A dried magnolia leaf is laid on the fire, miso and spring onion are heaped on it, and that is the entire apparatus. The leaf is broad, thick and slow to burn. As it heats, its own smell moves into the miso, and you take a little at a time onto a bowl of rice.

Winters in Hida were cold enough that food froze in the house. The account handed down is that people set a leaf on the coals of the sunken hearth and warmed frozen pickles and miso on it while they ate. Nothing was plated. The leaf did the work a dish would otherwise have done, and the miso came from a barrel the household had made itself the previous winter. The leaves were salted down in autumn and kept through the year.

Magnolia grows widely, and the leaves have a mild antibacterial property, which is why they were used for wrapping food as well as for serving it long before anyone thought of grilling on one. Seen that way this is less a recipe than a piece of equipment that happened to become a dish. Nothing needs washing afterwards, which was presumably part of the appeal in a house without running water.

The leaf is used once. When the meal is over it goes into the fire. What is left is a curled black rim, which is, inevitably, the thing everyone photographs.