We were given a gift of kumiage yuba from a yuba company up in Otsu recently and made donburi with it on Peko’s famous rice. Simply flavored with soy sauce and wasabi, this is veg, healthy, and not just tasty, but creamy tasty! Have you heard of yuba?

Yuba is made by simmering a large vat of tonyu 豆乳, or soy milk. As water evaporates, every minute or so, a film develops on the surface of the tonyu which is lifted off. This is yuba and it can be dried or eaten as is, fresh. If you like tofu and soy milk, you would surely love fresh yuba!

Yuba started out centuries ago as temple food in Kyoto but is now enjoyed by common people and is gaining popularity all over Japan because it is tasty and healthy.

Itadakimono: Kumiage Yuba

I had a chance to do a yuba making study/experience, called kengaku 見学, in Japanese at a shinise yuba company, Hiei Yuba in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, on the southern shore of Lake Biwa. Otsu is just over the mountain from Kyoto, and though a rather small town compared to Kyoto, it has a history that is a bit longer than Kyoto. In fact, it was the capital of Japan, just briefly, even before Kyoto was. We’ve got an article simmering about yuba kengaku coming your way soon, but until then, please just feast your eyes on this.

One of our friends that works at Hiei Yuba came to Kyoto Takashimaya for a week to sell their yuba at a demise. We met for dinner in the evening and were given a package of fresh, kumiage yuba.

Kumiage Yuba

This is four or five ‘sheets’ of yuba swimming in soy milk.

Gokokumai Mugi Gohan: Ingredients

Peko’s Gokokumai Mugi Gohan Recipe

• Short grain rice 2 cups
• Oshi Mugi (rolled oats, for Japanese mugi-gohan) 1/2 cup
• Gokokumai (5 grains) 1 pack, about 25-30g
• Kombu (dried kelp)
• Salt and Sake to taste

Add the amount of water based on the instructions of your rice cooker.

Gokoku: Package

Five kinds of ‘bird seed’ added to your rice makes it much more flavorful and healthy.

Gokokumai Mugi Gohan: Just Done Cooking

Discard the kombu after cooking.

Gokokumai Mugi Gohan: Served

Five kinds of grain (gokoku), rolled oats (mugi) and Japanese short-grain rice: yum!

Making the Donburi
Making the donburi is really simple. Just serve rice in a large donburi bowl, place yuba on top and add wasabi and soy sauce. (I think) to be photogenic, we didn’t add any of the soy milk that can be seen in the photo in the plate above. Be sure to add it though, it will be more creamy.

Last step: Devour

Yuba Donburi: Served

Yuba Donburi – detail with Shoyu and Wasabi

Yuba Donburi: Looks Like this While Eating

Miwa didn’t want me to include this photo, but she’s not here now and this is what it looks like as you eat it.

Kikizake: A very large tasting event was held featuring premium sake breweries and shochu distilleries over the weekend which Peko was lucky enough to attend.

Just over the East Mountains from Kyoto is Otsu City. Otsu is the capital of modern day Shiga Prefecture and was the capital of Japan 500 years BEFORE Kyoto became the capital! Otsu, situated on the southern end of Lake Biwa is an historic city with many delicacies and the area makes an excellent day trip from Kyoto. This kikizake event was held at the Otsu Prince Hotel.

With 108 breweries and distilleries attending, there is plenty to drink. Complimentary boxes of bread (served like popcorn in a movie theater) and bottled water tables helps the visitors drink-a-plenty!

I went with an old friend, a prof from undergraduate school, that arrived in Japan just the day before. I was invited by Kitagawa Honke Sake Brewery (article series). I told my guest that sake is made from just rice, water and koji. As we tasted the offerings of sake, he was incredulous at the variety of flavors and fragrances could be produced with just the three ingredients.

Quite a Crowd!

There were several thousand visitors tasting all kinds of excellent sake and shochu.

Matsunotsukasa Brewery – Tasting Fine Sake

Upon recommendation of Mr. Kitagawa of Kitagawa Honke Sake Brewery, we tried most of the offerings of Matsunotsukasa Brewery. I hadn’t seen their sake in Kyoto before, but I will be looking for it in the near future!

Matsunotsukasa Brewery’s Line-up

Beautiful labels, beautiful flavors!

Matsunotsukasa Brewery

Matsunotsukasa Brewery

Matsunotsukasa Brewery

Kikuhime Sake Brewery

Another recommendation of Mr Kitagawa was Kikuhime Brewery. More excellent, excellent sake!

Shoshu from Kyushu

By the time we got down to the high-powered shochu section, we weren’t in a condition to drink a whole lot more but we sample plenty of shoshu never-the-less, just a few drops at a time!
Kikizake Event Brochure

In the end, we managed not to get to drunk but were able to sample a whole lot of wonderful sake and found some very interesting shochu as well!

The food courts of department stores in Japan are a near other-worldly experience. The offerings are exquisite in taste and beauty and nearly boundless in regional and seasonal variation. In addition to the regular stores, there are ‘demise‘, small stands that sell a product from a different region or local, small shop and these demise change every week. Paku found some amazing narazuke from a tsukemono house in Nagoya the other day at Takashimaya Department Store. Her favorite is ginger.

