The Sugar Bar

The salty creaminess of feta, tanginess of lemon, the licorice-laced crisp flavours of fennel, the explosive sweetness of Sultan’s Jewel tomatoes, the mild honeyish pomegranate seeds and the nuttiness of edamame all brought together in harmony by the grassiness of good extra virgin olive oil.

And to think sometimes I forget why salads are so addictive, so all-encompassing and very beautiful to look at. If something so simple (and simply put together) can taste so good, lifting my spirits with each bite, I’m never going to underestimate the humble salad ever again.

A friend once offered me a bottle of salad dressing, to which I turned it down saying I don’t really eat salad dressing. I enjoy salads mostly as they are – their component parts with no oily, wet dressing that splatters everywhere when I’ve got leafy bits sticking out between my lips like a goat. I don’t know if it’s some weird purist mentality I’ve got but that’s pretty much how I usually like my salads. Or if I really had to go for a salad dressing, then extra virgin olive oil and loads of balsamic vinegar which I love with a great passion. Anything mayonnaise-y, or something thick like thousand island dressing really puts me off. Not that I can’t stomach it, I just won’t enjoy it as much. And give my tummy a few hours, it’d probably start feeling a little upset and gurgling like it was part of a string orchestra. I kid you not. Therefore I stress clean, crisp flavours always. That’s just the way forward.

After months of wishing after the Ottolenghi cookbook, and the torturous process of having to see my beautiful foodie friends blog about their Ottolenghi recipes, experiences, it was high time I finally got my own copy. And I did. And it was such a luxury – a stylishly put-together cookbook with a glossy white cover; my heart was beating twice as fast and doing little skips as I flipped through the pages, eyeing the pulses and vegetables, curbing the urge to start sticking little 3M sticky notes in there with a frenzy for potential lunches and so forth. Happiness is moi. (Yes I’m so easily pleased with new cookbooks. But aren’t we foodies all a species of that sort? I’m eyeing the The French Laundry Cookbook next.) I’ve always been a fan of Ottolenghi food ever since I moved to London and even before I did, I’d browsed through the cookbook thinking how gorgeous the food must taste. Then I started visiting the Islington branch since I live just a little way from it. There was no turning back. I became a true fan. Unfortunately, I always felt a bit like a muggle or a half-blood without the cookbook. And having to queue for half a day (yes I exaggerate) or resorting to take-aways to get Ottolenghi grub in my mouth, down my esophagus and then safely into my stomach whenever I have a craving seems much too complicated. Remember, I am lazy.

Equipped with my new cookbook, life seems so rosy. With the beautiful weather too, it’s about time I shove that crabbiness so typical of my character somewhere where the sun don’t shine. I can’t wait to try out more of the recipes and actually, that’s probably not gonna change the fact that I’d still be hopping on a bus to Angel to take-away Ottolenghi cakes (and then eating them in the dark corners of my bedroom – on my own – a la Gollum) or meeting friends there for lunch.

On a final note, let me just say that I’m not just OCD, a perfectionist and anal (please, no crude jokes) to the point of being annoying. I also plan like a high-strung freak (not that I’m high-strung at all. I just have this thing about planning.) But here’s a confession – I’ve booked my sister and I in for dinner at Ottolenghi 2 MONTHS in advance. Yea, so I’m totally off my trolley like that. Crazy.

The original recipe uses tarragon instead of basil and adds no tomatoes or edamame. This makes about 4 servings.

Fennel and Feta with Pomegranate Seeds, Edamame & Sumac
Recipe adapted from the original (p.17) in Ottolenghi: The Cookbook
Ingredients

1/2 pomegranate
2 medium fennel heads
4 tbs fresh edamame beans
1/2 cup cherry/plum tomatoes
1 1/2tbs olive oil
2 tsp crushed sumac, plus extra for garnish
juice of 1 lemon
4 tbs fresh basil leaves, roughly shredded
2 tbs fresh flatleaf parsley, roughly chopped
70g Greek feta cheese
salt and ground black pepper, for seasoning

Remove pomegranate seeds from the fruit. Be careful not to bruise them or break the skin. You can purchase pomegranate seeds also fresh from the cut fruit section in major supermarkets.

Remove leaves from the fennel, reserving some for garnish later. Trim the base, making sure there’s still enough left on to hold the slices together. Slice very thinly lengthwise. Place sliced fennel, herbs, edamame and cherry tomatoes in a large salad bowl.

In another bowl, mix the olive oil, sumac, lemon juice, herbs and some salt and pepper. Add this to the salad bowl, toss well. Taste for seasoning and adjust to taste.

