usagi mochi (gyuuhi series)

I've been busy in the kitchen making all kinds of rabbit-shaped confections in celebration of the year of the rabbit, and had meant to post some of them before the end of January. Unfortunately, I used up all the ingredients for the popular Usagi Manju before I could refine the recipe enough to share with you.

So while I wait for my pantry to be restocked, I've been playing around with gyuuhi. Gyuuhi is made from shiratama-ko (glutinous rice flour, sometimes sold as "mochi-ko"), sugar, and water. Confections made with gyuuhi usually have the word mochi in the name. You may remember that I first introduced gyuuhi a year ago, in the post on plum blossom confections.

Gyuuhi is easy to make, tender,and smooth, so using it to cover a ball of filling and shaping it as you please is relatively easy. In today's post, I wrapped the gyuuhi around a ball of koshi-an, and gently patted it into the rabbit shape that is traditional in the world of wagashi (thick in the rear and slimming to a rounded point in the front). Gyuuhi is too tender, however, to use for shaping the bunny ears, facial features, or bunny tail. So I marked the ears and face with a toothpick dipped in red food coloring. This is common in the world of wagashi, but I find it less than aesthetically satisfying.

Ingredients:
Koshi-an (smooth an)......200 grams
Shiratama-ko.............50 grams
Sugar.........................50 grams
water.........................80 cc
katakuri-ko (potato starch)... enough for dusting work surface
tiny bit of red food coloring dissolved in water

(Note: measurement conversions can be found in the plum blossom post)

Directions:
1. Divide the koshi-an into 8 pieces and roll into balls. Set aside.
2. Place shiratama-ko, sugar, and water in a microwaveable bowl and whisk ingredients briskly till there are no clumps at all.
3. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and heat in microwave oven at 500 for 3 minutes.
4. Mix the goo-ified ingredients rigorously with a wooden spoon or spatula, and remove the resulting clump of dough to a katakuri-ko (or cornstarch)-dusted surface.
5. Divide gyuuhi dough into 8 pieces and flatten each into a circle. Place one an ball in the middle of each circle and wrap gyuuhi around the ball.
6. Pat the filled dough into the rabbit shape described above. Dip a toothpick into the dissolved food coloring and press into the "rabbit" at the right places to mark its ears and face.

Give me a couple more weeks, and I should be able to post a recipe for Usagi Manju.

wagashi and the five senses

One of the staff at Obubu Tea drew my attention to the TORAYA website, and I really wanted to share it with you because it has a lovely but concise explanation of how good traditional Japanese confections appeal to the five senses. Check it out! (I borrowed the attached image from the TORAYA website.)

respect-for-the-aged-day (and rakugan confections)

Today we are celebrating Respect-for-the-Aged Day (敬老の日, Keirō no hi), which is a Japanese national holiday to honor elderly citizens. It used to be held on September 15, but now it's held on the third Monday of September so that we can make a long weekend of it (hopefully to use for entertaining our elderly parents and relatives).

Yesterday I was an observer at an event where celebratory confections were being handed out to everyone over seventy. One of these senior citizens, a good friend of mine, pulled a fancy box out of her handbag and asked me if I would like to have it. When she opened it for me, it turned out to be a rakugan confection in the shape of the face of a smiling old woman. My friend was daunted by the size of the thing and didn't care to eat it.

Rakugan is a confection made from a dough of sugar (or sweet syrup) and starchy powder (such as rice powder or potato starch). This is usually shaped into ornate, thumbnail-sized shapes in wooden molds where they become dry and stiff before being tapped out and arranged in pretty boxed collections, most often to accompany the somewhat bitter matcha tea in a tea ceremony. But there are larger versions to give as gifts or display as Buddhist altar offerings on holidays like today.

I'm not a huge rakugan fan (they're too dry and sweet for my taste), so I passed on my friend's offer, but then I thought it might be cool to take a photo and post it at the top for you to see. The photos below show the usual miniature confections in pretty, seasonal shapes. You can find a photo of some rakugan molds in the right column of the blog.

kushi dango w/ 3 sauces

I've posted dango here before in various presentations, but today I thought I'd go with the very traditional presentation of kushi dango, which is dango threaded on bamboo skewers, lightly grilled, and spread with a variety of sauces. The sauces shown in the photo, from left to right are: mitarashi (sweet soy-based), matcha (green tea powder), and goma (black sesame). My recipe of choice for basic dango is the one where silken tofu is mixed with shiramatako: details can be found on my shiratama an'mitsu post.

1. Prepare the wooden skewers by soaking them in water. This will make it easier to thread the balls, and the skewers will be less likely to burn during the grilling process.

2. Make the dango according to directions described in the link above.

3. Thread the boiled-then-chilled balls, four to a skewer, and grill on a wire net over the cooking ring on your stove or over a charcoal fire, only until the balls get slight, but yummy-looking burn marks. (You can even make these burn marks in a frying pan, if you'd rather not grill.)

4. Remove grilled skewered dango from the heat and spread each row of dango with one of the following three toppings (sauce= tare, paste=an).

Mitarashi sauce:
soy sauce...... 2 Tablespoons
white sugar........ 2 Tablespoons (remove any lumps with a sifter)
mirin..........1 teaspoon (optional)
water.........2 Tablespoons
katakuriko (potato starch or corn starch)...1/2 teaspoon

Place soy sauce, sugar, mirin, and water in small cooking pot over medium heat and stir with wooden spoon till the ingredients are well dissolved. When it begins to boil, slowly add katakuriko which has been liquified with a bit of water, and stir into the rest of the ingredients till it becomes clear and thickened. Remove from heat. Spread the sauce over the dango.

