Are you interested in winter root vegetables? Find a gobo burdock at your neighbor farmers market or food stores. You can make delicious kinpira dish at home. In Japan gobo is a long (20 inch), thin (1 ½ -inch in diameter at the thicker end), brown root vegetable. Locally grown gobo from the farmers market in my neighborhood is short and plump. Gobo in general has a pleasant crispiness and earthy taste. The flavor of this American cousin is much richer and tastier than the...
Read MoreTraditional burdock, gobo, dish, Yanagawa Nabe
Yanagawa Nabe is a dish which is served in a shallow, small-sized hot pot, in which fresh water fish called dojyo and thinly shredded burdock are cooked together with egg. The dish is locally famous and there are some specialty restaurants in Tokyo. I tasted the dish with my parents several times when I was little, but was not excited about the flavor of the fish – a kind of muddy taste. Dojyo (a kind of loach) is about 7 inch long and has distinctive 10 short whisks...
Read MoreBurdock pasta, instead of kinpira?
I found two long (3 1/2 foot each) gobo, burdock, left in my kitchen which I purchased toward the end of last year. I planned to make one more Osechi ryori dish, tataki gobo, but I abandoned the idea. It was too much. One of the most popular burdock dish is kinpira gobo, whose recipe you can find it in my The Japanese Kitchen. Instead of making this homey traditional Japanese dish, I decided to make something with Western flavors. Here is burdock pasta. I have shredded the...
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