Home-style
Imotako
Imotako — octopus and taro simmered together
Octopus from the Seto Inland Sea and taro are simmered together in a simple seasoned broth. Once reserved for New Year and wedding feasts, it is said to have become an everyday side dish today.
- Origin: Kagawa
- About 540 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Imotako simmers octopus and taro caught and grown around the Seto Inland Sea in soy sauce, sugar, and other seasonings — a simple dish. Octopus from the Seto Inland Sea feeds on nutrient-rich prey like shellfish, shrimp, and crab, and is said to develop a sweet, strongly flavored meat as a result. The mealy texture of the taro and the springy bite of the octopus soak up the seasoned broth together for a simple but satisfying dish. Octopus is said to offer a good balance of protein, vitamins, and taurine, and has long been valued as a food that helps with fatigue.
How it's made
The octopus is rubbed with salt to remove its slime, briefly boiled, and cut into bite-sized pieces. The taro is cut into rounds and rubbed with salt to remove its own sliminess. Both go into a pot with seasoning and are simmered until the flavor soaks in. Letting it simmer long enough for the octopus's flavor to soak fully into the taro is said to be the key step. The dish is served both as an everyday side and as a snack with sake.
Why it took this shape
Taro produces new corms from the parent plant year after year, and is said to have become a symbol of family prosperity as a result, valued as a festive dish for New Year's, weddings, and other special occasions. Often grown in a corner of the rice paddies, it's said to have been familiar enough to earn the nickname "paddy potato." Pairing octopus from the sea with taro from the fields appears to be a way this dish brought together the bounty close at hand from both land and sea.
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 Kagawa
- Aji no SanbaiAji (horse mackerel) is grilled until lightly charred, then steeped in a three-part vinegar dressing sharpened with chili and ginger. The vinegar is said to soften the bones enough to eat whole, and the dish has long served as a summer festival accompaniment to drinks around the Seto Inland Sea.
- Anmochi ZoniA New Year zoni made by simmering daikon, kintoki carrot, and a round rice cake filled with sweet red bean paste in dried-sardine broth, finished with white miso. Said to have begun as a once-a-year treat using sugar, once a costly commodity in the Edo period.
- Ebi Miso JiruSmall shell-on shrimp are pureed with rice rinse water, then simmered with white miso and tofu. Served as part of the roughly 300-year-old sacred sake festival at Uga Shrine in Toyonaka, Mitoyo, where it has long accompanied the shrine's home-brewed doburoku.
- Hage DangoFreshly milled new-wheat dumplings are coated in a simple red-bean paste. Traditionally made around Hangeshō, the early-July turning point when the rains break, as thanks for the season's farm work, and offered to household gods before the family eats.
- Ikanago shoyuA fish sauce fermented from sand lance and salt for six months or more, mainly produced in the Aji district of Takamatsu, Kagawa. It is said to have disappeared for a time before local volunteers revived production around 1998, and it is counted among Japan's three great fish sauces.
- Iriko MeshiRice is cooked with dried-sardine stock made from the fish heads, along with the sardine meat, carrot, daikon, and taro. An everyday dish centered on the Seiban region around Ibukijima, an island famed for producing this dried-sardine stock.