Nabe Cuisine 10,000 Calorie Meal A Day

 Chanko Nabe Foods Of The Sumo Wrestlers

Stem Below's invitingly and the delicious aroma of a bubbling hot pot fills the air warming body and soul, hot pots are an indispensable element of winter in Japan, one is loaded with fresh seafood, another one piled high with mushrooms

A luxury hot pot with prime cuts of meat, japan's countless regional delicacies blessings of the land and the sea, find their way into local recipes for hot pots.

Hotpot cuisine, Nabi in Japanese has flourished since ancient times in Japan, it has a special significance in sumo, the national sport of Japan Navigant even comfort the victims of a natural disaster and strengthen community bonds.

on this edition of begins upon ology our theme is hotpots nabe Japan's ultimate winter comfort food, we explore nabis history and timeless appeal, hello and welcome to begin Japanese

Japanese cuisine is known as nabe or hotpot which is extremely popular at this time of year in fact you feel going out with a group of Japanese friends in the winter to have something to eat and trying to decide.

What kind of restaurant to go to, there's a strong probability that somebody is going to suggest going for Nabe, Nabe the word simply means the cooking pot.

But because this kind of food is so popular, the word has come to mean, the food as well as the pot itself, of course, you'll find hot pot dishes all over the world but Japan does seem to have a particularly wide selection.

With all kinds of different ingredients and broths, first of all, let's take a look at some of the many different kinds of Nabe, that you'll find, family and friends fishing for tasty morsels amid billowing clouds of steam this is a typical winter scene in Japan.

In the colder months, the shops are full of delicious Nabe ingredients, including vegetables and seafood seasonal ingredients, one of the key elements in Nabes appeal another is Nabe's amazing diversity.

A Nabe involves boiling fish, meat and vegetables in a pot, placed on a tabletop heating device, you eat as the cooking continues, typically a group of several people gather around to share one pot.

You dig straight in plucking out the items you want to eat, you have to be with good friends because, you're sharing the same pot, it gives you a feeling of camaraderie, it's just so much fun chatting over a Nabe meal.

A friendly gathering around a hot pot, stimulates conversation, that's another reason for Nabe's popularity, Nabby cuisine can be divided into three broad categories based on the nature of the broth.

One example in this category is Sukiyaki, soy sauce sugar, and other seasonings are used to add flavor to the beef, the original aim of heavy seasoning was to eliminate the distinctive aroma of beef, dipping the beef in raw egg gives it a well-rounded flame.

Many now, may make use of regional delicacies and may have come to be, strongly associated with specific locations.

Hokkaido

The islands big salmon catch is put to use in the local Nabe, here they prepare an Ishikari nabe salmon chunks and raw vegetables simmered in a broth into which miso has been dissolved, sansho pepper is sprinkled over the food to remove any fishy smell and enrich the flavor.

Akita

Anime from Akita, one of Japan's top centers of rice cultivation, a typical women's group make kiritanpo, steamed rice that is mashed, then molded onto skewers to be grilled, this is the signature food of Akita.

Kiritanpo Pieces are added to a broth based on chicken bones, this produces kiritanpo Nabe the aromatic grilled rice goes perfectly with the hearty chicken stock.

Tokyo

Is home to a famous Nabe that dates back centuries the pot is brimming with whole noches dojo, simmered in a sweet and spicy sauce, before eating scallions and sansho pepper or sashimi, spice mix are added to the dojo Nabe.

Nara

Has a type of Nab dating back 1300 years, Asuka-Nabe is a mixture of chicken soup and milk, emissaries of Tang China bra dairy products to Japan's ancient capital at Asko and it is said that this led to the development of the local nabe.

This pleasantly mild hot pot features coarsely cut chicken, shiitake mushrooms, Chinese cabbage and other vegetables.

Fukuoka

In Kyushu this area is famed for its Matsu Nabe, which uses both beef and pork innards Matsu Nabe is said to date from the years after the Second World War, when low-priced awful was cooked in aluminium pots.

soy sauce and miso are the major types of broth, used plenty of vegetables including Nero garlic, chives also go into the pot, in Japan every local area is known for tasty product and this is why naba culture is so diverse.

A restaurant that specializes in a kind of Nabe called Oden which is extremely popular all over Japan, as you can see the soup here it's a very clear color it doesn't use any soy sauce.