Narazuke (Nara pickles), as you might guess are originally from Nara, but they are made in other regions of Japan now. Yamatoya Moriguchizuke Honke (大和屋守口漬総本家) is a long established maker of narazuke from Nagoya and they have a demise at Kyoto Takashimaya several times per year.

About Narazuke

With narazuke various kinds of vegetables are pickled in a mix of sakekasu (sake lees, what remains after pressing sake mash), mirin, sugar and salt. Narazuke requires a minimum of 1 to 3 years to make.

Narazuke, originally from the ancient capital of Nara, has a history going back at least 1,300 years! That makes narazuke even older than the ancient city of Kyoto. The typical narazuke is often so strong in alcohol content that you feel a bit drunk after eating a few bits, especially if not eaten with food. A pickle that intoxicates!

Peko has been a fan of narazuke since he first washed up in Japan, because it’s a ‘drinkin’ man’s pickle’. To connoisseurs it goes especially well with Japanese winter cuisine, rice and of course beer and sake. Paku, like a lot of gals in Japan is no fan of narazuke.

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke’s narazuke is much lighter in taste and more accessible to modern palates.

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke’s Narazuke

Moriguchi Daikon: A daikon radish reaching more than 1.8 meters in length! That’s a big one! A rare vegetable and longest daikon in the world. Originally from Osaka but now mainly grown along the Kiso River near Nagoya, this daikon is used exclusively to make this tsukemono. (see image below)
Uri: A cucumber like gourd, translated as Armenian Cucumber or Japanese gourd. A very popular spring vegetable pickled in various ways. Peko is quite crazy about anything with uri.
Ginger: Traditionally an unusual vegetable for tsukemono. This ginger narazuke was exceptional.
Baby Watermelon: Another ‘modern’ narazuke. This is Peko’s all time favorite. About the size of an egg, this narazuke is very, very soft, yet still crunchy.
Cucumber: Another classic for narazuke. Tasty.

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke ‘Demise’ Stand

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke ‘Demise’ Stand – Narazuke Offerings

The very long ones are moriguchi daikon.

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke – Narazuke

From left to right, uri (a kind of gourd), ginger and cucumber. Notice they are still covered in sakekasu paste, which has turned brown with the fermentation process.

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke – Narazuke

Left to right, moriguchi daikon, baby watermelon and cucumber.

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke – Narazuke
Moriguchi daikon and uri.

Moriguchi Daikon – a LOOONG Veggie!

This is a scan of a pamphlet distributed by the shop.
credit: Yamatoya Moriguchizuke (大和屋守口漬総本家)

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke Honke

This tsukemono house was established in the 1920′s and has been serving the Imperial Household since 1948.

Yamatoya Moriguchizuke website (Japanese language)

Honten/Main Store (Japanese language)
The honten includes a restaurant that serves many tsukemono and tsukemono inspired dishes. (We haven’t been there, but the pictures on the webpage look very good! Nouveau tsukemono cuisine!!)

Shop Locations (Japanese language)
There are many shops around Nagoya and several in the Tokyo area. Well worth checking out if you are in the area.

Yum! Wagashi, the traditional confections of Japan.

We love the little towns and villages near Kyoto, one in particular is Hikone, on the north-east shore of Lake Biwa. Towns like Hikone are a great day trip or one night stop. About an hour from Kyoto by train, picturesque Hikone has one of the oldest castles in Japan and a beautifully restored jyokamachi (城下町, castle town).

In the jyokamachi is Itojyu, a Japanese confectionary shop with a nearly 200 year history (founded in 1809).

We purchased a box of the Itojyu Umoregi wagashi. The subtlety and complexity of this confectionary makes it a real gem. Also, the addition of gyuhi, used in this way, makes it a very unique creation, indeed.

The main components are maccha-wasanbon, gyuhi and shiro-an paste.

The center of the Itojyu Umoregi is a delicate and creamy yellow an paste, made from an unusual yellow azuki bean. This is covered in gyuhi, which is a very soft form of mochi. This is then covered in maccha-wasanbon powder. Wasanbon is a very delicate powdered sugar, the traditional sugar of Japan, often a main ingredient for wagashi.

Itojyu recommends that Umoregi goes well not just with maccha and Japanese teas, but also coffee! We gave it a try.

Umoregi with coffee:

K. F. PakuPaku: Great! Wow!

K. F. PekoPeko: Ahh, yeah, not bad. I guess I liked it.

Itojyu has an interesting history. The founder was a thread (ito) wholesaler and one night his wife had a dream in which an elderly white haired man told her how to make a special wagashi.

Hikone is a great town to see and can be taken in in a day. Being of the Lake Biwa region, Hikone has plenty of unique dishes to try as well as several notable ryokans if you want to stay the night.

Incidentally, Umoregi is the name of the house of a favorite son of Hikone, Ii Naosuke that was one of the signatories to the treaty with Commodore Parry (neither men are very popular with Japanese today).

Itojyu website (Japanese language only)

いと重菓舗、滋賀県彦根市

map:

View Larger Map