To serve, layer the fennel, then the feta and then the pomegranate seeds. Garnish with reserved fennel leaves, sprinkle with sumac and more parsley leaves if you have any lying about. Serve.

You know, ninjas are like fairies. You don’t see them. But they exist, mostly in the shadows and the cracks between their underworld and ours. Somewhere between my bed and the wall that its pressed up against, a ninja lives in that shadowy crack. No idea why he/she’s spying on me but I’m happy tucking myself deep under the duvet, watching Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escape in India and feeding this ninja of the dark (who’s tucked in somewhere as well under my bed probably) some of these truffles. My alter ego? A figment of my imagination? Or just plain excuse to make these black/white babies for me to eat? The latter seems most likely and I totally agree. I am a bit of nutter and I love chatting crap like this. Call me overworked, imaginative or plain crazy. I really don’t mind. I’ve got truffles.

The week has passed quite slow with horrible weather for most of it. Although today’s ridiculously sunny, bright and worm it feels like the world’s played a hoax upon us. But I’m not complaining. In fact, I totally rejoiced, ditched the essay that is begging to be written before I get chucked out of college, and ventured into the kitchen to make these.

I blame Catty. Oh my dear, in a good way. She made the scrummiest matcha & lemon truffles for Easter and was so generous to pass me some to taste. I was really stingy with myself, rationing it carefully and only caring to nibble it. Talk about waste of effort. They were gone by the next morning. I found myself mourning its bittersweet flavours so quick, I might’ve given myself heartburn (heartache?) pining away for it.

So of course I had to have more truffles about the house.

Now I’m wondering why I didn’t just begin the post that way. More respectable and, sane of course. Why on earth did I resort to pseudo mythmaking and one about a non-existence ninja-who-lives-in-the-shadows-of-my-bedroom? Not so sure. I think I munched on one too many squares of chocolate whilst waiting for these to set. The caffeine fried away my logic and the cocoa butter greased everything up in my brain, it turned to a squishy mess. No use to me at all.

I was inspired mostly by Japanese wagashi and more specifically, Minamoto Kitchoan’s Miyabiguruma. Of course, mine is nothing close and hardly as refined. Geez, it’s got Shreddies in there for crying out loud! But you can’t blame me for trying to recreate those flavours at home with what I had on hand. Not sure they looked very pretty but they were good. It really helps that I’m on a Shreddies craze as well. In my breakfast cereal, having it dry as a snack and now in chocolate truffles. I think I’m going slightly overboard. Who knows what I’ll be adding it to next. I fear to think it.

The concept to these truffles is similar to these Oreo truffles or Lemon Lime cream ones. Yes so they’re supposed to be pretty sweets. Pre-dipping in candy coating, however, my flatmate very eagerly exclaimed, ‘Oh you’re making meatballs!’. Uh oh. They really do look like meatballs, don’t they.

Types of anko:
(to make things easy, this is taken from Wikipedia)

Tsubuan (粒餡), whole red beans boiled with sugar but otherwise untreated
Tsubushian (潰し餡), where the beans are mashed after boiling
Koshian (漉し餡), which has been passed through a sieve to remove bean skins; the most common type
Sarashian (晒し餡), which has been dried and reconstituted with water

If you prefer to make your own anko, you can use this recipe here. I’ve never been too successful making my own because I’m too impatient to wait for it to soak overnight, and cook for hours til it’s soft enough to mash or pass through a sieve. So feel free to use canned anko. I’ve chosen a half mashed half whole bean anko from Meiji.

When it comes to truffles, I always use candy melts or coating chocolate, aka confectioner’s coating or bark. If you’re wondering whether this is chocolate, yes it is! But it’s chocolate for lazy bums like me. No tempering – only melt, mix, use, set. Its easier to control than regular chocolate, sets quick streak-free at room temperature, tastes great and doesn’t melt upon touching which I find happens a lot when using regular chocolate (which requires you sometimes to cool it in the fridge and then you get nasty sweating after when you take them out). Candy melts come in many colours. No fuss over what kind of colours to use (if you decide to use them) and whether oil, paste or powder or au naturel vegetable/fruit juice/dyes will affect it. I’ve used candy melts in Midnight Black and because I ran out of white melts, I’ve used Green & Blacks vanilla white chocolate.

I’m feeling a bit zen with the black and white colour combination. Time to whip out my teapot, sencha and ponder over something deep. Who knows, my shadow ninja might decide to join me for a cuppa.

Makes about 12-15 eyeball-sized truffles. (I would’ve said ping pong-sized but aren’t eyeballs a little smaller and heck, sounds more fun. No?)

