Sweets
June Mochi
June mochi — sliced rice cake dipped in a perilla seed and miso paste
Roasted, finely ground perilla seeds are mixed with miso and sugar into a paste for coating slices of boiled rice cake — a Nanbu-region treat once toasted by children around the hearth on winter evenings.
- Origin: Aomori
- About 560 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
A Nanbu-region treat made by roasting and carefully grinding perilla seeds, called june locally, blending them with miso and sugar into a sauce, and coating thinly sliced or skewered mochi with it. The seeds' toasty aroma meets miso's depth and a gentle sweetness in a straightforward, rustic flavor; skewered mochi made from wheat or buckwheat flour and grilled over charcoal is also common, it is said.
How it's made
Perilla seeds are roasted and ground, then blended with miso and sugar into a sauce. There is a wheat-flour version, mugimochi, and a buckwheat version, sobamochi, each with its own texture and flavor, it is said. Boiled mochi is coated in the seed-miso sauce to eat, and skewered mochi brushed with the sauce and grilled over charcoal until fragrant is another common way to serve it.
Why it took this shape
The Nanbu region, often struck by cold-damage years and famine, is said to have built its food culture around grains other than rice. With rice scarce, kneaded and pressed dough dishes often carried the evening meal, and this treat is said to have stood alongside hattou and hittsumi as a dinner staple. Children grilling it over the household hearth however they liked is described as a familiar scene of autumn and winter.
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.
- At kissaten, cafes, and kanmi-dokoroThe difference between jun-kissa and chain cafes, the morning-set custom, and kanmi-dokoro staples like anmitsu and zenzai.
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 Aomori
- BekomochiColored strips of glutinous and non-glutinous rice-flour dough are bundled and steamed so each slice reveals a pattern — a Boys' Day treat from rice-poor Shimokita, its designs elaborated around Oma town.
- HittsumiHand-torn pieces of kneaded wheat dough are simmered in a chicken-and-soy broth with carrot and burdock — a dish from the old Nanbu domain spanning southeastern Aomori and northern Iwate, once a rice substitute in lean years.
- KakkeThin buckwheat dough is cut into triangles, simmered with daikon and tofu, and dipped in garlic miso — said to have begun when the Nanbu domain banned fine-cut soba, leaving people to eat the offcuts instead.
- Kujira JiruSalted whale blubber is parboiled to render off excess fat, then simmered in a big pot with daikon, carrot and potato — a New Year dish from around Hachinohe's old whaling grounds, said to deepen in flavor over several days.
- Mame ShitogiMashed boiled green soybeans are kneaded with rice flour and sugar into a log and sliced — a Nanbu-region sweet that stretched scarce rice with beans, once offered to the mountain and harvest gods.
- Aomori ShamorockSaid to be developed by Aomori's livestock experiment station over roughly two decades of research from a shamo and Barred Plymouth Rock cross; reportedly reared about 100 days for cockerels and 120 for hens, 50–60 days longer than a standard broiler.