Nara’s Zoni (a special soup with Mochi in it that people eat in the morning on the New Year’s Day) has a distinctive character. People in Nara take out Mochi (rice cake) and mix them with Kinako (roasted soybean flour), and eat them.
The yellow Kinako represented the color of gold or rice stalks. People prayed for the great harvest and the happiness by serving Kinakozoni. Kinakozoni is miso-based soup with potatoes, radishes, and Tofu in it.
The ingredients of Zoni are usually cut into round shapes because a round shape symbolizes the peaceful settlement of disputes like family harmony. Therefore, Zoni was regarded as a kind of lucky charm.
<References>
“Yamato’s Food Culture” (Noriko Tomioka by Nara Shimbun)
“Taste of Dating Yamato” (Nara’s Food Culture Study Group Nara Newspaper Company)
<About rice cake of rice cake>
Putting mushrooms in soup and miso tailoring seems to be Kinki 1 yen, but only Nara burns Marugoshi and burns it. In the neighborhood, the northern part of Mie prefecture is Marugonchi but the southern part is horny rice cake. A part of the southeastern part of Wakayama also burns horny rice cake. Kanto baked corner rice cake that cut its habit, it is a soup of soy sauce. There are various ways to celebrate, such as the shape of rice cake, bake or simmer, juice is miso soup only, what kind of ingredients to put in the ingredients, but when asked why, except for the reasons for use of the dumplings and round vegetables It is not very clear.
<Story concerning Kinako>
In ancient Nara, Todaiji had a large stone mill rolling with a water mill transmitted from China, but the common people did not have a stone mill, grains, wheat which is difficult to boil and not suitable for grain food, powder of soybean were valuables. Moreover, the manufacturing technology of this stone mill has not spread after that. Therefore, it was probably from the middle of the Edo period that the hand-rolling stone mill spread out in the middle of the Edo Period when customs that dusted kinako spread to the common people. Perhaps a high class aristocrat, a high priest may have been eating “Konakori noodle”.