Mitarashi Dango Daikazoku

Making dango this time around was easier than the past two times I've attempted making it.  I think my past failures were because if  1) faulty recipes, 2) incorrect ingredients, 3) sheer ignorance, and 4) lack of research and resources.  Ohio is not really known for its diversity when it comes to food items.  This time around, I read through several recipes online and watched a few videos on YouTube before I settled on a few that looked promising.  My top choices were food bloggers that I've been following for a couple years now, so they've gained my trust.  It also helps that they're all Japanese, two of which actually live in Japan, so I would hope they know what they're talking about.  After much deliberation, I stuck with the recipe by Maki of JustHungry.com except I halved the ingredients.

Dango Ingredients:

• 110g joushinko
• 55g shiratamako
• ~140ml of hot tap water (I ended up using more because I heated it up to much in the microwave and added cool water to cool it down)
• A pot of boiling salted water

I almost followed the directions exactly except that I mixed the two flours together then added the water instead of mixing the joushinko with the water then adding the shiratamako.  I got ahead of myself.  I mixed them together when I was measuring them out then read the directions.  Whoops!

I didn't think I'd need all the water since I did have more than the recipe called for.  However, the dough was very crumbly in the beginning so I kept adding water.  Even after I added all the water and pulled the dough together there was still stuff stuck to the bowl.  However, the dough was the right consistency so I didn't want to mess with it any more.  I kept reading that it should be as soft as your earlobe.  Maki's recipe says to "mix until it forms a soft dough that feels a bit dry to the touch", so that's what I did.  It has an interesting texture that I half wasn't expecting, half was expecting from watching dango making videos.

The original recipe says it makes 25 dango.  However, even though I halved it I still came out with 23, or 22 good sized dango and one smaller dango.  I am so glad I halved it, because I don't know what I would have done with all those dumplings.

A few minutes after the dumplings were made, the pot of water came to a rolling boil, so I carefully dropped them in so as not to splash.  Once they were done I promptly put them in an ice water bath as per instructions.

Historically, dango are eaten five on a stick.  This was because it was said to represent the human body and they were used as offerings to the gods.  My dango weren't divisible by five, so two skewers had to hold four dango each.  Poor little headless dango, unusable as sacrifices to the gods.

Maki's recipe called for the dango to be grilled, but the idea of using a grill pan made me hesitant, so I used a nonstick pan instead, which I was still hesitant about.  I always worry about things sticking to pans no matter what so I turned them often, but that kind of defeated the purpose of them getting dark marks.

While they were "grilling" I made the mitarashi sauce.  I thought about halving the recipe for the sauce since I halved the recipe for the dango, but I like my dango with a lot of sauce, so I didn't.


Mitarashi Sauce Ingredients:

• 1/4 c sugar
• 1/2 c water
• 1 Tbs potato starch
• 1/8 cup soy sauce
• 1 Tbs mirin

I failed to mix all the ingredients together before adding heat, so when I put it on the stove and left it to boil the starch became gelatinous on the bottom of the pan and made the sauce lumpy.  Also, this recipe has too much soy sauce for my taste.  I would rather it be more sweet than soy saucy, so I think I'll either use a different recipe in the future or cut back on the soy sauce in this one.

In the end, I think they came out alright for my first successful attempt.  They had a weird aftertaste to me, so I'm not sure if that's just the tap water or the copious amounts of soy sauce.  But look at these sexy food porn shots.

Oooh... 

So saucy...

So glisten-y...

Because I happened to find it and buy it while at Hana, I also mixed some kinako (toasted soy flour) with sugar and covered the 4-dango skewers with that, something I saw in Cooking with Dog's recipe.  I almost preferred the kinako dango over the mitarashi dango.  Another favorite topping of mine is anko (red bean paste), but I didn't think about using that as a topping until all the dango were already covered.  I guess I'll just have to save it for my in-class presentation.  Then they'll be extra abso-foodie-licious!

Kinako Dango

Hana Japanese Market

Taken from their Facebook page.

After doing some research looking for Japanese markets in DC I found only two.  There is one in Rockville and one in DC.  The one I went to was in DC.  A few minute walk from the U-street metro stop, Hana Japanese Market is a small store that sells Japanese goods, obviously.  When I say it is small, I mean it is small.  When I went there were people with a camera and a microphone filming and interviewing customers while they shopped (I was unable to escape them.  They asked what I was buying and what I was planning on making and if I had visited Japan and what my favorite Japanese food was.  I was nervous.) and with them it was super crowded.  I had to be very

Onigiri!  I used to eat these a lot in Japan.

careful not to knock things off the shelves with my basket, and getting around other shoppers was a challenge.  Not only do they sell prepackaged goods, but they also sell fresh and frozen produce and they even sell onigiri by the register!  Hana is run by an older Japanese couple, and them and the one young woman who was working there were very helpful while I was trying to find ingredients.

