Moro Nitsuke

Moro is nezumizame, the salmon shark, also called mokazame. It is landed off northern Ibaraki, off Fukushima, and off Miyagi, and it is carried inland to Tochigi, which has no coast of its own.

The reason it could travel is that shark meat is slow to spoil. So a shark could reach an inland province at a time when refrigeration and transport were limited. Around the ports themselves it was not especially wanted. Inland it was one of the few fresh sea fish there was. The spiny dogfish came the same way and is called sagambo here.

The cooking is short. Soy sauce, sugar, mirin, sake, and water, with ginger, and the cut pieces simmer over a medium flame for about ten minutes. That is the entire recipe.

Supermarkets in the prefecture sell the cut pieces, and it appears in school lunches. What one coast could not sell became, inland, the taste of home cooking.