Rice dishes
Gomoku Meshi
Gomoku Meshi — mixed rice with kanpyo, mushroom, and vegetables for festival days
Tochigi's signature kanpyo gourd joins dried shiitake, burdock, and thin egg strands in a colorful mixed rice — festive fare reserved for holidays and farm rest days because of the work it takes to prepare.
- Origin: Tochigi
- About 100 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Kanpyo, dried shiitake, carrot, burdock, fried tofu, snow peas, and shredded egg crepe are all cooked into the rice — a festive dish made for festivals and farmers' days off. The rice, infused with the texture of local kanpyo and the savor of root vegetables, is topped with a colorful array of ingredients, a hospitality dish that represents Tochigi.
How it's made
Kanpyo is rubbed with salt, rinsed, and cut into two-centimeter lengths. Rehydrated shiitake, blanched fried tofu, and shaved burdock and carrot are sauteed and simmered with seasonings. The rice, cooked slightly firm, is topped with the cooked ingredients and left to steam, then mixed through and finished with shredded egg, boiled snow peas, nori, and pickled red ginger for color.
Why it took this shape
Because this rice dish takes so much effort with its many ingredients, it's said to have been reserved for special occasions like festivals and farmers' days off rather than made daily. Built around local kanpyo with seasonal root vegetables and egg, it's thought to have taken shape as a dish combining the color and nutrition fitting for a celebratory table.
Before you go
- How to use a convenience storeA quick guide to choosing rice balls and hot snacks, buying coffee, paying by cash, IC card, or tap payment, using the eat-in corner, and sorting your trash — the basics for a first visit.
- Station food and ekiben (station bento)Where and when to find ekiben (station bento) before it sells out, etiquette for eating on board, how standing soba and udon stalls work, and where to find souvenirs sold inside the station.
- Soraben and airport diningA guide to what soraben means and how it differs from ekiben, whether to buy before or after security, etiquette for eating on board, airport restaurants, and things to check before buying food souvenirs to take home.
Dishes in the same style
- Aburafu DonDeep-fried wheat gluten, shaped into a log, is simmered in a sweet-savory broth and set with egg over rice, katsudon-style — a Tome City bowl said to trace to a tofu shop's shelf-stable gluten product, later turned into a bowl dish by a local innkeeper.
- Aburi-zushiNigiri with just its surface flash-seared by torch or hot iron. Unlike Edomae's shigoto curing for keeping, the searing here is done purely for the change in aroma and fat it brings — a relatively recent way of eating sushi.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tochigi
- Agemaki Yuba no NimonoFresh yuba sheets are layered, rolled into a log, sliced into rounds, and deep-fried before a slow simmer in a light broth — a Nikko dish built on the region's rippled yuba-making craft, served at New Year's and celebrations.
- Aiso no KanroniDace that gather to spawn each spring in the Naka and Kinu rivers, known locally as aiso, are slow-simmered in a sweet glaze until soft to the bone — food from a landlocked prefecture where river fish once meant protein.
- Ayu MeshiAlong the Naka River and other ayu-fishing streams, unseasoned grilled ayu is cooked into the rice — made for festivals and farm rest days, with any leftover fish skewered and hung by the hearth to keep.
- Bandai MochiIn the Kuriyama district of Nikko, firm-cooked non-glutinous rice is pounded on a wooden board — hence 'itadai-mochi,' board-mochi — and eaten with miso glaze, sweet bean paste, or a perilla-seed sauce depending on the hamlet.
- Battou JiruWheat dough is torn by hand into a miso soup simmered with seasonal vegetables — known by different names, hattou-jiru or dango-jiru, across the region, and long relied on when rice ran short.
- Chitake to Nasu no Abura ItameChitake mushrooms, which weep a milky sap when torn, are stir-fried with eggplant — a summer-only find tied to managed satoyama woodland, and also prized as a broth base for udon and soba.