Sweets
Kaki Mochi
Kaki Mochi — dried, thin-sliced rice crackers
Glutinous rice pounded with taro, sesame, and nori is sliced thin and air-dried into a keeping snack — said to trace to pounding it alongside New Year's mochi, later fried in low-temperature oil or toasted over charcoal.
- Origin: Chiba Katori
- About 70 km east of Tokyo
What it's made of
Steamed glutinous rice is pounded together with peeled, grated taro, salt, sesame, and nori, sliced thin once formed, dried, and then either deep-fried or grilled over charcoal into a snack. It is prized for its crisp bite and the toasted aroma that spreads slowly, said to taste best about a month after frying, and it has long been a simple year-round tea companion in local households.
How it's made
Steamed glutinous rice is combined with grated taro, salt, sesame, and nori and pounded in a rice-cake machine, then shaped into a loaf. After about two days it firms up and is sliced two to three millimeters thick, then air-dried in the shade or a well-ventilated spot for about two days. Once fully dried after roughly half a month, it is either deep-fried slowly in low-temperature oil or grilled over charcoal; frying makes it puff up evenly without a raw core.
Why it took this shape
It is said to trace back to rice cakes made alongside the New Year's pounding under the old lunar calendar, sliced thin and dried so they would keep and could serve as a tea snack for a long time. Adding taro is said to be a way of using the region's field crops without waste, and the fact that a dried batch kept in a mesh bag lasts nearly a year is thought to have made this a way of stretching New Year's rice cakes further, still part of the winter preparations today.
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
Contrast
- Seigaku MochiOrdinary non-glutinous rice, steamed twice without grinding and pounded like mochi, makes a rice cake with little of the stickiness of the real thing — said to have been devised by the late-Edo farmer-educator Ohara Yugaku for households that couldn't afford true mochi rice.
- TenmondouFibrous vegetables like burdock, lotus root, and ginger are boiled thin, then slow-simmered in sugar and dried into a keeping sweet — its name is said to trace to an old herbal remedy of asparagus root steeped in honey, and it was eaten as a snack to fuel farm work during the busy season.
Also from Chiba
- Arirang RamenA soy ramen said to have started at a single restaurant on a mountain pass in Chiba's Nagara. Named, it's said, for the legendary Arirang Pass of Korean folklore, its soy broth carries the sweetness of onion and pork, layered with house-made chili oil and grated garlic for depth and heat.
- Barappa ManjuFreshly milled wheat dough is wrapped around red bean paste and steamed on a leaf of catbrier, called barappa locally — a bun said to be made in Chiba's Hokuso area when people gathered for summer festivals or Obon, each bringing ingredients to share.
- Iwashi no Unohana-zukeSalt-and-vinegar-cured sardines are packed into sweet-vinegared tofu lees with carrot and ginger — the pale lees are likened to unohana blossoms in the name, and are also said to keep the fish from breaking apart or oxidizing; eaten at New Year's and as an everyday pantry food.
- Rakkasei MisoPeanuts too small or misshapen to sell are stirred into miso and sugar and toasted into a pantry relish — said to have started as a way for farm households to use up peanuts the market wouldn't take, in leaner years.
- SumitsukareDaikon and carrot, coarsely grated with a rough-toothed oni-oroshi grater, are simmered with leftover setsubun soybeans and sake lees — said to have traveled from Tochigi into Chiba's Higashikatsushika area, offered to the local inari shrine on the year's first Day of the Horse before being eaten. Ibaraki and Saitama carry dishes of the same name.
- Yude RakkaseiFreshly dug peanuts, still in their shells, are boiled whole in salted water — a taste unique to the growing region, since raw peanuts start hardening the moment they're pulled from the ground and need to be boiled almost immediately.