Rice dishes ── Sushi
Mikan Zushi
Mikan Zushi — sushi rice seasoned with mikan juice instead of scarce vinegar
In southern Ehime, where rice vinegar was once hard to come by, the tart juice of mikan or kabosu citrus stands in for vinegar in this scattered sushi. It's said to have grown out of "mikan rice," made with fruit too blemished to sell, and it now appears on school lunch menus too.
- Origin: Ehime
- About 710 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Rice cooked with mandarin juice instead of vinegar carries a faint sweet-tart fragrance and a bright color of its own, it is said. In southern Ehime, where rice vinegar was once scarce, the dish is said to have begun with local households substituting the tart, fragrant juice of citrus such as kabosu and mandarin. It is also said to trace back to a simpler mikan-gohan made with unsellable, misshapen mandarins, and rice cooked with orange juice once appeared in a local school lunch and drew wider attention after being featured on television.
How it's made
Rice is cooked in fresh mandarin juice. Because the mandarin's sweetness carries through into the rice, the trick is said to be cutting back slightly on the sugar in the vinegar mixture. A variety of toppings are arranged over the finished mandarin rice for color. A version stuffed into fried tofu pouches, called mikan-inari, is also popular, said to leave a lingering taste as the sweet-savory tofu meets the citrus's tang.
Why it took this shape
Southern Ehime, ringed by the Seto Inland Sea and terraced fields, is said to be well suited to citrus, soaking up abundant sunlight and sea breeze, and its mandarins are said to strike a fine balance of sweetness and acidity. Because rice vinegar was hard to come by locally, households are said to have turned to nearby citrus as a substitute. The dish is said to appear often at festivals and when entertaining guests, valued for a bright color said to stir the appetite.
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 Ehime
- Bote ChaRoasted tea is whisked to a froth with a salted bamboo whisk and poured over black-bean rice with toppings like bamboo shoot — a dish from Matsuyama. Said to have been devised by a domain lord's household during a period of enforced frugality, it's still served at a temple's springtime Buddha festival.
- EbitenSmall shrimp are ground shell and all, worked with white fish and tofu, and fried into a cake — a fish-paste product from eastern Ehime. The salt is kept light to let the tofu's sweetness and the shrimp's aroma come through, with the ground shell left in for a gritty bite.
- Igisu DofuIgisu seaweed and raw soybean flour are simmered into stock and chilled firm like agar, a dish from Imabari. Its cool texture is meant to coax back a summer appetite, and households differ over whether to fold in shrimp or leave it plain.
- SatsumaGrilled fish is flaked and worked into barley miso, thinned with a stock from its own bones, and ladled over hot barley rice — a dish of southern Ehime. Said to have started as a fisherman's trick for making dry barley rice easier to eat, with the fish varying by area and household.
- Tai SomenA whole sea bream is simmered and set on a large platter of boiled somen noodles, the cooking broth doubling as a dipping sauce. The noodles are linked to the Tanabata weaver-star legend and the fish to good fortune, and the dish has long been served to family at weddings and milestone birthdays.
- TaimeshiEastern Ehime cooks a whole sea bream into the rice pot; the south instead lays raw fillets marinated in egg and soy over hot rice. Considered an auspicious fish, it appears at celebrations too, and which style a household follows tends to run by region.