The word Himono means dry foods, especially dried fishes.
As you know, a dried fish(stockfish) has a long storage life and high amount of nutrients. Besides, it has good flavor and it's very cheap. So, it's a essential element of Japanese cuisine.
There are several ways of making Himono such as Maruboshi(drying a fish without removing its gut), Niboshi(boiling a fish before drying), Mirin-boshi(soaking a fish in Mirin before drying) and Hiraki-boshi(removing gut). Among them, Japanese people prefer Hiraki-boshi and it's served in many Japanese restaurants.
There are many kinds of fishes served as Himono such as:
Aji - Hiraki or Mirin-boshi
Sanma - Hiraki or Maruboshi
Hokke - Hiraki
Iwashi - Niboshi or Maruboshi
Especially, Aji and Sanma are extremely popular. You can buy them in any supermarkets at a very low price.
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This is interesting. Are these real school lunches from a public school?
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading my blog!
ReplyDeleteYes, of course they are real ones.
If you're interested in more Japanese school lunches,search the web by the word '給食' which means school lunches in Japanese(maybe in Chinese?,also), like:
http://images.google.co.jp/images?um=1&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&tbs=isch:1&q=%E7%B5%A6%E9%A3%9F&sa=N&start=18&ndsp=18
Japanese school lunches include almost all kind of ingredients and cooking methods; you may eat a fish cooked in Japanese style and meat in Chinese style and Western style vegetable soup at a lunch.Isn't it nice?
If you want to eat Japanese school lunches,there's many restaurants where you can eat genuine Kyushoku in Japan, like:
http://www.kyusyokutoban.com/kyusyoku/index.htm
I'm sorry to say that the site is written in Japanese, but I'm sure you'll enjoy it because it contains many photos.