Hot pot & soups
Yamato Zoni
Yamato zoni — New Year mochi soup in white miso, eaten with sweetened soybean flour
Nara-style New Year mochi soup with round rice cakes, thin celebratory daikon, taro, and tofu in a white miso broth. In many households the mochi is lifted out and dipped in sweetened soybean flour; the tofu is said to stand for a white-walled storehouse, the taro for family prosperity.
- Origin: Nara
- About 380 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
A white-miso New Year soup filled with tofu, daikon, kinboki carrot, taro, and round mochi. In many households the mochi is fished out and dipped in sweetened soybean flour, an unusual pairing of the miso's mellow sweetness with the flour's toasty aroma.
How it's made
A white-miso broth is simmered with sliced daikon, carrot, taro, tofu, and round mochi. In many households, the mochi is taken out and dipped in soybean flour mixed with sugar before eating.
Why it took this shape
Each ingredient is said to carry a wish: tofu is likened to a white-walled storehouse, expressing hope for prosperity, while the round-cut vegetables and round mochi are said to represent a year passed in harmony. Taro is taken as a symbol of family prosperity, and in the mountainous eastern part of the prefecture, the parent corm is used specifically as a wish to rise above others. The yellow of the soybean flour is said to represent a prayer for a good rice harvest.
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.
- Osechi and zoni for the New YearA guide to the meaning behind osechi's tiered boxes, the regional differences in zoni (square vs. round mochi, clear vs. miso broth), and the nanakusa-gayu custom.
- 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
- 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 Nara
- Amago no KanroniRiver trout, called the queen of the mountain stream, first grilled plain and then simmered in roasted tea before being finished sweet and savory in soy sauce and mirin — a dish of the Yoshino and Uda districts. The fish is said to have little of a river-fish's usual edge, and the dish is remembered as a mother's home cooking.
- Asuka NabeA hot pot from Asuka Village of chicken and seasonal vegetables simmered in milk and dashi. It is said to trace to a dairy product brought from Tang China in the Asuka period and later reworked by monks who simmered their chickens in milk, taking its present form around the early Showa era.
- Ayu ZushiA whole sweetfish pressed onto vinegared rice, made along the Yoshino River. Sweetfish, raised on river-stone algae, are called kogyo, 'fragrant fish,' and the sushi is said to have become known in part because a sushi shop featured in a kabuki play actually existed in Nara.
- DengaraA sweet from Higashiyoshino and Kawakami villages: bean-paste mochi steamed inside magnolia leaves. It is made for Boys' Day, wishing a son success and safe growth, and because each leaf on a single branch is wrapped around its own mochi, the finished cluster hangs like a bunch of fruit.
- Ei no NikogoriRed stingray simmered sweet and savory in soy sauce and sugar, a Nara dish. Its own gelatin dissolves into the cooking liquid and sets into a jelly once cooled, giving the dish its name, nikogori. It is said to have been eaten together with noppei at Kasuga Shrine's Wakamiya festival.
- Hangesho MochiA Nara Basin mochi pounded from cracked wheat and glutinous rice around hangesho, the eleventh day after the summer solstice. It is made at the point when the wheat harvest and rice planting both wind down, and is also called sanaburi mochi for the rite that sends off the rice-field deity.