Sweet Sesame Dumpling

Japanese Summer treat ごまみつ団子

There were 43 (as of Saturday) wildfires in Oregon and Washington causing the haze in the vicinity of Portland last weekend. We were saddened by the news of firefighters’ death and at the same time we appreciate their courageous efforts...sincere condolences to the families.

Instead of the usual sweet azuki bean paste in the center, this unique dumpling uses black sesame paste and to me has just the right amount of sweetness. I‘m sure many of you have heard about its beneficial components (check here). I stock this in my pantry and on some mornings I spread it on toast with a little bit of honey…I know I have been blessed so much.

Ingredients and Instruction for 12 dumplings (Print Recipe Here) The recipe credit goes to Japanese food researcher and cookbook author Maki Watanabe

For filling -

• 1/4 cup black sesame paste
• 4 Tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 4 Tablespoons water
• 1/2 teaspoon powdered agar-agar powder

For dough -

• 150g (1 bag) shratamako (白玉粉/refined rice flour)
• 130 to140ml water

Ground black sesame seeds for garnish

1. Making filling - Put all the filling ingredients in a small pan, stirring continuously, cook at low heat until it almost starts to boil. Spread in container of approximately 6 inch by 5 inch. Smooth out with spatula. Freeze for 2-3 hours.
   
2. Making the dough - Put shiratamako in a medium size bowl, add water little by little while kneading the dough well to make a soft, moist dough, add little bit of water if the dough seems too stiff. Divide in 12 portions and form into balls. Note: shiratamako is lumpy and has big chunks so you need to crush the lumps as you knead it.
3. Shaping  dumplings - Boil plenty of water in a pot.Take out the frozen filling and cut in 12 pieces, set aside. Ready a moist paper towel nearby for wiping your fingers. Take one ball and flatten on your palm to about a 3 inch round. Put filling in the center of flattened dough and gather the dough and close tight at the top. Anytime your fingers get black with the filling, wipe with paper towel so that the dough won’t get messy…you definitely like to keep the dough neat and white! Do this step as quickly as possible so that filling won’t melt but if it starts melting put it back in the freezer
   
   
4. Cook the dumplings – Prepare the icy water in a large bowl. With slotted large spoon, gently place  3-4 dumplings in the boiling water. When the dumpling floats to the top of the water surface, cook for additional 2 minutes. Scoop up the dumplings with slotted spoon and put in the icy water until cool. Repeat the process with rest of dumplings. Sprinkle with ground black sesame seeds.and serve cold.
   Warning! dumpling get hard after a while especially If you keep in the refrigerator. Microwave for 15-20 seconds….then of course it is no longer a cold treat!

 

Blame it on the unusual Summer weather (?), something caused our Asian pears to drop on the ground it seems like all at once. My husband was able to save some..

The shiso/perilla leaves are dwindling…a sure sign of the end of Summer right?…I made juice (concentrated) for #todaystapas instagram post. Refreshing!

I gave in to my ramen craving the other day…

This is a healthier version of the ice cream sandwich recipe on the back of Honey Graham Cracker box.

Wishing you a wonderful week!

Chicks

Fukuoka Specialty  ‘Hiyoko’ ひよこ Sweets

Craving makes you slightly insane I think. But what if the item is not available in a store, at least not within a 50 mile radius from my home then the only viable option is to make it? …right? Thank goodness for Google search, I found the recipe for this 100 year old popular sweets. The story behind it was even sweeter.

The birth place of Hiyoko, is a coal mining town of Iizuka, Fukuoka (飯塚、福岡) where sweets making flourished in the Meiji era. Japanese pasty shop owner Shegeru Ishizaka (石坂茂) who inherited the Yoshinodo (吉野堂) from his father was brainstorming new pastry shapes,  non traditional and more adorable style for a while. Then one night chicks appeared in his dream…okay...that sounds a bit strange but .. it was a huge success. Eventually they opened a factory in Saitama, near Tokyo in 1964 the year the Tokyo Olympics were held. Hence, chicks population exploded!

