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Taikabura
Taikabura — sea bream simmered with giant Shogoin turnip
Shogoin turnip, among Japan's largest, simmers with sea bream trimmings in dashi — a winter Kyoto dish and a classic 'deaimon,' the pairing of two in-season ingredients. Cultivation of the turnip is said to have spread after senmai-zuke pickles made from it became widely known in the Tenpo era.
- Origin: Kyoto City, Kyoto
- About 370 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
This winter simmered dish from Kyoto City pairs large Shogoin turnip with sea bream trimmings. The turnip, having absorbed the bream's umami, turns soft and almost melts in the mouth, and a touch of yuzu is said to add a refreshing lift. It's held up as a signature example of deaiimon, the Kyoto cuisine idea of pairing ingredients at their seasonal best, said to bring out a harmony between the bream's refined broth and the turnip's gentle flavor. Using an especially large turnip is also said to be part of the dish's appeal.
How it's made
Bite-sized pieces of sea bream trimmings and Shogoin turnip are simmered together in dashi, sake, mirin, and soy sauce. Once the turnip has softened, it's plated, and adding shredded yuzu peel just before serving is said to lift the dish with a fresh fragrance. The turnip greens can be used for pickles, it's said, and Shogoin turnips can run four to five kilograms, so simmering them slowly beforehand is said to help the flavor take hold.
Why it took this shape
Shogoin turnip is said to trace to the Kyoho era, when a farmer in Kyoto's Shogoin area in Sakyo Ward brought back seeds of Omi turnip from Shiga and began growing them there, and further breeding is said to have shaped it into its large, flattened form. Cultivation reportedly took off once the pickle senmaizuke, made with this turnip, became widely known in the Tenpo era. Rooted in the deaiimon idea of pairing seasonal ingredients, combining this refined white fish with a hefty turnip is thought to be how the dish became established.
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 Kyoto
- Chirimen SanshoChirimen-jako simmered sweet-salty with fresh sansho peppercorns in sake, soy sauce, and mirin — a Kyoto side dish said to have begun as a cook's gift in the mid-Showa era. The peppercorns leave a sharp, fragrant aftertaste.
- Ebiimo to Bodara no TaitanEbi-imo, a striped Kyoto heirloom taro named for its shrimp-like ridges, simmers together with bodara, cod dried in Hokkaido. Gelatin from the dried cod is said to keep the taro from falling apart, while the taro's bitterness softens the cod — a textbook 'deaimon' pairing.
- Fushimi no SakeSake from Fushimi in Kyoto, a district fed by groundwater from the Momoyama plateau. Its water is said to be softer than Nada's, giving a round mouthfeel and gentle, full sweetness that overlaps with the profile recognized under the GI Kyoto geographical indication.
- GanmodokiTofu mixed with vegetables, rolled into balls, and fried. Known in Kyoto as hirousu or hiryōzu, thought to have taken this form through the vegetarian temple-cooking idea of a filling dish made without meat.
- Hamo no YakimonoPike conger, riddled with fine bones, is scored with the skilled honekiri cut and then grilled — teriyaki-glazed or salted — in Kyoto cuisine. Said to have taken root in landlocked Kyoto because the hardy fish could be carried in alive, it is also a festival food for Gion Matsuri, nicknamed the 'hamo festival.'
- Kamonasu DengakuKamonasu, a round Kyoto heirloom eggplant over 10cm across sometimes called the 'queen of eggplants,' is sliced and pan-fried in plenty of oil, then topped with a sweet miso reduced with sake and mirin. It is said to have long been grown on the alluvial fan of Kamigamo.