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Table of Contents
Recipes
- Before we speak about anything else, we need to make 餡!
- Thirdly, a brief overview over ingredients used in 和菓子!
📝 My private notes from the 京都 course.
- Taste:
- People say that the sweets for tea should be slightly sweet and devoid of flavour as not to interfere with the taste of the tea. However, in a 茶事 this doesn't really hold, since you have the 中立 and the つくばい between the sweets and the tea.
- Still, tea sweets will have less flamboyant tastes to suit the mood of the setting better, while “regular” sweets can up that a little bit.
余情 :- It's a good principle for tea: It means being not too obvious. So don't just depict a flower directly, but rather lean towards the abstract so that the 御銘 can then complete the image in the mind of the beholder.
- 和菓子 touch all 5 senses: The ear by the 御銘 that is spoken when the guests ask for it.
By Family
My families don't align perfectly with how to chose 7 sweets for 真之行 (see presentation) nor with 仲實:
蒸し物 (steamed)
焼き物 (baked)
伸し物 (stretched)
練り物 (kneaded)
打ち物 (pressed)
Like
流し物 (jellied)
Like
飴
Which technically is hard sugar, but I'm using this category for non-pressed sugar-based sweets like こうはくとう or 雲平
Evergreens
かるかん, a 蒸し物 using yams.
浮島, a 蒸し物. Sometimes it includes some candied black beans.
桃山, a baked 黄身餡 sweet that can be shaped into beans, bells and chrysanthemums.
打ち物 are just pressed sugar sweets used in all shapes and flavours.
Simple to make, こなし-based alrounder. The colours change according to the season.
Steamed buns with yams (
Winter
A plain 薯蕷饅頭 that's coloured and brandied, making it a 織部饅頭.
∃ two kinds of 柚べし: 味噌 in a cured citron, or a 求肥 with walnuts and 醤油.
ぜんざい, a sweet soup with red beans and 餅. It's often served for 炉開き.
福寿草 , a 茶巾絞り
No photos yet, but also:
- 蕎麦板, a buckwheat biscuit that I really like!
- 粉雪, normally a 道明寺粉-based sweet that you can also make with baby food!
Spring
My 発音, which is a
うぐいす餅, a plain good ol' もち tossed in green soybean flour.
The 茶巾絞り 「水鳥」, for which I like to use 黄身餡 as 中餡.
The messy, but tasty affair that is the poppy seed 餅
The iconic 花見団子, where the use of 蓬 actually makes sense.
The literal いちご大福餅.
Not originally my idea, but because I only had the 千鳥 cookie cutter, we ended up with the 「雀の分」.
My creation「吉野窓」, which represents the excitement of viewing the cherry blossoms!
The starch-based canvas for black syrup that is the わらび餅
Summer
柏もち, the oak leaf-wrapped 団子-dough variation.
Autumn
吹寄せ, autumn leaves and whatnot from 雲平 dough, with some pressed sugar
洋菓子
Barfi, an Indian milk-based sweet.
Truffles, which I like flavour with olive oil.
Calisson d'Aix, a Provence sweet with a candied fruit dough
Torrone di Beneveto, which I like for February, but really is a 干菓子 that works always.
Soufflé Mitterand, an absinthe-flavoured ice cream
Baklava, which you can fill with buffalo milk and make look a bit like a ひしもち!
Madeleine, a small butter-cake in the shape of a shell that can be chocolate coated.
The wonderfully fluffy soft shell that is the macaron.
Cedric Grolet's lemon-shaped dessert, a fluffy ganache in a fruit-shaped shell
Schaumkuss, an Italian meringue on a wafer covered in chocolate
Meringue, which I'm flavouring with absinthe for more 🇨🇭🇨🇭🇨🇭
鳳梨酥, a Taiwanese pineapple jam in shortbread
Marrons glacés, which thanks to the glaze make for excellent 干菓子!
راحة الحلقوم, which is interesting in it's similarities to 葛!
千's 主菓子
Umegoromo (plum robe) sweets. In Japan, although trees may still be laden with snow, plum blossoms appear in February, holding the promise of spring. These sweets, decorated with a plum-blossom design, are made of rice dough with a filling of strained red-bean paste.
Hitchigiri sweets. Dainty shreds of colored bean paste are placed on patties of dough made of rice mixed with mugwort. They resemble the shells used in a game played by young girls on March 3, the Doll Festival.
Hanakurenai (pink flower) sweets. These suggest spring, with the green of willows and the pink of cherry blossoms. They are made of delicately tinted white-bean paste.
Karagoromo (Chinese robe) sweets. May is the month of irises in Japan. For these sweets, white-bean paste has been wrapped in rice dough that has been partly tinted a faint purple.
Mizumo no hana sweets. Green-tinted bean paste wrapped in arrowroot dough and folded into a three-sided pyramid.
Mizubotan sweets. Pink-tinted bean paste wrapped in arrowroot dough mirrors the beauty of the botan (tree peony).
Takenagashi sweets. Served chilled, these sweets of gelatin, sugar, and red-bean paste mixed and packed into green bamboo offer a cooling respite from the heat of the summer.
こはぎ 餅 (bush clover, one of the seven autumn grasses)
Minori no aki (autumn harvest) sweets. These sweets, made of mashed sweet potato topped with pieces of boiled chestnut, are dyed and shaped to evoke the autumn foliage of a mountain.
