Home-style
Yogoshi
Yogoshi — greens and vegetables chopped and simmered with miso
Boiled greens such as daikon leaves or taro leaves are chopped fine, pan-fried in sesame oil, and seasoned with miso — its name said to come from being made the night before and eaten the next morning, with houonko versions using the tiny, caviar-like seeds of broom grass.
- Origin: Toyama Tonami
- About 270 km northwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A simple, keepable side dish made by finely chopping boiled greens and stir-frying them with miso. Daikon leaves or taro leaf stems are common choices, their crisp bite tangling with miso's thick richness into a salty flavor said to pair well with hot rice. The vegetable changes with the season, so eggplant, spinach, and other greens bring their own color and aroma to the dish in turn.
How it's made
Leafy greens are boiled in plenty of water. Once done, they're rinsed under running water and squeezed firmly dry — said to be the key step. They're stir-fried in a pan with sesame oil, then seasoned with miso and sugar. A pinch of chili is said to add a sharp kick that makes the dish even easier to eat. Almost any vegetable can be turned into a proper side this way, it is said.
Why it took this shape
A custom of preparing the dish the night before and eating it the next morning is said to be where its name comes from. It is also said to have once served as a way to stretch a short supply of rice, and this simple method — needing no special ingredients and little effort — is said to have settled into everyday life. A regional variation uses the seed of a broom-grass plant and is sometimes served at memorial services, it is said.
Before you go
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- Setsubun: ehomaki and lucky beansA guide to ehomaki, the uncut sushi roll said to be eaten facing a lucky direction on Setsubun, and to mamemaki, the bean-throwing custom with roasted lucky beans.
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 Toyama
- Bai no NimonoWhelks from the deep waters of Toyama Bay are simmered whole in their shells — said to appear at celebrations thanks to a play on words suggesting doubled good fortune, with smaller whelks simmered and larger ones eaten raw.
- BekkoMelted agar is seasoned with soy sauce and mirin, then set with egg trailed in like threads — its amber color flecked with egg said to resemble a tortoiseshell hair ornament, giving the dish its name; in the west of the prefecture it goes by "yubeshi" instead.
- BurishabuThin slices of yellowtail are swished briefly through kelp broth, said to cook only the surface while leaving the center rare — versions using Himi's branded winter yellowtail are considered a particularly luxurious cold-weather treat.
- Genge no MisoshiruEelpout, a deep-sea fish covered in a gelatinous layer, is cut into chunks and simmered into a miso soup — long treated as an unwanted bycatch of sweet shrimp fishing, its flavor has since been reappraised and spread beyond the fishing villages that first ate it.
- Himi UdonA hand-stretched udon developed in Himi, Toyama, in the mid-Edo period by adapting somen-making techniques from Wajima. It was once presented to the Kaga domain as tribute.