Homemade Amazake

Aspergillus oryzae is practically the stem cell of Japanese cuisine.  A benefical mold, aspergillus plays a key role in foods and beverages as diverse as miso, soy sauce, pickles, rice vinegar, shōchū, and sake.  Perhaps one of the most surprising uses of this protean spore is in making a sweet, creamy pudding called amazake.  When added to cooked grain, the aspergillus enzymes digest the complex carbohydrates, rendering them into mouth-watering simple sugars.  

For the home cook, the most convenient form of aspergillus is kōji, rice deliberately infected with the mold.  In Japan, groceries sell kōji in refrigerated plastic packets that look like long-forgotten leftovers:  kernels of rice bound together by a furry blankets of pure white mold.  In Seattle I was able to buy freeze-dried kōji (Cold Mountain brand, $6.99/20oz.), tiny white pellets that look oddly sanitary and keep for up to a year in the fridge.  

Instead of following the instructions that came with my kōji, I used Sandor Ellix Katz's recipe.  Although the recipe appears complicated and strict, I made nearly every possible blunder and still ended up with edible amazake.  

The most common base for amazake is sweet rice but I opted to use millet instead, cooking the grain very soft and allowing it to cool somewhat before mixing in the kōji.  I didn't have the gallon jar Katz calls for, so I doled my batch out into three pre-heated quart jars, then put them in an insulated bag and poured in hot tap water.  

Overnight the bag popped open and the water temperature dropped much lower than it should have.  The amazake was sweet but not intensely so, so I added more hot water.  A mere hour later I could see white fur and small puddles of alcohol starting to form:  uh-oh.  I quickly brought the whole batch to a boil to stop the fermentation.  

I ended up with about 2 1/2 quarts--plenty to share around.  Although amazake is certainly not to everyone's liking, I've found that it quickly grows (no pun intended) on anyone willing to give it a chance. Because the bran on the millet was intact, my amazake is much chewier than versions made from white rice; if I had a food processor, I would probably run it through for a creamier texture.  Amazake can be eaten hot or cold, or diluted and drunk as a hot or cold drink.  Katz recommends vanilla, ginger, espresso, or slivered almonds as seasonings, or nutmeg and rum for ersatz eggnog; I enjoyed a warm cup with several spoonfuls of cocoa powder.  Amazake is also recommended as a sweetener for baking, and my friend Margaret used part of her share to make pancakes.  

Check out more travel-related treats at WanderFood Wednesday...

Kettle Kashigata

Kashigata are carved wooden molds for making certain kinds of Japanese confectionery. Between the wood connection and the sweets connection, I am just about powerless to resist them. I recently acquired this antique single-board mold depicting a kettle adorned with a lotus leaf.

Tribes of Rajasthan/Gujarat Photo Group

Photo © Kantilal Doobal-All Rights Reserved
Kantilal Doobal is the Bhuj-based photographer/guide who accompanied us on our forays in the tribal lands of Bhuj area. He photographed alongside us, and emailed us this group photograph at a Wadha village on the last day in the Kutch.

From left: Sharon Johnson-Tennant, Colleen Kerrigan, Sandy Chandler, Tewfic El-Sawy, Kim McClellan, Terri Gold, Cathy Scholl and Charlotte Rush-Bailey. The fellow in the blue turban is the village's chief. Missing are Wink Willett and Jamie Johnson.

Kantilal Doobal's Flickr stream is here.

Red Huckleberries

Red Huckleberries

Huckleberries are adorable and taste like heaven, but perhaps even better, they make you aware of and thankful for being in the right place at the right time. Since attempts to cultivate them have not come to much, luck is practically one of their flavor notes.

Many years ago on a summer trip through the Smokies my parents and I stopped at a little roadside restaurant for some lunch. When we asked about dessert our server said all of the menu items were sold out but she guessed there was a serving of huckleberry cobbler left in kitchen, just something they made for themselves out of berries from out back and not as pretty as the menu desserts, but we were welcome to try some. It was The Best Cobbler I have ever eaten. Blueberries and blackberries have a lot going for them, but somehow huckleberries manage to pack an unparalleled amount of flavor and complexity into a tiny package. Maybe wildness is the secret ingredient.

The huckleberries that grow on the Pilchuck Tree Farm in northern Washington state are of the red variety and tarter that the blues I've eaten before, but just as delicious. Like the salmonberry, the nutritious huckleberry was a major player in Native American diets. It was eaten fresh, dried, or mixed with other ingredients such as salmon roe.

Saleem Ahmed: Kyoto

Photo © Saleem Ahmed-All Rights Reserved
Nirja Desai is a follower of my blog, and suggested that I take a look at Saleem Ahmed's photographs. I did and immediately agreed with her that his work would be shown on this blog which is one of the platforms for emerging photographers to get some additional exposure.

Saleem is an undergraduate student (photojournalism major) at Temple University, and has a passion to do something for the world and tell stories. He traveled to a number of countries to include the Bahamas, Egypt, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, UAE, Switzerland, Spain, Syria, the UK, Iraq and India.

There's a multitude of gallery choices on Saleem's website, and I was especially attracted to his Japanese travel work. Kyoto, Yokohama, Miyajima, and Hiroshima are all galleries of his travels in Japan that I recommend you look at. His photography is a combination of street, lifestyle, and environmental portraits.

I hope Saleem's work gets seen by magazine photo editors, and gets them published.

Rainier Cherries

Rainier Cherries

Nope, they're not in season yet--despite our recent premature spring weather. But a few days into my elimination diet, this morning I found myself desperately searching the kitchen for anything sugar-free but vaguely candylike. And then I remembered: towards the end of cherry season last year, Rainiers got so cheap that I bought several pounds and stashed a couple of tubs in the freezer. Huzzah!

Eight months in hibernation doesn't amount to beauty sleep for cherries (hence the lack of an up-to-date picture), but they tasted better than they looked, and gave me the little hit of sweetness I was craving.

Salmonberries

Salmonberries

Unlike its distant cousin, the invasive Himalayan blackberry, the salmonberry is a seasonal treat native to the Pacific Northwest. Even so, something about them--the sci-fi name? the importance to Native cuisine?--has always made me classify them as "exotic". It wasn't until I had them pointed out to me in the wild that I realized I'd actually seen salmonberries around Seattle--not flourishing in vacant lots like the blackberries, but cultivated as decorative groundcover.

The ripe berries can be various shades of golden orange or dark red and are only slightly sweet, with a mild bitter aftertaste that reminds me of citrus pith. A fine snack for hikers, they can also be made into jam, cobbler, or pemmican.