Turban shells are washed, then boiled from cold, in the shell. Once cooked they are pulled out and chopped fine, and here is the part that matters: the water they were boiled in becomes the stock. Rice, that liquid, and the chopped shellfish, all cooked together in one pot.

Nothing else goes into the pot. Some households now add carrot or burdock to it, but the dish as it stands is a single ingredient together with its own cooking water.

On the Oki islands it is made into nori rolls and eaten whenever people gather in numbers: the new year, festivals, celebrations, and the days when a group turns out together for farm work. The seaweed used for the rolls is iwanori, the rock nori that the islands are known for, so what you are handed is two local things wrapped around each other and nothing at all brought in from outside.

Sazae are closed to fishing during May and June each year. From July, once the season has opened again, free divers go down for them, and as the catch builds through the summer the price falls and the shellfish start appearing on ordinary tables rather than only on special ones. The whole of this dish rests on a single decision, taken at the sink, which is not to pour the water away.