#2 Daifuku

In middle school, my friend’s family used to babysit me once a week after school while my parents worked. Her parents were Chinese by background and their house was always stocked with Asian snack foods sent en masse to their house and organized in stacks in their kitchen closet. When we came home, we were allowed one snack from this closet. This became a weekly adventure, not knowing what any of the labels meant or even being able to guess the ingredients from the foods’ odd shapes and colors. One day, deciding upon a round innocent cake-looking pastry wrapped in a plastic wrapper, I chomped down into a Daifuku and, though I don’t remember the taste, my 13 year old self apparently turned green and spit it all out, thus becoming the family’s joke for year and years to come. After calling my friend and talking about this project, she reminded me of Daifuku and I headed to Haruki’s Asian mini-market to get myself some.

This Japanese pastry is made of a mochi, glutinous rice cake outer layer surrounding a filling of anko, sweet red bean paste made from asuki beans and covered in a sweet powder called kinako. Haruki’s had four types: plain, plain layered with sesame seeds, a dubiously cotton-candy pink one flavored strawberry, and a green one which the woman at the counter highly suggested. I couldn’t understand what the flavor was so I looked it up at home.My green Daifuku uses yomogi mochi, which has the crushed lead of the flower plant yomogi in it, otherwise known as Japanese mugwort. Kusa mochi, and yomogi mochi, are considered spring seasonal dishes.

I’ve gained a pretty big sweet tooth since I was 13 strangely enough, and I found the little pastry to be delicious for the first few bites. The dough of the mochi is incredibly chewy, a lot like raw pie crust, and was not my favorite part of the sweet, but the sweet red bean paste was interestingly grainy yet creamy at the same time. A blogger tried to explain the little difference that yomogi made which I agree with: a bitter leafy taste he said he preferred. I didn’t find the pastry to have any leafy aspect to it, but there was a bitterness to the mochi that could not have come from the dough. I’m not sure if this was due to the packaging of the product, but my Daifuku was covered in kinako powder, which exploded all over my desk and made the sweet very messy to eat. After a while, however, a single daifuku can make you pretty full and in need of some water: it is, after all, like eating a large ball of uncooked dough.

Final analysis: a delicious treat with many an interesting and which I will definitely eat in the future, though best split between friends.

Sources:

http://slowfoodfromjapan.blogspot.com/2010/04/tea-time-with-kusa-mochi.html

http://shizuokagourmet.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/japanese-cakes-wagashi-15-daifuku/