🍲 Asuka Nabe

"Asuka Nabe" is a regional cuisine of Nara prefecture in which chicken and vegetables are simmered in a broth of milk and dashi. During the Asuka period, a messenger who came from China to Nara brought a dairy product resembling condensed milk and presented it to Emperor Kotoku, who was very pleased with it and began raising dairy cows in the Imperial Palace. This is said to be the first instance of drinking milk in Japan. In those days it was a drink for the nobility, but the monks also started drinking it in secret, and eventually began simmering their chickens in the milk, which was the origin of "Asuka Nabe." It began to spread among the common people, but since cow milk was expensive at the time, they used the milk of their goats. The "Asuka Nabe" of today, which uses local milk, was devised as a regional cuisine of Asuka during the early Showa period.