Bite-sized potatoes, buckwheat dumplings, hard tofu, round konnyaku. Threaded onto a skewer, painted with miso, and grilled. The skewer stands upright in the hearth and is turned, continuously, so that every face of everything on it cooks evenly.

The turning gave the dish its name. The motion resembles the way a deku puppet in Awa ningyo joruri, the local puppet theater, rotates its head, and deko-mawashi means roughly puppet-turning.

The materials are specific to the place. The potatoes are goshu-imo, a small variety grown in these mountains. The tofu is iwa-dofu, rock tofu, firm enough that a skewer goes through it without the block collapsing, which ordinary tofu would not survive. This is the Iya valley, one of the least accessible parts of Shikoku, and everything on the stick grew or was made within sight of the hearth.

Recipes now exist for making it in an oven or under a grill, and it is served in local primary and middle schools. Nobody is standing over a hearth turning anything by hand in a school kitchen these days. The name goes on describing a motion that has now largely stopped happening, which is how a great many food names end up in the end.