Home-style
Keichan
Keichan — chicken and cabbage stir-fried in a house-blend sauce
Chicken and cabbage and other vegetables are seared on a griddle or Genghis Khan pan in a house-made miso- or soy-based sauce — a dish of the Gujo area said to have started as a way to use hens once they stopped laying, seasoning varying by household and shop.
- Origin: Gifu
- About 250 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Chicken tossed with cabbage and onion in a miso- or soy-based sauce, then grilled on a hot plate, so the sauce's savory char, the crackle of fat hitting the metal, and the sweet smell of vegetables browning all pull together into something that's said to make you hungrier the longer it cooks. Miso, soy, or salt versions are said to split by region and shop, each cooked with its own bold style.
How it's made
Chicken along with cabbage, bean sprouts, and seasonal vegetables is tossed in a house-made sauce and grilled on a flat griddle or a dome-shaped pan borrowed from Jingisukan-style lamb grilling. Seasoning — miso, soy, or salt — is said to vary by household, district, and shop, and trying each place's own sauce is said to be part of the appeal. Pre-marinated chicken is also sold ready to cook.
Why it took this shape
The dish is said to trace back to using chickens once they'd stopped laying eggs — a precious source of protein at the time, and a treat reserved for special occasions. It's also said to have started as a local take on Jingisukan lamb, which was eaten in part of Gifu, with butcher shops and bars later developing their own sauces into distinct regional styles.
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 Gifu
- Akadatsu no SubuteThe red-purple leaf stalk of taro, called akadatsu, has its fibers removed and is salt-rubbed before being dressed in a sweetened vinegar — a dish of Yamagata City on land whose lime-poor, thin soil suited taro cultivation, once said to be fed to new mothers to aid recovery.
- Ayu NarezushiAyu heading downriver to spawn in autumn, often carrying roe, are salted and stuffed with freshly cooked rice, then packed in a barrel to ferment for about two months — a narezushi of Gifu City said to have been made from fish caught at the Nagara River's cormorant fishery and once presented to the shogunate.
- Ayu ZosuiAyu, grilled plain until fragrant, is flaked and briefly simmered with dashi and rice into a light porridge — a Gifu river-fish dish said to have begun as a way to use ayu too damaged from fishing to sell whole, often served as the closing course at restaurants specializing in ayu.
- FunamisoCrucian carp, first grilled plain, simmers for hours with rehydrated soybeans, then finishes in soybean miso and coarse sugar — a river-fish dish of the Seino region, where the miso's strong umami is said to soften the fish's characteristic edge, simmered until the flesh falls apart as a winter keeping food.
- Ayu no ShioyakiAyu are salted all over, given a decorative touch of salt on fin and tail, then grilled over charcoal on both sides — a river-fish dish of Gifu, said to draw on fish caught fresh at the 1,300-year-old Nagara River cormorant fishery or at the traditional yana weirs that channel fish into a catch.
- Gohei MochiCrushed rice is skewered and grilled, then glazed with a walnut- or peanut-flecked sauce — a dish of the Tono and Hida areas where soy-based sauce dominates north of the old Nakasendo road and miso-based sauce south of it, traditionally served to celebrate the new rice harvest or to honor a guest.