Home-style
Kyabetsu Mochi
Kyabetsu mochi — stir-fried cabbage tossed with freshly pounded rice cake
Cabbage stir-fried with soy sauce, dashi, and mirin is tossed with freshly pounded mochi — a dish from the Ose district of Koriyama. It is said to have been dreamed up by farmers who grew both rice and cabbage for themselves, a way to work through a surplus of each without tiring of it.
- Origin: Fukushima Koriyama
- About 200 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Sautéed cabbage is tossed with freshly pounded mochi in this dish from the Ose area of Koriyama City. The cabbage's crisp bite against the soft, chewy mochi makes for a playful contrast, it's said. The cabbage, seasoned in soy sauce, dashi, and mirin, is said to cling well to the mochi, giving the dish its character.
How it's made
Cabbage is sautéed and seasoned with soy sauce, dashi, and mirin, then tossed together with freshly pounded mochi, the basic method. Seasoning and technique are said to vary slightly from household to household. Cabbage's sweetness and texture shift with the season, which is said to change the dish's flavor depending on when it's made.
Why it took this shape
In Ose, many farming households grew both rice and cabbage, and the dish is said to have emerged from a self-sufficient way of life built around those two crops. Combining sautéed cabbage with mochi is thought to have been a simple way of eating through a large rice and cabbage harvest without growing tired of either.
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 Fukushima
- Aizu RamenFlat, thick hand-made noodles in a clear soy broth. Said to trace back to a Aizuwakamatsu diner owner bringing home a taste learned in Yokohama — a second soy ramen lineage that grew up apart from Kitakata's, in the same Aizu region.
- Aizu Curry YakisobaA dish from Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima: sauce yakisoba topped with curry roux. It's said to trace to a diner called Tommy Food, which began ladling curry over its yakisoba, catching on especially among young diners for its low price and filling size.
- Aizu GyuSteers and heifers of Japanese Black raised in the Aizu basin, fed mainly local rice straw — the basin's sharp seasonal swings are said to suit fattening, making it Fukushima's leading brand.
- Aizu JidoriA lineage said to have been brought to Aizu by Heike clan refugees, saved from near-extinction and re-established through crossbreeding by Fukushima prefecture; reportedly fattened for 90 to 170 days.
- Aizu Sōsu KatsudonAizu's sauce katsudon, doused in a thick sweet-savory sauce. Its origin has several competing accounts, none settled, but all point to it being refined through everyday improvisation on Taisho-era Western food.
- Aizu Yamajio RamenSalt ramen seasoned with mountain salt drawn from hot-spring water — rounder than sea salt.