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Japanese New Year Food and Traditions – New Year in Tokyo

Visiting in Tokyo in December is a great way of understanding Japanese New Year food and traditions, one of the country’s most important celebrations.

While Christmas Day is a normal working day in Japan (albeit one where it has become a custom to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken of all things – there’s a really interesting programme on the BBC World Service about this tradition), many businesses tend to close down for the new year period, usually from around the 28th December to the 4th January. Certainly most will be closed on the 1st to the 3rd January but some businesses may close for longer in order that proprietors and employees can spend time with their families. This means that if you are sightseeing, some ryokan may not be receiving guests and some museums and attractions will be closed.

We were in Japan around new year 2019-2020, our last trip before the world changed so dramatically.

See the Lights in Shibuya

Shibuya is a vibrant, bustling district in Tokyo which has loads of shops and restaurants. Its most famous features are found close to the station.

Its road crossing is possibly one of the best known in the world as it has featured in numerous films and adverts.

Apparently its nickname is ‘scramble’ because at its busiest time over 2,500 people can cross the road in the two minutes that the pedestrian lights allow.

As new year approaches, the crossing was the place to join the celebrations for those wanting a party. We visited in the afternoon as preparations were underway and also got to see some of the lights in the surrounding area.

The statue of Hachiko is a famous Shibuya landmark. Hachiko was an Akito dog owned by a professor in the 1920s. The professor used to go to work and each day his dog would wait for him to return at the station in the evening. The professor died in 1925 but Hachiko would still wait for him every evening for a decade until his own death. It’s a very moving story of canine loyalty and a statue was erected to the dog outside the station in 1934. Of course, he is dressed for the occasion at this time of year.

Japanese New Year Tradition

Japanese New Year FoodNoodles in Shinjuku

One of the traditional things to do on New Year’s Eve is to eat Toshikoshi Soba – year-end noodles. The principle is that long noodles equate to a long life, so they represent longevity and good luck. This is a popular tradition and soba shops are likely to be busy on New Year’s Eve. We had a wonderful meal with a dear friend at lunchtime at the food hall in Takashimaya Times Square, the vast department store just south of Shinjuku station, which has a variety of wonderful restaurants located on the top two floors. We chose the soba restaurant there. We had to queue for around 40 minutes which wasn’t a problem – it had such a nice atmosphere.

Once seated you are not rushed to finish your meal, even though there will be people waiting outside. If you want to dine on noodles in the evening your wait may be much longer – we saw very long queues in Shinjuku later that night.

We ordered the set menu which came with tempura and other treats. It wasn’t cheap but it wasn’t bank-breakingly expensive and the entire meal was simply divine.

The noodles are presented on a traditional platter and appear to arrive in the most enormous mound but, on closer inspection, actually have been cleverly placed on a conical tray.

Soba are buckwheat noodles that can be served hot or cold – on a winter’s day, hot was definitely the best way to enjoy them.

Japanese new year food

You are provided with a broth which you can season to your liking and then you dip the noodles in the broth. It is polite to slurp in Japan! (Which, when you’ve been brought up not to slurp your soup, is surprisingly difficult!)

Japanese new year food

As we were finishing the restaurant staff came around with a small teapot filled with a hot, white opaque broth. This was sobayu, the water that that the noodles had been boiled in. We mixed it with our leftover sauce, added any further condiments and drank it – it’s a very satisfying way to finish off the meal.

Back To The Hotel to Watch TV

New year is a family time and one particular Japanese new year tradition is that people stay home to see the new year in together. Kōhaku Uta Gassen is the NHK (the national broadcaster) TV channel’s new year show which has been running since the 1950s. It is a national custom to watch Kōhaku on New Year’s Eve. The format of the show is that popular singers, musicians and bands are invited to join and each are assigned to one of two teams – red and white. They each perform throughout the evening and the audience and judges decide which team was the best. Quite often western performers will take part as well. At the end of the show, just before midnight, everyone sings Hotaru no Hikari, a song similar to Auld Lang Syne. We spent some time in the early evening at our business hotel to catch some of the songs before heading out to see in the new year.

