About food in Japan

Wagashi (和菓子） - Shimizu (清水） in Kagurazaka

Wagashi(和菓子） is the generic name represents all kinds of Japanese traditional sweets. It has been developped for centuries with tea ceremony schools. As it has been often served with green tea, many kinds of wagashi are very sweet.

Unlike traditional sweets in other parts of the world, wagashi attracts people not only with the taste but also with aesthetic appearance. We traditionally appreciate the beauty of four seasons. The mind is reflected in the world of wagashi. Hence traditional high-end wagashi masters create different products season by season, some times using seasonal ingredients.

Shimizu, a very traditional wagashi shop, is located in Kagurazaka, central Tokyo. Arriving in the shop after a minutes walk from Kagurazka subway station, we feel that we had a time trip to Edo era. The house exterior, inetrior and sweets made us imagine the ancient world. All of the small pieces in the showcase are fancy. It must be hard to select some from the attractive choices.

Finally I bought four different pieces. During summer, it has more products looks cool, like jelly.

The most impressive work is tiny "firefly" in the center of the square-shape jelly.

It never be something unexpected, but should be there. The master dipicts a firefly lighting in the grass and the dark and he puts the world into a small piece of sweets.

How just a piece of sweet can be so romantic like this 

I wanted to gaze the piece with joy for longer but I enjoyed having it as well.

Many kinds of wagashi are fresh and it is better to consume them within a short time after your purchase.

It is regrettable to finish it but I am looking forward to finding another piece in different seasons there.

Shop name: Shimizu
Address: 110 Yaraicho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

Tofu (豆腐) – how to make it?

Tofu, which is made from soya beans, is one of the best known Japanese foods.

It is quite popular as igredient of miso-soup or healthy side dish. It has never been lacked in traditoinal Japanese diet. But even for Japanese, we do not know well how it is made.

Today I joined a specially occasion to learn how to make “tofu” and to try to make it by ourselves

 

What provided to us at the beginning were only 3 items; a paper cup, a small plastic spoon and a small packet of clear liquid. That’s enough to make tofu? Let’s see…

 

The clear liquid, called “nigari(にがり, bittern)”, is essential ingredient as coagulant to make tofu. It contains minerals come from sea water. To be surprising, ingredients for pure tofu are this mineral waters and warm soy milk only But for making high quality, yummy tofu, it is very important to mix up these two ingredients very quickly and evenly as soon as the liquid is poured into soy milk in a paper cup. After we had a short lecture and demonstration how to move a spoon in a small cup by the tofu master, we reviewed and practiced the steps several times with an empty cup, because our chance to have soy milk is only once but no time is given to look back how to do it.

 

We had to take the process very quickly to succed in having fine piece of tofu.

I　did not have time to take photo of this process…

I followed the instruction and took all steps without fail, maybe.

After ten minutes since warm soy milk was poured into my cup, finally it looks like and smells like tofu!　

It was really very short time experience to learn how tofu is made. But it was very interesting.

Of course we tasted the own made tofu. The warm piece of my tofu was much better than a cold factory-made tofu that we can find at supermarkets.