Rice dishes ── Sushi
Kakinoha-zushi
mackerel sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves for their tannin
Thin-sliced salt-cured mackerel over vinegared rice, wrapped tight in a bitter persimmon leaf and left overnight — a pressed sushi from Yoshino, Nara, where the leaf's tannin is said to do double duty as preservative and flavoring.
- Origin: Nara Shimoichi
- About 400 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A barrel-shaped mound of vinegared rice is topped with thin-sliced mackerel cured in salt and vinegar, then wrapped snugly in a bitter persimmon leaf. Unwrapped, the leaf's green scent has moved into the mackerel's fat, softening the edges of its salt and acid. A night resting under weight lets the leaf and fish scent work all the way into the rice.
How it's made
Mackerel is boned, cured in vinegar about an hour, and sliced thin. Rice is cooked with kelp and sake, then dressed into vinegared rice. Mackerel is laid onto a barrel-shaped mound of that rice, wrapped in a persimmon leaf, packed tight into a sushi box, weighted, and left overnight to settle.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that fishermen from Kishu, needing to raise tax rice, salt-cured summer mackerel caught in Kumano Bay and carried it to villages along the Yoshino River, where it became a summer-festival treat. In mountain villages far from the sea, fish was precious, and the tannin in persimmon leaves combined with vinegar's preserving power is said to have become the wisdom that let raw fish keep.
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 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.