January 22, 2009

Pork Soup/豚汁(とんじる、ぶたじる)

I made tonjiru (pork soup) for supper tonight. The ingredients were thinly sliced pork, daikon, carrots, yatsugashira, gobo (burdock root), honey mushrooms (frozen in the freezer), negi (Japanese scallion), miso, and some instant dashi.
今日の夕飯には豚汁を作りました。材料は、豚の薄切り、大根、ニンジン、八頭(やつがしら)、ごぼう、ナラタケ(冷蔵庫で冷凍していたもの)、ネギ、味噌、出汁の素です。
You may not be familiar with yatsugashira. Here is a photo. Yatsugashira is usually translated into yam.
八頭には馴染みの無い人もいるでしょう。写真を載せます。普通、八頭はyamと訳されます。

And, here is a photo of my tonjiru.
そしてこれが私の豚汁です。

5 comments:

Nancy Heller said...

Is yatsugashira similar to taro?

Hiroyuki said...

Nancy Heller: You are right. Well, I had assumed that satoimo in Japanese = taro in English, (which I confirmed in Wikipedia.) Yatsugashira (lit. eight heads) is one variety of satoimo, so it's safe to say that yatsugashira is a large variety of taro.
I have a copy of Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, written by Shizuo Tsuji, in which he wrote:
The word yam in the United states is used for orange-fleshed sweet potatoes... One of the most important is the sato imo, rendered here as "filed yam," but which has no common English name.

Hiroyuki said...

Not "filed yam" but "field yam", of course (laugh).

Anonymous said...

Hi Hiroyuki,

I stumbled across your blog in search of kabocha recipes and I am really glad to have found your blog!! I really appreciate how you write your blog posts in 2 languages.Its especially helpful for me as I am currently learning Japanese in Tokyo right now. I love food and really enjoy looking at all posts I look forward to reading the rest of the archives.. Thank you!!

Hiroyuki said...

momo: Thanks for your comments. momo = peach?
Note that I'm not a serious cook, but I hope you can learn as much as you can learn from a serious or professional cook!