Seeing in the New Year

There are several choices depending on how you are feeling. Shibuya was the place to go for a party atmosphere. The famous road crossing was usually filled with people waiting to see the new year in and the atmosphere guaranteed to be lively. However, in recent years, the event in Shibuya has been cancelled (even post-Covid), so check the local news if you are planning on going out. Other locations include Tokyo Tower, which has a countdown to the New Year, and Tokyo Disney and Disney Sea has traditionally had fireworks displays on New Year’s Eve. There will also be celebratory parties and countdown events in hotels and izakaya across the city.

We chose to visit the Meiji Jingū. It’s one of Japan’s most important shrines, a Shinto shrine, just a couple of stops from Shinjuku, where we were staying. Meiji Jingū is a lovely place to visit at any time. It is set in a large, forested park which is very pleasant to wander through and is a completely serene contrast to the hustle and bustle of neon urban Tokyo. There are several JR stops that you can use to reach the shrine. We disembarked at Harajuku, the district where the cool kids hang out, and followed the crowds heading towards the shrine. We arrived at around 11:30 pm and were by no means the first people there. It’s a pleasant stroll from the beautiful wooden Torii at the entrance.

You need to bear in mind that it’s a one-way system as you walk through. You will see traditional lanterns and rows of sake barrels along the way.

Then we stopped at the barrier which had TV screens showing pictures of the crowd as it assembled and the shrine itself. We weren’t too far from the front but were still some way from the shrine. Even though the area was very crowded, everything was typically well-organised and there was a quiet buzz of excitement.

As the new year dawned 108 bells rang out. This is actually a Buddhist (Japan’s other main religion) custom, the number represents 108 temptations and the bell ringing is to reject 108 worldly desires. The bell is actually rung 107 times on the last day of the old year and just once after midnight. The bell rings aren’t uniform in length – some of the bells are rung in quicker succession than others.

We were reasonably close to the front at the Meiji shrine but it still took us around 45 minutes to reach the Naien, the inner area, which contains the shrine buildings. Marshalls were present wielding signs in both Japanese and English and beckoned visitors either to approach, or to ‘wait a short while, please’ before coming forward. This means that smaller groups of visitors were able to visit the shrine and offer prayers without it becoming over-crowded. It was an excellent system, especially as everyone co-operated beautifully.

Japanese New Year Tradition at Meiji shrine

When it was our turn, it wasn’t really possible to undertake the full Hatsumōde but we threw our coins, bowed, clapped and made our wishes and prayers for the new year. The Meiji shrine is the most famous shrine to visit and apparently attracts over three million visitors in the first three days of each year. A lot of people don’t quite make it to the very front of the queue.

Outside the main temple area there are stalls with refreshments and it’s possible to hang out and enjoy the atmosphere. We then walked back to Yoyogi station, where we knew the platforms were likely to be less crowded than Harajuku, and we hopped onto a very full, but joyous, train on the Yamanote line, just one stop back to Shinjuku. As we arrived back at our hotel, a barrel of sake had been opened in the lobby and we were invited to partake of a cup. We greeted the hotel staff, ‘Akemashita, omedetou gozaimasu!’ – meaning: the new year has dawned, congratulations!

Hatsumōde – Visiting a Temple

Another Japanese new year tradition is visiting a temple within the first three days of the year. Although we had been amongst the first to undertake Hatsumōde at the Meiji shrine the night before, we met up with our friend in Kichijoji. (Also, because we were out at the shrine to see in the new year, we hadn’t found out whether the red or the white team had won Kōhaku, so she was able to update us with this important information.)

Hatsumōde is considered to be a very important part of welcoming the new year and there will be queues at temples. We met quite early and had to queue for around 30 minutes. It was all very organised and the atmosphere lively.

