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Taraosa
Taraosa — wind-dried cod gills and stomach, simmered soft for an Obon dish
Cod gills and stomach, wind-dried over winter, are soaked soft and simmered sweet-savory in soy sauce and sugar — a dish from inland Hita and Kusu, where cod itself is never caught; the dried fish is shipped down from Wakkanai in Hokkaido and became indispensable at Obon.
- Origin: Oita Hita
- About 850 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Taraosa, handed down in the Hita-Kusu area, is a dried preparation of cod gills and stomach. Its distinctive shape, resembling a large toothbrush, makes it hard to guess what it is at a glance. It combines a crunchy texture from the gills with a chewy one from the stomach, and once rehydrated and simmered in a sweet-savory sauce, its concentrated dried-fish flavor comes through. Because cod isn't caught in Oita, it is reportedly shipped in from as far as Wakkanai in Hokkaido.
How it's made
Because of its strong smell, it is soaked and rehydrated with the water changed several times, then cut into bite-sized pieces. It is typically simmered in a sweet-savory sauce of soy sauce and sugar; some households add rehydrated dried bamboo shoot or a bit of chili for a spicier finish. Letting the simmered dish rest overnight is said to let the flavor soak in further. A piece with a clear amber color is considered the best to choose.
Why it took this shape
In an era before reliable preservation and transport, the inland Hita-Kusu area reportedly had access to seafood mainly in dried or salted form. Taraosa, made from actual fish, was a treasured dish, and even amid the vegetarian leanings of Obon cuisine, this simmered version is said to have been the one exception kept as a special seasonal food. Dried in the cold winter winds of Hokkaido, it is reportedly shipped to the Hita-Kusu area in time for the Obon season each year.
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 Oita
- Aji no MaruzushiA whole horse mackerel, cured in plum vinegar and opened flat, is wrapped around vinegared rice and rolled in red shiso leaf — a celebratory sushi from Saiki, painstaking to prepare, built on the rich mackerel landed from the Bungo Channel.
- AmimeshiKrill simmered sweet-savory in mirin, soy sauce, and ginger is folded into freshly steamed rice — a dish from the Usa, Nakatsu, and Bungotakada coast, where krill are hauled from the Buzen Sea tideflats each autumn and winter; a favorite of the northern Oita coast.
- Atama RyoriGills, jaw, and innards of a large fish like grouper are quickly parboiled along with the flesh and piled onto a single platter — a dish from inland Taketa, far from the sea, said to have grown from a wish to waste nothing of a rare catch, served with a citrus dipping sauce.
- Ayu UrukaAyu (sweetfish) flesh or innards are minced with salt and left to ferment for about a week — an Oita salted delicacy said to have begun as a way to keep the clean river's seasonal catch; the innards-only version, nigauruka, carries a distinctive bitterness.
- Beppu ReimenThe dish's spread is traced to around 1950, when a cook repatriated from what had been Manchuria began making cold noodles in Beppu. Genso Arirang, founded that same year, is often named as the pioneering shop; the local style pairs a Japanese-style seafood stock with noodles made from buckwheat, wheat, and starch.
- Dango-jiruWheat dough kneaded and stretched into flat ribbons is simmered with root vegetables and shiitake in a barley-miso broth — an everyday Oita dish born of the prefecture's flour-based food culture, where poor rice land pushed wheat to the fore; the ribbons keep a firmer bite than udon.