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Pasutii
Pasutii — a chicken-and-mushroom stew baked under a pie crust, its name from the Portuguese for pie
Chicken, mountain yam, and shiitake simmered in chicken broth are piled into a bowl, topped with a pie crust, and baked — said to have arrived from Dutch traders at Dejima during the isolation era, mixing Chinese-influenced ingredients with a Japanese-style seasoning.
- Origin: Nagasaki
- About 970 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A dish where ingredients simmered in chicken broth fill a heatproof bowl, capped with pastry and baked in the oven — Japanese-style filling meeting a pastry crust. The contrast between the crust's crisp, flaky texture and the soft-simmered filling is said to be the appeal. It's considered a dish unique to Nagasaki, where Western, Chinese and Japanese elements overlap in a single bite.
How it's made
Chicken, mountain yam, fresh shiitake, ginkgo nuts, bean sprouts and hard-boiled egg are simmered in chicken broth (or shark fin or soft-shell turtle soup) and seasoned Japanese-style. This is packed into a heatproof bowl, capped with frozen puff pastry, and baked in the oven. To eat it, the pastry crust is broken and folded into the soup beneath. The toasty smell as it comes out of the oven is said to whet the appetite.
Why it took this shape
The dish is said to have been introduced by the Dutch traders who passed through Dejima during Japan's period of isolation, and its prototype already appears in a cookbook from that era. With Chinese-influenced ingredients tucked beneath a pastry crust and Japanese-style seasoning throughout, it's counted among Nagasaki's own 'wakaran' dishes, where Western, Chinese and Japanese elements overlap. It's believed to have started out as a luxury dish that ordinary people rarely got to taste.
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 Nagasaki
- ArumadoA hard-boiled egg dyed pink is wrapped in fish paste and steamed into a kamaboko log that shows a pink-rimmed cross-section when cut — a Hirado specialty, with kin dishes called "arimado" in Sasebo and "ryugan" in Nagasaki.
- Goto UdonA hand-pulled noodle from Shinkamigoto, Nagasaki. Its technique is thought to trace back to envoys returning from Tang China, and the island's camellia oil is worked into the dough for a smooth, elastic bite.
- HanahajikiCucumber, carrot, deep-fried tofu, and shrimp are cut into strips and fanned out on a plate to be dipped in a hot mustard vinegar-miso — a dish from Isahaya said to be named for how the mustard "flicks the nose," traditionally served at Buddhist memorial services.
- HatoshiShrimp and squid paste sandwiched in bread and deep-fried, a Nagasaki specialty said to have arrived from China in the Meiji era, growing from a shippoku banquet course into a food loved across the city.
- HikitoshiChicken raised at home is butchered for this Iki hot pot, typically enriched with iki-doufu, a rich local tofu, and firm-boiled somen — said to have begun as a dish served to guests in the inner parlor, its name tracing to "hiki-toshi," leading a guest through.