Fermented & preserved ── Tsukemono (pickles)
Nara-zuke
Nara-zuke — melon repacked in sake lees until it turns the color of amber
Melon salted, then repacked again and again in aged sake lees — the pickle most closely identified with the whole kasuzuke family. It's known for the labor of repeated repacking until the flesh turns amber.
- Origin: Nara City, Nara
- About 380 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Shirouri melon is the vegetable most used, salted first and then packed in aged sake lees. The lees' sugar and umami are said to seep in gradually, producing an amber, richly flavored pickle. Shirouri, rarely eaten any other way, has long served as this pickle's main ingredient — the industry body itself calls nara-zuke synonymous with kasuzuke as a whole.
How it's made
Shirouri melon, salted to draw out its water, is packed in aged sake lees. Rather than stopping there, the lees are replaced with fresh ones and the melon repacked repeatedly — a labor said to deepen both color and flavor step by step. The whole process takes months, and today it's more often made by specialist pickle makers than at home.
Why it took this shape
Nara is said to hold Japan's oldest surviving record of a pickled food: a document from 750 kept at the Shosoin repository mentions susuhori, salted vegetables. The Heian-era Engishiki is said to record more than twenty kinds of pickles, from salt-cured to lees-cured, and it was on top of that long preserved-food tradition that a method built around the labor of repeatedly repacking in sake lees is thought to have taken root.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- 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.
- Enjoying a bussanten (regional products fair)A guide to what's sold at a bussanten (regional products fair), how to find one, when it gets crowded, shelf life and taking food home, and how to fit one around a trip.
Dishes in the same style
- Bettara-zukeDaikon salted first, then pickled sweet in rice malt and sugar — said to descend from a lightly pickled daikon once sold at Edo's ebisu-kō market. The rice malt gives it a natural sweetness, and it still headlines Nihonbashi's autumn "Bettara Market."
- Fukujin-zukeSeven kinds of vegetables — daikon, eggplant, lotus root among them — diced and steeped in a soy-based marinade. Said to have originated in Tokyo, it's best known today as curry rice's standard side.
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.