Cooked rice is mashed, wrapped around a cedar stake, and turned over an open hearth until the surface takes colour. The stake is pulled out. The rice goes into the pot. Kiritanpo is said to have begun as food carried by men working in the mountains, and the shape explains itself: wrapped around a stick, rice travels. The name is usually traced to a padded practice spear that the grilled rice resembles.

The broth is made from Hinai-jidori chicken, a bird kept in this prefecture and slow enough to have flavour. Leek, burdock and maitake mushroom go in, and seri, the water dropwort that in Akita is added roots and all, bringing a smell of earth up through the chicken. The rice sticks cannot go in early; boiled too long they come apart into porridge, and judging that moment is most of the skill in the dish.

Because the staple is already in the pot, there is no separate bowl of rice beside it. The distinction between the dish and the thing you eat it with, which quietly organises most Japanese meals, simply stops applying here. A faint smell of cedar survives the broth, and you notice it late, after the second bowl, when the steam has thinned.

The rice sticks are said to come from around Kazuno; pairing them with Hinai chicken in a pot is credited to Odate, next door. In the snow months, the steam when the lid comes off is worth the journey on its own.