Rice dishes
Yamato Chameshi
Yamato chameshi — rice and soybeans cooked in roasted tea, as eaten by Todai-ji's monks
Rice cooked with roasted soybeans in brewed tea, said to have originated with Todai-ji's monks. Travelers are said to have carried it to Edo, where shops near Asakusa made it famous, while in Nara itself it is said to have only spread widely again from the Meiji era on.
- Origin: Nara
- About 380 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Rice is cooked together with soybeans in brewed hojicha tea. The tea's toasty fragrance carries into the rice, and the soybeans add a mealy texture, making for a filling, well-balanced dish.
How it's made
Rice is put in a rice cooker, hojicha is poured in to the usual water line, and soybeans are added before cooking. To skip the work of roasting the beans, pre-roasted beans sold around the Setsubun festival are sometimes used instead.
Why it took this shape
The menu for Todai-ji's Omizutori ceremony reportedly included "gecha," a dish said to be the origin of tea-flavored rice. Born in Nara, tea rice did not initially spread widely among ordinary people, but travelers who enjoyed it are said to have carried the idea back to Edo, where shops selling "Nara-cha" rice reportedly clustered around Sensoji Temple and became well known. Valued for its nutritional balance of rice and beans and its filling quality, it became known across the country, and is said to have taken root again in Nara from the Meiji era onward.
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 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.