【Reading】だいこんずし

【English Name】Daikon Zushi

Daikon-zushi is a type of fermented sushi rooted in Ishikawa Prefecture, including Kanazawa City and Hakusan City (around the former Tsurugi Town), belonging to the lineage of narezushi. As a New Year's dish in which daikon radish and dried herring (migaki nishin) are fermented with rice koji, it has been deeply etched into this region's food culture.

Tracing the preparation steps, the dried herring is first soaked overnight in rice-rinsing water to soften it. After the scales are carefully processed, it is cut into pieces several centimeters wide and steeped in sake. Meanwhile, the daikon is cut, skin on, into rounds about 2 cm thick, with slits cut into the sides into which the herring is inserted. The pickling process, adding rice koji, julienned carrot, kelp and red chili pepper, is carried out mainly from November to January. In the traditional pickling method, lactic acid bacteria are said to multiply rapidly within three days of preparation, and after 15 days the dish becomes rich in amino acids and its umami increases markedly.

Compared with kabura-zushi, the representative fermented sushi of the same prefecture's Kaga region, daikon-zushi stands out for being made with familiar, accessible ingredients. Whereas kabura-zushi has been prized as a gift, daikon-zushi has a strong character as a common, everyday taste eaten in each household. Incidentally, a dish of the same name is also handed down in the northern Hida region (Gifu Prefecture), but its method of finely chopping the daikon and combining it with fried tofu differs greatly from the Ishikawa version, and it is positioned as a separate regional dish with a different origin and lineage.