Cook the local flavors once more

Rice-flour oyaki with nozawana

From: Autumn leaves in Narai-juku and an autumn table in Shinshu

Three oyaki with browned crusts

Oyaki are the signature home dish of Shinshu: a dough of wheat or buckwheat flour rolled thin, wrapped around a filling and baked. The mountain villages were poorly suited to rice, so wheat and buckwheat served as staples in its place. The dish is said to originate in the Nishiyama area of Kamiminochi District, with fillings such as eggplant, mushrooms, pumpkin and dried daikon. In the snowy village of Sakae, a rice-flour version called anbo is also made. In 1983, oyaki (yakimochi) was registered as one of Nagano Prefecture's selected intangible folk cultural assets. This time I used a rice-flour dough and filled it with pickled nozawana, another Nagano specialty.

Ingredients

Rice flour
Water
Pickled nozawana
Fried tofu (aburaage)
Soy sauce

How I made it

Add water to rice flour, mix by hand and knead until smooth
Lightly stir-fry chopped pickled nozawana and fried tofu with soy sauce
Flatten a piece of dough in your palm, add the filling and fold it closed
Cook in a frying pan until both sides are browned

Sources: maff.go.jp maff.go.jp

This moment in the journey

Wrap, then bake

I flattened the dough in my palm, spooned on the nozawana, and folded it closed. I had wrapped gyoza before, so I knew roughly what to do. By the window, the cat watched my hands.

Into the pan they went, turned with long chopsticks. Before long the white dough had taken on a toasty brown crust.

I cut one open on the board. Oops: not much filling in there. Even so, the rice-flour oyaki were ready. Out in the garden, a persimmon tree hung heavy with orange fruit.

Watch this scene on YouTube0:58

Read this scene in the full journey