wagashi

Botamochi for spring, Ohagi for fall: Sweet Japanese rice and bean cakes

maki — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:31:05 +0200

[From the archives: Today (September 23rd) is the first day of the fall o-higan (お彼岸), when ohagi or botamochi are offered to ones ancestors, as well as oneself! My mother and my grandmother always made these at home around this time of year - I love their not-too-sweet stickiness. O-higan ends on the 26th, so if you like wagashi, why not give these a try? Originally published March 2007.]

The seven days centered around the bi-annual days of the vernal equinox is a Buddhist festival period known as higan (or o-higan for the honorific term) in Japan. The fall (autumn) higan is aki no higan, and the spring higan is haru no higan. Since the day of the spring equinox is March 21, we’re about to enter the haru no ohigan period.

During haru no higan, a sweet confection called botamochi is eaten. The mochi part means sticky, pounded rice, and the bota part comes from botan, or the tree peony. Botamochi is supposed to ressemble a tree peony flower.

During the autumn equinox (aki no higan or simply (o)higan)) period, a very similar confection called ohagi is eaten. This is supposed to look like a hagi or bush clover flower (Latin: Lespedeza thunbergii). Botamochi and o-hagi look the same to me, even though a hagi flower looks nothing like a tree peony flower, but the good old ancestors were probably a lot more imaginative than I am.

Botamochi and o-hagi are made of sticky rice and sweet tsubuan, ‘chunky-style’ sweet azuki bean paste. They are a bit fiddly to make but not difficult, especially if you use one of my favorite cooking helpers, plastic cling film. Since these are best eaten freshly made, it’s well worth the effort to make them at home if you like bean-based Japanese sweets. You can adjust the amount of sugar in the tsubuan to your taste. Here I have made three variations: coated with black sesame seeds; coated with kinako (toasted soy bean powder); and the most traditional form with the rice cake wrapped in a layer of the tsubuan.

Botamochi or Ohagi: Sweet Japanese rice and bean cakes

This makes quite a lot of botamochi/ohagi about 2 inches / 5 cm or so long. If this is too much, halve the ingredients. They also freeze very well - see Notes below.

By ‘cup’ here I mean the measuring cup that comes with a rice cooker, which has a capacity of 180ml. As long as you keep the same proportions you can use larger (e.g. American size, which is about 220ml) cups too.

For the mochi part:

1 cup regular white uruchimai or Japanese / japonica rice (the kind used for sushi and so on)
2 cups white mochimai or sweet rice (see Looking at Rice if you’re confused about which rice is which. You cannot substitute any other kinds of rice for this.)
About 2 cups of water (or the amount indicated for your rice cooker)

The tsuban:

1 batch of tsubuan

The kurogoma or black sesame coating:

3-4 Tbs. black sesame seeds
1 Tbs. superfine white sugar
pinch of salt

The kinako coating:

2-3 Tbs. kinako (available at Japanese groceries and some healthfood stores)
1 Tbs. superfine white sugar
pinch of salt
Extra water for forming the dumplings

Equipment needed:

rice cooker (you can cook the rice in a pot, but a rice cooker is much easier)
plastic wrap / cling film (however you call it in your neck of the woods)

The day before, wash the rice well, and wash and sort the azuki beans. Soak the azuki beans and the rice (separately) in enough water to cover, overnight or at least 8 hours. Drain well.

Make the tsubuan following these directions.

Cook the rice in a rice cooker in the normal way, with the indicated amount of water for 3 cups of regular rice.

In the meantime, toast the sesame seeds in a small frying pan until the seeds begin to pop. Remove from the pan into another bowl and mix well with the sugar and salt.

Mix together the kinako and the sugar and salt in another bowl.

While the rice is still warm not not burning hot anymore, put it in a large ziplock plastic bag. Close the zip, pushing out as much air as possible. Pound the rice and squeeze it and knead it until it’s sort of half-crushed (it’s mostly paste but you can still see some rice grains in there). This state is called hantsuki, or half-beaten, mochi. Let cool a bit in the bag.

Divide the mochi into 24 or so equal pieces.

To make the kinako-coated dumpling: flatten a piece of mochi on a sheet of plastic wrap, trying to make the edges a bit thinner than the middle, with moistened fingers. Put a teaspoonful or so of tsubuan in the middle. Carefully gather up the mochi around the filling (just like you’d do with onigiri) to form a sort of oval-shaped ball, completely enclosing the tsubuan filling. (This oval shape is called tawara-gata, or rice bale shape.) Roll the dumpling well in the kinako-mix. You may need to roll it 2 or 3 times since the kinako tends to sink in to the rice.

