Nabemono
|
|
Nabemono (鍋物, なべ物, nabe a big pot + mono stuff) refers to a class of Japanese dishes known as one pot dishes. "Nabe" refers to a traditional Japanese clay pot used for cooking one-pot stews or meals over a fire. Cooking fires are rare in modern Japan but nabe continue to be used for preparing one-pot meals. "Mono" means "thing" or "things" or "stuff". Thus, nabemono means things cooked together in a nabe pot (c.f., nimono [simmered things] and yakimono [grilled things]).
Most nabemono are stews and soups served during the cold winters of Japan. In modern Japan, nabemono are kept hot at the dining table by portable gas ranges owned by almost all Japanese people. By serving at the table, all the diners choose the ingredients they want from the pot and keeps a nabe hot while eating. This is considered an important feature of nabemono; Japanese people believe that eating from one pot makes for a closer friendship. The Japanese thus say, Nabe o kakomu ("sitting around the pot"), implying that sharing nabemono will create warm relations between the diners who eat together from the shared pot.
In Japan, the most popular nabemono is called "yosenabe". "Yose" means putting together. The name thus implies that all things (e.g., meat, fish, egg, tofu and vegetables) can be enjoyably cooked together in a nabe pot. Yosenabe are typically based on a broth made with Miso or soy sauce flavourings.
Another popular Nabemono is Chankonabe. Chankonabe was originally served only to Sumo wrestlers. Chankonabe is served with more ingredients than other nabemono as it developed to help Sumo wrestlers maintain their substantial weight. It includes rice and noodles as its ingredient. In the Sumo world, Chanko refers to all food that a sumo wrestler eat.
It is sometimes called just Nabe. Many kinds of ingredients are put and boiled in the clay pot. When the ingredients are cooked, people pick it up and eat with some sauce. Usually people eat from a shared clay pot. Hitori-nabe became popular among people who live alone recently. Literally meaning "alone nabe", it became popular as easy way to eat a filling and vegetable rich meal.
There are local kinds of nabemono all parts of Japan and these are some of famous nabemono.
- Hokkaido: Ishikari-nabe. The ingredients: salmon, salmon roe, Japanese radish, onion, tofu, konnyaku, cabbage, potato, leek, corn marigold, shiitake mushroom, butter
- The Tohoku district: Kiritanpo (Kiritanbo)-nabe. The ingredients: kiritanpo, chicken, burdock, parsley, leek, thin konnyaku
- The Kanto district: Houtou-nabe. The ingredients: pumpkin, Chinese cabbage, carrot, taro, houtou noodle.
- The midland district: Momiji-nabe (venison-nabe). The ingredients: venison, burdock, shiitake mushroom, leek, konjak, tofu, green vegetables
- The Kansai district: Syabu-syabu. The ingredients: thinly sliced beef, vegetables, shirataki
- The Chugoku district: Fuguchiri. The ingredients: the slices of blowfish, corn marigold, Chinese cabbage
- The Shikoku district: Benkei no na jiru. The ingredients: duck, wild boar, chicken, beef, pork, Japanese radish, carrot, mizuna (a kind of Chinese cabbage), hiru (a kind of shallot), dumpling made by buckwheat and rice
(Na means green vegetables and Jiru means the soup)
- The Kyusyu district: Mizutaki. The ingredients: chicken, tofu, burdock, shiitake mushroom, hackberry, bean-starch vermicelli, egg, leek. (Mizu means water and Taki means boiling. Unlike other nabemono, soup's dashi and flavor comes from chicken and Konbu)
People usually eat nabemono with the sauce and this sauce is usually called tare, lit. dipping. There are several kinds of sauce. Sometime people put some spices, which are called yakumi, into the sauce. For example, grated garlic, butter, red pepper, a mixture of red pepper and other spices, roasted sesame, momiji oroshi (a mixture of grated daikon radish and red pepper).
- Ponzu: The common pon-zu is made of soy sauce and juice pressed from a bitter orange, sweet sake, stock of kelp.
- Gomadare (sesame sauce): The common sesame sauce is made of kneaded sesame, soy sauce, stock of kelp, sake and sugar.