I’ve called these small buns cardaman as they have a fragrance of cardamom. And they are made on the model of butaman (Japanese for meat-filled Chinese steamed bun).
I’ve used buckwheat to give a season taste. And inside, kabocha pumpkin. What is wonderful is they are IN 5 MINUTES.
And they are delicious… Read more
My grand-parents produced strawberries for a living, so I know the beast well enough to be sure it is not a Winter fruit in the Northern hemisphere. But in Japan… they heard there was Christmas in other countries and that seemed fun. So they all wanted to Santa and dress in red. And eat read fruits… like strawberry. Now it’s part of the totally kitsch Japanese kurisumasu…
If you want to see where they come from, and discover those I’ll eat next year probably, visit the Shizuoka Gourmet.
So I know it’s bad, not ecological… and they are not really good. They are sour… Well, I’ve bought a few, a handful.
The trick is to hide them in ball of anko (azuki bean sweet paste).
Prepare mochi.
Wagashi Saga : Photo-menu of all Japanese sweet posts, and recipe posts.
And make ichigo daifuku mochi. OK, the shape is… artistic today. They were delicious anyway.
They go well with a bowl of foamy matcha ceremony green tea… unceremonially served.
1 daifuku :
Cal 137 F0.4g C30.2g P3.3g
Winter tea time…
Sunset is early in Osaka. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as many areas are less ugly at night.
Home-made “low sugar” mikan jam. Mikan are the mandarin oranges we have everywhere here. It’s not a long time preserve. I keep it 1 week in the fridge, or I freeze it.
making the mikan jam
That goes well with Earl Grey tea.
The bread are small balls that I coated with (neutral) oil before baking. That gives them a donut flavor.
Nonnette a la mandarine, the aux epices.
Today is Saint-Nicolas. In my old town, when I was a kid, that was a very important day. The day of children ! Saint-Nicolas, an old Orthodox style bishop and a mean butcher were around town, parading (a procession that was), visiting schools and any house we knew to deliver either huge bags of sweets, or sticks of wood to beat us. That depending on our taste, hedonist or masochist… or maybe not exactly. We’d all take the edible offer.
In old times, St Nicolas was bringing oranges, because that’s the season -not in my town we had no orange season, so they were imported. In Northern Europe, that was a rare and expensive sweet until quite recently. Other sweets are very old fashion because the tradition started in Middle-Age. There were lots of pain d’epices, ginger bread, well it’s “spicy bread” more exactly. Several types exist. Some are big loaves, like pound cakes, that you slice. Others, the most Saint-Nicolasish are flat semi-hard “boards”, cut in shape of the Saint or of his donkey, or both… and covered by a beautiful chromo (old style print) glued by anise flavored sugar. I posted my recipe in the last post. But that’s not my gouter (snack) today.
I made mikan nonnettes. Orange nonnettes are popular in Lorraine. They are “cup-cake” size tubular pains d’epices, filled with marmalade, and covered by some sticky stuff.
Mikan are mandarin oranges, now in season in Osaka. We are invaded, there are tons everywhere. So it’s easy to chop a few :
Throw into the home-bakery with a little yellow cane sugar and get a “slightly sweet” mikan jam.
For 6 pieces, I took 50 g of black sugar kurozato from Okinawa, a little honey, 1/2 cup of water and melted them together in a sauce pan. Added 170 g of flour (+ rice bran), baking powder and spices.
There are surely “pain d’epices” mix for sales, but powder spices don’t keep well, and you won’t use them for other dishes. I make mine : a small stick of Ceylon cinnamon roughly crashed, the tip of a clove (the stalk is too hard), the seeds from inside 3 pods of green cardamom, green pepper, a little grated nutmeg, anise seeds… in a mill. Keep the pods, stalks…
Add to the dough, add in 2 tbs of neutral oil (white sesame), then enough hot water to get :
Take a muffin/cupcake mold. In each, 2 tbs of dough, 2 ts of mikan jam, 1 tbs of dough. Bake. My oven found 40 minutes was well. I wanted them soft and let them 30 minutes.
You have kept the hard bit of clove and cinnamon, pods of cardamom, add a few leaves of Darjeeling tea (not your best first flush), in a tourist in China cup, to keep it warm. I places the cup on the oven. It doesn’t simmer (yuck !), just longly infuses.
Later, when the cakes are done, you get a warm mild spiced tea. You can even refill later.
Finishing the nonnettes : take the juice of 1/2 mikan, eat the other half. To the juice, add icing sugar and corn starch (1 tbs each) or if you prefer sweeter, only sugar. Mix well.
When you take the cakes out of the oven, they are very soft. They harden in a few minutes, so wait. But not too much as you want to paint them with the mix while they are still warm. Let them dry.
You can eat them the same day (while many other pains d’epices are not good just after baking). But they are better later, as spices develop flavor with time.
For the Gattaca-Avatar effect, I tried some LED light. That doesn’t affect the taste. They are delicious…
Hop ! We’ve stepped into December, the darkest month. But we often have bright days in Osaka… in the cold.
Okayu, congee, rice porridge is a good way to fight the cold. With sweet potato, yellow like the leaves of icho (gincko).
Brown rice and cubed sweet potato (with its skin), rinsed, cooked overnight in the rice-cooker.
Simple toppings :
sea salt
poppy seed slightly roasted under the broiler
goji berries and all their vitamins and commercial promises (let’s believe, 10 a day and you’re eternal…) and they are red like the leaves of momiji (Japanese maple)
Sencha green tea as many bushes stay green through Japanese Winter (I’m not sure it’s a bush of camelia… could be).
A little kaki (persimmon) like other fiery leaves.
That seems very simple, but the combination of tastes of that okayu was perfect, sweet, earthy, nutty…
Cal 263.5 F2.2g C65.5g P5.4g
Végétale in Osaka 