Japanese New Year Tradition Hatsumode

There is a certain ritual that one undertakes when visiting a Shinto shrine. It is absolutely fine for anyone from any religion, or none, to visit a shrine and make an offering. First of all, it is important to purify oneself before entering the shrine. This is called ‘temizu’.

Approach the chozuya, which is a small pavilion which contains a purification font filled with water. There are multiple ladles laid next to the basin. Holding the ladle in your right hand, pour water over your left. Change hands and repeat. Change hands and then pour a little water into your left hand and take it into your mouth. You aren’t supposed to swallow the water but to spit it delicately into the drain.

Then walk up to the shrine itself and make an offering by throwing a coin. The monetary value isn’t important but 5 yen and 50 yen coins are considered to be lucky. Go-en (5 yen) sounds like ‘goen’ which means ‘good luck’ in Japanese.

Then you should bow deeply, from the waist, twice, then clap your hands twice, to show reverence to the kami-sama (the god; kami can also be interpreted as a spirit). Keep your hands together for a silent prayer.

We were delighted to be invited to our friend’s family home to enjoy osechi-ryōri, traditional new year foods.

Japanese New Year Food

New year is a time for feasting and there are some dishes that are particularly associated with celebrations. Osechi-ryōri comprises lots of little dishes beautifully presented. Much of the food is prepared in advance so that the whole family can eat together rather than spending loads of time in the kitchen.

The quintessential Japanese new year food is mochi. These are rice balls made by pounding steamed sticky rice with a big mallet in a large wooden container to achieve a stretchy and slightly sticky consistency. This is then formed into little rice dumplings. They have an unusual texture – very soft and delightfully squidgy. New year mochi is called kagami mochi and comprises two mochi balls one set on top of the other, with a tangerine on top.

Mochi may be flavoured and/or filled with all sorts of ingredients. Matcha green tea, milk flavouring and azuki bean paste are popular fillings. Sometimes the mochi will have a sesame coating.

Matcha mochi with azuki bean filling is delicious:

Kazunoko is a popular new year dish. It is marinated seasoned herring roe. The roe is yellow in colour and comprises hundreds of eggs all bound together. The texture is surprisingly crunchy and the flavour slightly salty. It is usually marinated overnight in ingredients such as dashi (Japanese stock), soy sauce and sake. We were lucky to enjoy home-made kazunoko marinated in sake lees and it was delicious. The multiple eggs in the roe are symbolic of a large family. The kuzunoko can be served on its own or with other delicious ingredients, in this case, with prawns and a scallop on top of cucumber.

Kobumaki is a piece of kelp seaweed. It will have been simmered for a while to soften and is one of the Japanese new year food traditions is to present it in the shape of a bow. An alternative serving is a roll of kombu tied with a strip of dried daikon (a white radish); this is called hoshi daikon. Further variations include wrapping the kombu around a piece of meat or fish. The word ‘kombu’ also means ‘joy’ in celebration of a joyous day.

Sushi is not usually part of osechi-ryōri but it is a celebratory food and is often eaten on special occasions. It would be unusual for Japanese families to make their own sushi – they would leave it to the experts and buy some in.

sushi selection

Retail Therapy

Another Japanese new year tradition is Fukubukuro. When the shops reopen many will offer lucky bags – sealed bags or boxes – containing random merchandise. The value of the goods inside are greater than the price you would normally pay and sometimes you may – by sheer luck – end up with some very cool products. We met up with a dear friend in Nakano Broadway the following day and found a Lucky Box stall. At just 300 Yen we didn’t have high expectations but it was fun seeing what was in the box.

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RECIPE: Vietnamese Pickled Garlic

We were in our favourite local Vietnamese restaurant recently and, while eating a delicious bowl of Bún Bò Chân Giò Huế – Beef, Pork Hock, Meat Balls in a vermicelli noodle soup (Bún means vermicelli and the dish originated in Huế, a coastal city in central Vietnam that used to be its capital), the restaurant staff brought out a jar containing pickled garlic to be used as a condiment. It was delicious – it added another dimension to the dish – a zap of sour garlic with just a hint of spice from the chilli infused vinegar. It’s a really popular condiment and apparently some of the restaurant’s customers will devour the whole jar when it’s brought to the table. We figured it probably wasn’t too difficult to make ourselves so we did some experimenting and, indeed, it’s a really easy recipe.

