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Sabanuta
Sabanuta — vinegar-cured mackerel dressed with miso and mustard
Fatty Wakasa mackerel is cured in vinegar, skinned, and tossed with scallion and a mustard-miso dressing in this Obama dish, locally also called 'nota' or 'dorozu' — a piquant side meant to sharpen the appetite.
- Origin: Fukui Obama
- About 360 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Mackerel cured in vinegar and tossed with scallion, hot mustard, and miso, so a sharp vinegar tang gives way to the fish's sweet fat and mustard's bite up the nose. Skinning the mackerel first leaves the flesh tender, and it's said to hold its own even against pungent herbs like chive, ginger, or myoga.
How it's made
The mackerel is salted briefly, cured in vinegar, then skinned and cut into centimeter-wide strips before being dressed with hot mustard and miso. Scallion is the usual partner, though chive, ginger, and myoga chrysanthemum leaf sometimes join in, and a local heirloom scallion is said to be the favorite pairing. Locally the dish's 'nuta' dressing is sometimes called 'nota' instead.
Why it took this shape
Obama is said to have once supplied food to the court, and mackerel bound for Kyoto is said to have arrived salted just right after the long walk — a sign of how good the local catch was. Curing it in vinegar and peeling the skin is said to have become the way to let that fatty mackerel stand up to sharp herbs rather than be overwhelmed by them.
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
- HeshikoSalted mackerel is packed in rice bran for around half a year along the Wakasa and Echizen coast. Once the bran is brushed off it can be grilled, flaked over rice, or used as sushi topping — said to have been a winter protein source in lean months.
- SeigeThe legs and shell of female snow crab are simmered in a clay pot with grated daikon, finished with miso and a scrap of rock nori — a fishermen's dish from the Kono district of Minami-Echizen. The shell is said to lend a good broth, eaten over rice or alongside sake.
Also from Fukui
- Atsuage no NitaThick fried tofu, blanched and scored with a cross cut, is simmered sweet-savory in dashi, soy sauce, and mirin with a dash of ginger juice. Fukui leads the country in fried-tofu consumption, and this dish is said to have moved from a Honkoko feast dish into everyday cooking.
- BokkakeThick fried tofu, burdock, and shirataki noodles are simmered in a bonito broth and poured hot, broth and all, over freshly cooked rice — eaten for over a century since the early 1910s. In Katsuyama it is said to take a chazuke-like turn, topped with fish cake and mitsuba.
- ChameshiRoasted soybeans are steeped in hot roasted barley tea, and rice is then cooked in that same tea — a dish from the old post town of Imajo, said to descend from Nara's 'nara-chameshi'. It is said to be indispensable at memorial services, Honkoko, and for daughters visiting home.
- Choju NamasuGround sesame is worked into a paste with miso, thick fried tofu, mustard, and vinegar, then tossed with shredded daikon, carrot, and snap peas — a New Year salad whose name literally wishes long life, also said to appear at memorial services and Honkoko.
- Decchi YokanSweet red bean paste is set with agar, sugar, and a pinch of salt into a thin, water-yokan-like winter confection. It is said to have begun when a young apprentice, home for New Year from a Kyoto shop, stretched a bar of yokan with water to share with neighbors, eaten by the kotatsu.
- Echizen Oroshi SobaA cold soba from Echizen, Fukui, topped with grated daikon and bonito flakes. It is said to originate with a soba maker a local lord brought from Kyoto to promote buckwheat as an emergency food crop.