Imotaki

When the taro comes in and the harvest moon rises, the rivers of Ehime fill with cooking pots. Along the banks — the custom clings especially to the Ōzu area on the Hijikawa river — families and coworkers haul out kettles, build fires on the gravel, and hold imotaki: communal parties of taro stewed in sweet soy, eaten outdoors under a bright autumn moon. It is a real and living regional fixture, and it has an obvious northern cousin. Tōhoku's imoni, the riverside taro-stew gatherings of Yamagata and beyond, do the same thing a thousand kilometers away; imotaki is Shikoku's own answer, sweeter and built on chicken where some northern pots reach for beef and miso.

The cooking is unfussy and forgiving, which suits a dish meant for a crowd. Salt-scrub the peeled taro to shed its slippery coat and keep the broth clear, tear the konnyaku by hand so its ragged edges drink the seasoning, and build a frankly sweet soy-and-mirin broth in the sukiyaki register. The taro simmers until a skewer slides clean and the inside turns creamy as chestnut. Then the whole pot goes to the middle of the table — or the middle of the riverbank — and everyone eats from it together. That communal reach into the same pot, more than any single ingredient, is what makes it imotaki.