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Somage
Somage — a buckwheat porridge, its dumplings stirred straight into a vegetable soup
Buckwheat flour is stirred into a broth of daikon and carrot simmered with dried sardine until it forms soft dumplings — a Shiiba village dish whose name is said to combine the local words for buckwheat and porridge; once it hardened, it was grilled over the irori hearth, a way of stretching scarce rice.
- Origin: Miyazaki Shiiba
- About 860 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Somage, from Shiiba village, is a buckwheat dish similar to sobagaki dumplings, made by stirring buckwheat flour into a vegetable soup flavored with dried sardine dashi. "Soma" refers to buckwheat and "ge" to porridge in the local dialect. The plain flavor of daikon, carrot, and scallion meets the thick, nutty character of buckwheat flour for a simple, warming dish.
How it's made
Dashi is made from dried sardine, and shredded vegetables are simmered in it, seasoned with salt or soy sauce. Once it comes to a boil, buckwheat flour is stirred in and gathered into dumpling-like lumps. If it hardens, it can be cut into small pieces and grilled over an open hearth. It was often made on cold days, valued as a way to warm the body from within.
Why it took this shape
Buckwheat, suited to poor soil and cool mountain terrain, is said to have long been grown as a substitute for rice. The harvested grain was ground into flour with a stone mill, and somage is said to have developed as a way to turn the plain flavor of mountain vegetables into something richer with the help of oil and seasoning. In an era when rice was scarce, it's said to have served as a substitute food eaten on cold days, taking root deeply in the everyday life of Shiiba village.
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
- NadofuAs soybeans are simmered and set with nigari, seasonal greens — rapeseed blossom, mitsuba, or the leaves of the local Heike turnip — are folded straight into the curd — a Shiiba village tofu that both colors and nourishes the block while stretching scarce soybeans with greens that grow even on poor mountain soil.
- 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.
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.
- 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.