Recipe - Miso Hotpot - Hōtō

In Japan, I lived in a small rural village in an area that was famous for one particular dish: Hōtō – a kind of miso hotpot. People would come from Tokyo on the weekends just to enjoy this specialty, especially during winter. There was a famous farm-house restaurant nearby where you would sit around an open hearth with a big cauldron of hōtō bubbling away from which you would help yourself with a wooden ladle. The ladies who worked there dressed in traditional country indigo clothes and fussed around us always laughing and making ribald jokes! Sitting around the fire shoulder to shoulder with the other guests, on a snowy winter’s night, and sharing hot sake warmed us up physically and spiritually.

Recipe for Miso Hotpot (Hōtō)

Using about a litre of miso soup (made using the previous recipe for miso soup), you can add any number of ingredients selected from the following recommendations. This is a great recipe for a cold winter’s night when you go to the fridge and rummage about in the vegie crisper to see what’s left before you go shopping tomorrow.

The key ingredients for the right balance are root vegetables; pumpkin; cabbage; mushrooms; spring onions; tofu; wakame; snow peas; and thick wheat noodles.

The special noodles that are traditionally used in this recipe are wheat flour noodles called hōtō noodles. They are a type of udon noodle: udon noodles are now available in most supermarkets in the Asian food section. However, the kind of noodle used traditionally for hōtō is more like extra-wide fettucini, which is what I use instead of the pre-packaged udon noodles. Alternatively, I like to use fresh lasagne sheets, which I cut to the width I want using kitchen scissors. When you use fresh pasta like this you don’t have to cook it – you can just add it to the miso and let it simmer a couple of minutes.

In Japan they have a wonderful variety of mushrooms and use several different ones in hōtō. You can use the shiitake mushrooms that you used for the miso dashi stock. If you can obtain enoki or shimeji or other Japanese varieties, which I have seen recently in gourmet green grocers, then use them for a delicious gourmet touch. However, oyster mushrooms or portobello or swiss brown or champignons are good too.

Regarding the tofu, you need to use a hard tofu so it doesn’t disintegrate when mixed with the other ingredients. Whereas with miso soup I use a very soft “silk” tofu (more about tofu in a blog soon), in hōtō I use chunky squares of deep fried tofu – the kind you get at Asian grocery stores. Otherwise, use the plain “firm” tofu or the fried “Japanese” tofu from the local supermarket.

It is important to use spring onions and not regular onions because the flavour of onions to too strong and is not found at all in shojin ryori. You can replace the spring onions with leeks if you wish but the balance won’t be as delicate. Chives are okay to use, sprinkled on top after cooking.

It is best to steam or boil the vegetables before adding them to the miso, in order to preserve the healthy enzymes in the miso. However, in Japan they do just boil up everything together and serve it when the vegetables are cooked. It certainly makes life easier on Sunday evening when you want something quick and easy.

If you have snow peas, add them right at the end and only cook for a minute or so, until they just wilt a little – this keeps their lovely bright green colour which is so welcome on a wintry night. Ordinary peas are also okay to use.

Essential ingredients:

Thick noodles

Miso soup

Plus any of these ingredients are great in hōtō:

Root vegetables – potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnip

Vine vegetables – pumpkin, zucchini, beans, peas, sugar snap, snow peas

Leafy greens – chinese cabbage, savoy cabbage, white cabbage, silverbeet, spinach

Mushrooms – shiitake from making the miso stock, white mushrooms, portobello, oyster, swiss brown, Japanese varieties

Wakame seaweed – added at the very end when you’re ready to dish up

Tofu – deep fried, firm tofu, supermarket labelled “Japanese” style fried tofu, or specialty Japanese deep fried slices known as “abura-age”

Spring onions (or leeks or chives)

ENJOY!