Eating sakura (cherry blossoms and leaves) article in the Japan Times

My latest article in The Japan Times is about edible cherry blossoms and leaves. Japanese people love the cherry tree so much that not only do they eagerly look forward to their all too short flowering season each spring, they use the whole plant. They eat the berries of course later on (cherries are called sakuranbo and are in season in June and July) but they also eat the blossoms and the leaves, pickling them in salt and umeboshi vinegar (a by-product of making umeboshi). The wood is used for various things too, as well as the bark. See how sakura bark strips are used in the making of magewappa (bent wood) bento boxes here on JustBento. The bark is also boiled and used as a medicinal tea.

Some photos that didn’t get into the article below.

This is how salted/pickled sakura leaves and flowers are typically sold. The flat package contains leaves, and the jar has flowers. You can find them in well stocked supermarkets or in department store food halls in Japan around this time of the year.

Closeup of some cherry blossoms straight out of the jar. As you can see they are quite salty, so for most uses you need to soak them in water for a bit. But for sakurayu or sakura tea, just put a blossom or two in a cup of hot water. The ‘tea’ is salty and sour with a subtle fragrance.

The easiest way to enjoy the taste of sakura in Japan is via wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets). This is a sakuramochi - an an (sweet bean paste) filled mochi cake wrapped in a sakura leaf. The salty-sour taste of the leaf is a perfect foil to the sweetness of the cake inside.

Here’s another kind of sakuramochi; the mochi cake is made of Doumyouji rice, which is medium grain instead of short grain.

How the sakuramochi looks inside. It’s a nice couple of bites.

This is a sakura manjuu. The filling is an again, but the dough is different from mochi (but still made with rice). The top is decorated with sakura flavored salt. You can also find sakura manjuu with a salted cherry blossom on top.

Finally here is a sakura-flower shaped nerikiri, a delicate confection made just from smooth an. Beautiful, isn’t it? It doesn’t actually taste like sakura, unlike the more rustic sakura mochi and sakura manjuu, but it’s meant to enjoy the season via the eyes. This one is from Kagizen Yoshifuka, a famous old tea room in Kyoto that I have written about previously a couple of times.

You can also buy seasonal sakura flavored candies, chocolates and the like but to be honest, most of these are pretty but just taste like sugar.

I have noticed that a lot of people (at least in my circles) are travelling to Japan this spring. This is a good thing. If you’re in Japan or planning to go there soon, enjoy the sakura season!

View the original article here

Shrimp with Curry Leaves

Shrimp with Curry Leaves pictures (1 of 4)

It is not easy to come by fresh curry leaves here in Orange County. So whenever they are available at the local Indian grocery store, I rarely let the opportunity to whip up something spicy slip by, especially during the winter months. The curry leaf is one of the many Indian influences that blends really well into Malaysian cuisine, which is exotic and predominantly spicy. The leaves impart an unmistakable fragrance when used in any cooking, especially stir-fries, that I can best describe as smoky with a citrusy note. Ironically, unlike its namesake implies, the curry leaf doesn’t smell or taste like curry powder, although it is used to enhance the flavor of many curry dishes.

Growing up on an island where jumping fresh seafood is abundantly available has nurtured my deep affinity for seafood as my ingredient of choice. And one of the scents that evokes fond memories of my childhood is the distinct aroma of curry leaves coupled with the briny-sweet aroma of fresh shrimp wafting from my mother’s kitchen whenever she prepared her pièce de résistance—”Shrimp with Curry Leaves“. This dish is one of the truly “old school” seafood with curry leaves favorites before the advent of new creations such as Butter Prawn, Black Pepper Crab, or Creamy Butter Crab.

To fully savor the intense flavor of spices in this shrimp with curry leaves recipe, you have to lick the sauce coated on the shrimp shell as you take a bite of the shrimp, so be prepared to get your fingers “dirty.”

(Click Page 2 for the Shrimp With Curry Leaves Recipe)

Pages: 1 2

View the original article here