🍱 Tammu Dingaku

“Tamu dingaku”, also called“ sata dammu”, is a dish in which taimo are mashed and sweetened. It is also prepared as a dessert which pairs well with a fatty pork meal. Taimo are a local specialty of Okinawa, and are a variety of taro cultivated in clean water paddies.Also called mizuimo, in Okinawa Prefecture they are well-known and called tammu. Since the secondary and tertiary taro corm grow around the parent taro, it is considered a portentous ingredient for the flourishing of one's descendants, and is indispensable for celebratory meals. Okinawa Prefecture's taimo has a unique fragrance and stickiness, and is used especially for New Year's and Obon, but since one must wait nearly a year to harvest it, it is said that farmers calculate in reverse when they need to plant it. It is sold in storefronts not in its raw form, but steamed. Even nationally Okinawa Prefecture is one of the leading production areas, of which Kin and Oyama in Ginowan are famous. Dishes that use taimo include "durwakashi," in which taimo, muji (taimo stems), pork, shiitake, and kamaboko are roughly chopped, steamed thoroughly in pork broth and then kneaded, and "muji no jiru" (muji, pork, and tofu miso soup) which is made for celebrating a birth. In recent years it has become increasingly used in pies and sweets-making. In the beginning of the 18th century in Shuri Kingdom in Okinawa, taimo was used as a ceremonial food which was offered to the gods on New Year's Day. "Imo Orime" Festival was enthusiastically held on the northern part of the main Okinawan island as well, from which it can be surmised that imo (taro) were an important ceremonial ingredient.