Those who attended ICA Grey Stone’s 2012 World of Flavors Conference, you may remember Chef Iida Jiro’s Market Place dish. It was Hoba dish. He used salmon as a main ingredient and cooked it with special miso, all of them wrapped up in dried Hoba leaf. Hoba is a magnolia leaf (Magnolia obovata) and this humble preparation – cooking ingredients on top of dried leaf – comes from the mountainous region of Hida, located in Gifu Prefecture on Honshu, the main island of Japan.
My recent book, Hiroko’s American Kitchen, has a recipe of Hoba Miso with beef (page 124) and describes the dish’s history (page 125). Traditionally, the main ingredient used were vegetables – no salmon nor beef -, and cooking was done over bincho-tan charcoal fire. The leaf does not catch fire during cooking because the dried leaf is soaked long enough before using, and the infrared bincho-tan heat does not produce flame.
Lucky group of fourteen (14) people will be visiting the Hida region as a part of my Culinary tour to Japan with Hiroko Shimbo soon. The tour will take place on March 21st through March 30. Right now the village of Hida is covered with deep and lasting snow. This year they are receiving more snow. On our visit we will surely find some left snow on the ground. Our group attends Tofu making class in this rural village. I have also requested the traditional Hoba Miso dish demonstration. It will be thrilling for us to see and taste this several hundred years old preparation on the site where it was developed.
Here is the Hoba dish which I made for dinner last night. (Pardon me, but I have Hoba leaves in my kitchen.) My kitchen cannot burn bincho-tan charcol, so I cooked the salmon partially on the skillet, then, baked it with miso and vegetables wrapped up in the leaf in the oven. My Hoba Miso Steak recipe in the Hiroko’s American Kitchen does not use the impossible-to-get hoba leaf in America. But, by following the recipe great tasking Spicy Miso Sauce (page 102) makes an experience of the flavor of a true Hoba miso dish unforgettable.
