Sweets
Hina Manju
Hina manju — rice-dough buns shaped like flowers and rabbits for the Girls' Festival
Rice-flour dough tinted with food coloring is wrapped around red-bean paste and shaped into flowers, peaches or rabbits using wooden molds — tied to a doll-viewing custom in Hanamaki's Ohasama area, offered alongside kirisensho at the Girls' Festival.
- Origin: Iwate Hanamaki
- About 430 km north of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A confection from central Iwate, made from non-glutinous and glutinous rice flour dough filled with red-bean paste and shaped into more than thirty forms, flowers, peaches, leaves, rabbits. Offered alongside kirisensho for the Doll's Festival on March 3rd, the colorful confection is shaped with wooden molds, bamboo skewers, chopsticks and scissors into an especially festive treat, it is said.
How it's made
Dough made from non-glutinous and glutinous rice flour is tinted, often with food coloring, and filled with red-bean paste. Wooden molds, bamboo skewers, chopsticks and scissors are used to shape it into flowers, persimmons, peaches, rabbits and more. It is said to be made smaller today than in the past, and resting a while before eating lets the dough settle and the flavor deepen.
Why it took this shape
Central Iwate grew rice, wheat, barley and buckwheat in abundance, and a diverse food culture built on those flours is said to have developed there. Oyasama in Hanamaki once flourished as a post town on the road linking Sanriku and Morioka and is said to hold many heirloom hina dolls passed down through generations; the custom of children visiting house to house to receive this confection at the Doll's Festival is thought to have taken root there.
Before you go
- How to shop in a depachika (department store food hall)A guide to browsing prepared foods and bento, choosing wagashi as a gift with a good shelf life, sampling etiquette, end-of-day discounts, asking for cold packs and wrapping, and finding your way around a depachika floor.
- Osechi and zoni for the New YearA guide to the meaning behind osechi's tiered boxes, the regional differences in zoni (square vs. round mochi, clear vs. miso broth), and the nanakusa-gayu custom.
- Setsubun: ehomaki and lucky beansA guide to ehomaki, the uncut sushi roll said to be eaten facing a lucky direction on Setsubun, and to mamemaki, the bean-throwing custom with roasted lucky beans.
Dishes in the same style
- Abekawa MochiFresh-pounded rice cake is dusted in soybean flour mixed with sugar. Named for the Abe River, it's said to have been famous among Tokaido travelers as a teahouse specialty and to appear in the travel novel Tokaidochu Hizakurige.
- Iga ManjuSweet bean paste is wrapped in rice flour dough, then coated with dyed sticky rice grains. One account ties the name to the grains' resemblance to a chestnut's spiny husk, and in the western Mikawa region it's said to be offered to Hina dolls at the Doll Festival.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Iwate
- Azuki BattoRested wheat dough cut into wide noodle strips is served in a sugar-sweetened red-bean broth — made along the Sanriku coast for building-raising and harvest celebrations, with a custom of eating it seven times on the seventh day of Obon for good health.
- Hecchoko DangoDumplings of millet and sorghum flour, each dimpled in the center, are simmered in a sweet red-bean soup — also called "ukiuki dango," a harvest-close treat from rice-poor northern Iwate where they float to the surface as they cook.
- Hizu NamasuThin slices of cartilage from a salmon's head — "hizu" — are salted, cured in vinegar and tossed with daikon and carrot namasu — a rare delicacy from just one small part of the fish, a New Year dish where salmon run up Miyako Bay.
- Dento Mochi RyoriAn umbrella term for some 300 ways of dressing mochi — sweet red bean, edamame paste, walnut, natto, zoni and more. A domain-era custom of pounding mochi twice a month left Ichinoseki with a "mochi calendar" of 60-plus occasions a year and a formal ceremonial mochi course still observed today.
- Imo no Ko JiruAutumn taro is simmered with chicken, tofu, daikon and carrot in a soy broth — a fall favorite of the taro-growing Kitakami river valley, still enjoyed at riverside "imoni-kai" gatherings around Kitakami's Futako district.
- Iwachu ButaDesignated brand-pork No. 1 by the Tokyo Meat Market's branded-pork association — the first pork in Japan to receive such certification. Raised on an Iwate farm under SPF hygiene standards.