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Jisuke Imo no Negi Miso
Jisuke Imo no Negi Miso — steamed heirloom potato with scallion miso
Jisuke potato, an heirloom variety grown around Ogouchi in Okutama for over a century, is steamed and served with a scallion-and-bonito miso — named, it's said, for a man called Jisuke who took home tubers a bride from Yamanashi had brought with her, a crop suited to land too steep and thin for rice.
- Origin: Tokyo Okutama
- About 60 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Jisuke potatoes, a variety grown around Okutama, are steamed and served with a green-onion miso mixed with bonito flakes. They are known for white skin and white flesh, and the flavor is said to be rich and starchy, with a texture that holds up well without falling apart in cooking. The sticky, dense bite of the potato paired with the savory green-onion miso is said to be rooted in Okutama's daily life, still a familiar everyday side dish today.
How it's made
Jisuke potatoes are peeled and cooked through by steaming, boiling, or grilling, then served with a green-onion miso mixed with bonito flakes. In winter, dampened potatoes were left outdoors overnight to freeze, then dried and ground into flour to make potato dumplings, dusted with a roasted powder of soybean and wheat, a further method of preservation said to have let the potato be eaten year-round.
Why it took this shape
On land in Okutama unsuited to rice growing, jisuke potatoes — a variety of potato — have been cultivated for over a hundred years, said to have supported local diets as a side dish in times of food scarcity. They are also said to have been simmered with green beans or kelp to serve guests, and this potato is said to have taken firm root across generations as a food tightly woven into local life, still made in households today.
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 Tokyo
- Abura SobaNo broth is poured at all — noodles are tossed in a soy-and-sesame-oil tare pooled at the bottom of the bowl, said to have started at shops in the Musashino area in the late 1950s, with vinegar and chili oil stirred in partway through.
- Ajitsuke NoriSheet nori brushed with a soy-and-sugar seasoning and toasted crisp, said to have been devised as a gift for an imperial visit to Kyoto in the Meiji era. Its snap gives way to a burst of flavor and aroma.
- Anago ZushiConger eel, simmered sweet and savory, is laid over sushi rice and brushed with a reduced glaze called tsume — a staple Edomae topping from a fish that thrived in Tokyo Bay's nutrient-rich waters, its slick skin demanding a sushi chef's careful hand to clean.
- AnmitsuCubes of agar jelly topped with red peas, sweet bean paste, and dark syrup. Said to have begun when a Ginza sweets shop in the early Showa era added its own bean paste to the simpler "mitsumame" — jelly and peas in syrup — marking a point where wagashi met café culture.
- Asakusa shichimiA seven-spice chili blend from a shop tracing back to 1625 in Asakusa's old Yagenbori district, often described as the origin point of shichimi togarashi. The neighborhood's history as a hub for medicinal-herb wholesalers is credited with shaping a blend informed by traditional Chinese medicine, and the shop is known for custom-mixing blends to order.
- Bettara-zukeDaikon salted first, then pickled sweet in rice malt and sugar — said to descend from a lightly pickled daikon once sold at Edo's ebisu-kō market. The rice malt gives it a natural sweetness, and it still headlines Nihonbashi's autumn "Bettara Market."