Rice dishes
Shouga Meshi
Shouga Meshi — new ginger cooked straight into the rice pot
Mild new ginger, grown in the sandy soil along the Kinokawa river, is cooked straight into the rice pot in this Wakayama City dish. Its bright scent whets the appetite and goes down easily even in summer, and it's also been used as a folk remedy for colds and poor circulation.
- Origin: Wakayama City, Wakayama
- About 450 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Shoga meshi is a mixed rice dish cooked with new-season ginger grown in the sandy fields along the Kinokawa river near Wakayama City, its bright aroma sharpening the appetite. New ginger is milder than mature ginger and holds more moisture, giving it a crisp, juicy bite, and the rice takes on a faint color and fragrance once it steams together with the ginger. Light and refreshing, it is typically served with sesame and scallion.
How it's made
Freshly harvested new ginger is washed to show off its pale skin, then finely chopped or grated and cooked together with the rice. Letting the rice steam with the ginger after cooking lets the aroma spread evenly through every grain. It is usually served with sesame and scallion as condiments, and the same new ginger lends itself to other dishes too, from tempura to tsukudani preserves to ginger ale. Its clean aftertaste makes it easy to eat even in the heat of summer.
Why it took this shape
The sandy river-flat districts along the Kinokawa near Wakayama City, including Kawanishi and Nunobiki, are said to have grown ginger since the early Taisho era, taking advantage of the mild climate. Open-field cultivation reportedly became widespread around 1947, and the spread of greenhouse growing in the 1960s expanded the area under cultivation further. Harvested within 180 days of planting, the region's new ginger is among the largest crops of its kind in Japan, prized for its tender fiber and shipped to markets from Kansai onward. Cooking this local new ginger into rice is thought to be how shoga meshi began.
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 Wakayama
- BouriA whole, unpeeled parent taro is simmered over two days for this New Year's dish from the Ayukawa area of Tanabe City's Ото̄ district. One account holds that villagers gave up pounding mochi for six hundred years to atone for once turning away a fleeing prince, eating this in its place.
- Goma ToufuRaw sesame is skinned, ground, and worked with mountain water and Yoshino arrowroot into a simmered block of shojin cuisine. Said to have supplied protein for monks who abstained from meat and fish, it's now a familiar Koyasan souvenir and a fixture on Japanese menus.
- Gonpachi no Abura ItameGonbachi, formally known as itadori knotweed, is blanched, peeled, and quickly stir-fried in oil for this spring dish. Thick, well-grown stalks that snap with a crisp pop are prized for a crunchy bite and a faint sourness.
- Hatagonbo ZushiA stout, round burdock called hatagonbo, grown on the steep red-clay slopes of Hashimoto City's Nishihata district, is sliced into rounds, hollowed at the center, and packed with vinegared rice. Cultivation had nearly died out until a local cooperative revived it around 2013, roughly seventy years on.
- Igami no NitsukeIgami — what southern Wakayama calls the parrotfish — is simmered whole in a sweet-salty broth. Feeding on seaweed among winter rocks leaves it free of any off-flavor, and around Tanabe it's said to be served head-to-tail in place of sea bream for New Year's.
- Inoko MochiNon-glutinous and sticky rice are cooked with taro, mashed, and shaped into balls coated with lightly salted sweet red bean paste. Offered to the harvest god on the Day of the Boar in the old tenth lunar month, it's also made for autumn festivals in parts of southern Wakayama.