～ Tanimura time unfolds from the kitchen ～
When you bite into the Ishigaki Mochi filled with yellow sweet potatoes, a soft sweetness spreads across your face. The flavor seems to gently permeate not only your mouth, but your heart as well. The key to making them is to make sure to let the steam rise before steaming them. “If you don’t do that, they’ll just get flat,” the cheerful voice of Sakiko, an expert manju maker, echoed through the kitchen of the community center.
”Tanimura” is a laid-back area in Hasama-cho, Yufu City, a little up the mountain. Sakiko and Hiromi made traditional local dishes. Except for the manju, you can just eyeball the measurements. “Countryside people mostly rely on intuition,” laughs Hiromi, as she makes today’s main dish, “koneri.”
Hiromi peels an eggplant. “The eggplant will melt, so put it in last.”
◎Let’s make it loose today
”Koneri” is a summer side dish made by stir-frying vegetables that are available at home and adding your preferred flavor. Bitter melon and eggplant are essential, and finally, the whole thing is bound together with flour dissolved in water.
“Do you all like it firm? I like it a little loose, so let’s make it loose today,” says Hiromi. When Hiromi was a child, she would often gather with her friends at the main house of the neighborhood and eat meals together in large groups. The “Koneri” made in a large pot is a taste that brings back fond memories of those times.
If there are a lot of people, add more flour to increase the volume. You can also adjust the firmness or looseness to your liking. If you fry dried small sardines and shredded dried sardines first, the broth will come out and it will be full of flavor. Hiromi also adds some kinpira bamboo shoots that she brought from home, saying, “Here we go,” and puts them into the big pot. The crunchy texture adds to the dish, creating an exquisite balance. Watching Hiromi work with a free and enjoyable sense, you get the feeling that cooking is a live performance.
Hiromi loves to make Koneri “a little loosely”
◎Serve hot with brown sugar
Sakiko makes “jiriyaki” as a snack. She uses locally produced wheat flour, but if you buy it at the supermarket, you can use medium-strength flour. Add a little salt, two eggs, and a little salad oil to about 700g of flour, mix lightly, and then gradually add water. “Using a ladle makes it easy for the mixture to clump, so it’s better to mix it with chopsticks,” says Sakiko. When the melted batter was poured onto the frying pan, it flowed down like ribbons.
Once the front and back are cooked and it becomes crepe-like, powdered brown sugar is placed flat on top and rolled up. If you cut it diagonally, the spiral cross section looks beautiful. The moderately melted brown sugar goes perfectly with the hot dough, and it seems to go well with both coffee and barley tea. The red bean paste is also rolled up like a roll cake, and two types of jiri-yaki are completed.
Sakiko brought her favorite frying pan. “Jiriyaki is like a crepe.”
“Jiriyaki” – a beautifully rolled up dish
◎”I’m hungry, let’s eat.”
The long table at the community center was transformed into a luxurious dining table in an instant.
The “butterbur tsukudani” made by Hiromi brings to mind the vestiges of spring, and the pickles drizzled in vinegar take on the scent of kabosu in midsummer. Sakiko’s homemade sake manju and Ishigaki mochi are piled high on the plate. From the slightly spicy “bracken nanbanzuke” to the addictively crunchy wild herb “itadori kinpira,” dishes that capture the essence of this moment in early summer are lined up on the long table.
As the staff poured the koneri into the deep dishes, they cheered. “Let’s eat!”
Whether they were meeting for the first time or old friends, the conversation and tea flowed endlessly around the dining table.
Butterbur tsukudani
Pickles with vinegar
Sake manju (photo left) and Ishigaki mochi
Pickled bracken
Kinpira stir-fried Japanese knotweed
When asked, “Who taught you the food you made today?”, both of them answered, “I learned it by watching others.” It’s a taste that has been passed down from their mothers, neighbors who are good cooks, and from activities in the local women’s group while standing in the kitchen together.
”Even if the ingredients are the same, there is a certain amount to it, right? So, unless we make it together, it won’t taste the same,” says Hiromi. Sakiko also says that she often learned seasonings from an old lady who lived nearby. “At times like this (when cooking with everyone), I wish Grandma Aiko was here. I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the decades, but you can’t make delicious food without making mistakes,” says Sakiko, to which Hiromi nods vigorously and says, “That’s right!”
I think I’ll try one of the dishes I learned this Saturday.
They cooked delicious food for us.
Sakiko Sato(left) and Hiromi Hirashima
“Local Cuisine” is “Today, Saturday.”
If you cook with an easy-going attitude like Hiromi and a cheerful attitude like Sakiko,
you will surely find yourself enjoying a relaxed “Tanimura time.”
