Osechi
Before the New Year, traditionally, you prepare various kinds of food that has lucky symbolic connotations and keep for a few days without refridgeration, put them in laqured boxes, and it will be the staple diet for the first 3 days of the year, while the shops are all shut. These days, however, many shops and restaurants are open from the 1st or the 2nd, so you don't have to worry about having to eat the same thing again and again. You can also order osechi from department stores or restaurants, to save the hassle of food preparation. A client of my father's has been sending 3-layer osechi boxes every year, and it arrives in the morning of 31 December. This one's for 4 people and cost about 150 pounds. My father just picks what he likes to eat, then his secretary pops in to pick up the rest. (Apparently they do Chinese-style or European-style osechi too. I've just spoken to my sister in London who said she got osechi from Mitsukoshi department store, 40 pounds for 2 people.)
It comes wrapped in furoshiki... (Please excuse my crappy colour correction!)	... complete with 4 pairs of chopsticks for eating, plus another pair for serving.
Top layer Ayu fish (local speciality) with roe, cooked in sweet soy sauce Sweet red plums Salted herring roe (big brown things on the left) Rolled sea eel with burdock root Prawns Tile fish grilled with soy sauce & yuzu vinegared fresh thin ginger (the pink sticks) Fish & veg cake(the yellow ones) Cooked shellfish Sea bream roll with carrot & greens (bottom right) The round things & inside the red & white paper tubes are sweet rice cakes.
Middle layer Sablefish baked with miso & sake lees (that was the word I was looking for the other day...) Plaice & Seaseed rolls "Chrysanthemum-shaped" radish in sweet vinegar (hidden underneath the orange strips, left, which are also radish pieces. Red & white is a colour combination used generally for happy occasions) Pink & yellow fish cakes with prawns, beans and seaweed Chicken rolls with carrot & burdock root pieces Seaweed with herring roes (fish roes are also considered lucky, as they symbolise plenty of offsprings) Roast duck slices Dried kaki fruit (another local speciality) with yuzu flavour Soft boiled sweet prawns Assorted cooked veg: shiitake, lotus root, carrot, butterbur sprout pieces
Bottom layer Cooked squid (in a pine cone shape) Sweet marron puree topped with marrons in brandy Herring wrapped in kombu (seaweed) and cooked in sweet soy sauce Sweet vinegared daikon & carrot strips, with salmon gristle in vinegar too (the white thing underneath the orange thing, middle left.) The little red & white, shell-shaped things are apparently some root veg (original shape!) which I've never seen before. There are several ways or "spelling" the name in kanji, one is "long age happiness" and "happiness prospering thousand-fold", so obviously a very happy veg it is. Salmon and squid pieces marinated in rice malt Matsumaezuke (thin strips of dried squid, kombu, shellfish and daikon marinated in a sake/soy/chilli base.) Sweet black beans (bean="mame", which also means "industrious" :-) Tiny sardines(?) Daikon pieces wrapped in shiso leaves.
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