🍱 Awabi no nigai
Abalone shellfish is a specialty of Yamanashi Prefecture. There are various theories as to why abalone, a seafood, became a specialty in an inland area surrounded by mountains and not facing the sea. One of them is that it was not easy to transport abundant seafood from the neighboring Suruga Bay (Shizuoka Prefecture) across mountains without transportation and refrigeration facilities as is the case today, and only a few salted or dried fish were delivered. In the Edo period, fresh abalone from Suruga Bay was processed, marinated in soy sauce, and packed in wooden casks for transportation. There is also a theory that Shingen Takeda, noting the nutritional value of abalone, invented abalone as a campaign food. Compared to raw abalone, boiled abalone contains more glutamic acid and aspartic acid, which increases its flavor, and this may be the reason why it became a specialty of inland regions.