a way of making the dish easy to eat during the hottest months.
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 Yamaguchi
- Chikin Chikin GoboBite-size fried chicken and deep-fried burdock are tossed in a sweet soy glaze in this dish, born in Yamaguchi's school lunches. A nutrition teacher is said to have devised it around 1995 from recipes submitted by families, and its catchy, rhythmic name helped it spread into a statewide favorite.
- Chisha NamasuKakichisha, an heirloom crinkled lettuce grown around Shimonoseki, is torn by hand and tossed with vinegared miso, flaked grilled fish, or whitebait. It is said to have been devised by the Mori domain's people after being impoverished by the Battle of Sekigahara, and is also known as "chishamomi."
- Choshu KurokashiwaSaid to draw on the blood of Kurokashiwa, a natural-monument fowl native to Yamaguchi and Shimane, developed into a jidori by a Yamaguchi research station and finished and named by a poultry farm; reportedly free-ranged for 80–100 days.
- Fugu no KaraagePufferfish, marinated in soy sauce and sake, is coated in potato starch and deep-fried—a homely dish from the Shimonoseki and Hagi areas. While pricier tiger pufferfish goes into sashimi and hot pot, the more affordable shirosabafugu species is the one most often fried this way.
- Fuku SashiPufferfish sashimi is sliced so thin it becomes translucent, then arranged in a chrysanthemum pattern in this Shimonoseki dish. Locals call the fish "fuku," a homophone for good fortune, and eat it with citrus ponzu and scallion; the practice traces to 1888, when eating pufferfish was legalized in Yamaguchi alone.
- GobomakiLizardfish skin, a byproduct of making fish cakes, is wrapped around a skewer of burdock root and grilled with a basting sauce—a dish from Hagi. Because it uses lizardfish, prized for the region's grilled fish cakes, seafood processors often make the two together, and it is a fixture of festival and cherry-blossom bento.