Konoma no nishiki (autumn brocade) sweets. The last leaves of autumn form a brilliant brocade on the mountains. For these sweets, white-bean paste is wrapped in rice dough and sprinkled with ground poppy seeds, calling to mind the frost on the late-autumn trees.
Kazabana (snowflake) sweets. Gently falling snowflakes resemble flower petals being scattered by the wind. A steamed sweet filled with red-bean paste and stamped with the design of a snowflake.
花弁餅
千's 干菓子
Otafuku sweets. Ground soybeans and sugar are mixed and pressed into a mold to produce this image of a happy but plain-looking woman with enormous cheeks. She is traditionally called Otafuku. Neji-ribo sweets. Sugar cakes are tinted and twisted to represent the pull ropes on bells at Shinto shrines. February is the first month of the lunar new year, so congratulatory colors and symbols are once again used.
Kocho (butterfly) sweets. The first butterfly, heralding spring. These are sugar cakes pressed into a mold. Sawarabi (bracken sprout) sweets. Sugar cakes cut and shaped like the bracken sprouts that appear in early spring.
Kompeito (star) sweets. April is a time of cherry-blossom-viewing picnics, and these tiny sugar cakes are often used when serving tea outdoors with special utensils. These were originally brought to Japan by the Portuguese.
Kutsuwa (horse bit) sweets. These sugar cakes are shaped like the old-style bits used for horses in Japan. Tazuna (bridle) cakes. Sugar cakes dyed and twisted to resemble the old-time bridle for a horse.
Taki senbei (waterfall crackers). Sugar cakes pressed to look like waterfall fowing down. Aokaede (maple bud) sweets. Sugar cakes in the form of new maple leaves in the spring.
The image of this summer insect is pressed into the top of these sugar cakes. Uzu (water-eddy) sweets. Sugar cakes twisted to look like cooling eddies of water.
Omodaka (water plan-tain) sweets. Cakes of raw sugar are shaped to resemble the water plantain that blooms in sum-mer. Kanzemizu sweets. Raw sugar pressed into the form of water ripples.
Raw sugar shaped like taro, and like the leaf of it.
Naruko (bird clapper) sweets. These baked rice crackers are shaped like the boards used for clappers that scare off birds from eating the rice that is ready for harvest; the images of three pieces of bamboo, which act as the clappers, are branded on the surface. Suzume (sparrow) sweets. Hard-sugar cakes in the abstract form of sparrows darting around an autumn field.
Icho (gingko leaf) sweets. Sugar cakes colored and pressed to resemble the golden glory of the gingko leaf in autumn. Shimeji (mushroom) sweets. Sugar cakes colored and shaped like mushrooms.
Yukiwa (snowflake) sweets. Sugar cakes pressed into the form of snowflakes. Sasamusubi (bamboo-grass knot) sweets. Along mountain paths in the winter, bamboo grass can be seen beneath the snow. These sugar cakes are shaped and colored to resemble leaves of bamboo grass tied in knots.
若松 (young pine) sweets. Young pine trees symbolize the hopes for the new year. For these sweets, the impression of a pine branch is stamped on soft rice crackers, which are then stacked, with miso placed between each layer. No-shimusubi (gift knot) sweets. At New Year's, gifts of money are often wrapped in strips of paper. These sweets, similar to ribbon candy served in the West, are made of strips of sugar cake that have been dyed red and white, the traditional congratulatory colours in Japan, and tied in knots before they harden.
Background
お菓子屋
➡️ I've moved famous sweets and sweets stores to their own page.
Presentation
➡️ Rules governing the arrangement during tea also found their own page.
Dialogue
- When bringing your own sweets, and they are used in the 点前, the dialogue changes a bit: The host can either prevent the silliness of having to ask about the sweets by saying 'thanks for bringing those sweets' before the conversation moves to asking about the tea; or the guest can say 'thank you for using my sweets' after having inquired about the tea (UH19).
- For me, it's: 「
前席 では、かずかずのお菓子をどうもありがとうございました」. If it get's more complicated, I stumble over my words. - If asked about the ごせい and you've made the sweets, it's okay to say 「手作り」or 「
自作 」.
Resources
- There are 4 main books that I use:
- 仲實's 和菓子. Probably the Bocuse of Japanese sweets. More professional-oriented, but excellent recipes. Build around families.
- 金塚's 私の和菓子帳. Build around seasons. Recipes are sometimes a bit iffy, but a great calendar. Not too tea focussed.
- 清真's 本格和菓子. She's a 学校園 teacher, so her recipes are very tea-focused. Somewhat childish, probably simplified a bit.
- The 淡交テキスト series (TT): Great recipes, very seasonal, very tea related.
- In my drive, I have also an excellent mini-book by UH!
Org
- For pageImage, I had to fix a bug so that it finds the first image of a page.
- Every actual recipe now gets the
{{tag>...}}-snippet somewhere on its page, which should at least contain:- Family (from
mushimono yakimono noshimono nerimono uchimono nagashimono ame) - Season (from
winter spring summer fall evergreen)
- Because
topicuses the title on the page, each sweet needs to say it's name on the page again. - To fold such a list in, use:
++++ Title|
{{topic>tag&table&header&nofirsthl&nouser&image}}