Ainu cuisine

Ohaw, traditional Ainu soup

Ainu cuisine is the cuisine of the ethnic Ainu in Japan. The cuisine differs markedly from that of the majority Yamato people of Japan. Raw meat like sashimi, for example, is not served in Ainu cuisine, which instead uses methods such as boiling, roasting and curing to prepare meat. The island of Hokkaidō in northern Japan is where most Ainu live today; however, they once inhabited most of the Kuril islands, the southern half of Sakhalin island, and parts of northern Honshū Island.

There are very few Ainu restaurants in the world, though some do exist such as Ashiri Kotan Nakanoshima in Sapporo, and Poron'no and Marukibune in Ainu Kotan, Hokkaidō.

Ingredients

Traditionally, women usually gathered wild plants such as Pukusa.

Crops

• Deccan grass
• Foxtail and Chinese millet
• Wheat
• Buckwheat
• Beans
• shikerebe^[1] - berries of the Amur corktree, also translated as "Amur cork nuts".^[2]

Wild plants

• Pukusa, a wild garlic also known as kitopiro, gyouja ninniku (ギョウジャニンニク, or ascetic garlic) and ainu-negi (アイヌネギ, or ainu negi) in Japanese. Pukusa is very similar to wild leeks found in Canada and the United States in taste, texture and appearance.

Animals

Game

• Bear
• Deer
• Fox
• Raccoon dogs
• Rabbits
• Seals
• Whales
• Hazel Grouse
• Mallard
• sum or shum - oil, rendered fat^[3]
  • Traditionally: epersum (エペレスム) bear oil, pasum (パースム) or horse oil, humpesum (フンペスム) whale oil, beef oil, and yuksum (ユクスム) deer oil(?)^[4]

Dishes

• Kitokam - a sausage flavored with pukusa
• Munciro sayo - millet porridge
• Ruibe - thin sliced frozen salmon
• Sito - a dumpling made from rice or millet
• Ohaw or rur, a savory soup flavored with fish or animal bones.
  • cep ohaw - salmon soup
  • kam ohaw - meat soup
  • yuk ohaw - venison soup
  • pukusa ohaw - pukusa soup
  • pukusakina ohaw - anemone soup
• Munini-imo - a fermented potato pancake
• ratashkep or rataskep (ラタシケプ) - described as a "stew" or "mixed and braised dish" made from multiple ingredients by Kayano^[5] and others.^[6] Another source described it as a special treat that used special ingredients^[2]

Notes

1. Batchelor & Miyabe 1893
2. Honda, Katsuichi (1905). Harukor: An Ainu Woman's Tale (preview). London: Methodist Publishing House. p. 123., saying ratashkep was a "snack" but used non-ordinary special ingredients to appeal to children, like "Amur cork nuts with Chinese millet flour and wild peas, or chestnuts and preserved salmon roe".
3. Batchelor 1905 Ainu-Eng-Ja. dict.
4. Watanabe, Hitoshi (渡辺仁) (1982). アイヌ民俗調査 (snippet) 15. 北海道教育委員会., collected from the recollection by Umeko Ando
5. Kayano 1996, p.208 キナラタシケプ 山菜の寄せ鍋; p.460, ラタシケプ 「混ぜ煮:豆,カポチヤ,イナキピの粉,シコロの実など いろいろな物を混ぜて煮た物」
6. Dettmer, Hans Adalbert (1989). Ainu-Grammatik: Texte und Hinweise 1. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 843. ISBN 9-783-447-02864-6., where kina rataskep and mun rataskep are mentioned, and translated as "Gräser-Eintopf", "Kräuter-Eintopf" (grasses stew, herbs/worts stew)

References

• Kayano, Shigeru (萱野茂) (1996). 萱野茂のアイヌ語辞典 (Kayano Shigeru no ainu go jiten). Sanseidō.
• Batchelor, John (1905). Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary: (including A Grammar of the Ainu Language. London: Methodist Publishing House.
• Batchelor, John; Miyabe, Kingo (1893), "Ainu economic plants", Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 221: 198–240

External links

• Ainu Agriculture
• Origins of Ainu
• English site of the Ainu Museum
• Official site of an Ainu restaurant in Tokyo, "Rera Cise" (Japanese)
• Official site of an Ainu restaurant in Ainu Kotan, "Poron'no" (Japanese)
• Official site of an Ainu restaurant in Ainu Kotan, "Marukibune by Moshiri" (Japanese)