To make this I have to start with white sweet bean paste. Unlike sweet azuki bean paste, white sweet bean paste is…well…not in the store. Oh shucks!  I spent an entire afternoon stirring, washing many pans. cleaning kitchen,  I was just trying to make it to the finish line, refraining from a strong desire to tear the recipe up. I seriously thought about calling my son for a big box of chicks…express delivery of course.

Ingredients and Instruction for white sweet bean paste yield about 200g
(Print Recipe here)

Necessary equipment : food scale, food processor, colander, fine mesh sieve

• 250g white kidney beans Substitute option: large lima beans
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 150g more or less sugar.  I used made-in-Japan light brown sugar
• Pinch of salt

1. Soak beans in plenty of water for at least 5 hours, overnight if possible.
2. Drain water and place beans in the pot and pour water ( three or five times the weight of beans ). Bring to a full boil for 5 minutes then drain water.
3. When the beans are safe to touch, peel off shell from the beans. discard shells. Return the beans to the same pot and add plenty of water to cover and the baking soda and cook at medium–low heat ( low boiling stage) until the beans are soft. 20 to 30 minutes. Skim off scum periodically.
4. Drain the water. Put cooked beans in the food processor and puree.
5. Rinse the same pan quickly, put pureed beans in. Add sugar and salt and cook at low heat,stirring constantly with wooden spatula. Careful not to burn the bottom. Cook till puree is like stiff mashed potato – when you lift spatula, puree won’t drop,15 to 20 minutes.

Ingredients and instruction of  6 Hiyokos

Necessary equipment: Spray Mister

• 200g white sweet bean paste – see recipe above
• 1 egg yolk
• 15g rice flour I used Joshinko (上新粉 –Top rated rice flour)
• 1/2 egg
• 5g sugar
• 5g corn syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder –sift with flours below
• 45g low viscosity flour
• 10g  bread flour

1. Make sweet egg paste - Add egg yolk to the white sweet bean paste and mix well. Put rice flour in the egg/ bean paste mixture and combine well. Divide in 6 then shape like marshmallow ‘peep’. Set aside. I’m on a roll…  made 8 peeps.
   
2. Make skin -Double boil egg stirring constantly at low heat, 1-2 minutes Add sugar and light corn syrup until incorporated. Remove from double boiler. Add sifted baking powder, flours. Knead with wooden spatula well. Rest for 30 minutes.
   
3. Heat oven to 340 F. Set aside small amount of dough and roll out the rest of dough in a very thin sheet. Divide in 6ths. Cover the ‘peep’ shaped sweet paste (step # 1) from top and tuck underneath of peep, reshape to the way you want it to look. Use the set aside dough to make a tiny beak and stick to center of the face (I used water as glue) Make eye holes with tooth pick. Place on the baking sheet lined with non-stick parchment paper. Cover with damp cloth to avoid drying out while you make the other chicks.
   
4. Mist entire peeps with mister. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Mist again and immediately wrap with plastic sheet  and cool.  Warning: If you don’t mist and wrap right away the skin will harden quickly.
   

I’m embarrassed that mine looked like seals (with big nose) rather than loveable chicks. I’m sure my chick making skill will improve with more practice… The question is, will be a next time?

In hind sight, I should have doubled the white sweet bean paste recipe and freeze it since it’s very hard to find item in store..Duh moment really.
And you know what? While I researching Hiyoko story, I saw that Amazon sells this! Boy they have everything! Amazoning! I mean Amazing!

Garden diary - I don’t remember planting those but a nice surprise!….fingerling potatoes my husband dug up. And Peter Pan Kabocha – I don’t want to grow up….size of baseball…fine, be that way.Found the sweet 100…twin…

All kidding aside, we did some serious weekend projects – cleaned the gutter,  prep for winter, citrus scented Quince made into Jelly,  the white flesh turned to gorgeous ruby…so magical!

The Lemmon Salt will be ready in a week.

And get ready for trick-or-treaters!

Happy Halloween!

Bouncy

No Egg Mango Marshmallow

As if my week had sprinted to a new record, I woke up Saturday with a little panic. Until Tuesday…two more days yet I hadn’t made anything fa..bulous to post. Rats! I glanced at my calendar, wow, Easter is next Sunday? I suppose I would like to create something Easter…ly?

