Why?
Today is the 2nd of October. In Japan month comes before date so today’s date is the 10th month (October) and the 2nd day. In Japan we have several ways in reading number. We read ‘10’ as ‘To(u)’ and ‘2’ as ‘Fu’ in some reading. By connecting both it becomes ‘To-Fu’. That is why it is ‘TOFU’ Day today. You got it? It is a silly pun playing on words but it’s good to remind people about certain foods & things and make people appreciate what we have. 🙂
I am in Japan now. Because of some technical issue (I don’t mean Japan is technically behind though) I have not been able to post as often as I would want to do.
The 23rd of September was our national holiday “Autumnal Equinox Day (秋分の日)”. After this day the length of the daytime gets shorter than the nighttime day by day so this was officially the end of summer.
Still it is quite hot and humid here. The daytime temperature now is just below 30°C so it is almost the same as the hottest summer day in London.
In the garden Okra is still flowering and we can harvest some. Okra is one of the vegetables I wanted to grow in London and gave up after trying for a few years. It does sprout and gets cotyledons – the first leaves but … never reaches to the point having true leaves. So, I am happy to see the plant growing here. It’s been a bit late but some Peanuts plants are also growing in the garden here. I am looking forward to harvesting home-grown Peanuts sometime soon.
Hooray! I can finally post ‘How to Make Tsubu-An’ here, so after this post I will be able to start making more Japanese Sweets and post on this blog.
As I mentioned before ‘An’ (or ’Anko’, they are same thing) is the main component of Japanese Sweets. It is normally a sweet paste made of beans. There are mainly three types of An (Anko) used for Japanese Sweets and they are ‘Tsubu-An’, ‘Koshi-An’ and ‘Shiro-An’.
‘Tsubu-An’ has Azuki bean’s skin left and not sieved so it’s got more of a coarse texture among all the other ‘Anko’. And maybe because of this coarseness it is tended to be used for more casual Sweets. It needs less procedure to make Tsubu-An but that is not the reason I make this type more often. I like Tsubu-An’s texture the most. It is very versatile. If you are interested in making Japanese Sweets, Tsubu-An making is the great place to start.
I mentioned about Japanese Summer tradition in food – ‘Chilled Ramen’ before. There is another Must-Have in Summertime in Japan. That is ‘Kakigori‘ – the Shaved Ice!
It is the same as the Chilled Ramen, ‘Kakigori’ also has a traditional Flag to decorate at the entrance of restaurants letting people know that the shop serves it. Apparently the design of this flag has been more or less the same for more than 100 years. The red part in this flag is a Japanese Kanji character ‘氷- Kori‘ which means Ice. The blue part is obviously the sea that is the symbol for Summer and also there for making you feel Cool I believe. And the green part is two birds called ‘Chidori (Plovers)’. Whenever you see this sign you feel the summer is there and you want to have some shaved ice.
When the temperature starts rising and Summertime is coming closer, you see these kind of poster or flag at the entrance of restaurant in Japan.
It says ‘We have started serving Chilled Ramen’. Oh yes, Chilled Ramen! We like Ramen very much and we eat it cold too. It is our Summer Tradition. Summer in Japan is very hot and humid. We cannot survive without eating Chilled Ramen!
Although I haven’t manage to post ‘How to Make An/Anko’ yet (‘Tsubu-An’ Making has been posted now), I decided to go ahead with this post by thinking that presumably some readers know what ‘An/Anko‘ is and where to get it. But if you don’t know I will post how to make it shortly.
So have you heard of ‘Anko-ruffles’ before? No? You might have guessed it. Yes, it’s a made-up name from ‘Anko’ + ‘Truffle’ by me. These are Japanese Sweets I created but just look like Chocolate Truffle, don’t they? The taste and texture are completely different. This is one of the easiest Japanese Sweets to make. If you can gain some ‘An/Anko’ by either making it yourself or buying it.
‘An/Anko’ is the most essential ingredient in Japanese Sweets ‘Wagashi’. It is sweet bean paste. The one I used for this sweet is ‘Tsubu-An’ which is made from Azuki beans. If you have a little amount of ‘An’ (An is sometime called ‘Anko’. They are exactly same things) and some powder ingredients, you can make Anko-ruffles!
As the dry powder ingredients I used ‘Matcha’ Green Tea, another Japanese substance ‘Kinako’ and Chocolate Powder for this time. I will talk about ‘Matcha’ Green Tea and ‘Kinako’ in separate posts.
Water Feature at Kojimachi Kaikan Hotel, Tokyo
This is one of the Japanese gardens made by the famous buddhism monk designer Shunmyo Masuno. This is built along a Hotel facing to the lobby. There is not much gap between the water feature and the building and water falls down from quite a height. It has a huge impact as water power.
New lives were found inside this old crumbling tree. Is this a transmigration of soul? Very mystic.
I haven’t succeeded in capturing a movement with slow shutter speed yet. In the meantiteme I thought nothing looks like a ‘Moment’ more than Waterfall. It is very hot today here, where I am so I have to post this photo to feel cool.
This is a Salad suitable for summer time. It is the Salad as a main dish when you want to eat lots of fresh vegetables/salad and also meat to energise the weakened body in heat. I had diced pork which is normally used for stew or curry but I did not want to cook anything for long time. Summer time cooking should be simple & quick.
When I use Pork I always associate with ginger without a fail. Not just because the favour combination goes well, but ginger kill the porky smell. And most amazingly ginger has the enzyme which breaks down protein so that any meat becomes much more tender by marinating with it. Also Ginger is famous for lots of health factors such as immune system booster, anti-oxidant or anti-inflammatory etc… So why not use fresh ginger more often?
Sakura Junction 