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| Akita's signature dish - Kiritanpo. |
On Sunday out of the blue Hiro's mother sent a food parcel (since we can't buy food in Tokyo). Some vegies and chestnuts from the vegie patch, some local apples, oldest uncle's new season rice and.... kiritampo. Kiritampo is the signature dish of Akita prefecture & Hiro's mother cooks it to perfection. It's a chicken hot pot with mushrooms - mostly maitake and shiitake but some shimeji as well - gobo, naganegi (leek?), and seri (a relative of cress I guess). It came in five parts. The stock, in a 2 litre pet bottle, the cooked mushrooms, gobo and chicken together in a plastic bag, the kiritampo rice sticks in their supermarket packet, and the negi and seri in different bags. She would have simmered the chicken for hours... very tasty. It took all of 5 minutes to compile and 5 minutes to heat up. Delicious, and very hard to find in Tokyo.
Next time I will take the camera off macro and wipe the table properly....
2 comments:
I have a problem with gobo. It's such a bother to scrub all the dirty surface off. And it causes gas. The other day I made some for Sam and he told me that he had just met a cook who used to work for the Japanese Self Defense force, the air force kind, and he said they don't serve gobo in any of the cafeterias. Because of the gas. Lingering, frequent farts in airplanes -- very bad.
I love gobo.
Love, love, love.
It's so ...earthy and such a deep flavour, fibrous without the pretentious pseudo fibre of something like brown rice. Gobo, maitake and saba are the three foods I'd miss most if I left Japan. Oh... and maybe good tofu.
I wonder if daikon is on the SDF list?
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