Rice dishes ── Sushi
Boze no Sugata-zushi
whole butterfish sushi shaped for Tokushima's autumn festival
A whole butterfish, locally called boze, butterflied and wrapped around vinegared rice to keep its shape intact — an autumn festival sushi from Tokushima, best made with the freshest, firmest fish.
- Origin: Tokushima City, Tokushima
- About 510 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A white fish called boze locally (butterfish) is butterflied along the back, boned and gutted, then cured in salt and vinegar. The single opened fish is wrapped whole around a core of vinegared rice, keeping its shape from head to tail. Served uncut, the fish's form stays visible on the plate, its vinegar-firmed skin gleaming silver.
How it's made
Boze is butterflied along the back with the bone and innards removed, then salted and left thirty minutes to an hour. Rinsed of salt, it's steeped in vinegar for a similar stretch. Vinegared rice is packed into the opened fish as if stuffing it, the shape reformed, and it's served with a wedge of sudachi citrus. How the salting and vinegar time are balanced is said to determine how firm the flesh turns out.
Why it took this shape
This form is said to have developed around the autumn festival season. Boze is easiest to find fresh along the Tokushima coast from summer into autumn, and the firmer the fish, the better it holds up as a whole shaped sushi — conditions thought to have rooted this region's distinctive whole-fish style. Elsewhere in Japan the fish is mostly grilled or simmered; shaping it into sushi is said to be distinctly Tokushima's way.
Before you go
- How to read a vertical menuIn shops with strips of handwritten menu items on the wall, the top-right spot is often used for recommendations.
- 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.
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
Dishes in the same style
- 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.
- Aichi HakozushiVinegared rice is packed into a wooden frame, topped with shrimp, eel, shiitake, and egg arranged diagonally, and pressed. Placing toppings on the diagonal so everyone gets a fair share of each is said to be a feature of the Owari and western Mikawa style, made for celebrations.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tokushima
- Amego no HirarayakiA flat stone is heated over a hearth for hours, then a border of miso is built on it to grill amego trout, stone tofu, and konjac — an outdoor dish from the Iya valley. Its name comes from hirara, a local word for a flat stone, and it is said to have long served as a dish for entertaining guests.
- Awa BanchaA post-fermented tea from Naka and Kamikatsu towns in Tokushima, fermented by lactic acid bacteria. Coarser leaves picked from midsummer on are boiled, packed into wooden barrels, fermented for roughly 10 days to two weeks, then sun-dried — said to give a refreshing sourness.
- Awa BitonRaised in the mountains of Awa City, Tokushima, at about 400 meters, on a feed centered on rice. Handlers are said to adjust the feed mix daily and avoid genetically modified crops where possible.
- Awa GyuPedigreed Japanese Black fattened in Tokushima, which gained recognition after being shown at a Tokyo meat market competition in 1962 — said to have a moist, fine-grained texture and modest fat.
- Awa no ItokoniSweet potato that has been boiled then dried — yude-boshi style — is rehydrated and simmered slowly with red beans for about two hours over low heat. Fitting for a region where drying vegetables is common in winter, it is said to be a warming side dish built on the concentrated flavor of dried sweet potato.
- Awa UiroRed bean paste mixed with rice flour and Awa wasanbon sugar is poured into a mold and steamed into a chewy cake. Said to have first been made to celebrate the completion of Awa wasanbon sugar in the Edo period, with related uiro cakes also found in Nagoya and Yamaguchi.