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Tezukuri Sashi Konnyaku
Tezukuri Sashi Konnyaku — raw konjac sliced thin and eaten as sashimi
In the Okukuji area, said to be where konjac processing began, refined-flour konjac has little bitterness and can be eaten raw as sashimi, garnished with wasabi or yuzu and served at New Year's and to guests.
- Origin: Ibaraki Daigo
- About 130 km northeast of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Konnyaku flour is kneaded with water and set, then sliced thin and eaten raw like sashimi. Made from refined flour, it has little of the bitterness of raw taro, so it can safely be eaten uncooked, served with wasabi, ginger, or yuzu and a dashi-diluted soy sauce — a dish from a region long known for growing the konnyaku plant, prized for its pure, springy bite.
How it's made
Konnyaku flour is whisked into water until it forms a paste, then left to rest for several hours, longer in winter than summer. Food-grade lime dissolved in water is worked in quickly to set the mixture, which is shaped and boiled for about thirty minutes before being cooled in ice water. It's sliced thin, served with condiments and dashi-diluted soy sauce — a careful, time-consuming process.
Why it took this shape
The Okukuji region has long grown konnyaku, and a method of slicing the raw tuber thin, skewering and drying it, then grinding it to flour is said to have made it far easier to store and carry, letting cultivation spread rapidly. Tubers kept in cellars were taken out fresh each New Year to hand-make this dish, once served at festivals and to welcome guests.
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 Ibaraki
- Aka MochiReddish sorghum flour is kneaded with hot water, boiled into dumplings, and coated with sweet bean paste or soybean flour. In flood-prone areas where rice and wheat often failed, sorghum alone survived, making this a stand-in staple.
- Ankou-nabeMonkfish meat, skin, liver, and stomach simmered with vegetables, a winter pot of northern Ibaraki. It is described as a more approachable version of dobujiru, which fishermen ate aboard their boats, and comes in miso and soy-sauce versions.
- Ankou no TomozuBoiled monkfish — flesh, fin, liver, and more — is dipped in a vinegared miso worked through with its own liver, a winter dish from the north coast often paired with fugu as one of Japan's twin winter delicacies.
- Garigari NamasuDaikon is coarsely grated with a bamboo oni-oroshi grater — hence the crunchy 'gari-gari' name — then tossed with vinegared fish. The rough texture is the point, and the dish turns up at New Year's and other gatherings.
- Gomoku InarizushiFried tofu pockets are stuffed with vinegared rice mixed with carrot, burdock, and shiitake. In Kasama, home to Kasama Inari Shrine, the mix grows even more colorful with local soba and walnuts, served to shrine visitors.
- Gosai-zukeSalted, fermented sardines are layered with daikon, yuzu, and chili for a winter preserve from the Rokko coast. As sardine catches have thinned, saury increasingly takes their place.