伝統文化を知る

宙ちゃんの「伝統文化一直線」　第１８回　鍋こそ和食の華（下）

近藤宙時＝日本伝統文化検定協会理事

大市の○（まる）鍋

地域鍋に続く今回のテーマは、宙ちゃんが勝手に選んだ京都三大鍋料理。いずれも京都でなければ生まれ得なかった究極の鍋です。

飲食業は廃業率が最も高い業種で、一般的に開業してから３年のうちに７割が閉店し、１０年もつ店は１割にすぎないともいわれます。競争の激しい京都で数百年もの間、厳しい要求に応え続け、磨かれ続けて来た老舗は、もはや存在自体が奇跡と言いたいくらいです。その京都の老舗には、独自の鍋料理だけで生き残ってきた名店も少なくありません。

まずご紹介するのは「鳥彌三（とりやさ）」の「水炊き」です。四条大橋を西に越えて木屋町通を南に下った高瀬川沿い。坂本龍馬も通ったという木造総２階建ての堂々たる店構えです。水炊きと言っても、鍋に張ってあるのは水ではなく、鶏ガラだけを３日間も強火で炊き込んだ白無垢（むく）のようなスープ。まずはこのスープが、ほんの少し塩をして供されます。これが甘いも辛いもない、滋味そのものの味。芳醇（ほうじゅん）な喉超しは実にまろやかですっきりとしています。鶏の臭みなど全くなく、おなかが鳴ってしまうような香ばしさが鼻を通っていきます。あっという間に飲み干し、ついついお代わりをしたくなります。

鍋の主役は「丹波のぢどり」と「名古屋コーチン」の生後約3カ月までの雌鳥の骨付き肉。ポン酢を付ければ、スープで旨（うま）味を増した鶏肉本来の肉の味が口に広がり、すーっと消えていきます。気が付けば、とうに満腹。それでも、骨付き肉とシイタケなどの出汁（だし）でさらに旨さを増したスープにご飯を入れ、卵でとじた雑炊の誘惑には勝てません。夏には京名物の川床もしつらえられ、川風に涼みながらの鍋も楽しめます。

二つ目は、まさに日本でここだけの鍋。三十三間堂に程近い「わらじや」の「うなべ」です。豊臣家滅亡のきっかけとなる鐘で有名な方広寺の大仏を発願した太閤秀吉が、建立具合を見に来るたびに草鞋（わらじ）を脱いだのが店名の由来とされ、大草鞋が掛けられた入口は千利休もうなるほどに寂びています。

太い木を井桁に組んだ鍋敷きに焦げが付くほど熱せられた鍋でぐつぐつと音を立てているのは、スッポン仕立ての透明なスープ。主役は他に例を見ない、筒切りのウナギです。どうやって骨を抜くのか分かりませんが、あらかじめ焼いた身は皮も香ばしく、口に入れた途端、かすかに酸味と辛みのあるスープに溶けて喉を流れていきます。濃厚な旨味とタイにも負けない端麗さを持つウナギ本来の味を堪能できるよう、付け合わせは焼いたネギに庄内麩（ふ）と春雨のみ。店では「お吸い物」と呼ぶように、食欲を満たすと言うより、食欲をかき立てる鍋です。そして、いやが上にもかき立てられた食欲を満たしてくれるのが、続いて出される「うぞふすい」です。

こちらは、普通にさばいて白焼きにしたウナギと、シイタケ、ゴボウ、ニンジン、三つ葉にお餅が入った卵とじの雑炊。鍋の残り汁ではなく、このために取ったスープで作ります。筒切りとは違うウナギのかみ心地と風味を卵が優しく包み、淡泊でいて満たされる味わい。米の底力に感謝しつつ、食べ進むほどに旨味が濃くなっていきます。運が良ければ、「陰翳礼讃」でこの老舗の風情をめでた谷崎潤一郎よろしく、釿（ちょうな）だけで作られた「一炉庵」という三畳台目の茶室で、天井の網代（あじろ）のあやなす美を鑑賞しながら名物鍋を堪能できます。

