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Kigosho
Kigosho — the young leaves and pods of Fushimi togarashi peppers, simmered in soy sauce
The young leaves and small pods of Fushimi togarashi, a mild Kyoto heirloom pepper, are stir-simmered in soy sauce and sake into a everyday side dish. With a faint peppery aroma and distinctive bitterness, it is said to be enjoyed in summer over rice or alongside sake.
- Origin: Kyoto City, Kyoto
- About 370 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
This dish simmers the young leaves of Fushimi peppers into a tsukudani-style preserve, called kigosho. The leaves are tender, with a faint pepper aroma and a distinctive bitterness said to sharpen into a pleasant tingle with each bite. Since it comes from the mild Fushimi pepper, the leaves too are said to carry little of the harshness other greens might, making them easy to eat. The small unripe peppers are often simmered in alongside the leaves.
How it's made
The pepper leaves are quickly blanched, plunged into cold water, and squeezed dry before being simmered in soy sauce and sake. Fushimi pepper leaves are most common, though other pepper varieties are sometimes substituted, it's said. Enjoyed over rice or as an accompaniment to sake, the dish is sometimes given extra depth with the addition of small dried fish. It's said to be valued as a preserve that comes together quickly, its mild leaves and gentle bitterness making it easy to handle.
Why it took this shape
Fushimi peppers are said to have originated near Fushimi Ward in Kyoto City and are treated as one of Kyoto's traditional vegetables; their mild heat and distinctive sweetness earned them the nickname Fushimi amanaga. Making use of the young leaves as well as the fruit is thought to be how this dish took root as a way to use the plant without waste. Coming into season at the height of summer, it's said to have become a familiar summer obanzai, sold at farm stands and supermarkets alongside the peppers themselves, with a leaf-specific variety reportedly developed in recent years too.
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 Kyoto
- Chirimen SanshoChirimen-jako simmered sweet-salty with fresh sansho peppercorns in sake, soy sauce, and mirin — a Kyoto side dish said to have begun as a cook's gift in the mid-Showa era. The peppercorns leave a sharp, fragrant aftertaste.
- Ebiimo to Bodara no TaitanEbi-imo, a striped Kyoto heirloom taro named for its shrimp-like ridges, simmers together with bodara, cod dried in Hokkaido. Gelatin from the dried cod is said to keep the taro from falling apart, while the taro's bitterness softens the cod — a textbook 'deaimon' pairing.
- Fushimi no SakeSake from Fushimi in Kyoto, a district fed by groundwater from the Momoyama plateau. Its water is said to be softer than Nada's, giving a round mouthfeel and gentle, full sweetness that overlaps with the profile recognized under the GI Kyoto geographical indication.
- GanmodokiTofu mixed with vegetables, rolled into balls, and fried. Known in Kyoto as hirousu or hiryōzu, thought to have taken this form through the vegetarian temple-cooking idea of a filling dish made without meat.
- Hamo no YakimonoPike conger, riddled with fine bones, is scored with the skilled honekiri cut and then grilled — teriyaki-glazed or salted — in Kyoto cuisine. Said to have taken root in landlocked Kyoto because the hardy fish could be carried in alive, it is also a festival food for Gion Matsuri, nicknamed the 'hamo festival.'
- Kamonasu DengakuKamonasu, a round Kyoto heirloom eggplant over 10cm across sometimes called the 'queen of eggplants,' is sliced and pan-fried in plenty of oil, then topped with a sweet miso reduced with sake and mirin. It is said to have long been grown on the alluvial fan of Kamigamo.