Soup with cherry blossoms

Now is the end of March, and cherry blossoms in Hamamatsu and many other regions in Japan have started blooming. Personally, I prefer the apple blossom, but the cherry blossom is the flower most loved by Japanese people. You can see them not only in parks but also in some food.

On November 17, I wrote about beautiful instant soup from Fumuroya (不室屋) in this blog. Though they don’t have a permanent shop in Hamamatsu, some of their instant soup are available in the basement of Entetsu Department Store. Now, they have a new product that looks like a petal of a cherry blossom.

This is what I ate for dinner today. I had mixed rice with shiitake mushroom, burdock root, carrot, deep-fried tofu, and soy milk skin, black sesame tofu with sauce, and soup. The picture below is the soup when it was ready after I poured hot water. It had cherry-blossom-shaped hu and a real cherry blossom in it.

It was flavored with kelp broth and had a mild flavor. The flavor of the cherry blossom was weak compared with those used in sweets.

The sesame tofu was made from sesame, sweet potato starch, and arrowroot starch. As I explained before in the article of Kyoto Fair, sesame tofu is not a real tofu because it doesn’t contain soy beans. Fortunately, this product had vegan sauce made from miso, sugar, sweet sake, and sesame, so I could add it on top. I thought this sauce suited to black sesame tofu very well. According to the website of the manufacturer Hijiri Food (聖食品), their sesame tofu is made with the traditional method in Koyasan or Mount Koya, which is the center of Shingon Buddhism. Their products are made by using squeezed juice of sesame instead of sesame paste that is more commonly used for sesame tofu. In this way, they can have a smoother texture and mouthfeel. Hijiri Food produces also white sesame and golden sesame tofu, and I feel like trying them soon.