Nanakusagayu - Rice porridge with seven herbs

During the New Year’s holidays, I ate special dishes and many kinds of sweets with my family, overworking my digestive system. Today I had nanakusagayu or Japanese traditional rice porridge with seven herbs. Usually, it is eaten in the morning on January 7, but I had it for dinner because I eat only fruits in the morning every day.

As this is a nationwide custom, you can find a set of seven herbs in supermarkets. I bought a package with a sheet explaining the origin of the porridge and how to prepare it. According the sheet, this custom came from China and is intended to pray for good health and luck of the year. The porridge gives rest to weary stomach after eating New Year’s dishes to return to the normal diet and supplements nutrition that is apt to lack in winter with shortage of vegetables.

The seven herbs are hakobera (chickweed), gogyo (Jersey cudweed), hotokenoza (Japanese nipplewort), nazuna (shepherd's purse), seri (water dropwort), suzushiro (radish) and suzuna (turnip). Suzushiro is usually called "daikon", and suzuna "kabu." Other herbs are not so common compared with these two. Even though the recipe had an illustration of the herbs, it was difficult to recognize which was which.

The recipe was like this:
(1) Wash the seven herbs, dip them into boiling water for an instant, and chop them into small pieces.
(2) Wash rice, drain it with a strainer, and leave it for about 30 minutes. Put rice and water as 5 to 7 times as much as rice in the pot and heat them.
(3) Reduce heat to low when water starts boiling and cook slowly for 30 to 40 minutes. Be sure not to stir.
(4) When rice becomes soft, season it with salt, add all the seven herbs and cook them until they become tender.

The recipe didn’t describe the amount of rice. Since I didn’t have polished rice, I cooked 90 ml of sprouted brown rice. The porridge looked like this. Maybe I put too little water though brown rice required much more water than polished rice to cook.

Since I hadn’t eaten rice for a long time because of the New Year’s celebration, I enjoyed the familiar taste of brown rice. The tastes of herbs were not very memorable, but I wished the set of seven herbs was sold daily, not just on January 6 and 7, as it was convenient to use.