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Kasuyose
Kasuyose — coarsely ground soybeans stewed with root vegetables and chicken into rice
Soybeans soaked overnight and coarsely crushed are simmered down with taro, carrot, chicken, and rice into a thick stew — said to have been made in Yamato for festivals and celebrations, serving as a main dish, side, or even a snack.
- Origin: Kumamoto Yamato
- About 860 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Taro, onion, carrot and dried shiitake are finely chopped and stir-fried with chicken, then rice and soybeans are added and simmered until it thickens. Resembling a tofu-dressed salad in appearance, it's described as an unusual dish that can serve as a rice substitute, a side dish, or a drinking snack, with a gentle flavor throughout. It's said to have long been made in Yamato town households at celebrations and festivals.
How it's made
Taro, onion, carrot and dried shiitake are finely chopped and stir-fried together with chicken. Soybeans, soaked overnight until soft, are crushed just enough to leave some texture and added in, along with rice, then everything simmers until it thickens. Seasoning lightly with soy sauce, mirin and sugar is said to be common across versions. It's said to taste better once it's cooled and the flavors have had time to settle than freshly made.
Why it took this shape
In Yamato town, the dish is said to have long been made in home kitchens whenever people gathered for a celebration or festival. In an era when tax rice was collected and families were large, the dish is thought to have grown out of stretching precious rice with whatever vegetables were on hand and adding soybeans, the only protein source available, to bulk it up — and one account traces the name to a local dialect word for tofu lees. Some districts always add pumpkin, while others insist on leaving it out, a sign of how much the recipe still varies from village to village.
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 Kumamoto
- Amakusa DaioA large-bodied meat fowl once kept in Amakusa in the Meiji and Taisho eras, said to have died out in the early Showa period before Kumamoto prefecture spent roughly a decade recreating it; reportedly among the biggest jidori breeds, shipped at 120–150 days.
- Gane-ageSweet potato cut into batons is coated in a ginger-sweetened batter and deep-fried. "Gane" is Amakusa dialect for crab, said to describe the shape of the fried strands, and the dish also serves as a vegetarian offering at Buddhist services.
- Tai SomenSomen noodles are simmered in the broth of sea bream head and bones cooked down whole — a celebratory dish said to reflect the influence of nearby Shimabara's somen tradition. In Yamato's Mamihara, a version called "taimen" simmers the whole fish instead.
- Tako MeshiSun-dried octopus is rehydrated, chopped, and either cooked into rice with burdock and carrot or mixed in afterward — a dish that leans on the concentrated flavor of dried octopus, known for the summer sight of octopus hung out to dry in Amakusa's Ariake.
- Baniku SobaFrom the Aso area of Kumamoto: hot soba topped with horse meat simmered sweet and salty. It's said to carry the history of a region where horse meat took root as a restorative food for the injured and ill.
- ButaaeBoiled octopus and eggplant are stir-fried in a sweet, spicy barley miso — an Amakusa home dish said to have begun as a stand-in for pork, once hard to come by, using the local octopus instead while keeping the old name, "pork mix."