Red daikon, red mochi.

A colorful version of the Chinese snack that is called in Japan daikon mochi and I can’t pronounce any of its names in Chinese dialects… Well, radish cake.

I washed and grated my red skin daikon radish. It’s white inside as usual.

I steamed the daikon. Added an equivalent volume of mochiko (sticky rice flour) with enough water to get it creamy. For flavoring : salt, chili pepper flakes, dry shiitake mushroom, fish flakes (skip for vegan version). And fried slices of garlic.

I steamed the cakes. Let them chill.

Then pan-fried cuts of very cold cakes in sesame oil. They become creamy inside, crispy around. The flower is a slice of raw daikon.

For sauce : sweet chili sauce + Bulldog Worcester style sauce.

Mandarin mikan daifuku mochi

丸ごとみかん大福 marugoto mikan daifuku is a currently popular daifuku mochi tea sweet. It’s a cousin of the now classic ichigo daifuku.

Most *bakers* wrap the mikans with shiroan white bean paste, but I really like the anko red bean paste and mikan orange pairing.
For the recipes to make the mochi and paste refer to this post (click).

Mikan, Japanese mandarin orange. The early ones have a green skin. Now, they are becoming really sweet.

Azuki beans to prepare tsubuan sweet bean paste.

With kurozato black sugar.

Serve fresh. Then cut :

Arare rice crackers : zarame ume + shoyu

Shoyu arare (soy sauce caramel rice cracker).

Ume zarame arare (plum and sugar rice cracker).
They are 2 classic flavors for Japanese rice crackers.
You had already seen :

savory arare
matcha arare

Let’s make 2 new types of Japanese rice crackers. Here is my simplified recipe :

Cut a mochi in cubes.
Everything about mochi (click)

Let dry 2 days.

Toast till golden in the oven toaster.

ザラメ This square candy sugar is called zarame.

umeboshi pickled plum

For the plum sugar flavor, pass in a mix of pasted umeboshi flesh and sarame sugar, dry in the toaster a few minutes, add more sarame sugar.

For the shoyu, put a block or a tbs of kurozato black sugar in a sauce pan with a little water. When sugar has melted add some soy sauce, simmer till it gets syrupy. Coat the arare.

I have no idea about how long you can keep them. They disappear immediately after the photos are taken.

Not your usual vodka sauce pasta (veg’, fun and GF revamping)

Well, I was thinking about finishing old bottles I’ve add since forever in a closet and I thought that was vodka in the dark corner there, so the plan was to do that famous creamy vodka sauce. But, that was tequila. So why not ? I had tokk, the Korean rice cake-pasta-mochi and coconut cream. At the end there is nothing left of the original recipe, but miraculously I got that luscious sauce effect… Finger-licking good !

That starts with flavors of three fresh herbs in a tomato sauce with onion, garlic and olive oil. Plus a cup of vo.. er, tequila.

Then pas… er, Korean tokk are added. Then, when they become soft coconut cream.

The tok’ in sauce.

A crown of steamed romanesco.

Royal court tokpokki

Gungjung tteokbokki (궁중 떡볶이) were the tokpokki prepared for the Korean royal courts. They were served long before hot chili reached Korean peninsula, so they are much less spicy than the street stall version.

This is a simple interpretation of the dish using soy sauce and sesame oil as main flavoring and what I had in my pantry.

Nira (garlic chives), carrot, onion and soaked dried shiitake mushrooms.

The tokk (rice cakes) need 8 to 10 minutes boiling, then refreshing under fresh water. Then stir-frying and wetting the sauce with the mushroom soaking water. I only added black pepper.

Decorated with a little yuzu peel.
The balance of flavors is perfect. I think the mushrooms bring a lot, so don’t skip them or replace them with something strong in flavor. Beef is a possibility.