Sweets
Notamochi
Notamochi — pounded rice topped with a sweet mashed edamame paste
Rice pounded halfway is topped with 'nota' — mashed edamame sweetened with sugar and salt — a dish of the Suwa and Kamiina areas said to resemble Miyagi's zunda mochi, traditionally made at home for Obon and the equinox as edamame comes into season.
- Origin: Nagano
- About 150 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Half-pounded rice, still coarse with whole grains, is topped generously with 'nota' -- boiled edamame mashed and sweetened with sugar and salt. Its bright uguisu green catches the eye, and the sweet scent of edamame fills the mouth, locals say. The contrast between the textured rice and the smooth bean paste is said to be part of the pleasure.
How it's made
Rice pounded only halfway, so grains still show, is shaped into a ball or served in a bowl, then topped with edamame boiled and ground smooth in a mortar with sugar and salt. Some households make the paste sweet, others lean more toward salt, it's said. Serving styles also split between a bowl and hand-shaped balls.
Why it took this shape
Edamame is known locally in Suwa as 'bon-mame,' once grown along the ridges between rice paddies, it's said. The height of edamame season coincides with Obon and the equinox, times for honoring ancestors, and the dish is said to have settled in as something families returning home would eat together. That a similar idea took shape far away in Miyagi's zunda mochi seems less coincidence than the natural result of farming villages everywhere grinding beans into a paste for rice cakes.
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 Nagano
- Anyoji RamenSaku's miso ramen built around Anyoji miso, held to be the root of Shinshu miso.
- Gudakusan Miso ShiruRoot vegetables like daikon, carrot, and burdock go generously into this everyday miso soup of Nagano. Packing it with vegetables is said to allow less miso overall, and wheat dumplings are sometimes dropped in to make it a meal in itself.
- Hitashi MameGreen soybeans are boiled until still faintly crisp, then steeped in a lightly seasoned dashi — a dish of northern and eastern Nagano also made with the saddle-marked kurakake bean, sometimes paired with herring roe as part of New Year's osechi.
- Hoshikabocha no EgomaaeKabocha squash, sliced into strips and sun-dried until brittle, is rehydrated and tossed in ground perilla seed — a preserved dish of the Kinasa area born from the need to keep squash, which spoils easily over winter, also used simmered or as filling for oyaki.
- Hoba MakiRice-flour dough kneaded with hot water wraps sweet bean paste, then steams inside a magnolia leaf — a Kiso festival mochi. With no oak trees in the mountains, magnolia stood in, and locals say the leaf's scent settles in best the next day.