Oyaki - My favorite buns from Nagano Prefecture

When it is autumn or winter, I often feel like eating hot Chinese buns stuffed with vegetables. I have eaten such buns in Taiwan, a paradise for vegans and vegetarians. But here in Japan, I have never seen them sold in shops or department stores. Convenience stores are now selling Chinese buns but most of them contain meat. The only plant-based bun is the one stuffed with adzuki bean paste.

So, I was very glad to see Japanese vegetable buns sold in a supermarket yesterday. They are called “oyaki”, a specialty in Nagano Prefecture. Oyaki are wheat flour buns stuffed with vegetables seasoned with miso paste or soy sauce. Usually they are white, but what I saw there were green buns. I got curious and bought two kinds of them. One was “mushroom”, and the other was “kiriboshi”.
Both were vegan.

I steamed them at home tonight. As they looked the same, I forgot which was which. I divided one of them in two. It was oyaki with kiriboshi (abbreviation for kiriboshi-daikon) or dried radish strips.

Kiroboshi-daikon originally looks like this. These strips are often cooked or used for soup. Like dried fruits, radishes become sweeter when dried. Besides, kiriboshi-daikon has much dietary fiber and much more calcium, iron, vitamin B1 and B2 compared with fresh radishes. It also keeps a long time and is convenient to use.

Kiriboshi oyaki contained also mushrooms, carrots, and deep-fried tofu and was seasoned with soy sauce and sugar. The radish strips had firmness that I had expected and tasted good.

The other oyaki was stuffed with mainly mushrooms. It reminded me of autumn in mountainous Nagano Prefecture.

While eating these two buns, I felt a taste of fresh green leaves all the time. It surely was the taste of nozawana or turnip greens, which was mixed in the wheat flour and made the buns green. Nozawana is also a specialty in Nagano Prefecture. In fact, its taste was more impressive than that of the filling. It was unique, and I liked it very much.