野沢温泉の山菜狩りツアーを楽しんだ後、その晩に泊まる宿に調理ができたら良いと思われますよね。実は、それは出来る宿があります。大手ホテルには難しいでしょうけど、親切にやってくれる小さな宿は野沢温泉にあります。前もって打ち合わせした方が良いし、対応できない忙しい日もあるでしょうけど、聞いてみる価値がある。
私は今回の野沢温泉の旅でお世話になった宿がハウスサンアントンでした。若旦那の建策君が料理長でもいる。彼らがプロデュースする料理は「素朴で暖かいヨーロッパの家庭料理を中心に、オーストリアでの長い生活経験を生かしさらに研究を重ねた手作り料理」だそうです。その中で野沢の周辺の山で採れる山菜を取り組むのが好きそうです。お客さんが山菜狩りから持って来るのを調理して、その晩の夕食に出すように協力が出来ると言う。
これは北信の最高な楽しみ方： お昼は山菜狩り体験、夜はその採ってきた山菜が入っている夕食を食べて、尚且つ野沢の本格的な温泉お湯でぽかぽかになる。お勧めです！
After a sansai gathering tour, wouldn't it be great if you could take your harvest to the inn you're staying at and have the chef prepare the sansai and serve it for your dinner? Actually, there are inns that will do that for you. Larger hotels might not have the flexibility, but some smaller inns will gladly provide that service. It's best to inquire ahead of time, and the chef might not be able to accommodate such a request during peak times, but it's worth checking out.
On my recent trip to Nozawa, the inn I visited was Haus St. Anton. The chef, Kensaku-san, specializes in European home-style cooking based on his many years of living in the Austria Alps. But he enjoys incorporating sansai from the Nozawa Onsen mountains into his cuisine. And he told me he would be willing to have guests bring their own sansai and he would prepare it and serve it to them at dinner.
That would make for a perfect trip to Northern Nagano -- enjoying a sansai gathering tour then having your inn serve the sansai you picked at dinner, followed by a soak in the famous Nozawa Onsen hot spring mineral waters. I highly recommend it!
Haus St. Anton also has a jam-making operation. They have a shop on Nozawa Onsen's main market street.
