🍚 Ume gohan (rice with Japanese plums)

This dish is made with rice mixed with umeboshi (preserved Japanese plums) and dried young sardines, and cooked in dashi stock. It is perfect for summer, and allows you to enjoy the fresh aroma of Japanese plums and umami taste of sardines. A local woman from Kanagawa who became a "skills leader for old-fashioned living techniques" conceived of it as a dish that would bring out the features of Odawara cooking, and spread it to surrounding areas. It is regularly eaten as a staple meal by local families. Japanese plums have been cultivated in Odawara ever since the Warring States period. Initially, plum trees were planted in the land near castles to produce military provisions. In the Edo period, travelers passing through Hakone found Odawara's preserved plums useful as a side dish that would prevent their bento box lunch from spoiling. Pickled fresh plums appeared as a local Odawara specialty suited to hiking along the Tokaido road between Tokyo and Kyoto. In the present day, plums are grown in large numbers at the Soga Plum Grove, which ranks among the three biggest plum groves in the Kanto region. Odawara can boast of producing the most plums of anywhere in Kanagawa. The juuroume breed, grown only to Odawara, has thick, soft flesh, and is held to be the best variety of plum for umeboshi. The local area has developed various dishes, new and old, that use the familiar plum as an ingredient, including those that use plum extract and plum jam. One of these is ume gohan, or plum rice.