最後の三つ目は、二条城の奥に元禄年間からひっそりとたたずみ、志賀直哉「暗夜行路」、川端康成「古都」など数々の文学作品にも描かれた「大市（だいいち）」の「○（まる）鍋」です。○とはスッポンのこと。柔らかい甲羅の丸さが由来です。この店の○は、浜名湖にある５０ｍプール４１０個分という大市専用の広大な養殖池で、タイの身ともうわさされる特別な飼料で数年かけて育てられ、臭みが全くありません。

その○を一口大に切り分け、○で別に出汁を取った醤油ベースの濃厚なスープへ。備長炭ではなくコークスを使い、１６００℃以上という料理界きっての高温で一気に炊き上げます。土鍋は特製の信楽焼。実際に店で使うまでに酒や出汁を1カ月ほどなじませ、鍋を育てるのだとか。それでも高温に耐え切れず、１００回も使えば割れてしまうといいます。

底がまだ赤く光っている鍋の中で煮られた○の肉の芳醇なことといったら、表現のしようがありません。スープにも砂糖など入れていないはずなのに、後味には旨い肉だけが持つ蜂蜜のような香り高い甘さが広がります。ご飯のお供に最高の濃い味ですが、この鍋だけで食が進みます。真っ赤に焼けた鍋が供されるのは２回。それでも足りず、追加の鍋が来るのを今か今かと待ち、目の前に置かれた瞬間に箸を伸ばしている自分にあきれながら、顔は自然にほころんでいます。締めの雑炊の旨さは言うまでもないでしょう。日本人に生まれ、○鍋に出会えた幸運を感じざるを得ません。

実は「人生最後の晩餐（さん）は、とある店の茶漬け」と早くから決め、家人にもその店にも伝えているのですが、この○鍋も捨て難く、「○鍋の後にあの茶漬けで締めよう」などと、ぜいたくな妄想を楽しんでいます。

今回紹介した京都の三大鍋料理は、店構え、しつらえ、庭など、料理以外でも日本の伝統文化を感じさせてくれます。この席にあの文豪が座ったかもしれない。あの偉人はこの鍋を食べてどんな顔をしたのだろうか。そんな想像を巡らせる調味料まで付いてきます。ちなみに大市の玄関には、幕末の動乱を記憶する刀傷が今も残っています。

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【English version】

Chu-chan's ‘Traditional Culture in a Straight Line’ Vol. 18 Nabe is the flower of Japanese cuisine (Part 2)

Kondo Chuji = Director, Japan Traditional Culture Certification Association

Daichi's ○ (round) hot pot

Following on from the regional hot pots, this year's theme is the three major Kyoto hot pot dishes, chosen by Chu-chan on her own initiative. They are all ultimate nabe dishes that could only have been created in Kyoto.

The restaurant industry has the highest rate of business closures, with 70% of restaurants closing within three years of opening and only 10% lasting ten years. In the fiercely competitive city of Kyoto, long-established establishments that have continued to meet the most exacting demands and have been continuously refined over several hundred years are almost a miracle of existence themselves. Many of Kyoto's long-established restaurants have survived solely on their own unique nabe cuisine.

The first dish to be introduced is mizutaki at Toriyasa. It is located along the Takase River, west of the Shijo Ohashi Bridge and south down Kiyamachi Dori. The imposing wooden two-storey building is said to have been frequented by Ryoma Sakamoto. Mizutaki may be called mizutaki, but what is in the pot is not water, but a white muku-like broth made by cooking only chicken bones over high heat for three days. First, this soup is served with just a little salt. This is neither sweet nor spicy, but tastes like nourishment itself. The mellow taste is very mild and clean. There is no smell of chicken at all, but a savoury flavour that makes your stomach rumble. You will drink it all up in no time and be tempted to have more.

The star of the nabe is the bone-in meat of the Tanba Jidori and Nagoya Cochin hens up to about three months old. With a dash of ponzu (Japanese sauce made from ponzu citrus juice), the original flavour of the chicken meat, enhanced by the broth, spreads in your mouth and disappears quickly and easily. Before you know it, you are already full. Even so, it is hard to resist the temptation to try the zosui (rice porridge), in which rice is added to the soup, which is further enhanced by the meat on the bone and the dashi (soup stock) from shiitake mushrooms and other ingredients, and then mixed with an egg. In summer, the famous kawadoko (riverbeds) are set up in Kyoto, where you can enjoy hot pots while cooling off in the river breeze.