Chestnut & Adzuki Bean Black/White Chocolate Truffles
Ingredients

1 can/210g anko (adzuki bean paste)
10-12 small cooked chestnuts, depending on how many you end up making
about 1/2 cup Shreddies, finely crushed
about 1/2 cup black chocolate candy melts
about 1/2 cup white chocolate candy melts
black sesame seeds, for garnish (optional)
white sesame seeds, for garnish (optional)

There isn’t really a recipe for this is there? It’s just banging ingredients together.

In a bowl, mash together crushed Shreddies and enough anko to get a cement-like consistency. You don’t want it too dry or it won’t hold together. But you need it wet enough to be able to seal itself around the chestnut. Play around with it until you feel confident of it holding up.

Take a chestnut and about 1/2 to 1 tbs of crushed Shreddies and anko mixture, press into it and start to carefully seal the chestnut into it. Gently press to smoothen out the surface like you would a rice ball, then lightly roll between palms to form balls. If the surface starts to gloss and smoothen itself out, that’s perfect. Repeat for the other chestnuts. Place on a plate covered with grease-proof parchment. Place in refrigerator to let the chestnut balls set a bit for about 3-4 minutes.

In small bowls, melt candy coating separately, following the directions written on the bag (it will differ slightly depending on their make but will normally require a 1 minute melt-time in microwave; mix; 10 second blasts and mixing until the coating is completely melted and smooth).

Drop chestnut balls in candy coating, coat and drop onto flat surface lined with grease-proof parchment. Garnish with a tiny sprinkling of sesame seeds of the opposite colour. Allow to set for about 2 minutes or so. Done.

3rd March, is Hinamatsuri 雛祭り or Girls’ Day in Japan. This is a day when families wish for the healthy growth and happiness of their girls. Hina dolls (of the emperor, his court officials and ladies), dressed in imperial Heian costume on a red-carpeted doll altar, are displayed from end of February to 3rd March. They must be taken down after the festival due to a superstition regarding the marriageability of the girls if left displayed. These dolls absorb the ill luck or bad fortune from the girls and it seems (probably influenced by an ancient Chinese tradition) some dolls are set loose down rivers to send away that ill fortune. Because it is also the Japanese Peach Blossom Festival (Momo-no Sekku 桃の節句), peach blossoms are often displayed with the dolls and offerings like shiro-sake and wagashi are placed together with the dolls on the carpeted stand. These offerings are later enjoyed by everyone.

Wagashi meant for this occasion, hishi-mochi, come in three colours of pink, white and green representing the pink of the peach blossoms, snow and new growth respectively. Not only is this symbolic for the blossoming of youthful girls, it marks the advent of Spring. Can’t help thinking about my favourite Hanami Dango, which also comes in those three colours, eaten at the Hanami Festival or cherry blossom viewing festival.

Hikichigiri is a traditional wagashi eaten on the day of Hinamatsuri (you can see what it looks like here). It reminds me a bit of a sea anemone! Although I don’t celebrate the festival and I very surely could not find hikichigiri in London, I was determined not to be left out of an excuse to eat wagashi anyway. A stop-on-impulse visit at Minamoto Kitchoan, previously blogged about here, meant four little wagashi treats to take home. I‘ve the oribenishiki to chase away autumn/winter, hinamonogatari just for Hinamatsuri, sakuradaifuku to welcome spring and the mitarashi dango to represent my eagerness for summer. Yes, each chosen wagashi has a season in mind!

Hinamonogatari 雛物語 – ‘Doll Story’ – A spring wagashi known as hina-arare ひなあられ for Hinamatsuri, or popped rice.

Seems these are only available during the festival so they are extra special, especially when you’ve got the picture of a hina doll on the packet! These rice crackers are made by frying dry steamed rice in hot oil before colouring them. They are so pretty to look at and like sugar puffs, are crispy and delicate. I dropped a few in some of my dango sauce (mitarashi dango below) and they even made the same crackling noise as rice krispies.

Flowers, tea, nature, paintings and the appreciation of all four are an important part of tea ceremony. This next one really got me thinking…

Oribenishiki 織部錦 – Adzuki and Chestnut Paste Kurimanjyu Cake dusted with fine sugar

I read up a little that the five-lobed compound leaf on the cake’s brown top is an indicator of the adzuki bean and chestnut inside. But I wasn’t convinced and thought the leaf and subsequent three leaves beneath it represented something else. In terms of the name, I discovered a few interesting things:

Oribe is a reference to Furuta Oribe (1544-1615), a famous 16th century tea master who was a favourite student of Sen no Rikyū, both of whom were important contributors to the Japanese tea ceremony chado. Oribe founded the Oribe school of tea ceremony which is still in practise today in Japan. He became famous as a tea master after the death of Sen Rikyū, and became the tea ceremony instructor for the second shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada. He changed the tea ceremony from a style suited to merchants to one adapted to the samurai. He also developed the Oribe gonomi (Oribe taste) with novel designs of pottery (all a little out of shape, wonky-looking or chipped with shades of green and yellow), stone lanterns, and so on with a style that stressed utility and a beauty simple, humble and unassuming.

