New Year dishes welcoming 2013

On the new year day, we have for breakfast "ozoni," which is a soupy dish with rice cakes. Each local area has its own version of ozoni. For instance, Tokyo's ozoni is said to use more soy source than that of Kyoto.

Even Tokyo, there are many variations according to where originally people come from geographically and/or socially etc.

I usually use chicken, hakusai (Chinese cabbage), spinach, carrot and mochi (rice cake) for ozoni. It's accompanied with "osechi" cuisine such as "kamaboko (fish cake)" and "datemaki" on a separate plate (used to be layers of boxes). We usually have ozoni for the first three days of the new year.

This year, I simplified New Year's day breakfast, omitting many "osechi" or New Year dishes. I don't feel like having them except very basic staff.

Let's look at yellow things on a dish on the left. Round yellow things are "datemaki," which is made of eggs and sugars and almost all osechi include it. Its original form looks like "makizushi roll" and you cut it into slices and eat it. Here, I put two slices on the dish. A bit too sweet for me.

"Kazunoko"is next to datemaki. it's herring eggs and considered auspicious because it suggest hundreds of offspring.

Kamaboko is the half-round, red and white piece made of fish paste and solidified on a piece of wood. You slice it when eating it. The combination of red and white colors is considered auspicious and kamaboko with red surface fits to a new year day.

A bunch of cooked small fish below kamaboko is "tazukuri" and is one kind of anchovy. It was mainly used as fertilizer many years ago, although now it became part of human food. Tazukuri symbolizes bountiful harvest.

Black round thing is a lucky black bean. It requires good cooking knowledge to cook such huge beans without breaking its shape while cooking in a huge pot.

My grandmother used to make layers of "osechi" placed in layers of urushi boxes. Nowadays, you can buy grand osechi layers at a department store.