The second is a nabe that is unique in Japan. Unabe’ at Warajiya, close to Sanjusangendo. The name of the restaurant is said to derive from the fact that Taikoh Hideyoshi, who commissioned the Great Buddha statue at Hokoji Temple, famous for the bell that triggered the downfall of the Toyotomi family, took off his straw sandals every time he came to see how the statue was built, and the entrance with its huge sandals is so deserted that even Sen no Rikyu would be enchanted.

A clear soup made from spoon-feed noodles is simmering in a pot that has been heated to the point of scorching on a thick wooden pot stand. The star of the show is the unparalleled tube-cut eel. I don't know how the eel is boned, but the pre-cooked meat, with its fragrant skin, melts into the slightly sour and pungent broth and flows down your throat as soon as you put it in your mouth. To enjoy the original flavour of the eel, which is as rich and delicious as that of the Thai eel, the only accompaniments are grilled spring onions, shonai fu and harusame (bean-starch vermicelli). As the restaurant calls it ‘osuimono’ (soup), it is a nabe that stirs up the appetite rather than satisfies it. The next dish that satisfies the appetite that has been stirred up is the ‘uzofusui’.

This is a zosui (rice porridge) with egg and rice cake, which is made from eel that has been sliced and grilled, shiitake mushrooms, burdock root, carrots, mitsuba and mitsuba. It is made with the broth taken for this purpose, rather than the leftover broth from the nabe. The egg gently envelops the eel's chewiness and flavour, which is different from that of the tube slices, and the flavour is light but satisfying. Thanks to the underlying power of the rice, the more you eat, the more intense the flavour becomes. If you are lucky, you can enjoy the speciality hotpot while admiring the beauty of the ceiling ajiro (a kind of paper mesh) in a three-tatami-mat tea room called Ichiroan, made entirely of tannadai, in the manner of Junichiro Tanizaki, who described the atmosphere of this old shop in his book In-ei Raisan (Praise for In-ei).

The third and final restaurant is Daiichi, which has been quietly located behind Nijo Castle since the Genroku era (1688-1704) and has been depicted in numerous literary works, such as Shiga Naoya's ‘The Dark Night's Road’ and Kawabata Yasunari's ‘Ancient Capital’. Maru’ refers to a soft-shelled turtle. The name derives from the roundness of the soft shell. The fish at this restaurant is raised for several years in a vast aquaculture pond on Lake Hamana that is 410 times the size of a 50-metre swimming pool, using a special feed that is rumoured to be the meat of a Thai fish, and has absolutely no odour.

The fish is cut into bite-size pieces and cooked in a thick soy-sauce-based broth made separately from the fish. The fish is cooked at once at a high temperature of over 1600°C, the highest temperature in the culinary world, using coke instead of binchotan. The earthenware pots are specially made Shigaraki-ware. The pot is allowed to soak up the sake and broth for about a month before it is actually used in the restaurant. Even so, the pot cannot withstand the high temperatures and is said to break after 100 uses.

There is no way to describe the richness of the meat boiled in the pot, which is still glowing red at the bottom. There is no sugar in the soup, but the aftertaste is fragrant and sweet, like honey, which only good meat has. It has a strong flavour that is perfect as an accompaniment to rice, but this hotpot alone is enough to make your meal go faster. The red hotpot is served twice. I am waiting for more nabe to arrive, and the moment they are placed in front of me, I find myself reaching for my chopsticks, my face naturally smiling. The deliciousness of the zosui (rice porridge) at the end goes without saying. I can't help but feel how lucky I am to have been born a Japanese and to have encountered this nabe.

In fact, I decided early on that the last supper of my life would be chazuke at a certain restaurant, and I have told my wife and the restaurant about it, but I can't give up on this nabe, and I enjoy my extravagant fantasies, thinking about finishing the meal with that chazuke after the nabe.

The three major nabe dishes in Kyoto introduced this time give a sense of traditional Japanese culture outside of the cuisine, such as the restaurant layout, the decoration and the garden. That great writer may have sat in this seat. What would that great man have looked like after eating this nabe? It even comes with seasonings that make you imagine such things. Incidentally, the entrance to Oichi still bears a sword scar that remembers the upheavals at the end of the Edo period.