Autumn leaf daigaku imo

大学芋 Daigaku imo, literally “the university’s potato”, is a street stall sweet. It’s certainly of Chinese origin, but theses sticky potatoes have become part of the furniture in Japan. Osaka has a famous shop that makes some special ones, dipped in crack maybe, as you can’t stop if you start eaten one. I don’t know their secret. Maybe there is none. You take good satsuma imo (Japanese sweet potato), you fry them and coat in a syrup.
And the results depends on the quality of your ingredients and how you master the process.

Flat and small is easier, so I cut shapes of 5 mm of thickness.

I cook them in 3 steps : steaming till they are half-cooked, then I stir-fry them at 160 degrees C till they soften. I put them aside and bring the oil at 180 degrees, to cook them a little more and get crispiness. I put on oil absorbing paper 2 minutes.

Syrup : 1 tbs of sugar + 1 tbs of honey or mizuame (glucose jelly) + 2 tbs of water. Simmer till it starts getting thicker. Add a few drops of fragrant sesame oil. Pass the freshly fried potatoes (still hot) in this hot syrup.
Decorate with black sesame.

NB : I fry them in normal neutral frying oil, not the dark sesame oil for seasoning. It’s possible to fry in sesame oil but only if you have a different white frying sesame oil.

They have to be soft inside crispy around. They are better if you eat them warm, just after making them.

Mitarashi tokk

Matcha and wagashi. Tea and cakes. That’s an informal tea ceremony with a Korean twist.
The model is mitarashi dango, skewers of mochi balls in a sweet sauce. But these are sticks…

I’ve used Korean mochi (tokk). I have no idea if that exists elsewhere than in Osaka, but you can see this version here. It’s very convenient to prepare.

Boiled them till soft (10 minutes).

Put on skewers. Passed a little sesame oil around.

Grilled the skewers.

I’ve made a sauce by melting a small block of kurozato black sugar in water, adding a little soy sauce, a pinch of hot chili and a little potato starch to thicken.

Reheated the sauce and painted the skewers with it.

Served with matcha green tea.

Simple chijimi (garlic chive pancakes)

Onion, nira (garlic chives), peppers…

The batter is flour and potato starch. I cook them in neutral oil and add sesame oil to finish.

Cut in squares.

When it rains, jeon and makkoli

It was raining, raining, raining today…

When it rains, the Koreans make jeon as the noise of cooking them is similar to the sound of rain drops falling. And they drink makkoli, because… Well, I guess they must be thirsty.

I’ve got makkoli from the convenience store. It’s written in Japanese but that’s the real thing. It’s a drink made of fermented wine, close to Japanese amazake (sweet sake). But the Japanese one is for kids, while the makkoli has 6% alcohol, like a wine. I have to be careful because that’s so sweet that I’d drink that like milk, well even more easily than milk. But then, I don’t make a merry tispy fellow, just a person suddenly feeling sick. So, let’s be reasonable.

Chijimi and jeon are both names of Korean pancakes, well in Osaka, it’s all chijimi and you’ve seen some before here.
That’s the fashion to make green nira chijimi. I’ve seen restaurants had them. That’s a good idea,

nira

I have added a whole bunch of nira (garlic chives) into the blender with flour, a piece of potato and potato starch. That’s not so solid as usual, but if you flip them carefully, no problem. The taste is very green. I’ve used the color of onion and yellow bell pepper to contrast.