Feature

JAPANESE KITCHEN
For the third of our monthly feature on regional Japanese food we travel to the Tohoku region of Japan - an area that has been the focus of much media attention as it works towards recovery from the Great East Japan earthquake and resulting tsunami three years ago.  


Hittsumi
By Koyu Kikuchi, Accounts Section

I very much enjoyed reading my colleague’s article on Hiroshima and his recipe for Kaki-furai (hot fried oysters) last month. However, it made me think about the delicious oysters and sea urchins from the area of Japan in which I was born - the Tohoku region. I would like to invite him to try them too! In the Tohoku region, the dramatic, rocky shoreline that stretches over 200 kilometres along the Pacific Coast is called the Sanriku Kaigan. It is abundant in marine products and wonderful seafood, renowned throughout Japan for its freshness and quality.

Oysters, along with abalones and crabs, are best in the winter, and sea urchins are in season in the summer. They are so sweet and creamy! In the northern part of the coastline, traditional female divers called ama continue to catch sea urchins and shellfish one by one so as not to damage them. They were the basis of a recent popular TV drama (Amachan) in Japan, which some of you may have seen.
The Sanriku Kaigan was severely affected by the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. Fishing ports were destroyed, oyster farms were swept away, and towns and villages were almost completely destroyed. The reconstruction process is still on-going and will take many more years, but services and businesses are reopening. Even oyster farms are beginning to flourish again.

Many tourist sites reopened just within a few months of the disaster, and tourism in Tohoku considered to be a great way to revitalise the area. There are many wonderful places to visit - including the historic monuments and sites of Hiraizumi in my home-prefecture, Iwate, which achieved UNESCO World Heritage status in 2011.


One of the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Hiraizumi
Iwate prefecture has a number of well-known dishes. Of course, seafood is deliciously fresh, as I mentioned, and in particular we enjoy adding oysters to our nabe (hot pot). Wanko soba noodles are a local favourite, where buckwheat noodles (soba) are served up as an eating contest!

However, the dish I am most fond of I associate with my memories of growing up in Iwate - where the snow fell two meters high so you could hardly see any sunlight from the ground floor! My morning job was to make steps to the street level and remove the soft snow that fell overnight. In these cold winters we would eat hittsumi (wheat dumplings), made by kneading, stretching and tearing off bits of flour dough and boiling them in hot chicken soup with various vegetables - whatever was available. We would all sit around the kotatsu (a low table with a heater underneath) and cook this hot meal in front of us. This is a fond memory of my childhood.

Hittsumi is one of the most representative dishes of Iwate and is designated as one of the 100 local dishes of Japan. The texture of the dough is similar to gnocchi, although gnocchi is round whereas hittsumi is flatter.

Copyright (C) Iwate Prefecture
I hope you can enjoy making hittsumi at home yourself with this simple recipe, and I do sincerely hope you will visit the beautiful Tohoku region in the future.

 


Hittsumi recipe


 <Ingredients>

Flour (strong) 300g
Water (lukewarm) 150g
Chicken thigh 200g
Chinese cabbage 200g
Shiitake mushroom 2
Shimeji mushroom 30g
Enoki mushroom 30g
Leek (or spring onion) 1
Carrot 2
Greater burdock (gobo*) 80g


<For the stock>

Fish stock (katsuo dashi*) 600cc
Mirin* 50cc
Soy Sauce (light) 50cc

*Available in Japanese food stores in the UK


<Instructions>


  1. To make the dough, put the flour in a bowl and add lukewarm water little by little. Knead the dough until it is soft.

  2. Leave the dough to rest for two hours, covering it with a wet towel.

  3. Cut the chicken thighs into small cubes.

  4. Prepare the vegetables. Cut the carrot into paper-thin strips. Shave the burdock and soak the shavings in watered-down vinegar. Slice the leek. Halve the shiitake. Cut off the bottom of the shimeji and enoki and tear into small clumps.

  5. Put the stock into the pan and bring to the boil.

  6. Add the vegetables and chicken and bring to the boil.

  7. Tear off small pieces of the dough (tearing the dough while soaked in water makes it easier) and drop in the soup. When the dough becomes transparent it’s ready to eat.


You can also add fish or pork to this recipe, and drinking chilled sake complements the dish even more. You can also improvise, for example by adding curry powder, chilli or sesame.
 

 


JICC

 

 

 
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