🍱 Nigomi

Kunchi is a festival found around the northern area of Kyūshū including Saga prefecture. All called Okunchi, this is an autumn festival wherein the first crop of the year is offered to the local deity and thanks is given to the gods in heaven and earth for the bumper crop of grains. In the former town of Imari in what is now Imari City, Kunchi is also observed every year in October, where mikoshi and danjiri shrines are brought together for a so-called fight festival. The spectacle, known as “Imari Ton-ten-ton” begins at the sounding of the drum, and chestnut rice and nigomi are crucial Kunchi cuisine for the event. Nigomi is a boiled dish made with either chicken or tofu; chestnuts; and root vegetables like lotus root, burdock root, or daikon radish; all simmered in seasonings like sugar or soy sauce. Also called “nijā,” the dish's appeal is in the simple flavor of the vegetables and the well balanced nutrition it provides. It's said that the dish was originally made as a way to not waste the leftover ingredients used in making a different boiled dish called nishim , the leftover chestnuts and red beans used for chestnut rice, and the leftover water from boiling the red beans. Nigomi is made in bulk the evening before Kunchi, and is reheated and eaten bit by bit over the following 2~3 days.