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Nigomi
Nigomi — chicken, chestnut, and red bean simmered with root vegetables for an autumn shrine festival
Chicken and root vegetables — lotus root, burdock — simmer with red bean and chestnut in a sweet soy glaze. Paired with chestnut rice as an essential offering at the Imari-kunchi shrine festival, and said to be made in bulk the night before.
- Origin: Saga Imari
- About 940 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Chicken, red beans, and chestnuts are simmered together with root vegetables like lotus root, burdock, and daikon in sugar and soy sauce; also known by another local name, it's valued for the plain, honest taste of its vegetables and its well-rounded nutrition. It's said to be made in a big batch the night before a festival and eaten over several days, an essential dish for one city's autumn festival. It's also known by a couple of other local names tied to the sound of simmering.
How it's made
Chicken thigh and root vegetables are cut into similarly sized rough chunks, and konjac is parboiled and torn by hand. Red beans are boiled once, drained, and simmered again until soft. The vegetables simmer in dashi, then the beans, their cooking liquid, and seasoning are added to finish. Seafood or dumplings are sometimes used in place of the chicken, and letting the flavor soak in slowly is said to be the key. Seafood is sometimes used in place of chicken depending on the area.
Why it took this shape
It's said to be made in a large batch the night before an autumn festival and eaten over several days, reheated each time. One account holds it began as a way to use up leftovers from a simmered dish along with the chestnuts, red beans, and cooking liquid meant for a chestnut rice dish, so nothing went to waste. Neatly cut pieces were reportedly saved for guests, with odd scraps kept for the family. The festival it's tied to is known locally by a nickname referencing the sound of its drums.
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 Saga
- FunankoguiCrucian carp, wrapped whole in kelp, simmers for hours with daikon and other roots until even the bones turn soft — a winter protein source from the lean season on the Ariake Sea, and in Kashima, an offering to the god of good fortune at New Year.
- Futsu MochiPounded mochi is worked through with boiled mugwort and wrapped around sweet bean paste — where much of Japan offers diamond-shaped rice cakes at the Doll Festival, parts of Saga offer this mugwort mochi instead, and it doubles as a snack marking spring's arrival.
- Go DofuSoy milk is set not with nigari but kudzu starch, giving this Arita specialty a softer, glossier bite than ordinary tofu — served with sesame-soy as a side, or with black sugar syrup and soybean flour as a dessert.
- Hoshigaki NamasuJulienned daikon and dried persimmon are tossed with vinegar, yuzu juice, and soy — from Saga's Matsubai district, where curtains of drying persimmons hanging under the eaves mark the fall, and this dish is said to appear alongside New Year's osechi.
- Ika no KakeaeSquid, daikon, and carrot are tossed in a vinegared miso dressing thick with ground sesame — a style of dish found across Japan, but called 'kakeae' in Saga, where fatty mackerel sometimes stands in for squid at autumn festivals.