Eel

It is very hot these days in Japan. Japanese people are tired to be in hot. Many people of them eat eel in summer. Especially they eat eel on the day of the ox in midsummer. There two types of the way how they eat eel. One is “Unaju” which is served broiled eel over rice in a lacquered box. The other is “Unadon” which is a bowl of eel and rice. Generally the price of “Unaju” is higher than “Unadon”. Recently Japanese eels are defined as one of endangered species. So the prices of both “Unaju” and “Unadon” are amazingly high. I seldom eat “Unaju” and “Unadon” these a couple of years.

Shiogama

Shiogama is a Japanese cake. The ingredients of it are flour made from cooked glutinous rice, sugar, salt, powder of marine alga and crushed leaf of the perilla. These ingredients are mixed and pushed into the mold. Shiogama is originally made in Shogama City of Miyagi Prefecture located in north east Japan.

If “wasanbon” which means refined Japanese sugar made in Tokushima Prefecture is put instead of sugar, Shiogama is not so sweat and mellow.

Eggplant with miso

Eggplant with miso is called “Dengaku-nasu” in Japanese. “Dengaku-nasu” is eggplant pasted with “Dengaku” which consists of miso, sugar, sweat sake and sake. What does “Dengaku” mean? It means an acrobatics of an ancient festival at which rice plants are planted. The acrobatics is that an acrobat perform at the top of a long pole. This form is like that eggplant with miso is stuck by a stip.

I think this background is not known very well even in Japan.