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Nmukuji Puttoruu
Nmukuji puttoruu — sweet-potato starch worked glossy in a hot pan
Sweet-potato starch is thinned with water, seasoned with miso, and worked in an oiled pan until it turns glossy and paste-like. In typhoon-prone Okinawa it's also served as an emergency food, and swapping in sugar turns the same simple dish into a snack.
- Origin: Okinawa
- About 1560 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Sweet potato starch is dissolved in water and stir-fried into a thick, glossy dish. As its name suggests, its texture is defined by the starch coming together into a smooth, sticky paste, sweet enough for a snack with sugar or savory enough for a side dish with chives worked in. "Nmu" is the local word for sweet potato, and the dish is said to have grown out of a habit of keeping the starch extracted from it on hand at home.
How it's made
Sweet potato starch is dissolved in dashi and mixed with miso. Finely chopped fish cake and chives are added, and the mixture is stir-fried in a generously oiled pan while being worked continuously. Once it turns glossy, it's taken off the heat and eaten while still hot. Some versions swap the chives for brown sugar for a sweeter finish. Because the starch scorches easily, cooking it quickly while watching the heat closely is said to be important.
Why it took this shape
Sweet potato is said to have arrived from China in the early 17th century and spread as a crop that helped stave off famine, and the starch extracted from it is said to have become a pantry staple in households from there on. In a prefecture that sees frequent typhoons, the starch's long shelf life made it useful as emergency food as well, and this dish is said to have settled in as an everyday snack. Another dish built from the same starch, nmukuji andagii, fries it together with mashed, cooked sweet potato.
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 Okinawa
- Ashi TibichiPig's trotters are simmered for hours with kelp and daikon until the bone slides free on its own. Rooted in the belief that eating a body part heals the same part in the eater, it's traditionally favored by older people, anyone with trouble in the legs, or those minding their skin.
- AwamoriA distilled spirit from Okinawa made only from Thai rice and black koji, with every grain of rice turned into koji in a method called zen-koji-jikomi. Citric acid from the black koji is said to keep the mash from spoiling even in hot, humid conditions, and it's classified alongside shochu as a single-distillation spirit.
- Chii IrichiiPork blood is worked with pork meat, carrot, and wood-ear mushroom into a distinctive stir-simmered dish. Rooted in the same eat-what-ails-you logic as ashi tibichi, it was thought to guard against anemia, and it's traditionally offered before Lunar New Year and at memorial services.
- Chimu ShinjiPork liver and a native yellow carrot are simmered down almost like a medicinal decoction, meant for days the body needs support. It follows the kusuimun idea that food itself can be medicine, and is traditionally made for anemia or when someone's caught a cold.
- Gooyaa ChanpuruuBitter goya is stir-fried together with Okinawa's firm tofu and egg. A dish only earns the name champuru once tofu is in it, and this one has long served double duty — coaxing back a summer-flagged appetite while delivering vitamin C, now eaten year-round.
- HanazakeA distilled spirit made only on Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost island, at around 60 percent alcohol. Its raw materials and method are the same as awamori, but because its proof exceeds awamori's legal ceiling, it's classified as 'spirits' rather than awamori under the liquor tax law.