Sweet Sculpture
I HAD not been in Japan many days when I was attracted by a street lined with colorful stores. Coming upon a well-lit shop, I was attracted by a delicately laid-out window display. On a small tray lay the spiny outer shell of a chestnut and another beside it, split open to show the inner nutmeat. They were flanked by reddish-brown maple leaves.
I started to move on, then went back for another look. What were they? Ceramics? Papier-mâché? Unable to read the sign over the door, I entered the shop to satisfy my curiosity.
The Inside Story
What I found on the other side of the sliding doors was something, not just to please the eye, but especially to please the palate. Those lovely sculptures in the window were confections and candies, yet so different from any I had ever seen or tasted. One reason was that the ingredients are not associated in the Western mind with candymaking. What are they? Would you believe it—pounded rice dough and stewed beans! These aren’t the only ones, but they are the most basic and their use goes back many centuries.
Wagashi is the name used to cover a wide variety of confections uniquely Japanese. Fruit is the customary dessert following a meal, while traditional sweets are made to accompany tea drinking and are savored in small amounts. Color, shape, texture and aroma reflect the time of year. In spring you can expect to see wooden trays filled with peach, plum, camellia or daffodil cakes. Then there are nightingale buns, bird-shaped and dusted with green soy flour.
Shall we enter a shop run by two generations of cakemakers? Maybe they’ll let us have a peek at the area where the cakes are made. We bow low and smile politely as the owner leads the way. In the corner a huge copper pot sits on a single burner while the main ingredient for the lovely sculptures-to-be is boiling. It’s the beans, of course, and lima, soy or small red ones named azuki may have their turn in the pot. All these beans are almost fat free and rich in vitamins, protein and iron. Virtually no preservatives are used in this shop.
On a table close by are rows of little steamed dumplings made of rice flour filled with bean jam. Using a tea towel and wooden instruments, the confectioner shapes the lumps into impressionistic fruit and flowers with swift, sure movements. When decorating begins, seaweed gelatin is used. It looks and acts like other types of gelatin, with the added bonus of being iodine-rich. Today it’s colored green for the leaf and pastel shades for the flower designs. The kanten, as this tengusa (agar) variety of seaweed gelatin is called, is also mixed with bean paste to make yokan, a jellied loaf that is the favorite of a whole nation. And among foreigners, too! Cooled in summer, it’s a refreshing treat available in persimmon, chestnut, green-tea and other flavors.
Long before foreign sugar arrived on the Japanese candymaking scene, the Oriental version of glucose (made from rice starch and barley) or fruit extracts were used as sweeteners and for aroma. That principle of using natural ingredients still prevails. At the next table we see aromatic grass being mixed with rice dough to make kusa-mochi, literally, grass cakes. Our eyes widen at the sight of pale-pink mochi (rice-flour dumplings) covered with leaves—pickled cherry leaves, and quite edible. Other leaves used for purely decorative wrapping are oak, bamboo and camellia.
Traveler’s Take-Home Treats
In ancient times when traveling was done mostly on foot, many confectioners spread the fame of their products by operating little rest stops, much like a modern drive-in. Tea and rice doughballs skewered on sticks would be served, then taken along to munch on like chewy popsicles or carried to the folks back home. Travelers in the cold and rugged prefecture of Aomori preferred kori-mochi, originally used as survival rations. Then, as now, sweetened dried rice squares were tethered together with straw strips to form a dangling cascade. Three hundred years later sightseers to this area still seek it out.
If we swing over to the castle city of Tatebayashi, we’ll find a very old candy called rakugan. Barley or corn is its base and, pressed through wooden molds, bite-sized flowers, leaves, sticks, stones or any other conceivable shape may appear. Traveling the hamlets and cities of Japan, you’ll find each has its speciality, or meibutsu, and often they’re tied in with the growth and history of the region.
A last look around the work area confirms that there are no ovens in this cake shop. The watchwords are stew, knead and heat. To this list we can add imagination and a sculptor’s deft touch. The figurines before us are called sweets, but we’ve come to appreciate that the contents are nourishing foods.
As the shop attendants wrap our purchases in beautiful keepsake boxes, our host asks us to be his guest for tea and cake. The gelatin-glazed rosebuds and grass cakes look good to me. What will you have? Perhaps the shape of the sweet sculpture will influence your decision. Or maybe the color. Whatever you choose, it will be good.—Contributed.