Sweets
Shidami Dango
Shidami dango — dumplings made from leached, dried acorns
Acorns are boiled, dried, leached with wood-ash lye and mashed, then sweetened into dumplings — once a famine-proof staple in northern Iwate's mountain districts, its recipe still kept alive by a preservation group around Kuji.
- Origin: Iwate Kuji
- About 530 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
A confection from northern Iwate and the Ou-Kitakami mountain areas, made from shidami, a local word for acorns, mashed and sweetened into dumplings. Beyond the plain sweetened dumpling, there's also a steamed version wrapping shidami paste in wheat dough. The acorns are said to carry calories, protein, fat and carbohydrates roughly comparable to white rice.
How it's made
Shidami acorns are peeled and simmered to remove their bitterness and astringency, then mashed and sweetened into dumplings, sometimes finished with a dusting of roasted soybean flour. Alternatively, the sweetened paste is wrapped in wheat dough kneaded with hot water and steamed. Gathered in September and October, the acorns are boiled promptly and dried, then de-bittered again before eating, a laborious process, it is said.
Why it took this shape
In northern Iwate and the Ou-Kitakami mountains, the cold yamase wind blowing in from the Pacific in summer often brought crop failures, and shidami acorns, which bear fruit even in a bad year, are said to have been valued as a dried, stockpileable food for such times. Postwar advances in farming ended their role as an emergency food, but a modern natural-food trend is thought to have brought renewed attention to them.
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 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.
- Hina ManjuRice-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.
- 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.