We had grown a bunch of garlic earlier in the year – planted in the late autumn we harvested it mid-summer. We also have a habit of keeping empty jars for preserving purposes, so had most of the ingredients and equipment to hand. It’s very flexible to make and the quantities in the recipe really depend on the size of your container. You will need a clean empty jar – you can use any old jar. Just wash it out thoroughly and fill it with boiling water, which will make sure it’s clean enough to store pickles, then let it cool down. Our jar was around 300 ml capacity.

Vietnamese Pickled Garlic Recipe

Ingredients

Several bulbs of garlic (the quantity will depend on how large the bulbs are and how finely you wish to slice it)

Two red chillies

White vinegar (you can use rice vinegar if you are feeling decadent but the garlic has a strong flavour and we feel it would dominate the subtle flavour of the rice vinegar)

2tsp white sugar

1/2 tsp salt.

Method

Peeling the garlic is the most time-consuming part of this job. Garlic is one of the stickiest substances known to human kind but you don’t realise this until you start peeling lots of it.

Once peeled, you have a number of choices. You can keep the garlic cloves whole, you can slice them with a knife or you can slice them wafer-thin using a mandolin. We prefer the very thinly sliced garlic because when you add it as a condiment the flavour enhances rather than dominates the food.

If using a mandolin, be really careful. Being clumsy cooks, we use a knife glove which means that you can slice the garlic very close to the blade without risking sliced fingers. Bloody garlic pickle is not a good idea.

Place the sliced garlic, slice the chillies and add everything to the jar.

Top up with the vinegar. Add the sugar and salt.

Shake the jar.

Leave to infuse for at least a week. The pickled garlic will last for months… but is likely to get scoffed much sooner. Also, because the vinegar is acidic you can add additional sliced garlic or another chilli as you use up the existing condiment.

Although this dish goes really well with Phở and Bún Huế dishes, we’ve also used it to add a bit of zing to Vietnamese summer rolls.

And this condiment isn’t just for Vietnamese cookery. We use this pickle to garnish soups – this is a home-made vegetable soup.

Vietnamese pickled garlic recipe

Or it can be used in a meat dish – these are glazed pork belly bites. Just a slice or two atop really cuts through the richness of the meat.

Vietnamese pickled garlic recipe

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RECIPE: How to Make Japanese Dashi stock

Dashi is a Japanese soup stock which is really easy to make and very delicious indeed. It is a fundamental component of many Japanese dishes, such as miso soup, surinagashi and noodle dishes such as ramen and udon. It’s a very simple stock but provides a huge amount of flavour and definitely puts the “mmm” into umami, the fifth flavour. You can buy instant powdered dashi and just add water but if you can find the ingredients in your local Asian supermarket it’s really not much effort to make. The process is very simple and much quicker than traditional stock making in European cuisines, which generally require ingredients such as meat, vegetables and herbs to be boiled for several hours. Here is our Japanese dashi stock recipe

Japanese Dashi Stock Recipe

Dashi usually only uses a couple of ingredients. The dashi we made used konbu (kelp – a seaweed) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes, which are skipjack tuna flakes that have been simmered and smoked, then dried in the sun to ferment and finally shaved to wafer thin slices). Katsuobushi, like many fermented fish products (think nam pla – fish sauce from Thailand), smells somewhat stinky and not very pleasant when you open the packet, but somehow it adds a magical quality to the finished stock. Other dashi ingredients could include dried shiitake mushrooms or dried anchovies.

Ingredients

3 sheets of kombu kelp seaweed

EITHER

40g bonito flakes

OR

5 dehydrated shiitake mushrooms (for vegetarian or vegan version)

1 litre of water

Method

Make the dashi: Put kombu and bonito flakes (or shiitake mushrooms) into a saucepan of water.

