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Hiyajiru
Hiyajiru — seasonal vegetables served in a cold, savory soaking broth
A cold broth made from dried scallop soaking liquid, freeze-dried konnyaku, and dried shiitake is poured over seasonal vegetables — a dish of Yonezawa. One account traces it to field rations of the warlord Uesugi Kenshin, and in winter it takes the local heirloom green yukina as well.
- Origin: Yamagata Yonezawa
- About 250 km north of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Seasonal vegetables are steeped in a cold dashi broth like an ohitashi in this dish from Yonezawa. The name suggests a soup, but it's really about tasting the vegetables themselves. In winter, the heirloom yukina green is sometimes used, adding a crisp bite and a sharp, peppery note, it's said.
How it's made
Using the soaking liquid from dried scallops as the dashi base, paired with frozen konnyaku and dried shiitake, is said to be the key to its flavor. There's no fixed vegetable, with cabbage or rapeseed flowers used in spring and chrysanthemum in autumn, changing with the season. Vegetables prepared like ohitashi are topped with the cold dashi, and recipes are said to vary from household to household.
Why it took this shape
Yonezawa is a castle town tied to the Uesugi clan, and this dish is said to have grown out of a frugal one-soup-one-dish way of eating the clan encouraged. Much like yukina, an heirloom vegetable grown through winter buried under snow, the region's habit of finding ways to secure fresh vegetables even through harsh winters is thought to be what shaped a dish built around swapping in whatever vegetable the season offers.
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 Yamagata
- Akayu Karamiso RamenMiso ramen with a knob of chili miso in the center, dissolved gradually to shift the flavor.
- Akebi no Miso ZumeyakiThe bittersweet rind of the akebia fruit is stuffed with minced meat and maitake mushroom simmered in miso and sugar, tied with kitchen string, and grilled. Elsewhere in Japan the white pulp is what gets eaten, but Yamagata is said to hold onto the unusual custom of eating the rind instead.
- DongarajiruWinter cod caught in the coldest weeks goes into a miso soup head to tail, innards included — said to trace back to fishermen's cooking on the Shonai coast. The liver's richness carries the flavor, and the traditional way adds only a scrap of rock nori, no scallion.
- Hatahata no YuageHatahata, scaleless sailfin sandfish that crowd the Shonai coast to spawn, are boiled whole and eaten with nothing more than grated daikon and soy sauce — a simple winter fish dish. With no scales to remove, it is said to have become a fixture of Shonai's autumn and winter table.
- Hyoboshi no NimonoPurslane, called hyo, is picked in summer, boiled, and sun-dried into a keeping food, then rehydrated and simmered with shirataki, carrot, and fried tofu for New Year. The name is said to be played on for luck — a wish that something good might happen, hyotto, this year.
- ImoniTaro, beef, konnyaku, and scallion simmer together in a soy-based autumn hot pot said to trace to boatmen on the Mogami River, who cooked taro and dried cod on the riverbank while waiting out the delays of cargo transport. On the Shonai coast the same dish turns to pork and miso.