Tokushima Prefecture
Iya no dekomawashi

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- Main lore areas
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Iya area, Miyoshi City
- Main ingredients used
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Potatoes, konnyaku, tofu, etc.
- History/origin/related events
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Dekomawashi" is a local dish of Iya area in Miyoshi City. Bite-sized potatoes, buckwheat dumplings, rock tofu, and round konnyaku are skewered and grilled with miso sauce. The skewers are placed on the hearth and grilled, turning the skewers in a circular motion so that they cook all the way through. It is said that the name "dekkomawashi" comes from its resemblance to the way the heads of "deku" (wooden dolls) in Awa ningyo joruri (puppet theater) are turned. In the Iya region, a small potato called "zyoshu-imo" is grown, and this is used in the dekomawashi. Iwa-dofu is a type of cotton (momen) tofu that is as hard as a rock, and is also made in the Iya region. It is also suitable for making dekomawashi, which is skewered and grilled. In addition, buckwheat flour is widely produced in the Iya region, as in "Iya soba" (buckwheat noodles), and many of Iya's specialties are used in this dish.
- Opportunities and times of eating habits
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This dish was mainly enjoyed as a home-cooked dish and eaten on a daily basis. It is common to stab the top ingredients in this dish in the following order: zodojumo (sweet potato), tofu, and konnyaku (konnyaku). Since konnyaku was not slippery, it served as a stopper for the ingredients on top. Although the ingredients were the same in each household, it is said that sometimes the dish was made with only zhojyuimono, especially during times when the zhojyuimono harvest was large.
- How to eat
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Prepare the zoshuimono and konnyaku by boiling them, then knead buckwheat flour with water, roll them into a ball, and boil them. These and bite-sized pieces of rock tofu are then skewered on bamboo skewers and grilled on a hearth before being coated with miso sauce and grilled some more. When grilling, the skewers are rotated in a circular motion to ensure that the tofu is evenly cooked.
- Efforts for Preservation and Succession
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Since few households have hearths nowadays, Tokushima Prefecture provides a recipe for "dekomawashi" that can be made in the oven or on the grill in its "Tokushima's Local Cuisine" document. The book is designed to make it easy for people to become familiar with local cuisine. In addition, the dish is sometimes served at school lunches in elementary and junior high schools to pass it on to children.