Hecchoko Dango

A northern Iwate dish made from grain-flour dumplings, sorghum, foxtail millet or common millet flour, shaped with a dimple in the center and dropped into a simmering sweet red-bean broth. Sorghum flour carries a slight bitterness that pairs well with the sweet broth, it is said. The dimple helps the broth soak in, and because the dumplings rise as they cook, they're sometimes called ukiuki-dango, "floating dumplings."

Sorghum, foxtail millet and common millet flours are each kneaded separately with hot water, shaped into balls, and dimpled in the center. They're dropped into a simmering red-bean broth made by rehydrating and cooking dried beans, and are done once they float, it is said. A savory version, hecchoko-dango-jiru, swaps the sweet broth for a miso or soy broth with daikon, carrot and shiitake.

Cool northern Iwate is poorly suited to rice, and millet, foxtail millet and buckwheat have long been cultivated there instead, it is said. The dish is said to have been eaten as a seasonal treat after the harvest-closing niwajimai observance, thanking a year's labor, and offered to the gods as well; the name itself is thought to carry a meaning tied to hecchо, meaning hardship, easing the year's toil.