Rice dishes
Ohan
Ohan — rice steamed golden with gardenia fruit, served with a savory vegetable topping
Rice is steamed in water tinted golden with gardenia fruit and topped with kayaku, a simmer of white fish, tofu, and daikon — a dish from Usuki said to have been devised as a stand-in for extravagant red rice under the domain's austerity edicts, the kayaku made in bulk on New Year's Eve and reheated through the first days of the year.
- Origin: Oita Usuki
- About 780 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Ohan, handed down in Usuki, is rice cooked in water steeped with gardenia fruit, giving it a warm golden-yellow color. It's topped with "kayaku," a simmered mix of white fish such as lizardfish, tofu, daikon, and burdock seasoned with soy sauce and mirin. The gardenia's faint fragrance meets the deep, savory flavor of the kayaku for a dish as colorful to look at as it is to eat.
How it's made
Gardenia fruit is steeped in water, and the rice is cooked in the water once it turns yellow; steeping it too long is said to dull the color or tint it green, so timing matters. The kayaku topping is made by simmering white fish such as lizardfish with tofu, daikon, and burdock in soy sauce and mirin. In Usuki, tradition has it that the kayaku is ladled directly over the rice rather than served alongside it.
Why it took this shape
The Usuki domain, which reportedly ran into financial trouble more than once, enforced strict frugality edicts, and this golden rice is said to have been created for the local lord as a substitute for red rice made with precious azuki beans, then shared with his retainers as well. While ohan is said to trace back to samurai-class cooking, kayaku is said to have grown out of the lives of merchants. Busy with year-end and New Year trade, merchants reportedly made a big pot of kayaku to see them through the first three days of the year, reheating it again and again until the flavor turned rich and mellow.
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 Oita
- Aji no MaruzushiA whole horse mackerel, cured in plum vinegar and opened flat, is wrapped around vinegared rice and rolled in red shiso leaf — a celebratory sushi from Saiki, painstaking to prepare, built on the rich mackerel landed from the Bungo Channel.
- AmimeshiKrill simmered sweet-savory in mirin, soy sauce, and ginger is folded into freshly steamed rice — a dish from the Usa, Nakatsu, and Bungotakada coast, where krill are hauled from the Buzen Sea tideflats each autumn and winter; a favorite of the northern Oita coast.
- Atama RyoriGills, jaw, and innards of a large fish like grouper are quickly parboiled along with the flesh and piled onto a single platter — a dish from inland Taketa, far from the sea, said to have grown from a wish to waste nothing of a rare catch, served with a citrus dipping sauce.
- Ayu UrukaAyu (sweetfish) flesh or innards are minced with salt and left to ferment for about a week — an Oita salted delicacy said to have begun as a way to keep the clean river's seasonal catch; the innards-only version, nigauruka, carries a distinctive bitterness.
- Beppu ReimenThe dish's spread is traced to around 1950, when a cook repatriated from what had been Manchuria began making cold noodles in Beppu. Genso Arirang, founded that same year, is often named as the pioneering shop; the local style pairs a Japanese-style seafood stock with noodles made from buckwheat, wheat, and starch.
- Dango-jiruWheat dough kneaded and stretched into flat ribbons is simmered with root vegetables and shiitake in a barley-miso broth — an everyday Oita dish born of the prefecture's flour-based food culture, where poor rice land pushed wheat to the fore; the ribbons keep a firmer bite than udon.