Because it is one of the only Japanese markets in DC I was worried that because it is so small that I wouldn't be able to find what I needed for dango.  But boy was I surprised.  They had everything!  I guess it's true when they say that big things come in small packages.  They had the ingredients that I needed to make the dango along with the ingredients for the mitarashi sauce.  They even had other stuff I could use as toppings like adzuki bean paste (ogura-an) and soybean flour (kinako).

Joushinko and Shiratamako

Mirin, Soy sauce, Ogura-an, Kinako, and Katakuriko

Their prices were a bit higher than I expected, but beggars can't be choosers especially when there's no where else to get this and it's imported.  Now all that's left to do is pick a recipe and attempt to make them again this weekend.  I can't wait.  It's going to be abso-foodie-licious!

Joushinko, why hast thou forsaken me?

Once I decided that I wanted to make mitarashi dango, of course I went to look for recipes.  I can't make a food item if I don't know what I need or how to make it.  So, after looking at several recipes I noticed the two ingredients I would need to buy that wouldn't be as easy to come by; joushinko (or joshinko or johshinko) and shiratamako.  Both joushinko and shiratamako are a type of rice flour, joushinko being a Japanese rice flour made from milled, short grain rice.  Shiratamako is a Japanese rice flour made from glutinous rice flour and starch.  Both are needed to make the perfect earlobe texture.  All joushinko will make dango that is chewy and doughy while all shiratamako will make a dango that is sticky, neither of which we want.  

Joushinko

Shiratamako

So, in looking for the right flour I found shiratamako easily.  However, joushinko is giving me major trouble.  I can find all the Thai rice flour and Bob's Red Mill rice flour that I could ever want, but I can't find joushinko for sale online.  I may just use the Thai rice flour since it is indeed non-glutinous, or I'll see if I can find a Japanese market somewhere and browse their selection.  If not, I may also try a recipe I saw that used tofu and shiratamako.  Maybe I'll try both.  Either way, I want to end up with a treat that is abso-foodie-licious.

Food and Science Foodventure - The Decision

"I want to make mochi for my project.  Yeah, write about that." -The prompt for this post

One of my favorite Japanese sweets is mochi.  Not the mochi used as a topping for frozen yogurt (not that I don't love it) or the ever popular mochi ice cream, but the fluffy round sweet rice cake filled with deliciously smooth red bean paste (or sesame paste or taro or strawberries) also known as daifuku.  Or even the freshly pounded mochi they serve at Shinshun Matsuri that is topped with shredded nori and chunky red bean paste and some other stuff I don't know the name of.

The boxed good stuff

The fresh good stuff

But, after some more contemplation I've realized that there is another Japanese treat that I quite enjoy that I can't get as easily year round.  Not only can I not find it as easily as boxed mochi, but in the past I have attempted to create this yet to be said treat and failed twice in the most epic of ways.  

What I would like to attempt to make a third time (third time's the charm) is mitarashi dango (みたらし団子, pronounced: me-ta-rah-she dah-n-go).

Mmm....mitarashi dango...

Hanami dango

 If you've never had mitarashi dango, you are missing out my friend.  It's similar to mochi in that it's also made from rice or rice flour but with some differences.  Dango is a generic term for unfilled dumplings.  This type, in particular, is served on a bamboo skewer.  So, unlike mochi, there are no fillings.  All the tasty stuff gets put on top unless it's mixed in to add color for Hanami.

Dango by themselves don't have a strong favour so they are easy to top.  They go well with red bean paste, but my favorite topping is the glaze.  It is a sweet and savory sauce typically made with sugar, soy sauce, and starch.

I may have to try a couple different recipes before I can get this right (I hope I don't, that would be awful), but I love it so much that I've got to try.  It won't nearly be as good as the ones I got from the little sweets shop around the corner from my apartment in Japan or the prepackaged ones, but, hey, I'm just an untrained American attempting to create wagashi.  Nobody's perfect.

It may be a challenge, but I'm hoping it will turn out abso-foodie-licious.