Noodles ── Udon
Chitake Udon
Chitake Udon — udon in a broth of milk-cap mushrooms and eggplant
Eaten around Obon in Tochigi, this pours a dashi of stir-fried chitake mushroom and eggplant over udon. It's said to have arisen where udon kneaded for Obon met a mushroom that appears only in summer.
- Origin: Tochigi
- About 100 km north of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
The core is chitake (a milk-cap mushroom), eggplant, and udon. Chitake releases a white sap when torn and carries a strong aroma said to pair well with eggplant. Stir-fried into the dashi, its flavor dissolves through the broth, and ladled over the noodle it carries that savor through the whole bowl.
How it's made
Chitake, cleaned of soil, and eggplant are stir-fried in oil, then dashi and seasoning are added for a light simmer. The broth goes over udon in a bowl, finished with scallion as garnish. Soba can stand in for the udon, and the dish is sometimes written as "chitake udon (soba)" to note both.
Why it took this shape
In Tochigi, a wheat-growing region, households are said to have kneaded udon from freshly milled flour as part of Obon observances. Chitake is a scarce mushroom that appears only around August, ahead of autumn's fungi, and because its season overlaps with Obon, it's said to have found its way into the noodle's dashi.
Before you go
- How to read a ticket machineShops that use a ticket machine (shokken-ki) often place their most popular items in a similar spot.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
- What staff say, and how to respondCommon set phrases you'll hear at restaurants, with what they mean and what to do when you hear them. You don't need to memorize them — just recognizing them is enough.
Dishes in the same style
- Bukkake UdonUdon boiled and chilled in cold water, then doused directly with a concentrated sauce. Scallion and grated daikon go on top, and mixing everything together boldly is said to be the standard way of eating it. A hot version, using warm broth instead, is also said to exist.
- Chikara UdonKake udon topped with a piece of grilled mochi. The name is said to trace to mochi's reputation as a food that "gives you strength," carrying more calories than plain rice. In the Kinki region it is also called kachin udon, from okachin, an old courtly word for mochi.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tochigi
- Agemaki Yuba no NimonoFresh yuba sheets are layered, rolled into a log, sliced into rounds, and deep-fried before a slow simmer in a light broth — a Nikko dish built on the region's rippled yuba-making craft, served at New Year's and celebrations.
- Aiso no KanroniDace that gather to spawn each spring in the Naka and Kinu rivers, known locally as aiso, are slow-simmered in a sweet glaze until soft to the bone — food from a landlocked prefecture where river fish once meant protein.
- Ayu MeshiAlong the Naka River and other ayu-fishing streams, unseasoned grilled ayu is cooked into the rice — made for festivals and farm rest days, with any leftover fish skewered and hung by the hearth to keep.
- Bandai MochiIn the Kuriyama district of Nikko, firm-cooked non-glutinous rice is pounded on a wooden board — hence 'itadai-mochi,' board-mochi — and eaten with miso glaze, sweet bean paste, or a perilla-seed sauce depending on the hamlet.
- Battou JiruWheat dough is torn by hand into a miso soup simmered with seasonal vegetables — known by different names, hattou-jiru or dango-jiru, across the region, and long relied on when rice ran short.