Sweets
Shikishiki
Shikishiki — a thin wheat-flour griddle cake folded around sweet pea paste
A prewar Nara snack made by thinning wheat flour with water and sugar and frying it thin like a crepe. It is usually folded around a filling of sweetened pea paste, and is counted alongside Miwa somen and hangesho mochi as part of Nara's wheat-growing food culture.
- Origin: Nara
- About 380 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A thin, pan-cooked snack made from wheat flour mixed with water and sugar. Eaten much like a crepe today, it is sometimes made with egg added, and can be enjoyed plain and sweet, topped with chopped scallion and bonito flakes, or wrapped around sweet bean paste.
How it's made
Sugar is mixed into wheat flour, then thinned with water until the batter loosens slightly. It is mixed just before cooking, since letting it sit causes it to develop stickiness and become harder to spread thin. The batter is spread thin in a pan over low heat, and once cooked through, a sweet pea-bean paste is added before folding it over and flipping it to finish.
Why it took this shape
Because wheat cultivation flourished in Nara, this dish is said to have long been made alongside Miwa somen and hangesho-mochi, other wheat-based foods of the region. Said to date from before the war, it can be made easily with ingredients on hand, and is still sometimes served at local community events 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
Also from Nara
- Amago no KanroniRiver trout, called the queen of the mountain stream, first grilled plain and then simmered in roasted tea before being finished sweet and savory in soy sauce and mirin — a dish of the Yoshino and Uda districts. The fish is said to have little of a river-fish's usual edge, and the dish is remembered as a mother's home cooking.
- Asuka NabeA hot pot from Asuka Village of chicken and seasonal vegetables simmered in milk and dashi. It is said to trace to a dairy product brought from Tang China in the Asuka period and later reworked by monks who simmered their chickens in milk, taking its present form around the early Showa era.
- Ayu ZushiA whole sweetfish pressed onto vinegared rice, made along the Yoshino River. Sweetfish, raised on river-stone algae, are called kogyo, 'fragrant fish,' and the sushi is said to have become known in part because a sushi shop featured in a kabuki play actually existed in Nara.
- DengaraA sweet from Higashiyoshino and Kawakami villages: bean-paste mochi steamed inside magnolia leaves. It is made for Boys' Day, wishing a son success and safe growth, and because each leaf on a single branch is wrapped around its own mochi, the finished cluster hangs like a bunch of fruit.
- Ei no NikogoriRed stingray simmered sweet and savory in soy sauce and sugar, a Nara dish. Its own gelatin dissolves into the cooking liquid and sets into a jelly once cooled, giving the dish its name, nikogori. It is said to have been eaten together with noppei at Kasuga Shrine's Wakamiya festival.
- Hangesho MochiA Nara Basin mochi pounded from cracked wheat and glutinous rice around hangesho, the eleventh day after the summer solstice. It is made at the point when the wheat harvest and rice planting both wind down, and is also called sanaburi mochi for the rite that sends off the rice-field deity.