Sesame Sauce: Blend black sesame paste (tahini) with sugar and enough water for desired spreadability and flavor.

Matcha paste: Mix a desired amount of green tea powder into store-bought shiro-an (white bean an), and add enough water to get the desired consistency. Or, if you can't get shiro-an, make a soft version of kinton and mix in matcha (powdered green tea) to taste.

Note: In this recipe, grilling the skewered dango is only for aesthetic purposes. You can skip that step if you want. Adjust ingredients for desired consistency and sweetness.

beko mochi

Beko mochi is a simple sweet that was common in Hokkaido when I was a child. Families would make it at home using small wooden molds that might have been passed down for generations. It consists of little more than a steamed dough of two kinds of rice flour sweetened with sugar (white sugar for the white dough; dark brown sugar for the brown dough). It contains no an, and no flavoring other than the sugar.

The Hokkaido version of beko mochi is almost always shaped like a leaf-- part white and part brown. City folk sometimes purchase them from wagashi shops-- more for their nostalgia value than for the flavor or appearance. But in the countryside, grandmas still follow the multi-step procedure of kneading two kinds of rice flour (glutinous and non-glutinous), steaming the dough, kneading again, pressing it into molds, and steaming it again.

I was taught to make beko mochi years ago, when I was working for a small coastal town in southern Hokkaido with a population of 2700. The town's one and only hardware store sold several different kinds of roughly carved wooden molds that charmed me so much, I bought one of each before I even knew what they were for. I haven't made beko mochi since then, and had no real desire to do so, but recently I came across a boxed beko mochi mix that came with its own plastic leaf mold. I bought it with the full intention of making a batch for this blog.... but I never got around to it. Sorry. (Blame this monstrously hot summer.)

So the photos I've posted are of store-bought beko mochi, and the store-bought beko mochi mix. :D

kashiwa mochi

Japan is now in the middle of Golden Week, a series of holidays starting from April 29 and going till May 5. When I was little, May 5 was called "Boys' Day." Various foods and displays that symbolized the parents' prayers and dreams for their sons were the highlight of this festival. And even as a girl, it was exciting to be a part of of the celebrations.

Nowadays, the holiday is called "Children's Day," but the festival retains much of its masculine feel. Typical displays include old-style warrior helmets and armor. This contrasts with March 3 which is officially called "Doll's Day," and is a festival to celebrate the traditional feminine qualities that parents once wished for their little girls. The typical display is dolls dressed in the costumes of the ancient imperial court. I think both festivals are fun, and no amount of indoctrination in political correctness will change that.

One of the sweets traditionally associated with Boy's Day/Children's Day is Kashiwa Mochi. A Dictionary of Japanese Food by Richard Hosking defines it thus: "Round shaped mochi filled with an and wrapped in an oak leaf. It is especially eaten on May 5, Children's Day (formerly Boys' Day), the symbolism being that oak leaves do not wither." (p.74)

Here is a recipe from Denshi Renji de Kantan Wagashi (easy Japanese sweets made with a microwave oven) by Matsui Michiru:

Ingredients:
smooth an (koshi-an, sieved sweet red bean paste)....200 grams
non-glutinous rice flour (johshinko)......200 grams
water............................280 cc
oak leaves.....................8

Directions:
1. Divide the an into 8 portions of equal size and roll each portion into a ball.
2. In a microwave-safe dish, place rice flour and water, mixing them well.
3. Cover the dish and heat in microwave for 4 minutes. Remove dish from microwave, mix contents again, and microwave for 3 more minutes.
4. Remove the dough from the dish and wrap it in a clean, moistened kitchen towel. With the dough wrapped in the towel, knead the dough until it is smooth.
5. Moisten your hands with water and divide the dough into 8 equal portions, pressing each portion gently into an oval shape. Place one an ball in the middle of each dough oval. Fold the dough over the the an ball, sealing the edges .
6. When the dough has cooled, fold an oak leaf over each of the an-wrapped dough balls.



These freeze well. Defrost at room temp when you're ready to serve them.

stuffed kumquats

I'd been saving a bag of kumquats (kinkan) in syrup to serve as a special dessert one of these days. But "one-of-these-days" kept getting postponed, and in the meantime I decided to turn these little bitty citrus fruits into wagashi by stuffing them in a manner not unlike the stuffed dried persimmons I posted a couple months ago. The kumquats were smaller and more fragile than the dried persimmons, so it was a little tricky, but the results were definitely worth it!

Ingredients:
kumquats in syrup, syrup drained and reserved for other use
shiro-an (white bean an)
walnuts, chopped
granulated sugar (optional)

Directions
Pat the kumquats dry and slice them in half, preferably not all the way through, so that the peel is still connected on one side. Stick a fork in the center of the exposed flesh on one side of the halved fruit, and gently tug at it so it all comes out in one piece from the peel. This is surprisingly easy. Do that to the other half, then follow procedure for all the rest of the kumquats.

Remove any seeds, then chop the kumquat flesh. Mix it with an equal amount of shiro-an, and stir a much lesser amount of chopped walnuts into the mixture. Using a teaspoon, stuff the mixture into the two halves of each kumquat, then press the halves together so that they appear whole again. Sprinkle the stuffed kumquats with granulated sugar, and spear with toothpicks to serve. These sweet/bitter treats go great with hot green tea, and just as well with coffee.