East Japan VS West Japan -- Ozōni (mixed soup with rice cake) Battle!
Happy New Year!
Please keep supporting the blog of KINSHA in 2014!
As the first blog of 2014, let’s start with a Japanese new year dish called “ozōni (mixed soup with rice cake)”♪
To begin with, what is ozōni? As a Japanese, still I can only come up with the idea which ozōni is a rice cake dish all family members have when they gather together. In fact, people eat the rice cake offering to the god in order to get the god’s blessing.
There are various types ozōni with different ingredients or ways of cooking depending on regions, but it is mainly divided into East Japan and West Japan style. The difference is not purely due to a difference in region, but also related to whether the place is affected by the Edo culture or Kyoto culture. The difference of the East Japan and West Japan style is summarized as follows:
☆East Japan style: broth☆
Region: East Japan, Chūgoku region, Kyushu region, etc
Features: Adding pan-fried rectangular rice cakes to broth made by soy sauce, with a fresh taste.
In Edo period, in order to save the time and effort to cut the rice cakes, and also for storage convenience, slab rice cakes were made, leading to the popularization of rectangular rice cake. Swollen pan-fried rice cake will become rounder after being added into the broth. In samurai family, they used chopsticks to hold and raise the vegetables, implying becoming famous (raising one’s name); then they ate the vegetables and left some, implying becoming legendary (leaving one’s name in history). Japanese mustard spinach is usually used.
☆West Japan style: white miso soup☆
Region: mainly Kyoto
Features: Adding plain circular rice cakes to white miso soup to cook, with a mellow sweet taste.
Circular rice cake is used because of a wish for harmony.
Carrots and radishes are cut into circular shape, wishing for a good harvest in that year. In the old Kyoto, people used the “okera fire” obtained from the Yasaka Shrine to set the fire “okudosan” for the cooking of ozōni. It really sounds Kyoto.
Different regions have their own practices, for example, Kagawa Prefecture has the practice of using red beans rice cake; Nagasaki Prefecture or Nagano Prefecture use yellowtail fish, implying promotion.
My hometown is Aichi Prefecture, and I didn’t know that there are different kinds of ozōni, so for the first time when I saw the ozōni made by white miso soup in Kyoto, I was so surprised! The ozōni of my home is the East Japan style with circular rice cakes, and decorated by small hand ball-liked gluten♪, which can be bought at Kyoto Nishiki Market. Aichi Prefecture is the hometown of Tokugawa Ieyasu, where simplicity and frugality are emphasized, so simple ozōni without many ingredients is quite common.
Both are the broth style, but one was made by a person from Kyoto, and one was made by a person from Fukuoka♪
No matter which region or family, it’s interesting to find that each has its own taste or culture. If you come to visit Kyoto during New Year, please have a try on ozōni. New trials give new chances, a golden rule right?
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