Intrigued by Koichi Izumi’s no egg guimauves (French for marshmallows) recipe (yeah, this fits my Happy Easterish theme) however, I was missing a few key ingredients. Where could I get passion fruit puree?  I dunno…the mangos I bought at Wholefoods were on sale for 69 cents each, nice! But not so nice was that, at Winco, they were 59 cents. How in the world? The 10 cents less means a huge dime difference, right?… OK back to my subject, I substituted with these precious mangos I paid the premium for.   

I refer to his recipe but a few compromises were made and perhaps the most ‘I don’t get it’ moment is his method of soaking powdered gelatins. After 2 hours of waiting “supposedly” the gelatin would be macerated in water. But it didn’t. Impossible! I cried. Could it be that Japanese gelatin and American are not same? Nice fellowship by my husband.

Ingredients and Instruction (Print Recipe here)

Necessary equipment: 6x6 pan/mold (I used 7x4 and1/2 inch plastic case), line with parchment paper on bottom, blender or hand held immersion blender, hand held mixer, food thermometer and small sieve

• Water 30g or more
• 2 packets (14.4g) of unflavored gelatin
• 4 mangos (I prefer Madame Francique or Shindhri)
• Sugar #1 -3 Tablespoons If the mango is very sweet, add less sugar.
• Lemon juice 1-2 Tablespoons
• Sugar #2 – 90g, more or less
• Corn starch 25g
• Powdered sugar 25g

1. Prepare gelatin – Pour water in small bowl. Sprinkle gelatin in and wait for it to eventually absorb the water, 2-3 hours. Note: sprinkle a little bit more water if the gelatin is not completely macerated after 2 hours.
2. Making mango purée – Cut mango lengthwise into three sections with the middle section containing the pit. Lay the skin side on your palm, make a grid pattern on the flesh with knife (see photo). Push flesh out from skin side. If you like, scrape the fruit off from the pit to use. Put all the flesh into a sauce pan then add sugar #1 and lemon juice. Cook for 30 minutes on low heat. Stir frequently and crush with a wooden spoon to break down flesh. Turn off heat and puree with immersion blender or put into a blender to puree. Need 150g of this puree in the recipe.Store extra mango puree in airtight container and keep in refrigerator. 
3. Put macerated gelatin and sugar #2 in a large bowl set aside.
4. Prepare 1 size smaller pan than the above bowl filled with 1 cup of hot water to use as double boiler. The water should not touch bottom of the bowl.
5. Put 150g of mango puree into another pan and add 1/4 cup of water.  Frequently whisk the puree and cook to reach the temperature of 200F –230F range*. The laser instant thermometer is very helpful. Careful not to burn puree * The original recipe said must keep at 230F.
   .
6. After reaching the desired temperature, dump the contents from above into the step #3 bowl. Place bowl on the top of the prepared pan in step #4 
7. Double boil the pan on low heat – this keeps the temperature of puree mixture above 108F. Lower than that it will get too hard to pour in the mold. Mix with hand held mixer slowly at first then speed up to max. Mix for 6-8 minutes,scrape off sides mid-way through. The color of the mixture will get lighter and thicken. This photo is misleading, the right texture is when you lift up the mixer, it  drizzles down and makes a spiral pattern at the bottom.
8. Pour mixture into the mold. Cover with paper towel until it has cooled to room temperature then  cover with plastic sheet. Let rest for overnight.
9. Combine powdered sugar and cornstarch then sift once.
10. Dust pallet knife and top of marshmallow with powdered sugar mixture (step #9) through small sieve, insert knife along edges of the mold. Turn onto flat surface then peel off parchment paper, sprinkle with  powdered sugar mixture. Cut in cubes or other fun shapes. Don’t forget to dredge cut sides with sugar mixture too. Peep,peep!

Getting ready for Easter

Left over mango puree is very nice as an ice cream topping.

I shared some marshmallows with my neighbor friends so that we don’t have to consume the entire sugary snack by ourselves.

Happy Easter to you all!