🍱 Yubeshi (Yuzu cake)

It is a simple local confectionery with the texture of a mochi rice cake, and the flavor of yuzu and miso. The more you chew it, the more delicious it gets. Yubeshi, yuzu cake, is a Japanese confectionery found throughout Japan, but in this region, it is wrapped in bamboo bark and steamed. The antibacterial properties of the bamboo bark are used as a preservative. It is now a famous confectionery of Kikuchi City, an area that has long been a rice-producing region, and the scraps of rice produced during the rice harvest were effectively utilized to make the confectionery. It is said that the Kikuchi clan, which flourished during the Nanbokucho period (1336-1644), first used the rice scraps as food for their soldiers. It was not until the Meiji Era (1868-1912) that it took its present form. Tsushimaya Matabei, a confectioner for the Hosokawa clan, moved from Kyomachi in Kumamoto to Kikuchi after being forced to leave the city during the Seinan Civil War, and commercialized a modified version of the traditional yubeshi (yuzu cake). With the excavation of the Kikuchi hot springs in the 1960s, the product became popular as a souvenir. In fact, although the name "yubeshi" is the same, there is a completely different type of yubeshi in the Hitoyoshi and Kuma areas, where many dishes are made with yuzu. The yuzu fruit is hollowed out and made into a container, then stuffed with a mixture of miso, peanuts, sesame, ginger, togarashi chili pepper, and Wheat flour with seasonings and steamed. After that, it is put in a net and dried in the sun for about two weeks to mature. In the old days, it was wrapped in "waratsuto," a straw wrap, and dried for a month under the eaves of the house. Accented with the spiciness of chili peppers and it is salty, and it became a snack for shochu from Kuma area as well as for tea. It was a wise way to utilize the yuzu, which was abundantly available.