Recipe for New Year Food
ˇ§Ozouniˇ¨ is soup with rice cake that you eat maily on New Year's Day after having ˇ§osechi ryouri". Depending on where you live in Japan, the way you cook ˇ§ozouniˇ¨ is different. I will just introduce the one that my mother makes at homeˇK
1. Most important thing is to make soup stock! Get some kelp (kobu) especially designed for soup.
a. Place this in a pot with water and leave it for a while. Then, boil the water with kelp in.
b.Take out the kelp just before the water starts boiling and then add some pieces of dried bonito (katsuobushi) instead.
c & d. Stop heating the soup right after you put dried bonito and filter the soup.
This soup stock is called "dashi", very basic and indispensable for most Japanese food.
| j15. a. Kobu | b. Katsuobushi | c. Filtering the soup | d. This is the base soup |
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2. Prepare for vegetables that will be added later. We usually use radishes, carrots, taros and spinaches. Cook these vegetables using some of the soup that you have just made.
3. Add chicken in the soup and cook it. Arrange the taste as you like by adding salt and soy sauce. But you should remember not to put too much soy sauce! It is very important to keep the original color of the soup!
4. Grill some rice cakes. Usually one or two per person.
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5. Place chicken, vegetables, rice cake, steamed fish paste, honewort, a piece
of citrus skin for decoration and add more soup.
Done!! |
 j.18 |
The difference in each area is, for example, in Hiroshima, where my father is from, they add yellowtails instead of chicken. (By the way, he hated it!) In Kyoto, the soup is miso based and they use rounded rice cake instead of the squared ones that are used in Tokyo. In northern part of Japan, such as Hokkaido, they will add salmons, salmon roe and crabs because they a peculiarity of the region! In some places like Tottori prefecture, they will use red beans to cook the soup.
| j.19 Hiroshima and other southern prefectures with yellowtails. | j.20Kyoto, Osaka etc with miso based soup. | j.21Tottori, Shimane etc with red bean based soup. |
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