お節料理やおせち食材を英語で説明する

おせち料理は、外国人にとって理解しにくいものです。

私たちは、説明されても日本人の感覚で理解できますが、

いざそれを英語で訳すとなると、なかなか難しいものがあります。

 

そんなお節料理やその食材を英語で説明しました。

レストランなどで、メニューの解説欄などに表記しても良いと思います。

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O-sechi foods おせち料理

O-sechi foods are mish-mash of foods historically eaten at the start of the year to pray for a rich harvest, as celebration in samurai homes, or just to ring in the New Year in commoners’homes.

Centred around preserved ingredients, these foods also represented a few days ‘break from cooking chores for housewives over the New Year period. They also reflect the superstition that fire should not be used during the New Year.

O-sechi foods are arranged lavishly and presented beautifully in a multitier serving container known as an o-ju. For many Japanese, these is no New Year without o-sechi.

 

mish-mash: ごたまぜ,寄せ集め

 

Meaningful foods 意味づけのある食材たち

O-sechi foods are not simply a lavish first meal for the New Year.

In fact, each component of the o-ju conveys its own individual wish.

 

Prawns: 海老(えび)

A wish for longevity, due to their long “beards” and wizened stance.

 

Kazu-no-ko (herring roe): 数の子

A wish for many healthy descendants, due to the accumulation of many eggs.

 

Black beans: 黒豆

A desire to work diligently and live healthily (the Japanese word mame can mean “bean”, “diligently” and “healthily”).

 

Konbu kelp: 昆布

A wish for joy (due to its association with the verb “yorokobu”: to be delighted).

 

Lotus root: 蓮根

The holes in lotus root are said to allow one to see the future.

 

Ta-zukuri (small fish cooked down in soy sauce and sugar): 田作り

A wish for a fruitful year. Small fish were once used to fertilise fields.

 

What’s in the fifth tray? 5段重とは?

Formally, an o-ju should have 4 or 5 tiers, but recently the ten dency is for 2 or 3, because people have trouble eating everything otherwise.

The fish, vinegard su-no-mono, grilled items and boiled items go in different places according to established rules.

If the o-ju has 5 tiers, the fifth tray is left empty. It is said that if the tray is filled, there will be no room for anything else. Leaving it empty ensures that there is always space for more happiness.

 

O-zoni お雑煮

O-zoni is a mixed soup customarily eaten on New Year’s Day everywhere in Japan, other than Okinawa, as a wish for safety in the coming year.

An essential component is mochi. There stucky rice cakes, seen as auspicious, have long been eaten in Japan on celebratory or other special days. Traditionally, New Year is welcomed by pounding mocha and offering them along with other produce to the gods that visit happiness upon the year. On New Year’s Day, having been accepted by the gods, these offerings are eaten in o-zoni.

The eaten of o-zoni is accompanied by thanks for the bountiful harvest and safety of the past year, and wishes for the same in the coming year. Along with o-sechi foods, o-zoni is an indispensable part of meals over the New Year’s period.

 

To each, his own 地域によってお雑煮の作り方が違う

The precise content of o-zoni varies between families and across Japan, from the shape of the mocha to the type of stock and ingredients.

In eastern Japan, the general tendency is to use square mocha; in the west, it’s round mochi.

Sometimes the mocha are toasted; sometimes they are boiled. In the Kansai region of western Japan, o-zoni is based on a lightly coloured miso stock; everywhere else in mainland Japan, the overwhelming preference is for a clear soup known as sumashi-jiru.

O-zoni typically includes daikon, carrot and spring onion, but the variations thereon across Japan exhibit the richness of regional produce. For example, in the Tohoku region o-zoni features mushrooms and edible wild plants called sansai; in Niigata, salmon and salmon roe; in chiba, nori seaweed; and in Hiroshima, oysters.

 

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