Make the sesame coated dumplings in the same way. To make the sesame stick better you may need to lightly moisten the surface of the dumpling.

To make the tsubuan-coated dumplings, make a small oval-shaped ball with the mochi. Spread some tsubuan on a piece of plastic wrap, and gather up the plastic to make a ball. If the dumpling looks funny you can adjust it a bit after unwrapping it from the plastic wrap.

Serve with green tea, preferably while gazing at some beautiful spring (or fall) scenery.

Notes

In the photo at the top, I’ve presented the botamochi in a lacqured black wooden box. In the second picture the dumplings are on a black ceramic plate. Black seems to suit these better than white.

The traditional way of making this half-beaten mochi is to grind it in a suribachi, but the pounding on the plastic bag method is much easier, requires no cleanup and lets out your aggressions. (Web developers: imagine it’s a difficult client’s face and punch away.)

These do not keep well in the refrigerator since the rice hardens up, so keep in a cool place until it’s time to eat them. They can be frozen successfully though: just wrap them individually in plastic wrap, and defrost at room temperature or nuke in the microwave for about a minute per dumpling (depending on the wattage of your microwave).

I find that adding a bit more salt to the tsubuan for this makes the dumplings tastier.

Yatsuhashi, Cinnamon sweets from Kyoto

maki — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:43:11 +0200

Just about anyone who takes a trip to the historical city of Kyoto goes home bearing a box of yatsuhashi　（八つ橋）, a small delicate sweet that is flavored with nikki or cinnamon. While I am not from Kyoto, I get a fit of nostalgia for yatsuhashi on occasion. Fortunately they aren’t that hard to make at home.

Yatsuhashi, which means ‘eight bridges’, come in two basic forms: nama or ‘raw’ yatsuhashi which are soft, and yaki yatsuhashi which are hard and cookie like. Nama yatsuhashi, pictured below, are soft, thin squares of cinnamon scented mochi (sticky rice) dough, folded into a triangle with a filling of sweet azuki bean paste (tsubuan).

Like other mochi-based sweets, yatsuhashi are totally gluten-free, so if you are gluten intolerant you might want to try these out. They also happen to be more or less fat free and vegan too. (They are definitely not sugar-free though!)

Really traditional yatushashi calls for nikki sui or cinnamon water, but ground cinnamon is much easier to get a hold of so that’s what I’ve used here. I have also used natural or raw cane sugar for additional flavor.

Some notes about this recipe

You might hate me for this if you are in the U.S., but as a departure from my usual practive I’m only giving you metric weight measurements here. Because so little of each ingredient is needed, accuracy is very important. Fortunately most modern scales can switch from metric to imperial measurements and vice versa, and a good scale is really a good thing to have if you do any kind of baking, not to mention portion control!_

I’ve given two dough recipes here. One uses mochiko or sweet/glutinous rice flour only. Mochiko or the Chinese equivalent which is usually labeled “glutinous rice flour” seems to be quite widely available at Asian grocery stores and health food stores. Most Japanese recipes for yatsuhashi call for a mixture of medium-grain rice flour (joushinko) and sweet rice flour, but when I used this mixture for mitarashi dango I got a lot of comments and emails that it was hard to get the joushinko. Note that the amount of water is a bit different when you use 100% mochiko vs. a mix of mochiko and joushinko.

Recipe: Nama Yatsuhashi

This amount of dough makes about 12 small yatsuhashi, or a batch of baked yatsuhashi. For maximum cinnamon flavor, make sure to use fresh cinnamon powder!

Dough - Mochiko or glutinous rice flour only version:

100g mochiko or glutinous rice flour
60g raw cane sugar or light brown sugar (in Japan use wasanontou （和三温糖）)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
85g (85cc) water

Dough - Mochiko and joushinko mixture version:

40g joushinko
60g mochiko
60g raw cane sugar or light brown sugar (in Japan use wasanontou （和三温糖）)
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
95g (95cc) water

Other ingredients:

3 Tbs. kinako (ground toasted soybeans)
1 Tbs. ground cinnamon, plus extra for sprinkling
3-4 Tbs. tsubuan or other filling (see notes below for suggestions). You can make your own tsubuan, or buy cans or bags at a Japanese grocery store.

Measure your ingredients accurately!

Mix the dry ingredients together well with chopsticks or a fork, add the water and mix very well. It will be rather loose and sludgy.

