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Tsuwabuki no Aburaitame
Tsuwabuki no aburaitame — bitter greens simmered soft with fried tofu, soy, and sugar
Tsuwabuki, its bitterness drawn out and blanched in salted water, is stir-fried with fried tofu and seasoned with soy sauce and sugar — a side dish from the Nichinan area; the plant resembles fuki but stays evergreen year-round, gathered wild along the southern Miyazaki coastline each spring.
- Origin: Miyazaki City, Miyazaki
- About 880 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Tsuwabuki no aburaitame is a home-style dish from the Nichinan area, made by stir-frying tsuwabuki, or Japanese silverleaf, with fried tofu and seasoning it with soy sauce and sugar after removing its bitterness. Tsuwabuki is a perennial in the daisy family, resembling butterbur but evergreen year-round, with thick, glossy leaves. It offers a simple side dish with a mild bitterness and a crisp, satisfying bite, milder and more tender when made from young spring leaves.
How it's made
Tsuwabuki is peeled and soaked in water to draw out its bitterness. It's boiled in plenty of salted water, then stir-fried well and combined with fried tofu, seasoned with soy sauce and sugar. Because its character comes from that mild bitterness, how thoroughly it's soaked beforehand is said to make the difference in flavor. It's a dish that often appears as an everyday side on the table, and some households make a larger batch to keep on hand.
Why it took this shape
Tsuwabuki is a plant native to Japan, said to have been eaten in parts of Kyushu since long ago. It's said to grow wild along the coastline of southern Miyazaki's mild coastal areas. In the Nichinan area, it's also said to have been valued for a detoxifying effect, and alongside preparations like simmered tsukudani or dressed salads, this stir-fry is said to have remained a familiar, everyday way to eat it, especially in early spring when the young leaves first appear.
Before You Go
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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 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.
- 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.
- 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.