Nishiki in the name might refer to the richly coloured brocade of Japanese kimono or the Higo Yamato Nishiki (a type of camellia flower often seen on kimono and its name meaning ‘Old Brocade of Japan’). Camellia is symbolic of the advent of spring and is also largely associated with chabana – a branch of flower arrangement during tea ceremony championed by Rikyū. The cake definitely doesn’t show a camellia flower and its pattern of a 5 compound leaf rather than say a maple leaf really confused me and how it had any relation to brocade, kimono or tea ceremony but part of me thinks it might refer to the tranquility and simplistic beauty (reminder: Oribe philosophy) which even leaves must and also do deliver. Correct me if I’m wrong or share with me your thoughts on this. I’d greatly appreciate it.

So there was my rather Zen and intellectual moment with a cake and a cup of tea. Bet you guys don’t often do that with sweets, now do you? I admit if you put a cupcake in front of me or a good fruit slice or scone, there’ll be no pondering and appreciation of the seasons/nature. Just gobble gobble and swallow.

Moving away from that autumn/winter treat though, come end of March, it’s all about sakura in Japan. Joy to spring and the blossoming of flowers. That would surely put a smile on my face once this awful grey just goes away (even if only for a little while).

Sakuradaifuku 櫻大福 – Mochi with Sakura Shiro-an Filling coated in taro starch – another spring wagashi

A strong perfume of sakura is unleashed once you open the packet and as you bite into this, the perfume is always there gently wafting about you, making it such a delightful sweet to enjoy which tantalizes all the senses as wagashi is supposed to do. Although this is different from sakuramochi whether in ball form or East Japan’s crepe rolled-form then wrapped in a sakura leaf, I believe the flavours are quite similar. Sakura leaves are pickled in salt water before use in this and there is a strong combination of sweet savouryness in the shiro-an or white-bean paste filling. I think this has got to be a new favourite daifuku of mine because I’ve never actually managed to taste sakura as pure and strong as in this shiro-anko filling.

Shiro-an is made from navy beans or lima beans. I was very pleased to see a variation from the usual anko or red adzuki bean filling. The mochi surrounding the filling was coloured a very light pale pink with bits of crushed sakura kneaded into it. What a pretty sight and of course with daifuku, it’s name literally meaning ‘big or great luck’, I can’t help thinking that a lot of luck and fortune might be coming my way now that most of this has been consumed!

Mitarashi Dango 御手洗 団子 - Japanese mochiko dumpling with a soy sauce and sugar syrup

Although my favourite kind of dango is the hanami dango, I do love the caramel-ish coloured soy sugar syrup in this. With my penchant for sweet and savoury together, it’s hard to say no to this. This variation of dango is often eaten at the summer Mitarashi Festival – a purification festival – and traditionally offered to the gods at Shimogamo shrine. Hence, the name 御手洗: ‘honourable washing of hands’.

To celebrate, I made my own mitarashi dango too according to this recipe here which is so simple to follow with clear photographed instructions. I loved the mitarashi sauce but found I had to add a bit more potato starch. I like my sauce not so drippy but real thick and gooey. Also, as you can see from the difference in colour between Minamoto Kitchoan’s and mine, mine’s a lot ‘thinner’ and less caramel brown. That’s because that photograph was taken after the first dipping/coating of the sauce.

Leaving the dango on the skewers to cool a little more to room temperature after cooking, drizzling and coating with mitarashi sauce at intervals lets the sauce set better around the dango. You’ll get a darker colour than the initial thin light-coloured appearance. I didn’t grill them as the recipe called for and although it is actually a lot tastier when grilled, as you would normally find them if you bought them from the store, again my kitchen fails me. Or rather my kitchen utensil-poverty limited me. But it’s actually fine to leave them as it is up to the boiled stage. It lacks that extra grilled x-factor but together with the sauce, and left for a bit to cool and set, these dango sticks are just amazing treats for everyone.

These were consumed without any more cracking of the head and name deconstruction, thankfully. Might stay off informative posts for a while as this one really sapped me dry. Off to nom on a few more dango bits.