Microwave on HIGH for 1 minute. Take out and mix well again - most of the moisture would have been absorbed.

Put back in the microwave and cook on HIGH for 1 minute 30 seconds. Take out and mix again. At this stage it will form a rough ball and more or less clear the sides of the bowl.

Spread a large piece of heat-proof plastic wrap (like Saran Wrap) on your working surface, and turn the dough out on it.

Wrap the dough up in the plastic.

Knead the dough several times, using the plastic wrap as a heat barrier and to prevent sticking between you, the working surface and the dough. This kneading is very important to ensure the dough is smooth and pliable. You may have to open the plastic wrap and re-shift the dough a few times. Keep kneading until the dough is smooth and shiny.

The dough here is almost ready - it just needs a few more kneading turns to make it totally smooth.

Mix the 3 Tbs. of kinako and 1 Tbs. of cinnamon, and use this as the dusting ‘flour’ to roll out the dough as thinly as possible. It helps to use more plastic wrap to prevent sticking here. If you have trouble getting it thin enough, try dividing the dough and rolling out smaller pieces.

Cut the dough into 10 to 12 squares. Wet two sides, fill with about 1/2 tsp. of filling, fold up into a triangle and press hard to seal. I then like to coat them again in the kinako-cinnamon powder mix, and dust on extra cinnamon to serve, but this is optional.

Green tea is the perfect accompaniment to these.

Filling notes

If you can’t get or make tsubuan, you can try:

Sweet white bean paste
Nutella - this really fits!
Peanut butter mixed with a little sugar
Apricot jam

If filling the dough doesn’t work, you can just spread the filling of your choice on top of a flat piece and pop it in your mouth.

Baked yatsuhashi cookies

You can use the dough to make little cinnamon flavored cookies that are, of course, gluten and fat free.

Just cut the thinly rolled out dough into squares, or fancy shapes with cookie cutters.

Bake in a 170°C/335°F oven for 15 minutes, then turn the heat off and leave the cookies in there for an additional 15 minutes. The cookies may or may not puff up, but either way they will be very crispy. You can optionally sprinkle them with additional cinnamon or cinnamon sugar while still warm.

Strawberries, tsubuan, ice cream

maki — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:31:44 +0200

There are some food combinations that you think just shouldn’t belong together, but do so well. Strawberries with sweet beans? Surely not, you think, until you taste an ichigo daifuku - a strawberry wrapped in some azuki an and thin gyuuhi, a dough made of rice. I’ve had ichigo daifuku on my mind lately but have been too lazy to make the dumplings. This is a very easy alternative. Arguably it’s even better.

You need some tsubuan, sweet azuki beans that have been roughly mashed. I recommend my not-so-sweet tsubuan, which is easy to make in batches; extras can be frozen. Or use storebought—you can find it at Japanese groceries.

You also need some ripe strawberries, which are in season now around here, marinating them in balsamic vinegar.

Put about 2 tablespoons of tsubuan in a bowl, and top with about 4 (or more) spoonfuls of sliced strawberries, with plenty of the syrup that it’s in. Top with a little, or a lot, of vanilla ice cream, made with soy milk or cow’s milk, whichever you prefer. (In this case I prefer a soymilk ice cream, which seems to fit better.) Let the ice cream melt over everything while you eat.

It’s a cool yet quite filling snack for a warm day.

Kuzumochi, a cool sweet summer dessert

maki — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:11:04 +0200

I wrote about the use of kuzu powder in the goma dofu (sesame tofu) recipe. This time it’s a very traditional, simple sweet dish using kuzu.

Kuzumochi are sticky ‘mochi’ cakes made with just kuzu powder, sugar and water. The texture is somewhere in between gelatin and mochi made from rice flour - wobbly but not too sticky. It’s traditionally served chilled, so it makes an interesting, gluten free (and vegan) summer dessert.

Recipe: Kuzumochi

100g (3 1/2 oz.) kuzu powder (you really can’t substitute anything else here, e.g. arrowroot or cornstarch - neither have enough body)
50g (1 3/4 oz.) white sugar
500ml (2 1/2 cups + 2 Tbs.) water

Mix together all the ingredients in a small pan. It starts out as an opaque white liquid.

Heat over medium-low heat, stirring consistently. As it heats up, it will start to clump up. Keep stirring.

It will get more translucent and clumpy. Keep stirring quite vigorously.

When it turns transclucent all over and quite thick, and clears the bottom of the pan, it’s done.

