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home cooking - Japanese cuisine
Karen Resta,
While I have never made real wagashi, I would imagine that it is very, very demanding!
I don't believe that Westerners can't appreciate wagashi. Culture has been moving from West to East for centuries now. That is a very important factor to consider. And, I suppose that wagashi will never be nearly as popular as sushi or karaoke.
Maki,
That is really unfortunate that Toraya in NYC closed. I would think that a big, cosmopolitan city like NYC could support a Toraya. Too bad, so sad.
Oh, I love your sites! Thanks for sharing all the recipes!
Food blogging camera. What do you use?
Fuji FinePix
But my mobile phone takes darn good photos too!
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
++
I checked around and people in Japan almost never make wagashi at home, even gourmets and foodie types.
It is just a whole lot tastier, cheaper and easier to buy them in a store -- that is like 500 years old.
Peko
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Chinese Classic Baozi, Kyoto-style!
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Recent Comments | Response to Comments
Focaccia with Caramelized Onions, Goat Cheese and Rosemary
Caramelized onions and goat cheese are a wondrous combination!
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
Karen Resta,
While I have never made real wagashi, I would imagine that it is very, very demanding!
I don't believe that Westerners can't appreciate wagashi. Culture has been moving from West to East for centuries now. That is a very important factor to consider. And, I suppose that wagashi will never be nearly as popular as sushi or karaoke.
Maki,
That is really unfortunate that Toraya in NYC closed. I would think that a big, cosmopolitan city like NYC could support a Toraya. Too bad, so sad.
Oh, I love your sites! Thanks for sharing all the recipes!
Food blogging camera. What do you use?
Fuji FinePix
But my mobile phone takes darn good photos too!
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
++
I checked around and people in Japan almost never make wagashi at home, even gourmets and foodie types.
It is just a whole lot tastier, cheaper and easier to buy them in a store -- that is like 500 years old.
Peko
sudachi (Japanese citrus) and Sanma-no-shioyaki
How about yuzu and kabosu?
Yuzu has various and wonderful uses in the kitchen.
sudachi (Japanese citrus) and Sanma-no-shioyaki
Oh, cool! So we can get them in big cities stateside.
I have never seen sudachi in the US, do you know if they are imported or grown in the US now?
Pacific saury isn't something I ever recall seeing in a regular grocery store, just Asian places. Do we eat it in Western cooking? I can't recalling ever seeing it. It would be difficult for the unaccustomed to eat as is it too small to fillet.
Peko
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
Hi Karen,
Yes, wagashi is a beautiful and artful thing!
Several of the very old Japanese wagashi companies have stores in New York and Paris. Toraya, in Paris comes to mind.
http://www.toraya-group.co.jp/english/shops/index.html
Oh! They have three locations in the US! Cool!
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
Just call me Peko, or even Pek if you like.
wa (和) = pure, ancient Japan/Japanese and kashi (菓子) is sweet, or, confectionary. There is also yogashi, yo means 'Western'. So, Western pastries, confectionaries.
Wagashi is not really made at home in Japan. People buy it. Wagashi is readily available in Japan, anywhere. Even 24 hour convenience stores. (This is of course low end, but not bad.)
What people do do at home is mochi-tsuki. (Making/pounding mochi) This is often done in the company of many people, like the extended family at New Year's, etc or as the whole neighborhood, if you are going to do a mochi-tsuki, you might as well make a lot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mochi (The second photo from the top is a mochi-tsuki in Japan)
Thinking... Westerners make pasta or bread at home far more than Japanese make wagashi at home.
How about this? Think of it as making cheese at home. You could do it. But almost no one does. It is just too, too much work. You can get excellent, excellent stuff in a store at a reasonable price.
I think that if you want to make wagashi in some Western country, you have to start a wagashi shop -- and make a bit for yourself.
Drop me a line at Peko (@KyotoFoodie) if you have anymore questions.
This wikipedia article is a great resource:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagashi
Serious Sandwiches: Saffron's Lamb 'BLT'
OMG!!!
Will have to make an excuse to go to Minneapolis to part take!!
Do they deliver -- to Kyoto?
Peko (@KyotoFoodie)
Best Restaurants in Tokyo
Nice blog, nice articles!
Lots of Western food, eh? Looks a lot less traditional than the territory over here in Kyoto, especially on KyotoFoodie.
Japanese restaurant that serves katsudon in Boston?
