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Usuyaki
Usuyaki — a thin griddled flatbread of wheat flour, savory or sweet
Wheat flour thinned with water and mixed with dried baby sardines and shiso is griddled on both sides — a Yamanashi snack said to be one product of a flour-based food culture that grew where rice farming did not suit the land. Sweet versions with bean paste also exist.
- Origin: Yamanashi
- About 110 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Wheat flour thinned with water is mixed with dried baby sardines and chopped shiso, then fried on both sides on a hot griddle. The thin-cooked batter turns crisp at the edges, and a bite releases the sardines' salt against the shiso's clean, fresh scent, locals say. A sweet version with red bean paste or sweetened simmered beans also exists, the dish's character shifting with whatever goes in.
How it's made
Wheat flour is mixed with water in a bowl until smooth, then dried baby sardines, shredded shiso, and salt are stirred in. A thin layer of oil goes on a hot griddle, the batter is poured round, and both sides are fried well, people say. Fillings and seasoning vary widely by household, and some versions are made sweet with sweet potato, simmered beans, or red bean paste, it's said.
Why it took this shape
With forest covering much of the prefecture and little land suited to rice, a flour-based food culture built around wheat is said to have developed in rice's place. Easy to make either sweet or savory depending on what goes in, and simple to carry, it's said to have been eaten not only as a treat at home but as a quick bite between stretches of farm work. It seems to reflect the ingenuity of stretching limited crops into everyday food.
Before you go
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- 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.
- Awabi no NigaiAbalone from Suruga Bay was soy-sauce-marinated and hauled in barrels by horse, the jostling and body heat said to have worked the flavor deep in — a specialty from landlocked Kofu. Sliced thin and paired with its liver, shiso, and cucumber, it endures as a taste of the sea inland.
- 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.