They just use dried fish and seaweed and some salt and it has a very clear color and a delicate taste as well, it has the flavors of both the seaweed and the dry fish.

Japan's soft water is ideal for extracting the flavors from soup stocks, like dried fish dried bonito for example or seaweed, also for extracting the flavors from all these vegetables and other ingredients, that go into the various forms of different Nabe around Japan.

We're going to to talk about another very popular form of Nabe, which is extremely important in the development of sumo wrestlers, sumo wrestlers slam into each other with tremendous force, the world of sumo demands strong spirit strong technique and strong body.

One of the key factors in producing this triple strength is Nabe, the hotpot dish that sumo wrestlers eat is called Chanko Nabe, in the late 19th century one sumo stable took in so many trainees, that it became impossible to offer them all individual servings, so the stable began making one huge hotpot that everyone could eat from.

The stable master decided what kind of Nabe should be made, based on their instructions the kitchen crew figures out what ingredients are needed and how much time is required for each process.

You have to boil each ingredient properly and make broths that match, what goes into the Nabe, you should never overcook the ingredients, you have to manage the heat and other factors carefully to get the best flavor.

Preapering Nabe togather spread houner among the wrestlers, care is taken when putting in the ingredients, vegetables that take longer to cook go at the bottom then the other vegetables, chicken and finally the broth is poured in and everything is left to cook.

a meal of chanko nabe made possible by the wits and dexterity of sumo wrestlers a lot of thought goes into it a great deal of consideration for each other to, the ones who make the meal consider the timing of adding the ingredients.

They consider the order for adding them to the pot, they consider how to adjust the heat it requires attention to detail, once the nabhi is ready the wrestlers eat in order of rank with the highest-ranking eating first.

Chanko Nabe is a lesson in the strict hierarchy that prevails in sumo, the lower ranked wrestlers don't get to eat with everyone else, they act as waiters sometimes all the ingredients are consumed before the most junior wrestlers get to eat.

They may have to do with just the broth, chanko nabe teaches the importance of ingenuity research and making other people happy.

The restaurant across the road from the main arena, where the sumo tournaments are held in Tokyo and it even features its own ring of the sort, where some more bouts are held.

The Chanko nabe served their is rather a high class one they serve a seafood variety

and it's got squid, salmon, prawns, crab, scallops pretty good, now as for the kind of pots that he used for making Nabe these earthenware ones are the most common because they're thicker than metal pots they conduct the heat more gently.

They allow the ingredients to simmer slowly also, once they've been heated they retain the heat very well, so the food stays warm, which of course is what you want, now it's time to delve back into history and find out a little bit about how now they're cooking developed.

Japan surrounded by the ocean and with rivers tumbling down its many mountains, Japan has water in abundance, plentiful fish and vegetables as well as clean water everywhere led to the development of a rich culture of hotpot cuisine.

In the hearth of a traditional Japanese house a place that was for both warmth and cooking, in the old days a pot would be hung over the fire filled with plenty of water it would be used to cook fish and vegetables the family would gather around and eat.

The history of hotpot cooking in Japan is a long one, it stretches back six or seven thousand years, it's thought that clay pots were already being made and used in the Jomon period.

Back then people mainly boiled acorns and other nuts, archaeological sites have yielded many clay vessels that are thought to have been used as cooking pots, a picture from the 14th century shows buddhist monks at a temple.

They are gathered around the hearth cooking a meal in a pot, according to Buddhist precepts eating meat is forbidden, so fish and vegetables were the main ingredients in Nabe at that time.

In the 17th century, Nabi pots started to become widely available, the population at large began to use braziears making it possible to cook hot pot dishes anywhere, these developments gave rise to a new style of cuisine small hot pots for just a few people.

All you had to do was boil vegetables fish and tofu, this simple cuisine became very popular, there is a poem from that time about the popularity of Nabe barely cooked, the food just flies out of that small pot from the poem you get a clear sense of the race, for the tastiest morsels.

When the modern era dawned in the mid 19th century Nabe underwent a great transformation, a dish very different from boiled vegetables and fish appeared , it was called Gyu- Nabe.

