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Kujaku
Kujaku — dyed egg wrapped in colored fish surimi, sliced to show a peacock-feather pattern
A hard-boiled egg dyed red is wrapped in white-fish surimi colored green, then steamed or fried — a Kamae (Saiki) dish named for how its sliced cross-section echoes a peacock feather, brought out for New Year's and other celebrations.
- Origin: Oita Saiki
- About 800 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Kujaku, from the Kamae district of Saiki, wraps a hard-boiled egg, its white dyed red, in a paste of white fish surimi tinted green. Sliced crosswise, it reveals rings of green, red, white, and yellow said to resemble a peacock's feather pattern, which gives the dish its name, meaning "peacock." For all its festive appearance, the flavor is the plain, familiar taste of fish surimi, and it has long been a dish that brightens New Year's tables.
How it's made
A hard-boiled egg is peeled and its white dyed red with food coloring. White fish such as lizardfish is minced and worked in a mortar with sugar, salt, egg, and potato starch, then tinted green with food coloring. The egg, dusted with potato starch, is wrapped in the surimi and either steamed for about 15 minutes or briefly deep-fried at around 180°C until just set. Steaming is said to be the original method, though frying is more common today. It is sliced crosswise and plated to show off the cross-section.
Why it took this shape
Saiki, close to the Bungo Channel, reportedly developed a culture of processing landed fish such as lizardfish into surimi paste so nothing went to waste. Coloring the surimi and wrapping it around an egg is said to have been a way to turn humble ingredients into a festive-looking dish. Thanks to its vivid colors, it is said to have become a fixture of New Year's osechi and even school sports-day lunchboxes. More recently, some producers have moved away from artificial coloring and now sell versions left uncolored.
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.
- Osechi and zoni for the New YearA guide to the meaning behind osechi's tiered boxes, the regional differences in zoni (square vs. round mochi, clear vs. miso broth), and the nanakusa-gayu custom.
- Setsubun: ehomaki and lucky beansA guide to ehomaki, the uncut sushi roll said to be eaten facing a lucky direction on Setsubun, and to mamemaki, the bean-throwing custom with roasted lucky beans.
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 Oita
- Aji no MaruzushiA whole horse mackerel, cured in plum vinegar and opened flat, is wrapped around vinegared rice and rolled in red shiso leaf — a celebratory sushi from Saiki, painstaking to prepare, built on the rich mackerel landed from the Bungo Channel.
- AmimeshiKrill simmered sweet-savory in mirin, soy sauce, and ginger is folded into freshly steamed rice — a dish from the Usa, Nakatsu, and Bungotakada coast, where krill are hauled from the Buzen Sea tideflats each autumn and winter; a favorite of the northern Oita coast.
- Atama RyoriGills, jaw, and innards of a large fish like grouper are quickly parboiled along with the flesh and piled onto a single platter — a dish from inland Taketa, far from the sea, said to have grown from a wish to waste nothing of a rare catch, served with a citrus dipping sauce.
- Ayu UrukaAyu (sweetfish) flesh or innards are minced with salt and left to ferment for about a week — an Oita salted delicacy said to have begun as a way to keep the clean river's seasonal catch; the innards-only version, nigauruka, carries a distinctive bitterness.
- Beppu ReimenThe dish's spread is traced to around 1950, when a cook repatriated from what had been Manchuria began making cold noodles in Beppu. Genso Arirang, founded that same year, is often named as the pioneering shop; the local style pairs a Japanese-style seafood stock with noodles made from buckwheat, wheat, and starch.
- Dango-jiruWheat dough kneaded and stretched into flat ribbons is simmered with root vegetables and shiitake in a barley-miso broth — an everyday Oita dish born of the prefecture's flour-based food culture, where poor rice land pushed wheat to the fore; the ribbons keep a firmer bite than udon.