Yesterday, my sister came to our parents’ house from Tokyo with some sweets. After having traditional New Year’s dinner as last year, we had kohaku (紅白) manju or red and white buns stuffed with sweet adzuki bean paste. This kind of buns are often eaten or delivered at festive events such as New Year, wedding, entrance and graduation ceremonies of schools, etc. As 2020 is the year of the Rat according to the Chinese Horoscope, the white buns bore the image of a rat, and the pink bun the Chinese character that means the Rat.
Apart from the special design for the New Year, they seemed to be ordinary buns. However, the skin of the buns contained yam, adding moist in the texture. Such buns are regarded to be of higher quality compared with those made from only rice flour or wheat flour. I like them because they actually taste better.
My sister gave us hanabira-mochi or a flower petal rice cake as well. I wrote about it already at the beginning of last year as it is a traditional sweet for the New Year. The unique thing about it is that a stick of sweetened boiled burdock is wrapped in a thin rice cake (The product we ate had also a stick of sweetened boiled carrot), and the bean paste inside contains miso and tastes a bit salty.
The rice cake was very good. I can’t explain well how soft and delicious the rice cake was, so I just post another picture that shows the cross section of it. It looked colorful inside.
I wish all of you a happy new year!
No comments:
Post a Comment