My Lovely Blogaki

The Japanese love the food with slimy consistency. Think marinated sea cucumber, mozuku sea weed, and name-take mushrooms. I don't know any other nation so fond of slimyness in food. Even among our neighbours, I don't know any slimy Korean or Chinese dish.

So I want to introduce you to Japanese slimy potato called Yamato-imo （大和芋）. Yamato is one of the old names of Japan, and Imo means potato in Japanese.



This is how it looks like on supermarket shelf. In nature it is covered with mud and brown. When it is washed, its cream white skin appears.

We have also a similar potato called Naga-imo （長芋）, meaning long potato. Which is thinner and long, less slimy and less sticky, best eaten as salad, in my opinion.



To eat it, we remove the skin and grate it. This is how it looks when grated. Cloud-like mass of stickyness and slimyness. It does not have particularly strong flavour, althought the potato itself has potato-ey smell. If you mix this with Japanese Dashi stock, it becomes a nice slimy soup, which can be eaten with steamed rice mixed with pressed barkey.



This is one of many ways of eating it. I cooked udon noodles in soup and put a drop of slimy potato in it. The potato disolves in the soup and it gives sticky, slimy texture to the soup which makes the noodles to be slimy.

I missed so much Yamato-imo, as I could not find it in England. It makes me feel at home, Japanese home.