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Published: January 17th 2016
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Hatto Gozen dish
Mochi - flavoured with azuki bean-, soybean-, dried flakes of shrimp- and zunda (mashed edamame, Japanese green beans, often served with beer). My mother took us to Seki no Ichi, one of the most famous restaurants in Ichinoseki, for dinner. We took the taxi to the restaurant.
A five-minute drive from Ichinoseki station, we were shown the former brewery site which had been converted into the restaurant, museum and shops. When we reached there, it was so dark that we couldn’t see the exterior of the historic buildings but could see the historic rooms with displays of antique furniture and the family’s treasures in the restaurant.
As we sat at the reserved table, we found dishes of
mochi – Japanese rice cake made of mochigome, a short grain japonica glutinous rice – were flavoured with kinako (soybean flour), azuki (bean paste), sesame, dried flakes of shrimps and zunda (mashed edamame, Japanese green salted beans, often served with beer) served in the lacquerware. Mark had eaten Manju (a popular traditional Japanese confection made from flour, rice powder and blackwheat with a filling of red bean paste and sugar) several times, but it was the first time he had tried mochi.
I
told him that, the mochi, served in Seki no Ichi, was made from whole rice, in a labour-intensive process, mochitsuki, mochi-pounding activity, and this activity is carried out at the local festivals and ceremonial events in Japan as follows:
Polished glutinous rice is soaked overnight and cooked.
The cooked rice is pounded with wooden mallet (kine) in a traditional mortar (usu). The two people alternate the work: one pounding and the other turning and wetting the mochi. They must keep a steady rhythm or they may accidentally injure one another with the heavy wooden mallet.
The sticky mass is then formed into various shapes, usually a sphere or cube.
It is more common to see azuki bean-, soybean- and sesame-flavoured mochi, but it was the first time I had come across dried flakes of shrimp- and zunda-flavoured mochi. The latter is one of the local dishes
steamed rice with chicken and eggs
lunch box - we had between Morioka and Ichinoseki on the Shinkansen in southern Iwate prefecture and Tohoku district; I saw ice cream and sweets flavoured with zunda in the later part of our Tohoku trip.
At our table we each found a cooking pot and a dish containing slices of carrot, white reddish, shungiku – glebionis coronaria: used as a leaf vegetable for soup, stir-fry or hot pot – and the flattened dough, which seem to have been made from flour and water and kneaded. My mother told me that the flattened dough was ‘
Hatto’ which we were to put the pieces of into the boiled soup on the table. My father told me that the Hatto was the same as ‘suiton’ – flour dough – and advised me to put the pieces little by little, as the chuck would absorb water like udon (thick noodle) and mochi. So, I told mark to put the sliced vegetables in the pot first and then toss the bites of Hatto little by little. As well as seafood dishes on the Sanriku coast, he seemed to like the Hatto Mochi Gozen, the regional cuisine of the central and southern Iwate prefecture.
My parents and I had delicious locally brewed beer. I have looked at the information of Seki no Ichi on the website: on the site of Seki no Ichi, there is the former kōji (jiugu – dried fermentation used in the production of traditional alcoholic beverages) factory has been converted the beer brewery, which visitors are able to overlook from the first floor.
Hatto Mochi Gozen dish included the mochi, from which one of the luckiest customers could pull the winning twig, concealed in the mochi, and get the special present from the restaurant. Mark pulled the lucky twig and received a bottle of sake produced by the local sake brewery. However, he is a teetotal man; my parents took the bottle. My mother looked for an appropriate souvenir for him in the gift shop. The majority of the items were either ingredients used in the production of sake and alcoholic beverages there. I found drinkers’ mat of ‘Iwate Kura (warehouse)’ beer and asked him if he would like to have them as souvenirs from Seki no Ichi. He agreed, and she bought two of the drinking mats for him.
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