Wet the inside of a square container, and pour in the goo. Smooth out the top as well as you can with a wet spatula. It will be quite clear when hot, but will get more cloudy white as it cools. Let it cool down to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least an hour, or until completely cold.

Take it out of the container (it will slip out easily) and cut into cubes.

The traditional way to serve kuzumochi is with plenty of molasses or black sugar syrup and kinako, toasted and ground soybean powder, as in the top photo. I like it with lots of kinako. (If you don’t have molasses, dissolve 1 cup of dark brown sugar in 1/2 cup of water.)

Since the kuzumochi is mildly sweet and quite bland, you can try all kinds of toppings. Try some fruit preserves, fresh fruit with honey or syrup, even condensed milk and strawberries.

Wagashi are not some sort of magic Japanese diet food

maki — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:42:56 +0200

Someone alerted me to this entry on the Health.com blog which quotes me. (Health.com is a Time Inc. property.) I just wanted to set some things straight, because a couple of the statements there are just not right.

The Time Inc. reporter contacted me with some questions, based on her premise that wagashi or Japanese sweets were healthier for you because they were low fat (or at least no added fat; there is some fat content in the beans used). She wanted to know if this was a reason why Japanese people were generally thin.

What I basically said to the reporter was this: no, I don’t think the lack of butter and cream in wagashi have anything to do with the general thinness of Japanese people. As I am quoted as saying, things like smaller portions, more movement and societal pressure are the main causes. I also said that a traditional Japanese meal does not include a dessert course.

So I was not misquoted as such. But the rest of the article goes on to say some rather misleading things, which I am rather surprised by since I gave the writer plenty of information which would have, I thought, logically lead her away from her preconception that wagashi are some magical diet snack.

First and most inaccurate: “The Japanese are not fond of cream, chocolate, butter, or the fattening ingredients that comprise the typical Western dessert.” - As anyone who has spent any time in Japan knows, this is absolutely not true. Japanese people love cakes and gateaus and puddings chocolates and choux buns. Beard Papa, anyone? Pocky? Purin? Cute Sanrio characters named after sweet sticky buns? I would venture to say that Tokyo may have more French-style patisseries per capita than almost any other city except for Paris and Vienna. Those skinny Japanese women love love love Western style pastries. Those pastries may not necessarily be eaten as part of a main meal as dessert, but are eaten between meals for sure.

The article also goes onto recommend giving wagashi a try. Of course, why not? You may like them, you may not. (I’ve noticed that non-Asian people have very mixed reactions to Asian sweets in general.) However if anyone thinks that wagashi will aid your weight loss efforts, please think again. They are loaded with highly refined white sugar and often use white rice or wheat flour. They are in that sense about on par with those infamous low-fat cookies, Snackwells. Surely we are beyond the point of thinking that eating low fat but high sugar snacks leads to weight loss?

A point in favor of wagashi is that many are partly made with some kind of bean - though almost always hulled beans, so with a lot less fiber than say, your average baked beans. Also, most wagashi are made in tiny little portions which, because they are so sweet, you can only eat slowly, usually with a cup of green tea. Finally, they may make you feel full simply because you’re not used to the texture and taste. But all this is simply speculation. I for one could probably eat more taiyaki or ichigo daifuku than I could a dense chocolate cake in one sitting.

Comparing apples to oranges, or rather wagashi to Western pastries

Here are some calories for some typical Japanese sweets. The source is the official food nutrient database (五訂食品標準成分表) which is published by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the standard reference for all dieticians and health professionals in Japan. Numbers are rounded off for simplicity.

1 daifuku (mochi (beaten white rice) dumpling filled with sweet azuki beans): 160 calories
1 piece of yohkan (a block of azuki bean paste): about 100 calories for a piece approx. 1 cm (less than half an inch) thick
1 dorayaki (two little pancakes with a mound of sweet azuki beans in the middle): 240 calories, most of which comes from refined sugar and white flour

Now here are the calories for single portion sizes of Western style sweets as they are typically sold, and eaten, in Japan:

1 individual serving of purin (caramel custard): 110 calories
1 small choux pastry filled with custard: 150 calories
1 piece strawberry ‘shortcake’ (actually a spongecake filled and frosted with whipped cream, with strawberries in the middle and on top): 350 calories

Not such a huge difference is there? Yes, those typical Japanese cake and pudding portions are quite small. The piece of strawberry shortcake for example is just about the size of the palm of my hand. A choux bun is about 3 inches in diameter.

