🍲 Tanishi no-Miso-ni (simmered Pond Snail with Miso)

It is a local dish of Iiyama, a hot spring village known as Oku-zashiki of Tokyo, in which tanishi are simmered in salty-sweet Miso. There are various ways to cook tanishi, such as “Dengaku” (Grilled) and “Yanagawa-nabe” (hot-pot), but the typical one is “Tanishi no Miso-ni”. In the Iiyama area, tanishi used to be a popular catch in spring, and many stalls selling tanishi were set up during the Iiyama Kannon's flower festival, an annual spring event (now known as the Iiyama Cherry Blossom Festival). For this reason, the area was even called "Tanishi-machi" (Tanishi town). The fact that there is a folk song called "Tanishi Koto-koto" that invites people to the Iiyama Kannon festival shows how familiar tanishi was to the local people. Even after it became difficult to obtain locally produced tanishi, the local hot spring inns used to offer tanishi stewed in miso by using foreign products, but these products have become scarce and are no longer available.