Hot pot & soups
Toyama Kabu no Kasujiru
Toyama kabu no kasujiru — a sake-lees soup built on Yonezawa's firm heirloom turnip
Toyama turnip, a Yonezawa heirloom vegetable firm enough to hold its shape, and uchimame — soybeans flattened with a wooden mallet — go into a miso soup finished with sake lees for a mellow winter dish. Cultivation is said to have spread under lord Uesugi Yozan's push to build up local industry.
- Origin: Yamagata Yonezawa
- About 250 km north of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
This soup pairs toyama-kabu turnip, a Yonezawa heirloom vegetable prized for its firm flesh that holds its shape when simmered, with flattened pressed soybeans called uchimame. A splash of sake lees gives the broth a mellow richness, warming the body from the inside out. Compared to ordinary turnips, toyama-kabu is said to carry a stronger aroma and sweetness.
How it's made
Because the firm turnip is hard to cut cleanly with a knife, cooks reportedly scrape it into pieces using the corner of the blade, a technique locally called bukkaku. It's made as a miso-based soup finished with sake lees, and is said to taste even better made the night before, reheated the next morning once it's softened slightly. Uchimame is made by soaking soybeans and flattening them with a wooden mallet, it's said.
Why it took this shape
Toyama-kabu is said to have been grown to suit Yonezawa's snowy climate, its firm flesh letting it keep through winter as a vegetable that could be stored. Pairing it with uchimame, another food preserved for the same snowbound reason, and rounding it out with the richness of sake lees is thought to be how this became a nourishing dish for getting through the harshest months of winter.
Before you go
- Foods to look for in winterA guide to foods often seen in Japan around winter — nabe hot pot, fugu, oysters, crab, year-end soba, and osechi — with rough pointers for finding them.
- At yakiniku, shabu-shabu, and hot potGrilling your own meat at yakiniku, swishing thin slices at shabu-shabu, and sharing from the pot — the customs behind each.
Dishes in the same style
- Aichi Miso OdenA pot of sweet red miso sits in the center of the simmering pot, and daikon, tofu, and other ingredients simmered in dashi are dipped into it before eating. While soy-based Kanto-style oden spread in Edo, Aichi is said to have settled on dipping in soybean miso instead.
- Aichi ZoniSquare mochi and mochina, a traditional Owari green, are served in a plain clear broth for New Year — a notably simple zoni. It's speculated that using miso so often in daily cooking is exactly why a clear broth is chosen for this festive occasion, deliberately leaving miso out.
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.