As Japan adopted Western waves people began to eat meat, new restaurants opened that served beef in Nabe Gyu-Nabe may consists of cubed beef simmered in miso sauce in an iron pot unlike earlier forms of nabi stood in plenty of water.

The meat was cooked in the souce alone, with no water added, eating beef just like Westerners did, was considered a mark of progress and sophistication, Gyu-Nabe became very popular.

This technique for cooking beef to bring out the flavor gave birth to a new form of nabi cuisine, as the seasoning used in Gyu-Nabe changed, it evolved into Sukiyaki, the nabi cuisine that developed from ancient times was closely linked to Japan's climate.

Incorporating influences from Western cooking added a new twist to Nabes diversity, the Sukiyaki restaurant has been in business since 1871 and was a favorite haunt of Japanese literary giants.

The Sukiyaki key itself actually goes back quite a long time Suki is a farming implement it's a kind of flat spade and yaki is a kind of all-encompassing word that takes in things like roasting toasting baking broiling and grilling.

Back in the old days people used to heat the metal part of the Spade over a fire and then cook either tofu or fish over it, much later on when people started eating beef in Japan and beef was cooked in shallow pans, the same term Sukiyaki was then applied to that as well.

So when you eat sukiyaki, you have a raw egg in a bowl you have to eat the beef while it's still fairly rare. they cut their beef really big, that just went straight down your throat if you intended to chew on it, but it was so soft, it just literally melts in your mouth.

We'll talk about How Nabe was used very effectively to bring some comfort to the victims of the earthquake.

January the 17th 1995, a massive earth quake hit the Kansai region in western Japan. with devastating results, people were left homeless in the dead of winter and struggled to get by at evacuation sites, but victims of the disaster received a boost from hot Nabe.

That volunteers came and served, the warmth of the Nabe sustain bodies that were chilled to the bone, the taketori shopping district in ko bays Nagato ward was reduced to ashes by fires that broke out after the quake, 95 people died in this area.

As a result of the reconstruction efforts, the shopping district has a new look today, among the shops along the street is a small restaurant run by a woman her own home was burned down in the disaster.

Her husband takashi was chairman of the local Neighborhood Association and played a leading role in their communities evacuation center, six months later exhausted from the hard work he died of a heart attack.

The women found herself on the verge of despair, but to honor her husband's memory she kept going, three years after the earthquake, she opened the restaurant, the house speciality is oden.

She has special memories concerning the cauldron she uses to make oden, it's a huge pot 50 centimeters in diameter, it was used to cook the nabe, that helped people to make it through the toughest times of the evacuation center, when she opened her restaurant she was determined to obtain that giant pot.

She wanted to repay people for their help, when the community was close to despair she felt such gratitude for the feelings of all the volunteers, so many people brought things to and helped them to make it through, they brought all kinds of things and that kept them going.

The restaurant attracts people, who drew strength from the warm ingredients in their pot in the dark days of the evacuation center, then in October 2004 a major earthquake struck the middle of Japan

The women was unable to regard it as somebody else's problem she really felt for the victims in Kobe, they finally made it back so they know those people in Niigata are facing 10 or 20 years of rebuilding.

She was deeply grateful for the help she had once received from volunteers, so all on her own she headed to an evacuation center Niigata, to volunteer with the harsh winter loom and she started ladling out the same kind of hearty Nabe that had sustained her own community a decade early.

She infused her cooking with the hope that the hot nabe would help lift the spirits of the disaster victims, as the evacuees started eating the nabe they began to cheer up and she went around to talk to them.

She started consoling them of not having a house to go back to, not having a home was the hardest part for her too, later she received many thank-you letters from people in Niigata, the year she had spent perfecting Nabe at her restaurant were put to good use in her volunteer work.

She was glad that she opened the restaurent, she found a good line of business,she is not alone anymore, one big pot serving a group of hungry people, that's the essence of Nabe culture, a Japanese hotpot strengthens bonds and even gives people the energy they need to keep Going.

Conclusion

Japanese people have a big thing about harmony, it's not always easy to sense that in 21st century Tokyo, but when you're sitting around a big hot pot with a group of friends and you're all digging into it you do get a visceral feel for that harmony.

The famous old saying that people say all time, rock and roll is good for the body and good for the soul, I sometimes think the same thing might applay to Nabe as well.