Japan-wide — nishime as celebration dish with strongest association to New Year osechi
Nishime (煮しめ, literally 'firmly simmered') is the generic term for a range of simmered vegetable and protein preparations traditionally made for New Year (osechi) and large celebrations where the dish must hold up for multiple days. Nishime ingredients: renkon (lotus root, auspicious for 'seeing the future through the holes'), gobo (burdock root, wish for long healthy roots), konnyaku, satoimo (taro — for family multiplying, as the taro mother plant produces many child corms), carrot (for colour), takenoko (bamboo shoot, when in season), shiitake, abura-age, and occasionally chicken. Each ingredient may be simmered separately in the same flavoured dashi to preserve its individual character, then arranged together in the final presentation. The term 'nishime' describes the technique of simmering until the liquid is fully absorbed — the finished vegetables should be coated with glaze, not sitting in liquid.
Sweet-savoury, subtly complex — each vegetable retains its individual character while sharing the common dashi seasoning; the variety of textures (firm burdock, chewy konnyaku, soft taro, crunchy lotus root) across a single dish makes nishime uniquely satisfying
Cook each ingredient separately or at least add in order of cooking time (hard root vegetables first; mushrooms and soft items last); nishime dashi is slightly sweeter than standard nimono dashi (the sweetness helps preservation); cut vegetables into attractive shapes: mentori (chamfered corners on cubes prevent breaking); hana-giri (flower cuts for carrots); the final dish should be plated attractively — nishime is an osechi presentation dish.
Nishime technique for osechi: prepare all vegetables the day before New Year's Eve; the dish improves as it rests, allowing flavours to equalize across different vegetables; the standard osechi nishime is arranged in the lacquer box (jubako) third tier — one of the most colourful layers of the three-tier arrangement; the elaborate knife work for nishime (twisted konnyaku, flower carrots, hexagonal renkon cuts) is worth the effort for the visual impact of the final osechi presentation.
Cooking all ingredients together from the start (root vegetables require significantly longer cooking than mushrooms and tofu — simultaneous cooking produces over-cooked soft items and under-cooked hard items); leaving liquid in the finished dish (nishime should be nearly dry, with glazed vegetables — not a wet braise); under-seasoning for multi-day consumption (nishime should be slightly more assertively seasoned than daily nimono because it is consumed over 3 days).
Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art — Shizuo Tsuji