🍱 Chitake to Nasu no Abura-itame

This is a representative dish of Tochigi, fried "Chitake" (=weeping milk cap mushrooms) and eggplants. "Chitake" is also called "Chichitake", and its name came from its milky white liquid out when you tear one. Weeping milk cap has good smell and goes well with eggplants, and it is used one of ingredients for Dashi (Japanese soup stock) for "udon" thick noodle or "soba" buckwheat noodle. In Tochigi Prefecture, "Chichitake" and its related species were called "Chitake", and eaten on daily basis. "Chitake" in "satoyama" (woodland near village) is very scarce edible mushroom grown around in August, earlier than other mushrooms, and the locals ate this mushroom during "bon" season (mid-August). In "satoyama" area, people managed the area to produce "chitake"; they cut oak or "kunugi" (a kind of oak) every couples of decades years to produce charcoal, and cleared fallen leaves to compost leaves. The amount of product and distribution of "Chitake" is decreasing now due to environmental change.