So we come to same old boring conclusion

Anyway, why are Japanese women generally thin? I’ve addressed this subject in depth a little while ago, but to put it in a nutshell:

They eat less. Portions are much smaller.
They move more.
There’s a lot of societal pressure to remain skinny

Not very novel or cute answers I’m afraid. There is no magic pill, or little sweet.

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nutritionist or health professional. But I would challenge anyone to get a Japanese health professional to come up with the conclusion that eating wagashi in lieu of Western style sweets can help people lose weight.)

Not-so-sweet Tsubu-an: Japanese Azuki Bean Paste

maki — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 18:03:11 +0200

A bowl of tsubuan with some azuki beans.

Wherever I go, wherever I live, my belly remains firmly Japanese.

I love all kinds of food and will try almost anything at least once. But after I've been eating other kinds of food for a while, no matter how good it is, my belly sends a message up to my brain saying something like "Hello? Haven't we been away from home too long?" The rest of my body hasn't been back to Japan in some time, but my belly insists on being fed food from home on a regular basis. So when I feed it plain white Japanese rice and other food it grew up eating, it seems to breathe a sigh of relief and relax back down. And if I refuse to listen to its demands, it gets very cranky.

A lot of Japanese sweets are based on beans that are cooked with a ton of sugar to a paste-like consistency. Red azuki, or adzuki, beans are the most popular, and sweet azuki beans have their own name, an (餡).

There are many kinds of an, but the two most commonly used types in home cooking are koshi-an, and tsubu-an or ogura-an. Koshian is an that's been passed through a sieve so that you just have the smooth bean paste. Tsub-an or ogura-an is more rustic - it's just the whole beans, hulls and all, cooked until they are falling apart. My late oba-chan (grandmother) used to make ohagi and botamochi which are basically the same thing, just that botamochi are eaten in spring and ohagi in the fall. Either way, it was a small dumpling of home made tsubu-an and a sticky mixture of short-grain and regular rice. Some she left plain, some she dusted with kinako, toasted soy bean powder. I hated commercial an as a child since it was usually sickly sweet, but I loved oba-chan's ohagi which tsubuan that was not too sweet and even slightly salty.

The other day I got a sudden urge for tsubuan, and I had to call up my mother to get the recipe. It's very easy though takes some time. You can do the soaking part overnight of course.

This not-too-sweet tsubu-an is a good filling for steamed buns; these are called an-man. (I still don't like anman myself for some reason though.) It's also used for dorayaki, which is basically just two small American-style pancakes sandwiched together with a dollop of tsubu-an in the middle. Other Japanese foods that use tsubu-an include anpan (a sweetish bun) and taiyaki (a fish-shaped waffle with an in the middle) My favorite way to eat it though is just as-is, at room temperature. I even add a bit more salt to it, because I love that sweet-salty combination of tastes.

(Incidentally, the Wikipedia page on red bean paste says that tsubu-an is whole, uncrushed azuki beans and the partially crushed kind I'm describing here is tsubushi-an. I just know that my family and anyone around me always called the crushed kind tsubu-an.)

Tsubu-an (or Tsubushi-an, depending on where you grew up)

2 cups washed azuki beans
3/4 to 1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt

Soak the beans in cold water to cover for 24 hours.

Drain the beans and put them in a pot with water to cover. Bring the water to a boil, boil for a minute then drain the beans. Put the beans back in the pot with fresh cold water, bring to a boil and drain again. This twice-boiling gives the beans a better flavor, according to my mother.

Put the beans, sugar, salt in a pot, and add enough water so that it comes up to about 2cm/1 inch above the beans. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a low simmer. Add water if it boils away. Cook until the beans are completely cooked and falling apart. Taste, and add a bit more salt if needed.

Roughly mash the beans with a potato masher, fork or a pestle and let cool.

This will keep in the refrigerator, well covered, for up to three days or so. It doesn't freeze well - the texture turns rather grainy.

Notes:

See my article about Japanese red rice and beans for more about azuki beans.
I hate the word "adzuki". It sounds like some made-up word, probably coined by an non-Japanese speaker, and is phonetically incorrect. Let's stick with "azuki"!
I recently found some small red beans at my local Indian grocery store that look a lot like azuki, though they are just marked as "red beans". I'll have to try them out to see if they are the same. I hope so because they are about 1/5th the price of the azuki beans at our local Japanese grocery!
For people who emailed me wondering about more Japanese recipes...don't worry, they will be here. My belly dictates it.