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Pancake Day in Japanese Style

/ Mutsumi / 12 Comments

It’s ‘Pancake Day’ today! It is not familiar Day for Japanese but I know it comes every year near Springtime.

So, what is Pancake Day?

Pancake Day is also called Pancake Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday. It is a day before the start of Lent which is the period of 40 days leading to Easter. As you can guess I am not Christian so this is the maximum I can explain about this day. What I understand is that the Pancake day is the day people try to use up all their eggs, fat and sugar in order to clear up the cupboards at home before another feasting period (Easter).

What they do?

People make Pancakes! That is the main thing. There are some festivals and people race with a frying pan on one hand flipping pancake whilst running. It’s a fun day. On social media I saw someone who lives locally asking where is a cafe that serves good pancakes. I guess it is great to know where a good cafe is but what I can’t understand is why this person doesn’t make Pancakes herself? Originally that is what this day is for, isn’t it? And it is not difficult to make a pancake either. You just need basic ingredients of eggs, sugar and flour.

So I made my own pancakes. In my kitchen it cannot be a normal pancake. It has to be a Pancake in Japanese style. I made ‘Dorayaki‘ with ‘Matcha‘ Green Tea flavour.

Matcha Drayaki

Matcha Dorayaki half

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Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce

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Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce 1

Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce

This is the sweet dish I made for the Sake Cooking competition. The theme of my dishes for the competition was ‘Sake for Eating’. This dessert was a food but I wanted to put some reminder that Sake is alcoholic ‘Drink’. That is why I wanted to use a wine glass for serving this dessert.

My thoughts behind this dish were

1. I wanted to keep all the flavour and taste of Sake in my dessert without losing any by heating Sake. That is the reason I decided to make Jelly.

2. I like flavour of Sake, however, I wanted something ‘more than just Sake’. I infused Sake with Rose Petals in order to enhance the delicate Sake flavour. The consequence of that made the Jelly has fragrant Rose smell and also slightly Rosy pink colour. I managed to infuse Sake in both flavour and colour.

3. It has been changing in recent years but Sake still has the image as it is the drink for men more than for women. I wanted to create something which suggests that Sake could be something romantic.

Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce

Rosy Sake Jelly with Raspberry Sauce 2

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And the Prize Goes to …

/ Mutsumi / 12 Comments

Wow … what a day, what an experience.

It was three months ago, I saw this advertisement about Sake Recipe Competition.

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‘Gekkeikan Masters Cooking Competition’

The notice must have been out there for a while but when I saw this poster it was just a week before the deadline. The applicant had to create two recipes, one in savoury and one in sweet by using Gekkeikan ‘Sake‘ (Japanese Rice Wine) which should not be a Japanese Dish. Developing two recipes in a week seemed rather hard but I tried anyway. Then right after New Year’s Day I received an email saying that I was shortlisted for the final! They said that six finalists were selected from over one hundred applicants. That sounded pretty impressive.Β  πŸ˜€

However, I faced the first problem … The contestants had to cook the dishes in the final day and serve them to judges. I submitted a baked dish but there was no oven at the venue! I had to develop some other dishes which you didn’t need to use an oven. I had tried several dishes but was not happy with them. And then one week before the final day I was told that I could bring a small oven if I wanted. Great! So I decided to stick to my original idea but had to adjust the recipe a little for making it suitable for cooking in a small oven.

The final stage of the competition took place at Ichiryu Udon noodle restaurant last Sunday (the 24th January). But there was a bigger problem waiting ahead of me…

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🎢 “Haru yo Koi, Hayaku Koi”🎡

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Cherry wrap

Cherry Wrap Manju with Matcha Green Tea

🎢 “Haru yo Koi, Hayaku Koi”🎡

Thia is a Japanese song for Children. “Come here, Spring. Hurry up, Spring”. It is sung from a child’s point of view. It must be the feeling of lots of people right now.

It is a weird winter this season. It started so mild and then suddenly freezing! In many area in the world it seems like snowing a lot now or even a blizzard. It was the same here in London. Because it was so mild we did not need to use central heating and I did not even wear any woollen jumper for a long time and then it became so cold last week. We are lucky that the temperature is getting slightly milder now.

However, for the people who are fighting with the snowy environment I just want to say to “Keep warm & safe and also Have a Break”. Maybe with a hot ‘Matcha‘ Green Tea and a good Japanese Sweet to make you feel relaxed and keep you going. You cannot do anything productive if you are exhausted.

The sweet in this photo is ‘Cherry Wrap’ Manju with ‘Matcha‘ Green Tea. It is a Japanese style crepes with the real Cherry Blossom I preserved myself wrapping sweet Azuki bean paste. It feels like the winter has just started but it will be gone in 2 or 3 months time. Then we will see lots of Cherry Blossom again. Hope this Cherry Wrap gives you a warmth in your mind by thinking the lovely season awaits ahead of us.