Bring to a simmer. Skim off any froth.

japanese dashi stock recipe

After 15 minutes, turn off the heat. You should have a clear broth

japanese dashi stock recipe

Sieve the solids from the broth.

japanese dashi stock recipe

Keep the solid ingredients. You can dry these out and use them again to make a secondary dashi.

japanese dashi stock recipe

This Japanese dashi stock recipe is so easy to make and can be used in many delicious dishes.

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RECIPE: How To Make Lao Larb

Lao larb, also known as moo larb, is the perfect dish for a hot summer’s day. It’s incredibly easy to make and really refreshing. It’s kind of a meat salad which hails from South East Asia; we first tried it in Lao , where it holds the status of national dish, but we have also eaten it in Thailand, and quickly became hooked. Even better, all the ingredients are really easy to find in our home country. There’s a tiny bit of preparation needed prior to assembling the dish, so worth thinking about making it ahead of time. The following recipe will feed four as a starter or two hungry people.

Lao larb or moo larb

INGREDIENTS

300g pork mince. (The ‘moo’ of moo larb is pork.) Chicken mince also works really well and quorn mince or mushrooms can provides a vegetarian alternative. Lamb isn’t recommended as it’s quite fatty and the fat tends to congeal a little when it cools, which doesn’t provide a very nice texture.

1 large red onion (or 2 small)

Generous handful of fresh mint

Generous handful of fresh coriander

Freshly milled black pepper

1 or 2 juicy limes

Generous splash of fish sauce (vegetarians can use veggie fish sauce or a combination of soy sauce with a dash of vinegar) – around half a tablespoon

Optional: chilli flakes, toasted rice, teaspoon of sugar, Thai basil leaves for garnish

METHOD

You need to allow enough time for the mince to cook and cool before assembling the dish. It’s the perfect ‘make in advance’ dish.

Cook the mince. Pour a little oil into a pan and fry until the meat is cooked through. Allow it to cool.

Finely chop the onion, coriander and mint and add to the mince.

Lao larb ingredients

Add the fish sauce, lime juice and black pepper to taste. We really like coarsely ground black pepper so grind ours in a pestle and mortar. This is really where you can adapt the flavour to your personal taste.

Mix well. It’s fine to make in advance and let the flavours infuse.

Serve with steamed rice and a salad garnish.

Lao larb
Pork moo larb
Lao larb
Vegetarian version using quorn mince

VARIATIONS

One of the lovely things about this dish is that you really can adjust it to your taste. There are some variations. If you like heat, add chilli flakes (flakes are better than fresh chilli). This was one of the dishes we tasted in Lao that wasn’t searingly hot, the spice coming from the pepper rather than chilli, but it’s fine to add more heat if you like it. If you’d like to add some sweetness, sprinkle in a little sugar and mix in.

There is also an important and popular variation where you can add roasted ground rice powder for an additional nutty complexity to the flavour and texture. It’s very simple: place a handful of uncooked Thai rice in a dry frying pan and roast the rice for 10 minutes or so, moving about in the pan until the rice is brown. Then transfer to a pestle and mortar or a spice grinder and grind to a powder.

(You can actually toast more rice to make a greater quantity of this powder; it will keep for a couple of months in an airtight container.)

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How To Make Miso Paste

One of the great things about travelling around Japan is getting to sample the regional variations in the food. We had visited a miso/soy sauce factory in the western city of Kanazawa but, on our way, we had taken a detour to visit the snow monkeys at Yudanaka and also had the opportunity to visit the nearby town of Obuse in Nagano prefecture. And we also wanted to learn how to make miso paste.

Obuse is a pretty little town with some interesting museums – notably an exhibition space dedicated to artist and printmaker Hokusai who was famous for his ukiyo-e (floating world) pictures from the Edo period. His best known work is probably The Great Wave off Kanakawa, one of the 36 views of Mount Fuji series. When we visited, they had on an exhibition which contrasted the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji with the One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji series.

