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Seri no Yogoshi
Seri no yogoshi — blanched water dropwort dressed with tofu, sesame, and miso
Blanched, 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.
- Origin: Miyazaki
- About 880 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Seri no yogoshi is a tofu-dressed salad found across Miyazaki, made by tossing boiled and chopped water dropwort, or "seri," in a dressing of mashed tofu, white sesame, miso, and sugar. "Yogoshi" is a local word for this style of tofu dressing, said to come from the way a mortar and pestle get messy in the making. The dish carries seri's refreshing aroma, crisp texture, and vivid green color as a simple side dish.
How it's made
Seri should be boiled only briefly, about ten seconds, to avoid overcooking, and wild seri, which tends to be more bitter, is best soaked in water for a while after a quick blanch. Drained tofu is mashed together with sesame, miso, and sugar in a mortar to make the dressing, then the boiled, chopped seri is folded in. Because of its plain, clean flavor, it has also been made by hand as part of the meat-free dishes served at Buddhist memorial services.
Why it took this shape
Seri is a plant native to Japan, recorded as a food in old texts dating back to the Nara period. It favors damp soil and is said to grow wild in rice paddies and along footpaths after the harvest. Its name is said to come from the way it grows in a dense, competing cluster from a single spot. Dressing it with tofu and sesame is said to reflect an old wisdom for boosting the nutritional value of a humble seasonal green.
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
- Nuta-imoTaro, 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.
- Tsuwabuki no AburaitameTsuwabuki, its bitterness drawn out and blanched in salted water, is stir-fried with fried tofu and seasoned with soy sauce and sugar — a side dish from the Nichinan area; the plant resembles fuki but stays evergreen year-round, gathered wild along the southern Miyazaki coastline each spring.
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.
- 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.
- 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.