Setsuko Pastry

Green Tea and Cream Mochi

Setsuko Pastry, from $3

For two years, Osaka native Setsuko Tanaka has been supplying Seattle with the sort of Japanese-inflected French pastries that have become so popular in Japan (as well as in France). When she moved to Seattle 6 years ago, Tanaka hungered for treats she couldn't find: fresh Japanese sweets, light French desserts, and something in-between.  Having studied wagashi and pastry in Japan, Tanaka began to make the sweets she craved.  Gradually, her hobby became a new career.  

The featured sweet for March provides a great introduction to Setsuko Pastry's products.  The green tea and cream mochi (pictured above) is a delicate hybrid of East and West, old and new.  The mochi gets its verdant color from a generous amount of green tea, while the red bean paste filling is lightened by a non-traditional layer of whipped cream; the finishing touch is a preserved cherry blossom.  Like all Setsuko pastries, the green tea and cream mochi is fresh, made from scratch, and free of preservatives.  

The dessert platter pictured below displays some of the other items on Setsuko's menu:  a Mont Blanc topped with red bean paste and pureed candied French chestnuts, a green tea "rare" cheesecake, a syrup garnish made from a dark Japanese sugar, the green tea mochi, and two rounds of black sesame shortbread.

Setsuko pastries are currently available at Shun, Village Sushi, Issian, Kozue, Root Table, and the Panama Hotel.  Contact Tanaka via her website to be notified of monthly specials.  She also accepts special orders for birthday and wedding cakes, with vegan options available. 

Setsuko Pastry
206/816-0348

Hungry for more?  Check other food- and travel-related posts over at Wanderfood Wednesday. 

Sakura Daifuku

Sakura Daifuku

To understate the obvious, cherry blossoms are a big deal in Japan. Every spring newspapers and tv programs deliver breathless up-to-the minute reports on the best viewing spots. Photographers offer tips for capturing all that fluttering beauty on film. Friends and co-workers camp out to secure the best spots for ohanami (flower viewing parties), enjoying picnic lunches and sake (and sometimes portable karaoke) under canopies of frothy, pale pink blossoms.

But there's also a somber side to this blossom worship. As the short sakura season wears on, every puff of wind releases showers of loose petals, which drift like tenacious snowflakes onto the picnics and parties below. Short-lived sakura are a reminder of mortality (albeit a fluffy, pink reminder) and therefore a traditional favorite of samurai, yakuza, and all those who aspire to a short, beautiful life.

Every year around this time the global wagashi purveyor Minamoto Kitchoan sells sakura daifuku, little balls of white bean paste wrapped in mochi that has cherry blossom petals mixed into it. The petals infuse the mochi with a delicate but unmistakable perfume. It might not be one of the loveliest Japanese sweet, but it's one of my favorites.

Since I'm nowhere near a Minamoto right now, I decided to try making my own. While it's hard to harvest petals without feeling like a scoundrel, I quashed my guilt by wandering the long way home and taking a single blossom from each tree I passed. At home I rinsed them and separated the petals from the stamen and calyx (I guessed that these would be unpleasantly crunchy).

For the outer casing, I cooked up some short grained sweet rice (mochigome), then worked it over with a potato masher until it became a coherent but lumpy mass (having seen how much labor goes into real mochi, I hesitate to apply the term to my mush). Then I stirred in a little salt and sugar, a touch of beet food coloring, and a handful of petals. I formed my shiroan into small balls and encased each one in the rice paste, then topped each ball with a single petal.

I put a few in the freezer to taste when my diet is over and I can eat sugar again, and distributed the rest to friends.  Mmmm, mortality.  

Tokaragashi II

Tokaragashi, $10/3

It's a lovely coincidence that Tokara's monthly "open house" and my birthday both happen on the 10th.  This year, instead of the usual chocolate-on-chocolate cake, I enjoyed a small box of three of Tokara's high summer sweets.  

Gourd (above) has a core of matcha-flavored smooth bean paste encased in cast kanten (agar jelly) with domyoji (crushed rice) for extra texture and a suggestion of snow flurries.

Summer Shade (below) is a single adzuki bean nestled on white bean paste, wrapped in a shimmering skin of gold-tinted kanten:  no need for candles when your birthday treat generates its own glow!

