The Long Awaited Ichigo Daifuku!

AWESOME ALERT: This recipe is an extremely "easy to try" recipe, as you don't even need to cook anything in or over a stove. You just need a microwave to cook the dough! As for the shaping of them....well, you'll read about that later. ;)

      Alright. So I was gonna have Kally and I post about this the next time we hung out, but then we got all busy with fun so...now it's just gonna be me putting it up! lol I figured since it was holding me up from posting newer stuff, I just oughta tell ya'll about it!

     Daifuku. Mochi balls is another name you may have heard it called before. If you've ever been in an Asian market you may have seen those powdery, pale-white doughed, round (albeit slightly flattened) balls about the size of your palm in the dessert section. They're traditionally filled with just red bean paste and, although a lot of times they're white, they can also be pink or green. I read online that although they're eaten year round, they're super consumed during the Japanese New Year, as they're thought of as a "good luck" food. As for our Ichigo Daifuku, it's a variant of the traditional red bean paste filled mochi that's believed to have been invented in the 1980's. It's a mochi ball filled with a strawberry covered in red bean paste. But, being American, I couldn't help but think that although I like red bean paste, strawberries go good with chocolate. SO, with our recipe we were gonna do half the strawberries wrapped in red bean paste, half with the strawberries being covered in Hersey's Chocolate Syrup before being tucked into their cozy little ball. ;)

     The recipes you'll find while doing a search for daifuku are all pretty similar, so we just chose to use the  ichigo daifuku recipe from the blog Chocolate & Zucchini. There are a few major points I feel I should say before we continue that Kally and I found out as we made these:

1. YOU MUST WORK WITH THE DOUGH QUICKLY.
        Kally and I cooked the dough and were going through the rest of the steps and it wasn't until we were down about half the page that it said, "The dough will get less flexible as it cools, so try to work at a brisk pace." No joke, the second we read that, we stared at each other, and then looked at our dough that had been sitting in its bowl about five minutes. We had to try to heat it back up to get it more flexible again, which worked okay, but I do think that mistake is what made it not make good round dough balls in the end.

2. 8 ounces = 1 cup
        Yep, I looked that up so you didn't have to. ;) The original website had a couple ingredients amounts listed in ounces, so I figured to tell ya here. That means that you should put just under a half cup rice flour for this recipe. As for the red bean paste, I didn't measure it out. I just used it by putting what I thought looked like a delectable amount on the strawberry. lol 

3. You don't have to chill the strawberries with the paste on them.
        We put the paste on the strawberries while the dough was in the mircowave, and it worked out just fine. :)


And now, with the "need to know tips" out of the way, onward!



                                                                        Ichigo Daifuku
                                  (strawberry wrapped mochi balls)

-Note: This recipe is from the blog I linked to above, Chocolate & Zucchini (C&Z), but tweaked some and translated to U.S measurements by me. :)

-About 7-9 regular sized strawberries (you may need to cut into halves to fit dough around them properly)
-14 oz packet of anko paste (even half this size would be fine)
- 1/2 cup glutinous rice flour (actually it translates to a little less, about .43 of a cup. Also, it MUST be the glutinous kind. I read that's what makes the dough stretchy)
-1/4 cup sugar
-2/3 cup cold water
-Corn starch for dusting (Kally and I discussed that powered sugar would probably be an even better substitute)
-Kally and I Variant= Hershey's Chocolate Syrup (to go into some of the mochi balls with the strawberry   instead of the red bean paste)

This recipe listed above is supposed to make 10 ichigo daifuku. C&Z says that although it can be doubled, they don't tend to taste as good the next day, which I could see.

  
                                                                           Steps

1. Rinse, dry, and cut the strawberries in half if they're larger in size. Put a somewhat generous layer of red bean paste all over them.

2. Pour a generous amount of corn starch on a counter top (or in my case, a rimmed cookie pan) to prepare for when you'll have to stretch out the dough and also on a plate which you'll use for when they're finished. You will have to cut with a knife on the surface you choose to flatten the dough on, just so you know in advance. ;)


3. Combine the rice flour, sugar, and water in a bowl and stir to dissolve. Cook for two minutes in the microwave on medium, stir with a spatula, and then cook a time or two more for another two minutes each time, stirring after each of those times as well. Do this until the mixture thickens and is slightly translucent.
-If you, like I, have a silly microwave that doesn't allow me to use its "medium" option, you can get the same effect if you "de-thaw" at 1.0 lbs meat. It'll put up about 7 mins on the microwave, so you will have to keep an eye on it so you can stop it every two minutes as you're supposed to.
-It was hard for us to tell what really counted as "translucent", but after about six minutes, that tasted correct for us as the end when we ate them.

4. When the dough is finished, pour it onto the corn starched area. It'll be near lava hot, so be careful, but put more corn starch on it and try to pat it out. When you pat it out flat enough, cut it into ten even pieces.