Not sure about Boston, but if you are in Japan, in Kyoto, Katsukura rules! It is a chain, but damn fine!
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
Well, if you are going to have a rice cooker, you are probably cooking rice too. And you would want to cook the rice to be as tasty as possible, so, in my book, you have got to add a sheet or two of dried Japanese kombu (kelp). Also, a handful of barley adds to immensely to the flavor complexity and nutritional value or white rice. Also, don't use stinking tap water for cooking rice if you want it to be tasty!
Best Restaurants in Tokyo
I tend to agree with most of the comments. Can anyone recommend a slightly more Japanese guide to good food in Tokyo?
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
Peko, I love your blog! I've been looking for recipes like this forever, but it's so hard to find info on Japanese food that isn't the kind of food you'd see in a restaurant (and even the restaurants don't usually offer a great variety of dishes). Thanks.
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
I often use to cook at home. Its pleasure for me. Thanks a lot for sharing these recipies. I will try them out at home.
Azeem Sarwar
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
That Rice Cooker Chicken sounds wonderful.
But (to those of you who have tried it), do you just marinade the chicken, or put the marinade (along with the chicken) in the cooker, too? Thanks, JJ
Food blogging camera. What do you use?
I use a Canon Powershot SD600 Digital Elph. I used to be a somewhat serious photographer (ok, that was 10 years ago, but I do remember the basics), so I know how to properly use the manual settings. The automatic setting sucks, and I rarely use it.
All my food photos are taken on the macro setting (or sometimes on manual if I'm not doing a closeup). The key is to take tons of photos and really learn how your camera takes pictures - Canon Powershots produce very different photos from Sony Cybershots, so you have to play around with your camera to figure out what settings give you the results you want.
Once you have that all figured out, you'll be well on your way to lovely photos. Oh yeah - a decent photo editing program helps, too! (I am a fan of Picasa - it's free and very user friendly).
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
One of the recipes I've been meaning to try from Elizabeth Andoh's book Washoku is the Wafu Waffle. It's a fresh waffle topped with chunky red bean jam and vanilla ice cream, drizzled with brown sugar syrup then sprinkled with a mixture of kinako and cinnamon.
The weather is becoming perfect for this right now, I do believe. :)
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
Toraya used to have a full tea room / restaurant in New York, on the UES. Unfortunately it didn't do as well as they expected, and it closed down a few years ago. My sister was a chef there...now she's basically out of the restaurant biz (not much demand for wagashi shokunin (chef) in the US...and she did not want to move to Japan.) The Toraya in the Kinokuniya bookstore just sells their readymade things, like yokan.
I have one wagashi recipe on my blog, for ohagi or botamochi...this is something that people do make quite often at home in Japan, or at least my mother and aunts do. (There's also a basic recipe for tsubuan, and also, though it's not wagashi, castella.)
Other than that I have to say it didn't occur to me to post wagashi recipes...I didn't think people would be much interested. I'll try to if there is the demand for it though... I'll ask my sister for tips!
sudachi (Japanese citrus) and Sanma-no-shioyaki
I honestly don't know where all of Mitsuwa's produce comes from, though some of it is definitely grown in the U.S.
A lot of their seafood is flown in, not all, but a lot.
I've seen yuzu in Mitsuwa, but I havent looked close enough to see if kabosu was available, sorry!
Food blogging camera. What do you use?
I love my Casio EXILM S770
Food blogging camera. What do you use?
i'm in love with my canon rebel xt.
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
I remember reading an article some time ago about the schools where one is trained to make wagashi, Peko - the details of learning to do the confectionary-making as a professional seemed to me to be even more demanding than those of being trained as a pastry chef in the Western tradition.
It's interesting that while Japan is embracing Parisian pastries its own have not travelled to other places all that extensively. It may be the texture, or the lack of pure dense sugar taste.
I must get to Toraya next time I'm in NY. :)
Best Restaurants in Tokyo
Hmmm. At the risk of beating a dying and/or dead horse (but think of the horse sashimi!) I still think it smacks a bit of Western ethnocentrism to think of Tokyo as a "global cosmopolitan city [read: Western] rather than a Japanese city." In fact, it is a global cosmopolitan *Japanese* city. Yes, there is great Western food all over Tokyo, but I hope people are travelling to Japan to eat Japanese food. Sure you can find great Mexican there, but don't people also want to know where to find great kaiseki ryori? Great kushi-age? Great chanko-nabe?
