You will love this everyday food so much that you will claim that it is the best Japanese food. And you won’t be the first to make that conclusion. Plus, it’s a dish that’s handy to cook in bulk. For friends or comrades from your sport team. For self to eat also next week. The great thing about Oden is that the second day is even better than the first day. Oden. Obden – in Czech every other day.
All items in oden must keep shape to survive continuous extending.
Oden. The Japanese write this word in the basic alphabet of hiragana. Probably because it’s a simple weekday meal. Even a poorly educated person needs to read the word. And like the ordinary “o ni gi ri”, this food accepts the courtesy prefix “o”. O de n. It’s important food. When oden is written with kanji character, it is immediately obvious that fields are celebrated. The character for the field is a square, divided into four smaller fields. And you can imagine that something good was grown in the fields – rice, konnyaku, soybeans, daikon, gobo or potatoes. They are all common raw materials. Also fish must not be missing in this meal. You find it in the form of fish dumplings. Everything that comes into oden must keep its shape. Oden is a large dashi soup full of various delicacies of various shapes and it all boils slowly with no end to it. This is the case in oden restaurants. Dashi soup from yesterday is simply extended with new dashi and what has been eaten is added too. Who you have been in Japan, you know the useful-handy stores that are open 24 hours a day. You can get food there at any time of the day, night or morning and you will probably choose oden. This soup dish on the counter is gurgling slightly and you just say which delicacies to choose from the pot. There are well over twenty species. They pour the broth over your choice of items and add a heap of karashi mustard and the food is ready. It warms up. It will please. It will strengthen.
Oden is a hearty meal. Athletes also love it. I remember when a kendo team, of which my son was a member, held a dinner together because they welcome their beloved high-ranked teacher. The team considered it a great thing to make oden in a large pot to honor their teacher and the occasion. At first I thought it was no suitable food for such an important gathering. But when I was at the party, I understood that oden is a strength, that oden is a bond, and that it is a great goodness. Goody. Itadakimashou!
Yours, Miyabi Darja