We were pleased to discover that the town also had a shop dedicated to miso.

The delightful owners were very happy for us to sample their wares and it was great to be able to compare flavours of the different types on offer. We bought some packets of miso to take home with us.

How To Make Miso Paste

We had long wanted to experiment with making miso but, while it’s easy to get hold of soy beans, obtaining rice koji is more difficult in the UK. We were able to buy some inoculated koji in Japan and have later discovered a number of suppliers in the UK and EU from whom koji can be obtained. We used pre-inoculated koji. If you are really hardcore, you can obtain the spores, then steam the rice and let the mould grow on it to create your own koji.

That is for another time though. We started with the simple approach using koji that we had bought in Kanazawa…

How to make miso paste

The best book in the world for learning how to make Japanese preserves, pickles and ferments is Nancy Singleton Hachisu’s Preserving the Japanese Way: Traditions of Salting, Fermenting, and Pickling for the Modern Kitchen. We have tried and tested loads of recipes from this book and can wholeheartedly recommend it. We followed the miso recipe.

Organic soy beans were soaked overnight and then boiled for a couple of hours until soft.

How to make miso paste

One thing we realised that we needed to obtain – a bit too late at this stage – was a proper blender. The soy beans were mashed by any means necessary – in the end a combination of a potato masher and hand blender produced the best results from all the available gadgets in the kitchen but the beans were still a bit chunky – we didn’t achieve a really smooth paste. But that was okay, miso doesn’t have to be totally smooth. In fact, chunky miso has a very pleasant nutty texture. But a blender was duly ordered for future use.

How to make miso paste

After the beans had cooled we mixed in the rice koji and salt – giving everything a really good squash together. It’s a very hands-on approach. (Make sure hands are clean, of course, a good way to do this is to spray them with white vinegar.)

How to make miso paste

Then you get a big container, in this instance we found some food-grade plastic tubs, which we cleaned thoroughly and wiped with (cheap) vodka, grab a ball of mixture and throw it into the container. You need to have a good aim. The point of the throwing is that the mix splats together and doesn’t allow air bubbles. It’s really important that the mix is compact. If your splatting ability isn’t as accurate as it could be, make sure you really pack the miso together afterwards – a good squish with your fists will help.

How to make miso paste

When the mixture is thoroughly squashed and compacted, sprinkle salt over the surface of the mixture, find some heavy weights and crush the miso to push it all together.  

Then it’s simply a matter of time. Miso production in Japan is usually started in spring when temperatures are low. We started in April. The hot, humid summer is essential for the maturation of the miso and this is quite difficult to replicate in the UK, which has summers that can best be described as variable. However, we are lucky enough to have a greenhouse in our garden so our miso spent several days at a temperature that tried to emulate Japan’s summer heat although it didn’t get close to its oppressive humidity. It worked though – after the summer, on opening the lid we could definitely get that distinctive miso aroma. We knew we were on the right track.

How to make miso paste

We waited a few more months – until late October – and finally plucked up the courage to scrape the scary-looking surface of the miso and dive in.

How to make miso paste

An initial taste revealed it to be really delicious – salty and savoury with a heady aroma. We do a lot of food preservation via a lacto-fermentation process and are generally a bit scared of mould which is considered to be a Bad Thing. If food goes mouldy, it is dangerous and should be chucked. With the miso, the covering of the weight did develop some mould so we were cautious. But it hadn’t affected the food, so all was well.

It turned out that we had managed to ferment about 3kg worth! That will keep us going for a while. We carefully washed some old plastic tubs from takeaway food – these are brilliant for storage – decanted the miso from the tub and put it into the fridge for future use. As a fermented food, it should have a very good shelf life.

The first thing we made with the miso was soup – the traditional accompaniment to many Japanese meals. Our miso was so delicious that it was possible to make a nice drink by simply pouring boiling water onto the paste, mixing and devouring, but that was too crude an approach.

