Hirara means a flat stone. The stone goes on the hearth, and a low circular wall of miso is built around its edge, like a dyke. Water, sugar, and sake go inside the wall. Then it heats, slowly, for around three hours.

That interval is not waiting time. It takes that long for a stone of any size to come up to temperature, and the traditional use of the gap was to walk out and get the food: amego, the local river trout, plus mountain vegetables from the slopes. The gathering is inside the recipe. You start cooking before you have anything to cook.

It belongs to the Iya valley in Miyoshi, deep in the mountains of Tokushima, and it was originally made outdoors on stones lifted from the riverbed. Fish, sansai, konnyaku, tofu, laid onto the hot surface as it comes ready.

Now there are versions for an electric griddle, and it is served in local primary and middle schools. I keep thinking about whoever did that conversion. Somebody took a dish whose defining feature is three hours of heating a rock and fitted it into a school lunch period. Something is certainly lost in that translation, and the dish itself goes on existing, which is the trade.