I mean, c'mon, you wouldn't travel to Rome to eat sushi or pad Thai or burritos--and Rome is a global cosmopolitan city. And I would hope that a guide to eating in Rome would have more than 4 out of 12 Italian places!
Best Restaurants in Tokyo
Nicolas wrote a comment about the Western-heavy stance:
"At some point through my job I decided to think of Tokyo as a global cosmopolitan city rather than a Japanese city. I did eat my share of Japanese food, but on the whole the city boasts food from all over so I tried to cover most styles without tilting too far in any direction."
Five our of the 12 places he mentions aren't Western so I think he made a good balance. He has other blog entries that focus on Japanese food. Hope that helps!
home cooking - Japanese cuisine
That was a beautiful and useful explanation, Pek.
Including the language, which is important and which makes any thing more alive when understood.
I don't know of a single wagashi shop in the United States, though there may be some in New York City or Los Angeles. A shame, for they are so delicious and gorgeous. :)
Serious Sandwiches: Saffron's Lamb 'BLT'
oh man. seeing as the BLT is one of my two favorite sandwiches (The other is a Reuben), i'm all about this. i want this. i want it now. the lunch i brought to work today pales in comparison.
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
I look forward to reading the responses here. This page will be flagged for watching.
I recently started cooking steel cut oats in the rice cooker, making steel cut oats my news favourite breakfast. I make it similar to the way mlt43 does. The idea to use the rice cooker for oats likely came from a Serious Eats post.
My roommate bought our rice cooker the day after she moved in. I might have to fight her for it when the living arrangement ends. :)
(She's Chinese, so rice is a staple in her diet. She claims that she burns rice when she cooks it stove top.)
Best Restaurants in Tokyo
I agree. Chotto heavy on the Western food for a guide to Tokyo.
Though I just skimmed the article (so maybe I missed the mention of it), I think that there is actually stuff like ramen and soba in Tokyo--as well as some off the hook yakitori under the tracks and great Korean barbeque.
Tokyo is a serious eats kind of place, if you enjoy Japanese food.
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
I like steel cut oatmeal cooked in the rice cooker. I use the same water:rice ratio, and sometimes even throw in some dried fruit before I turn on the switch.
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
I guess you can always take a temp of the thigh when it's done. I really want to try this, but the manual of my new rice cooker explicitly warns not to cook anything but rice in there. Dare I defy the manual gods and bugger up my new rice pot? Adam, you go first, and let us know :)
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
i'm korean and i think my mother used to put a whole slab of pork belly in there and when it came out it was the perfect texture.
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
Nice. Thanks again, TK.
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
Adam, thanks for adding formatting! And yes, it does cook the chicken enough - remember, you're not cooking the breasts because you carved that out. That's a huge chunk of meat you don't have to cook. And cook the chicken on its back for more even cooking, so that the body's cavity is facing outwards. I always test my chicken by cutting into it - as long as the juices run clear, even though right near the bone it's a very faint faint pink color, it's done.
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
Cool. Yours does one more thing than mine! Mine does not "keep warm." It only turns on and then pops off.
My other question is: You're sure it cooks the chicken enough? How does it know?!? (I'm always nervous about underdone chicken.)
Also: Hope you don't mind that I added some formatting to yr recipe. ;)
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
I have the cheapo kind. It does two things only - turn on, and keep warm. So yours should work just fine!
Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice
Recent Posts
Chinese Classic Baozi, Kyoto-style!
Posted by KFPEKOPEKO, November 17, 2009 at 5:55 PM
Bon Appetit Magazine Photoshoot at Kichisen
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Classic Modern Japanese 'Sweet Potato'
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Recent Favorites
Moroccan Chicken with Almond Raisin Couscous
Posted by marissadespins, January 30, 2009 at 3:55 PM
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About KFPEKOPEKO
Website: http://www.kyotofoodie.com/
Location: Kyoto, Japan
About: I am a real, live foodie living in Kyoto, Japan. I love the cuisine of Kyoto. I write an English language blog about my eating adventures here which is popular among fellow foodies and folks planning a trip to Japan.
Favorite foods: bread, artichoke, kung pao chicken, most anything Japanese, Italian or French.
Last bite on earth: Ahhmm, that is difficult. Let me think about it. In the meantime, please check out my blog!
Caramelized onions and goat cheese are a wondrous combination!