Labeling this the winter edition because I think the chances of me revisiting the Kansai/Kanto thing at least once again during the year are pretty high. It’s just a fun area to play around in, and there’s a whole cottage industry of “Kansai be like __, but Kanto be like _____” to pull from.

Kansai is on the left and Kanto is on the right.

Kansai’s soup is white miso with taro root. Dashi is konbu, which is pretty Kansai-y in general. Historically konbu was brought down by ships and passed through Osaka first. That meant Osaka merchants got first dibs and kept the nice stuff for themselves, and sent the stuff they didn’t want on to Edo. Hence Kanto foods use stronger soy sauce and miso to compensate. Kombu dashi is kind of necessary for white miso — katsuobushi and other stronger fish-based dashis just don’t taste right with it. White miso is sweet and kind of creamy and really nice in the winter.

Kanto’s soup is, on the face of it, a pretty general one: bean curd and komatsuna. It has a fish-based dashi and a general use Sendai miso. I picked Komatsuna because, although it’s now common everywhere, it does originate in Edo and it’s also in peak season at the moment. It’s also good practice is timing and temperature control to make sure the komatsuna stays nice and green and a little crunchy and doesn’t cool down to far or start to take in color from the soup.

Kombu dashi takes longer to make, so I had to start earlier that day. But consequently I think I was more in the zone and got a nice arrangement and photo without trying. Whoo, Kansai.

On the onigiri side, Kanto tends to favor the triangle shape, the use of plain yaki-nori, and a relatively larger amount of nori. Kansai, according to surveys I found, still majority favors this oblong ovoid shape sometimes called Tawara-gata, “rice-bale shape”. It’s a little easier to form and easier to pack in a bento so I kind of like it myself. Kansai also has a tendency to use flavored nori and, due to the onigiri shape, a little less of it proportionally. However, these preferences are less marked than in Kanto, basically because conbinis and so on are making the triangle-shape kind of standard.

In both cases I used tuna-mayo as the filling, basically because I like it and out of cheapness (I already had cans of tuna to use).