KitchenNippon

Ingredients for 4 Servings

Sweet potatoes (さつまいも / Satsuma imo) 1 (large, about 450 g)
Gardenia (くちなし / Kuchinashi) 1
Apple juice (りんごジュース / Ringo jūsu) 100 ml (100% juice)
Reduced amazake* (煮詰め甘酒 / Nizume amazake) 3 tbsp (reduced)
Salt (塩/ Shio) 1/4 tsp

Apple (りんご / Ringo) 1/4 (about 70 g)
Apple juice (りんごジュース / Ringo jūsu) 1 tbsp
Salt (塩/ Shio) Pinch

* Make reduced amazake by adding 4 1/2 tbsp of amazake to a small pot and heating until the amazake is reduced to 2/3 of the original amount.

How to Make
1. Cut the sweet potatoes into 2-cm rounds and skin them, taking a bit of the potato off just beneath the skin, as well. Soak the rounds in water. Break up the gardenia and stuff it into a tea filter pack.
2. Fill a pot with plenty of water and bring it to a boil. Add the tea filter pack and sweet potato rounds. Boil the rounds until they are soft, then drain off the water. Return the sweet potato rounds to the pot and mash them. Add the apple juice, reduced amazake, and salt. Put the pot on low heat and mix.
3. Cut the apple into quarter rounds. Place these in a bowl, add a pinch of salt, and mix. Drizzle on the apple juice. Cover the bowl with a piece of plastic wrap and heat the bowl in a microwave oven for 2 minutes.
4. Combine the mashed sweet potatoes and apple quarter rounds in a mixing bowl and serve.

Significance of Kinton as an Osechi Dish
Kinton is written with the Chinese characters金団. 金 (kin) means gold, 団 (ton) refers to a group – often of people, but this character is also used in the word “futon” (布団), which might literally be interpreted as cloth that has been grouped. Kinton (金団) refers more specifically to gold dumplings (金の団子 kin no dango) or a golden quilt (金の布団 kin no futon). And these in turn are metaphors for gold nuggets or ingots (金塊 kinkai), or the gold coins (flat ovals) used from around 1600 to 1867 in Japan. Kinton, therefore, symbolizes financial good fortune (金運 kin-un) or good luck in competition (勝負運 shōbu-un).

Recipe Developed by Chef Machiko Tateno