Oh, it’s been a food-rich week! Inbetween extremely boring packing/clearing out sessions, I’ve been reading far too many food blogs. Before the drool has time to hit the keyboard, I’m off my seat and in the kitchen. Today was no exception. I came across a recipe for mame daifuku, a Japanese sweet, on a blog I’ve mentioned before (To short term memories). So, today, as a late afternoon snack, I made some.
Mame daifuku is a Japanese sweet comprising a soft, chewy dough surrounding a small sphere of sweet red bean paste. I don’t have any red bean paste in the flat, so I made some:
- Boil a cup of chinese red beans (hong-do/ang-dao or adzuki beans) for ~1 hour in ~5 cups of water.
- About 30-45 min into the cooking time, scoop out a quarter cup of beans and set them aside for the daifuku.
- When the remaining beans are cooked and soft, drain the cooking liquid off, and purée the beans with half a cup of sugar.
- Heat 1-2 tbsp of corn oil (or sunflower) in a non-stick wok and fry the paste for ~5 min. Set aside.
I followed the excellent instructions for the daifuku as much as possible, having to substitute the peas with the red beans I’d set aside, and using regular chinese glutinous rice flour instead of shiratamako. The inclusion of the whole red beans turned the daifuku into so much more than mochi… And it went extremely well with genmaicha (Japanese green tea with roasted brown rice). An excellent bridging snack!
Anatomy of a daifuku
Originally uploaded by framboise.
akatsuki ra-ra-ra 