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Nuta-imo
Nuta-imo — boiled taro dressed in a sweet sesame-miso sauce
Taro, boiled in its skin, is dressed in a sauce of ground sesame, miso, sugar, and mirin — a Miyazaki side dish that thickens as the taro's edges soften into the sauce, said to have grown from a way of using up small taro too little to serve any other way.
- Origin: Miyazaki
- About 880 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Nutaimo, from central Miyazaki, coats boiled taro in a dressing of ground sesame, miso, sugar, and mirin. As it's mixed, the taro's edges soften into a thicker, stickier texture, and mashing part of the taro into the dressing makes it richer still. The soft, starchy taro carries the flavor of sesame and miso with a gentle sweetness, in a simple, homey dish.
How it's made
Taro is boiled in its skin until soft, then peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces. It's tossed with a dressing of ground sesame, miso, sugar, and mirin, and that's it. As the taro is mixed with the dressing, its edges round off and the dish grows thicker and stickier, a defining trait of this dish, and mashing part of the taro into the mix adds even more body.
Why it took this shape
Miyazaki, among the leading producers of taro in the country, is said to have long favored dishes built around it. Nutaimo is said to have developed as a way to make good use of the small taro corms harvested in autumn. Its name isn't clearly settled, but one account ties it to the sticky texture the dressing takes on when mixed, and another links it, like the vinegar-miso dressing called "nuta," to the sliminess of a muddy marsh.
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
Contrast
- Seri no YogoshiBlanched, chopped water dropwort is tossed in a dressing of ground tofu, sesame, miso, and sugar — a Miyazaki-style shira-ae named yogoshi, for how the mortar gets 'dirtied' in the making, long prepared by hand as a meat-free dish for memorial services.
- Hyuga Kurokawa Kabocha no NimonoHyuga kurokawa kabocha, a black-skinned heirloom pumpkin first grown in Miyazaki City, is cut into large chunks and simmered slowly in sugar and light soy sauce — lighter and less sweet than a Western pumpkin, but it holds its shape well and its skin is good to eat too.
Also from Miyazaki
- Chikin NanbanFried chicken dipped in sweet vinegar and topped with tartar sauce, said to have originated in Nobeoka, Miyazaki. It's said to trace to a sweet-vinegar fried chicken devised as staff food at a Western-food restaurant in the 1950s.
- Futatabi DangoDumpling flour is kneaded, steamed with freshly picked mugwort folded in, then pounded a second time — a Nobeoka treat named for that unusual second working of the dough, wrapped around sweet bean paste and dusted with soybean flour into a soft, pale-green dumpling.
- Hie-zushiWild boar bones are simmered into a broth, then rice, millet, and vegetables are added and cooked down into a porridge — a Shiiba village dish built on millet, a grain said to have been eaten in Japan since before rice farming; whenever a boar was dressed, the porridge it made was shared around the whole village to see out the long winter.
- Iriko MochiGlutinous rice is parched and ground into iriko flour, then kneaded with starch syrup, rested, and cut into bars — a Miyazaki sweet said to have arrived from the Satsuma domain as a festival treat, once handed out to neighbors to wish for a child's healthy growth.
- Jidori no Miso KorobakashiJidori chicken is rolled around a dry pan with no added water, coaxed with a miso glaze without letting it catch — a home-cooked dish from around Kobayashi City, its name a western-Miyazaki dialect word for tumbling food in a pot as it cooks, the mix of vegetables and seasoning varying from house to house.