Hot pot & soups ── Nabe (hot pot)
Yanagawa Nabe
Yanagawa nabe — loach and burdock simmered in a pot and finished with beaten egg
Loach, carefully cleaned, simmers with burdock in a clay pot and is finished with beaten egg — a dish of Yanagawa, the canal city, kept locally as its own even though a Tokyo hot pot shares the same name.
- Origin: Fukuoka Yanagawa
- Sukiyaki-style (simmered in warishita)
- About 900 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Loach is carefully cleaned, simmered with burdock, and finished with beaten egg; it's usually treated as a distinct dish from another loach hotpot with a similar name. It's said to be no less nourishing than eel while staying easier on the wallet, a dish tied to a low-lying area crossed by canals known as a water town, almost entirely flat terrain that shaped the local diet.
How it's made
The loach is split open and its small bones carefully removed. Burdock and shiitake line a clay pot, the loach is arranged radiating out from the center, a sweet soy broth is brought to a brief boil, and beaten egg is poured over before garnishing, bringing the tender loach, soft egg, and sweet-savory broth together as one. Loach caught just before it burrows into the paddies to overwinter is said to be especially fatty and good, and how carefully the small bones are removed is said to shape the final texture.
Why it took this shape
In a low-lying region crossed by canals, loach is said to have been favored by ordinary people as an affordable source of nourishment thought no less strengthening than eel. It's also described as a dish meant to help people get through the heat of summer. It's said to have long been eaten in the area alongside eel, another freshwater staple.
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
- Toriniku no SukiyakiA whole chicken, offal included, is piled onto a platter with napa cabbage and chrysanthemum greens and simmered in a bold sugar-and-soy broth — a gathering-day hot pot from the Kasuya-to-Munakata area, where poultry-raising is said to have taken off after an Edo-era famine.
- Gyu NabeA Yokohama-born hot pot of beef, tofu and chrysanthemum greens simmered from the start in a soy or miso-based sauce. Born of the port city's encounter with Western meat-eating culture, it is said to trace to a tavern owner who opened one of the first beef-pot restaurants.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Fukuoka
- Abutte KamoSmall damselfish are salted overnight, then grilled whole, scales and innards left on — a bony fish often passed over elsewhere, but said to have caught on in Hakata Bay after a Meiji-era glut led someone to salt and grill the excess.
- Achara ZukeWhite melon, eggplant, and lotus root are pickled in a sweet vinegar spiked with red chili — the name is said to trace to the Portuguese 'achar', carried in through Hakata Bay's old trade, and an odd number of vegetables is used for Obon hospitality.
- Amagi no KawatakeA rare wild freshwater algae, found only in the Kogane River in Asakura, is dressed with sweet or three-flavor vinegar — said to have once been presented to the shogun, and now conservation efforts continue as it's listed as endangered.
- Beta MochiWheat dough is flattened, steamed, and topped with soybean flour or sweet red bean paste — named, it's said, for its resemblance to a flat local sole called 'beta', and tied to the feast marking the end of rice planting.
- Kabocha no Dango JiruA giant local pumpkin from Buzen's Mikkado district is simmered soft, then torn wheat dumplings are dropped in — the pumpkin, said to trace some 450 years back to Portuguese traders, was once a lifeline in leaner years.
- ChanraaA noodle dish said to have started at a diner in Moji, Kitakyushu. Chanpon-style noodles go into a Japanese dried-sardine broth closer to udon than to the original pork-and-seafood soup, devised, it's said, for a student who wanted Nagasaki champon but couldn't afford it.