5. Take a piece of the cut dough and try to gently stretch it out more to be big enough to cover a strawberry. Place it on the palm of your hand and dust off the excess corn starch (I find a crumpled paper towel works excellent for things like this). Grab one of the coated strawberries and put it tip side down on the dough, wrap the dough around it, then, being careful to not tear it, try to put the ends together to close the pouch. If you were doing the chocolate sauce, while the strawberry is on the dough on your hand just grab the bottle and put a little drizzle on. ;)

6.When you're finished one, set it on the corn starched plate, and repeat! The directions say to let it sit for an hour to cool, but we couldn't wait. We ate some right away. But they are tasty, probably more so, when they're cooled down(even fridge cooled down).


Though this recipe is fun and tasty to make, due to the original directions having certain crucial information in odd spots in the list, our Ichigo Daifuku ended up looking a bit funny, as you could see in the picture I put up right before the recipe. That's why I gave you my edited and "correctly-placed-steps" directions for this. The main things Kally and I learned from this run-through was:

#1-Though chocolate syrup sounded like a good idea, oddly enough in this recipe it just tasted bitter. The red bean paste really won the show paired with the strawberries. Although Kally in her initial sampling of the paste before we got started thought it didn't really have a flavor, when it's put into mochi dough, some sort of sugar miracle happens and it really tastes sweet. Also the thick paste texture really works well with the chewy dough and firm, juicy strawberries.
 #2- I know, I know. Corn starch is the classic way to powder daifuku. But Kally and I both agreed for our next run through we're gonna try powdered sugar. Even though corn starch doesn't really have a flavor, when it's in bigger quantities(say, when you're covering sweets like a mochi ball *wink*), the lack of flavor leaves you with just a blah powdery taste. We also thought powdered sugar would lend itself to making a sweeter mochi ball too! And that can't be a bad thing...right?

Well, I know this post has gone a little long, but I hope if you've got through all this, that it'll help you in your quest to try making Ichigo Daifuku. Now that I have all the steps in a super helpful order, your mochi balls should turn out way better than ours! See, Kally and I went through and made the mistakes so you don't have to! ;) Remember, even if you're thinking, "ah...I dunno if I should try it..." for whatever reason, for about $5 in ingredients and 6 minutes to cook a dough in the microwave, there's really no harm! Well, I hope ya'll have a great week and I will post about the pasta I made later! :D

"Feeding hummingbirds? Bear hunting?" No, we're making pudding!

                                           Today's cooking crew! Alicia, Grandma, Kally, and me.

      So today was the day. Kally, Alicia(my sister-in-law), and I were gonna meet up with my Grandmother-in-law to learn how to make Suet Pudding. Oh? You've never heard of it? Probably because it's more of an old time recipe, back when people would butcher their own cows, and then use the beef fat to make a sweet pudding cake for the hard workers. Yep, today you'll get a recipe handed down from my husband's great grandmother, a sweet dish with an ingredient you need to pick up from a butcher. And that's where we began our journey.

     "So, you ladies going to feed some hummingbirds?" the nice butcher behind the meat case asked as he handed me a package of suet, a finely ground mix of beef fats.
     "No." Kally and I smiled at him.
     "You going bear huntin' then?"
     "No....we're gonna cook suet pudding...it's a sweet pudding." I added that last part quickly as the butcher made an attempt at an "ah" face, probably trying to cover up the real face he wanted to show, one which other butchers had made at me when I told them that- a face of horror. ;)

     So, with our suet and whipping cream we had to pick up in hand, we stopped by Alicia's house then headed to my Grandma's.

     It was pretty cool. I asked my Grandma if it was alright if I share her recipe with ya'll, and at first she hesitated. After I talked to her a little more, she decided she was okay with it. "It would be a shame to let a recipe like this disappear," she said. I couldn't agree more. :)

                                                                            Suet Pudding


3 cups flour
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup finely ground suet*
1 cup molasses
1 cup milk
Raisins and nuts to taste(even grandma says, "you just put in how much you want". I think she suggested 1/2 cup of each? Don't you just love recipes that ya, "just kinda put a little of this in..." ;)  )

 *Ask your local grocery store meat section for this and if they make a funny face or don't know what it is, if they can finely ground beef fat, which is what we had, that works too. Suet technically is the bubbly fat surrounding the kidney, but the butcher said there's not much of that and they don't really keep it.


 Suet Pudding Icing
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup whipping cream
1 Tbs flour
1 pinch salt


                                                               Suet Pudding Instructions


Note: If you are going to be putting raisins in, you must first reconstitute them to avoid little hard rocks in your pudding. ;) To do this, just boil them in some water until they're plump, like this:

                                                            1.Mix together dry ingredients.

                                  2.Mix in all wet ingredients except suet.

                                      
                                                       3.Mix in the suet.

                                  

                                                   4. Add in raisins and nuts if you'd like.


             5. Put batter in a steamer pan, and steam on medium high heat for approximately two hours. Don't forget to check about every thirty minutes that the water hasn't boiled out, or it may ruin your pan my Grandma said.