The very best miso soup starts with a dashi, which is a soup stock. There are several types of dashi. You can get instant powdered dashi and just add water but it’s really easy to make your own using ingredients that are generally easy to find from Asian supermarkets. The process is very simple and much quicker than traditional stock making in European cuisines, which generally require ingredients such as meat, vegetables and spices to be boiled for several hours. And it’s definitely worth the not very considerable effort.

Dashi usually only uses a couple of ingredients. The dashi we made used kombu (kelp – a seaweed) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes, which are skipjack tuna flakes that have been simmered and smoked, then dried in the sun to ferment and finally shaved to wafer thin slices). Katsuobushi, like many fermented fish products (think Thai nam pla – fish sauce), smells somewhat stinky and rather unpleasant when you open the packet, but somehow it adds a magical quality to the finished stock. Other dashi ingredients could include dried shiitake mushrooms or dried anchovies. Dashi definitely puts the “mmm” into umami.

We simmered kombu and bonito for 20 minutes, skimming off any froth from the surface of the broth. Then we sieved the broth and kept the solid materials. A bit like olive oil, this was the primary dashi, but it’s possible to resuse the dried base ingredients to make another dashi.

When the dashi is ready add a tablespoon of miso paste and bring to the simmer.

Miso soup usually has some additional ingredients such as negi (like spring onions), tofu, mushrooms or wakame seaweed.

How to make miso

You can find our detailed recipe for making miso soup here.

And here is a link to the highly recommended Preserving The Japanese Way book.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links. If you click the link and decide to make a purchase we will earn a small commission, at no cost to you, which helps towards running this site.

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Bhutan Chilli Cheese

The tiny mountain kingdom of Bhutan is more famous for its amazing landscapes, beautiful dzong (monasteries), trekking possibilities and the fact that its king uses a gross national happiness index to understand the well-being of his subjects than its cuisine. The country has a national dish that is unexpected and delicious. And really, really spicy: Bhutan chilli cheese.

In Bhutan, chillies aren’t so much considered to be condiments – something to liven up a meal – but rather are used as vegetables. A meal isn’t considered to be complete if it doesn’t contain chilli. The country’s national dish is ema datshi: ema meaning “chilli” and datshi meaning “cheese”: Bhutan chilli cheese! The sorts of chillies the Bhutanese use are large, red chillies. Normally larger chillies are less hot than the teenie, weenie fiery ones but these still pack a punch. The chillies may be dried and can be rehydrated simply by cooking gently in water.

You can often see chillies drying in the sunshine outside houses.

Bhutan chilli drying

Chilli and cheese as a combination actually makes perfect sense. The heat of the chilli is stored in the seeds and the membrane on the inside of the fruit, capasaicin being the active ingredient, which sticks to the tongue and provides that essential – and addictive – burn. There’s an old saying that you should never drink water to quench the heat of a chilli – it’s like mixing oil and water, it just doesn’t work. But milk contains casein which acts like a detergent, binding to the capasaicin and allowing it to wash away, providing a calming effect.

Take this one step further to blend chilli with cheese and you have a gorgeous conglomeration of fire and calm. And, in Bhutan, to be enjoyed with every meal.

Making Bhutan Chilli Cheese

We were lucky enough to learn to make chilli cheese when we stayed on a farm in the lovely Punakha region.

The datshi of ema datshi is a cheese made from cow or yak’s milk, a soft-ish cheese with a texture that was reminiscent of ricotta. It has a salty, tangy flavour.

Bhutan cheese

The chillies are often dried and need to be rehydrated. They are added to a saucepan with a small amount of water and salt for seasoning. They are then simmered until tender.

The cheese is added in slices, taken from the outside of the cheese ball, and the saucepan is taken off the stove to allow the cheese to melt in the residual heat.

Bhutan chilli cheese

The resulting Bhutan chilli cheese is undeniably fiery but utterly delicious and curiously moreish.

Chitwan National Park Tharu Village fire
Cooking with the Tharu in Chitwan, Nepal
Nepal momos
Nepalese momo dumplings
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