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Masu no Ankake
Masu no ankake — poached cherry salmon under a sweet, cold starch glaze
Poached sakuramasu is topped with chives and a sweet kudzu-starch glaze served cold rather than hot — a spring feast of the Shonai coast. The technique is said to have arrived from western Japan via the Kitamae cargo ships, and it remains a fixture of festivals like the Sakata Matsuri.
- Origin: Yamagata
- About 340 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Boiled cherry salmon (sakuramasu) is served with chives and topped with a sweet, cooled kuzu-starch sauce in this Shonai spring dish. Ginger is added on top, and the smooth, thickened sauce is said to mingle with the fish's subtle flavor. Unlike the hot, savory ankake sauces of Kyoto, this one is served chilled, a distinguishing trait.
How it's made
Boiled cherry salmon is arranged on a plate with chives, then covered with a sweet sauce thickened with kuzu starch and served cold. Ginger is placed on top, and some households add sliced hard-boiled egg or thin noodles. The sauce is said to be cooled before serving, which gives the dish its distinctive texture.
Why it took this shape
Cherry salmon are said to swim upstream just as the cherry blossoms bloom, carrying the nourishment they've stored for autumn spawning, making them a signature spring fish of Shonai. Ankake sauce techniques from western Japan are said to have arrived via Kitamae trading ships, and using sugar and kuzu starch, both costly at the time, is thought to have made this an extravagant dish reserved for entertaining guests at celebrations.
Before you go
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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 Yamagata
- Akayu Karamiso RamenMiso ramen with a knob of chili miso in the center, dissolved gradually to shift the flavor.
- Akebi no Miso ZumeyakiThe bittersweet rind of the akebia fruit is stuffed with minced meat and maitake mushroom simmered in miso and sugar, tied with kitchen string, and grilled. Elsewhere in Japan the white pulp is what gets eaten, but Yamagata is said to hold onto the unusual custom of eating the rind instead.
- DongarajiruWinter cod caught in the coldest weeks goes into a miso soup head to tail, innards included — said to trace back to fishermen's cooking on the Shonai coast. The liver's richness carries the flavor, and the traditional way adds only a scrap of rock nori, no scallion.
- Hatahata no YuageHatahata, scaleless sailfin sandfish that crowd the Shonai coast to spawn, are boiled whole and eaten with nothing more than grated daikon and soy sauce — a simple winter fish dish. With no scales to remove, it is said to have become a fixture of Shonai's autumn and winter table.
- Hyoboshi no NimonoPurslane, called hyo, is picked in summer, boiled, and sun-dried into a keeping food, then rehydrated and simmered with shirataki, carrot, and fried tofu for New Year. The name is said to be played on for luck — a wish that something good might happen, hyotto, this year.
- ImoniTaro, beef, konnyaku, and scallion simmer together in a soy-based autumn hot pot said to trace to boatmen on the Mogami River, who cooked taro and dried cod on the riverbank while waiting out the delays of cargo transport. On the Shonai coast the same dish turns to pork and miso.