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Imonamasu
Imonamasu — julienned potato stir-fried crisp with vinegar
Julienned potato has its starch thoroughly rinsed away, then gets stir-fried in oil and vinegar until crisp — a dish of Iiyama City said to have been eaten since the Edo period and served on large plates at gatherings and ceremonies.
- Origin: Nagano Iiyama
- About 170 km northwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Julienned potato is soaked in water again and again until the starch washes clean away, then quickly stir-fried in oil with a dash of vinegar added. A crisp, snapping texture is said to be the point -- a lightness you wouldn't expect from potato. Some households add carrot for color, but it's said to be left out for Buddhist memorial gatherings, the dish varying with the occasion it's served at.
How it's made
Potato is cut into thin strips and rinsed patiently in water until no more starch clouds it. It's stir-fried in hot oil, and adding vinegar right at the start is said to be what keeps that crisp bite intact. Because the prep takes real effort, it's said to have been made less as an everyday snack than as a dish brought out for gatherings where people came together.
Why it took this shape
The Hokushin region, one of Japan's heaviest snowfall areas, is said to have made fresh vegetables hard to come by in winter. Where namasu is usually made with daikon and carrot, potato -- which keeps well even under snow -- is said to have taken their place here. Served heaped on a large platter at celebrations and memorial gatherings, the dish seems to reflect the ingenuity of hosting guests well with whatever winter still offered.
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 Nagano
- Anyoji RamenSaku's miso ramen built around Anyoji miso, held to be the root of Shinshu miso.
- Gudakusan Miso ShiruRoot vegetables like daikon, carrot, and burdock go generously into this everyday miso soup of Nagano. Packing it with vegetables is said to allow less miso overall, and wheat dumplings are sometimes dropped in to make it a meal in itself.
- HangoroshiSticky rice, pounded only halfway to a texture called hangoroshi, is coated in sweet bean paste or roasted soybean flour — eastern Nagano's version of botamochi and ohagi, called one name in spring and the other in autumn, a festive sweet that busy farm households could put together quickly.
- Hitashi MameGreen soybeans are boiled until still faintly crisp, then steeped in a lightly seasoned dashi — a dish of northern and eastern Nagano also made with the saddle-marked kurakake bean, sometimes paired with herring roe as part of New Year's osechi.
- Hoshikabocha no EgomaaeKabocha squash, sliced into strips and sun-dried until brittle, is rehydrated and tossed in ground perilla seed — a preserved dish of the Kinasa area born from the need to keep squash, which spoils easily over winter, also used simmered or as filling for oyaki.
- Hoba MakiRice-flour dough kneaded with hot water wraps sweet bean paste, then steams inside a magnolia leaf — a Kiso festival mochi. With no oak trees in the mountains, magnolia stood in, and locals say the leaf's scent settles in best the next day.