Fermented & preserved ── Tsukemono (pickles)
Yamagata Dashi
Dashi — a summer relish of chopped raw vegetables from Yamagata's Murayama basin
Summer vegetables and aromatics chopped fine and dressed in soy sauce, eaten raw — a Yamagata staple. It is said to have taken hold especially in the hot, humid Murayama basin as a quick dish for the busy farming season.
- Origin: Yamagata Murayama and Okitama
- About 290 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Watery summer vegetables like eggplant and cucumber are finely chopped with aromatics such as myoga ginger and shiso and dressed in soy sauce. Recipes are said to vary so much by household that people joke a hundred houses make a hundred different versions, some adding mountain yam, okra, or shredded kelp for extra body, others onion.
How it's made
All the vegetables are finely diced, soaked briefly in water to draw out bitterness, then drained. It's piled in a bowl, topped with bonito flakes, and finished with a dash of soy sauce. Beyond rice, it turns up as a garnish for chilled tofu, somen, or soba, and restaurants not infrequently serve their own twists, dashi pasta or dashi pizza among them.
Why it took this shape
It is said to have taken hold especially in the hot, humid Murayama basin as a dish that could be put together quickly during the busy farming season, when appetites flag in the heat. Its name has several possible origins: one traces it to dashi broth's role of bringing out other ingredients' flavor, another to the idea of quickly bringing (dasu) chopped vegetables to the table, and it has become a well-established Yamagata souvenir in its own right.
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
Contrast
- Shokuyogiku no OhitashiPetals of the purple 'mottenohoka' chrysanthemum are quickly blanched in vinegared water and dressed with soy sauce. Their tube-shaped petals give a crisp bite and gentle bitterness said to make this an everyday autumn side in Yamagata homes.
- Shoyu no MiSoybean, wheat, and rice are mixed with koji and left to ferment with salted water into an all-purpose Shonai relish said to date to the Edo period. It goes over rice, onto cold tofu, or into a grilling sauce, its sweetness and salt shifting with how much koji each household uses.
- Akebi no Miso ZumeyakiThe bittersweet rind of the akebia fruit is stuffed with minced meat and maitake mushroom simmered in miso and sugar, tied with kitchen string, and grilled. Elsewhere in Japan the white pulp is what gets eaten, but Yamagata is said to hold onto the unusual custom of eating the rind instead.
Also from Yamagata
- Akayu Karamiso RamenMiso ramen with a knob of chili miso in the center, dissolved gradually to shift the flavor.
- DongarajiruWinter cod caught in the coldest weeks goes into a miso soup head to tail, innards included — said to trace back to fishermen's cooking on the Shonai coast. The liver's richness carries the flavor, and the traditional way adds only a scrap of rock nori, no scallion.
- Hatahata no YuageHatahata, scaleless sailfin sandfish that crowd the Shonai coast to spawn, are boiled whole and eaten with nothing more than grated daikon and soy sauce — a simple winter fish dish. With no scales to remove, it is said to have become a fixture of Shonai's autumn and winter table.
- Hyoboshi no NimonoPurslane, called hyo, is picked in summer, boiled, and sun-dried into a keeping food, then rehydrated and simmered with shirataki, carrot, and fried tofu for New Year. The name is said to be played on for luck — a wish that something good might happen, hyotto, this year.
- ImoniTaro, beef, konnyaku, and scallion simmer together in a soy-based autumn hot pot said to trace to boatmen on the Mogami River, who cooked taro and dried cod on the riverbank while waiting out the delays of cargo transport. On the Shonai coast the same dish turns to pork and miso.