And about 20 minutes before the pudding's ready....

               1.Time to make the icing! Mix all the ingredients together in a pot(we found this out after we made it. When we cooked the suet pudding and did the icing, we were at Alicia's, and Grandma didn't call us back until after the icing was done...lol)

                                      2. Bring icing to a boil, and cook until it thickens.




      After two hours of letting the pudding steam, get some pudding and top it with icing and dig in! :D For those a little worried to try it due to flavor, or confused about the texture of a "pudding" which looks like a cake, here's the low down. It tastes like a spice/gingerbread-ish(minus the crazy spicey bit) flavored moist cake. Like Kally mentioned, she thought it would be more like a pudding since that's what it's called. But when it's complete, it should be springy.

      For the record, though it may have a weird ingredient, you don't taste meat flavor at all, so the next time you wanna cook something sweet for your family, why not try this? Do something different, I dare ya. ;) Well, though Kally and I are sitting here writing this, she has to leave, and I have some Olympics to watch, so the information about our Ichigo Daifuku experience will have to wait 'till later! Signing out!

                                                                                                                       -Angela and Kally

Inauguration Speech

Alright. So I'm not gonna give an Inauguration speech. According to  good 'ol Wikipedia, a speech like that's given at the beginning of a leader's term of office. But then again, I did start(begin) a blog(office), and I am the editor of it(leader).....so you can take this how you will. ;) My name is Angela. I decided to start a blog as under my title says because I started getting interested in eating food from other cultures. My husband and I used to live in Cache Valley(see definition-boondocks), but now that we live just outside of Salt Lake City, and I being a stay at home mom, I can't help but explore. And exploring makes you hungry.

Now, although I often go exploring Salt Lake City and other areas alone, well, with my baby too lol, I do sometimes have my friend Kally with me. During these eating out and food making adventures, it's quite likely my husband Jeff and/or my best friend Kally will be involved too. Because of this as I continue with this blog, we may do co-writing(like interview style) or something....I dunno. We'll see what happens. :) So anyways, I wanted to give ya'll a little of my food background.

I grew up living with my mom, but when we'd go visit my dad, every other weekend and when we were older, the summer, he'd take us to eat just about anything but American. He had grown up in Hawaii and a little in Saint Thomas, so he wasn't the biggest fan of American food. He knew there was better food to be had. And that's straight from his mouth. :) It led to some funny times, like him offering us uncooked octopus and mangoes preserved in what I can only guess was dried ginger powder and salt, but for the most part I loved it all(even the octopus haha). I had wanted to be like my dad in loving all food since I was about four years old. I wanted to make that a life goal. Now, I've failed sometimes, though the only real foods I can't bear to eat is lobster and anything mint(yes, even chocolate), but I think I've done pretty well. As for my mom, well, she never cooked. Ever. Well, okay. Maybe Shake and Bake chicken or a roast once a month, and a package of Pasta-Roni Alfredo Angel Hair Pasta to split between three(a side dish of a food turned main course, but still side dish portions) every other week or so, but other than that, nothing. My sister and I would just eat cereal or peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. I swear I think people think I'm joking when I say that. We were those kids you see on TV commercials with sad faces when schools out and they say, "that was my one real meal I was going to eat that day." Alright, we had food options at home, though meager as stated above, but my sister and I related with them. ;)

So, with my food background being as it was, my husband Jeff couldn't be more opposite. He grew up in a family where he couldn't even remember if they had taken him and his siblings to any other food than American growing up. If you had to ask Jeff what his favorite food is, or if you caught him on any given day at some random time and asked him what he'd like to eat, nearly a hundred percent chance he'd say "a really good hamburger." Any time it's his time to choose where we're gonna eat, you best believe the menu where we're going has a "sandwich and burgers" section on it. It has made it tough with my exploring I've been doing, but he's been a sport...so far. My soba noodle dish I made last night pushed him a little over the "explore different foods" ledge, but after grilling hamburgers and bratwursts tonight I think he's now recouping.

Well, I guess I'll sign off now. I just want to say I think this'll be a fun experience. I hope ya'll enjoy reading and like the pictures, recipes and instructions, reviews, and other things I'll put up. Good news for ya'll is since my husband and I have a budget(and don't like to spend a ton on "luxury" things like eating out), most the places we'll visit will be around $10 or less a dish. Also, for recipes, I don't tend to like dishes with tons of ingredients, steps, or recipes that take half a day to make. So, unlike some recipes on the internet you come across where the food looked good but then you get discouraged after you get past the picture and what the food's called(my heart's still in shambles due to this. Dang you cannoli shells!*shakes her fist at the sky*), I hope you find my blog's recipes doable. :) Well, tomorrow brings a day of Suet Pudding and Daifuku(particularly Ichigo!), so I'll write more tomorrow!