Gourd and Summer Shade are still available through the retail outlets listed on Tokara's website.  Tokara's next touryanse happens September 10th.  Call ahead to reserve a box of seasonal sweets as beautiful as they are delicious. 

Tokara

6208 Phinney Avenue North
Seattle WA 98103 
206/784-0226

Higashi III

Kingyo Higashi
Nara no Kikuya

Thanks to a kitchen moth infestation, I've been rooting around in my cupboards and making lots of highly unappetizing discoveries. One exception to that grim trend was discovering a little box of sweets that I brought back from Japan nearly two years ago and then lost among my drygoods. In it I found these tiny higashi, dry sweets made of a very special sugar called wasambon that has been pressed into a carved wooden confectionery mold, or kashigata.

Their long shelf life is one reason that higashi are so prized, and these little goldfish didn't disappoint. Not only were they non-moth-eaten, they were fresh and sweet and a perfect texture, if perhaps a little faded. They also brought back welcome memories of my visits to Kikuya, an ancient confectionery shop in a suburb of Nara, and to Okada Seitō-Sho, a farm and factory in rural Shikoku that is Japan's last producer of wasambon.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Happy Valentine's Day to you and yours! As a token of my regard, here's a little wagashi bouquet made from homemade shiro-an and beet-stained nerikiri. I pressed each ball into a mold carved to look like a peony bud on the cusp of blooming, and dotted the buds with with kanten dewdrops.

And the black sesame seeds? While I was looking up pictures for the mold, I was surprised to see many peony buds crawling with ants--the suggestion of which makes my skin crawl in sympathy. Digging a little further I learned of an "old gardeners' tale" that says the ants actually encourage the buds to open.

I decided to throw in a few ersatz ants because I can't think of any better Valentine's wish than this: whatever temporary discomforts you may be experiencing, I hope that they will help you, in the end, to bloom bigger and brighter than ever!

Tokaragashi III

Tokara's December touryanse collection.

Tokaragashi IV

Tokaragashi

Tokara, $10/3

The May "touryanse" assortment of Kyoto-style wagashi from Seattle's Tokara sweetshop: 

"Azalea" (above) is white kinton tinted with green tea, filled with chunky bean paste. 

 

"Iris" steamed cake of rice and yam with a smooth red bean paste center; the design is applied with a tiny branding iron.

"Violet's Whisper"  is thickened bean paste wrapped around a ball of smooth red bean paste.   

Tokaragashi V

Tokaragashi V

Since I bought Tokara's seasonal wagashi at almost the same time last year, this box gave me the pleasure of recognizing an old favorite along with the thrill of discovering two new delights.

I was too slow to check Tokara's website for the correct names and descriptions, so apologies for being a bit vague. The modernist flower (above) was soft, translucent mochi, decorated with petal marks seared in by a branding iron and tiny cubes of kanten jelly for abstract drops of morning dew. Inside, a black sesame paste--pungent, dry, and velvety as halva.


















A bundled-up bamboo leaf unfurled to reveal a fu manju (above), a dumpling of steamed wheat gluten, flavored with grassy yomogi and tucked around a core of sweet, chunky red beans.

Last but not least, the "old friend", Gourd (below): matcha-flavored white bean paste inside a molded kanten jelly textured with crushed, cooked rice.

To see more of Tokara's beautiful creations:
Tokaragashi I
Tokaragashi II
Tokaragashi III
Tokaragashi IV

Umai-do Update

In the year since I had my first, addictive taste of Umai-do's homestyle Japanese sweets, I've been keeping a hungry eye on this young business. My article on Umai-do's proprietor, native Seattleite Art Oki, appeared in the January/February issue of Edible Seattle magazine; if you weren't able to catch it in print, the full text is now available on Edible Seattle's webpage.

While the Umai-do storefront isn't yet open, renovations are coming along, and in the meantime Oki is happy to take special orders. You'll also have a chance to enjoy Umai-do products at Seattle Center's Cherry Blossom Festival, April 16-18. Try the "pink" manju (above), a delicate dumpling of homemade white bean paste wrapped in fresh mochi, or any of the other treats pictured on my original post.

Umai-do

3046 South Dawson St.

Seattle, WA

206/850-5306

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