Home-style
Oita Aimaze
Oita aimaze — mashed tofu tossed with simmered mountain vegetables and dried radish
Bracken fern, dried shiitake, and shredded dried radish are simmered in dashi and soy sauce, then tossed with mashed tofu — a Taketa dish once essential to the formal spread at weddings and funerals, resembling shira-ae but heavier with vegetables.
- Origin: Oita Taketa
- About 820 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Aimaze, an essential dish on the formal trays of the Kuju area of Taketa, mixes stir-fried vegetables with mashed tofu. It is distinguished by its generous use of mountain vegetables and dried ingredients such as flowering fern, dried shiitake, and dried daikon strips. It resembles shira-ae tofu salad but stands apart for the sheer variety of ingredients, and it is said to take its name from the way both the vegetables and the tofu are seasoned before being mixed together.
How it's made
Dried shiitake and carrot are cut into thin strips and simmered with flowering fern and dried daikon strips in dashi and soy sauce. Tofu is mashed in a mortar with salt and sugar; draining it well beforehand reportedly gives it more body, making it easier to mix. The simmered vegetables and mashed tofu are then combined. There is no fixed set of ingredients, so households use whatever seasonal vegetables and mountain greens are on hand, giving each home's version its own look and flavor.
Why it took this shape
In the Kuju area of Taketa, ringed by the Kuju mountains and the outer rim of Mount Aso, aimaze is said to have been a fixture of the formal trays served at weddings, funerals, and other ceremonial occasions. In an era when sugar was precious, a generously sweetened aimaze reportedly marked a special-occasion feast, and some households are said to have used sweet sake in place of sugar to add sweetness. It remains an essential dish for Buddhist observances today, though reportedly made with less sugar than before.
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
Contrast
- KoneriEggplant and bitter melon are stir-fried, simmered in dashi-thinned miso, then thickened with wheat flour — a summer side dish from Bungo-Ono said to trap the vegetables' nutrients in the sauce, its name coming from the kneaded flour used to finish it.
- Atama RyoriGills, jaw, and innards of a large fish like grouper are quickly parboiled along with the flesh and piled onto a single platter — a dish from inland Taketa, far from the sea, said to have grown from a wish to waste nothing of a rare catch, served with a citrus dipping sauce.
Also from Oita
- Aji no MaruzushiA whole horse mackerel, cured in plum vinegar and opened flat, is wrapped around vinegared rice and rolled in red shiso leaf — a celebratory sushi from Saiki, painstaking to prepare, built on the rich mackerel landed from the Bungo Channel.
- AmimeshiKrill simmered sweet-savory in mirin, soy sauce, and ginger is folded into freshly steamed rice — a dish from the Usa, Nakatsu, and Bungotakada coast, where krill are hauled from the Buzen Sea tideflats each autumn and winter; a favorite of the northern Oita coast.
- Ayu UrukaAyu (sweetfish) flesh or innards are minced with salt and left to ferment for about a week — an Oita salted delicacy said to have begun as a way to keep the clean river's seasonal catch; the innards-only version, nigauruka, carries a distinctive bitterness.
- Beppu ReimenThe dish's spread is traced to around 1950, when a cook repatriated from what had been Manchuria began making cold noodles in Beppu. Genso Arirang, founded that same year, is often named as the pioneering shop; the local style pairs a Japanese-style seafood stock with noodles made from buckwheat, wheat, and starch.
- Dango-jiruWheat dough kneaded and stretched into flat ribbons is simmered with root vegetables and shiitake in a barley-miso broth — an everyday Oita dish born of the prefecture's flour-based food culture, where poor rice land pushed wheat to the fore; the ribbons keep a firmer bite than udon.