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Tori Motsuni
Tori motsuni — chicken giblets flash-glazed in a thick soy-sugar sauce
Chicken liver, gizzard, and heart are flash-glazed over high heat in a thick soy-sugar sauce until they shine — a Kofu dish said to have begun just after the war, when a soba shop owner found a use for giblets that would otherwise have been thrown away.
- Origin: Yamanashi Kofu
- About 110 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Chicken liver, gizzard, and heart are simmered fast over high heat in a soy-sugar glaze until they turn glossy. A sticky, sweet-salty sauce clings to the pieces, and a bite of liver releases a deep, rich savor, locals say. Unlike the long-simmered offal stews found elsewhere, quick cooking is said to be the point here.
How it's made
Liver, gizzard, heart, and unlaid eggs are trimmed, cut into bite-sized pieces, and rinsed thoroughly in a light saltwater brine. Soy sauce and sugar are brought to a boil in a pan, the offal is added and covered, and it's stirred occasionally to keep it from scorching until the sauce clings thick to the pan's edge, people say. It's often served alongside lettuce and cooked shishito peppers, it's said.
Why it took this shape
In the lean years just after the war, a soba shop owner in Kofu is said to have worked out this dish after being asked whether something could be done with offal that would otherwise be thrown away. Simmering it down hard in soy sauce and sugar, both precious at the time, seems to reflect the ingenuity of getting a satisfying flavor from limited seasonings. The sweet-salty result is said to have gone well with both plain rice and drink, settling in as an everyday favorite among locals.
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 Yamanashi
- Akebono Daizu no EdamameThe 'akebono' soybean, said to be 1.6 times the size of an ordinary bean, is picked young and salt-boiled — an edamame from the Akebono area of Minobu town. Grown since the Meiji era but resistant to mechanization, aging growers have made it scarce enough to be called a 'phantom bean'.
- Amanatto no OsekihanMade without azuki or cowpea beans, glutinous rice is dyed red with food coloring and mixed with candied sweet beans — a Yamanashi take on celebratory red rice, sweet-salty with a sprinkle of sesame salt. A similarly sweet red rice is said to exist far away in Hokkaido and parts of Tohoku.
- AnbinSweet potato and wheat flour are kneaded with hot water, wrapped around bean paste, slapped flat, and steamed — a sweet from the Kyonan region. Its name is said to come from the slapping motion, revived in Ichikawamisato town's Rokugo area after a local school's closure sparked a heritage-food effort.
- Azuki HotoHoto noodles, cut thicker than usual, are simmered in sweet azuki bean soup in place of mochi — a festival food in Yamanashi. The summer festival at Miwa Shrine in Hokuto city's Wakamiko area is nicknamed the 'hoto festival', and azuki's red color is said to ward off misfortune.
- Hirauchi TanmenA salt-based tanmen from Kofu, Yamanashi, built on wide, flat noodles said to feel almost like fettuccine. Bean sprouts, pork, and napa cabbage pile on top for a vegetable-heavy bowl carried on today by several shops around the prefecture.