Β Have a lovely weekend, Everyone. πŸ’“

My First Order!

/ Mutsumi / 10 Comments

Hooraaaay! I had the first order for my Japanese sweets and I managed to deliver them to the client last Saturday. (Sorry, it takes so loooooong to write in a second language)

The client was a lady who lives locally. She visited my market stall on the 6th of December and liked my products. She wanted my Japanese sweet for her husband’s birthday party who loves Japanese food. What a lovely thought!

So what she ordered me was 35 pieces of β€˜Ukishima’ with Matcha Green Tea & Apple and Chocolate & Chestnut flavours. I prepared the ingredients ready for making it on time for the Saturday.

So, Voila!

Ukishima

35 Pieces of Ukishima became ready! I cut and trimmed the edge of each piece carefully.

Ukishima matcha

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Matcha Chocolate in an Origami Box

/ Mutsumi / 6 Comments

Matcha Chocolate 2

On New Year’s Eve I was invited to friends’ house for the New Year’s Eve Dinner with some other good friends of mine. Many of us are foodies so we each brought some different dishes.

The main dish and dessert were already made by somebody else so I made some nibbles for drink before the dinner started. It was Mushroom Vol au Vents and Cheese Twists. It took a while until the main dish was ready to serve so my nibbles went down a treet whilst we were waiting.

starter1 Β  Β  starter2

The main food was a roasted chicken brought in by Miss D. She also cooked all the side dishes such as Braised Red Cabbage, Lentil with Italian Sausage and roasted potatoes & Tomato with garlic (famous? Gwyneth Paltrow recipe). It was delicious! Thank you Miss D for your hard work.

Our course followed by a selection of Cheeses & Biscuits, Grapefruit Posset and Melting Snow Man made by the friend’s daughter and then Herbal Tea.

As our little tradition of exchanging gifts on the New Year’s Day I took some ‘Matcha Chocolate’ in a handmade Origami Box with me.

Matcha Chocolate

Matcha Chocolate 1

It’s easy to make and taste so good. It can be a very good gift for a Matcha lover. I presented it in a handmade Origami Box.

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My Products for the Market

/ Mutsumi / 3 Comments

So what were my range of products for the markets? I did not have much time to take photos and by the time I finished making and before packing, there wasn’t enough natural light to take good photos of all my products. However, I managed some.

The first product I introduce to you here is the most colourful one ‘Nerikiri‘. Nerikiri is the very delicate Sweet which basic ingredients are just rice flour, sugar and beans so that it is Gluten/Dairy/Oil/Egg free. It is one of the most classy Japanese Sweet ‘Wagashi (ε’Œθ“ε­)’ that are often used for Tea Ceremony.

These are the three types I made.

Nerikiri 3 types

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Mission Accomplished!

/ Mutsumi / 4 Comments
nerikiri ready to go

‘Nerikiri’ ready to go to Market

It’s over! My mission to running a stall in the Chritmas market in two weekends in a row finished! Pheeeeeeeew.

Although I was planning and practicing some sweets as products, not everything went according to plan. What I have learnt from this experience was that β€œFood is a living thing”. Even when I thought I was following the recipe I had a great result before, something went wrong when I really seriously wanted to make everything neat and delicious. It was so unpredictable.

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Yaki Manju (η„ΌγγΎγ‚“γ˜γ‚…γ†) – Baked Manju

/ Mutsumi / 7 Comments

There is a recipe of ‘Yaki-Mnju (η„ΌγγΎγ‚“γ˜γ‚…γ†) / Baked Manju’ I normally use. That is a Japanese Sweet wrapped with biscuit. It is good. I like it. It is also something that Western people are quite familiar with.

We have a Japanese sweet called ‘Kuri-Manju (ζ —γΎγ‚“γ˜γ‚…γ†)’.Β That is a ‘Yaki-Manju’ with Chestnut ‘Kuri‘ pieces inside and made into a Chestnut shape. The skin of this sweet is slightly different from Western biscuit. It is much smoother and you can make it into some shapes.

This time I made ‘Yaki-Manju’ in the traditional way. I tried making some shapes with different filling.

‘Kuri-Manju (ζ —γΎγ‚“γ˜γ‚…γ†)’

This one is ‘Kuri-Manju‘ with Chestnuts ‘Kuri’.

Yaki kuri manju

Does it look like Chestnut to you?

Yaki kuri manju cut

Instead of using small pieces, I mixed Chestnut in syrup mixing with ‘Shiro-An (白あん)’ and that made the filling looks like a paste.

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