150 recipes. Page 3 of 7
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No crust goes into the pan, only a tall collar of parchment, and the batter bakes at 230°C until the top turns deep brown with a bitter caramel smell. After four hours or more in the fridge the cake is firm, and a while at room temperature before serving brings the center back to soft and creamy.
A thick round of sweet potato and a ball of red bean paste are wrapped together in dough and steamed, so a cut bun shows three separate layers: soft wrapper, bean paste, and fluffy potato. These dumplings come from the Kikuchi area of Kumamoto, where they were made as a snack during the autumn sweet potato harvest.
Thick toast carries sliced roast turkey under a cheese-enriched cream sauce, the whole dish warmed through in the oven and then browned under the broiler, then eaten with a fork straight from the baking dish. Only a small pinch of salt goes into the sauce itself because pecorino brings much of it. The bacon goes on after the oven, where it stays crisp instead of softening under sauce. A dish rated for broiler heat is needed, as ordinary glass can crack.
The cabbage mixed into the ground pork gives off its water, keeping the filling juicy inside the fluffy steamed dough. The filling is seasoned with ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil, and a little sugar makes the dough faintly sweet.
The moisture in beet puree is what makes this dark chocolate cake heavy and damp. That is also why it should never bake until it looks dry; it comes out as soon as a skewer in the center shows no wet batter.
Cubes of sweet potato poke out of each round dumpling like stones in a wall, which gives ishigaki dango, stone-wall dumplings, their name. On the Sagamihara plateau in Kanagawa, where volcanic ash covered the fields, wheat and sweet potatoes grew widely, and these dumplings were a snack between farm tasks. Holding back some of the potato and pressing it onto the surface makes the stone pattern stand out.
Already-cooked lobster meat folds into a warm sauce enriched with egg yolks and spooned over toast, the opposite of a chilled lobster roll. The timing starts from shelled, fully cooked meat; boiling and picking a whole lobster is not included. Tempering the yolks with a ladle of hot sauce, then keeping the heat gentle, prevents strands of cooked egg. The sherry is heated only briefly, so the dish is not alcohol-free. It goes to the table at once, because the yolk sauce turns grainy if held over heat.
Round eggplant slices, slit into pockets and stuffed with sugar-sweetened miso, sit inside a plain wheat wrapper. Nagano's oyaki can hold many seasonal vegetables, and in this filling the eggplant turns soft and juicy as it steams, soaking up the salty-sweet miso. Some oyaki are only grilled or only steamed, but these are browned in a pan first and then steamed, leaving the wrapper chewy-soft with a toasted bottom. The batch makes twenty.
In New Orleans the beignet is a doughnut with no hole: yeast dough cut into squares and fried. Milk, egg and butter let it puff up soft and bready in the oil, and the heap of powdered sugar shaken on straight away melts a little into the warm surface and clings.
With no egg or leavening, the batter bakes into a thin, plain wheat crepe, and all the sweetness comes from the brown sugar rolled up inside. Rolling begins just as the sugar starts melting on the pan, leaving a sticky ribbon of brown sugar through the center of each piece.
Beef and pork cooked with peppers and green onion fill thin pastry half-moons that are sealed with a fork and deep-fried. Because the filling is cooked and cooled first, the pies fry briefly instead of waiting for raw meat to cook through a thick crust. Shortening rubbed into the flour makes a dough that should not be kneaded like bread, and warm filling melts that fat and tears the thin wrapper. A clear border with the air pushed out keeps the seams closed in the oil.
Stretched until the counter almost shows through, brushed with butter, and folded into a square, this Malaysian flatbread tears apart into thin, flaky layers. Right out of the pan, the bread gets a gentle clap from the edges so the folded layers separate before they set together.
Spooned mounds of batter spread wide in the oven into thin wafers, with enough toasted sesame that nuttiness and brown-sugar sweetness come first. Right out of the oven they are fragile; a minute or two on the pan firms them enough for a wide spatula, and the thin edges crisp only once fully cool. Shallow layers in an airtight container keep them whole.
No commercial yeast goes in: a ferment built from glutinous rice and rice koji raises the dough and leaves a clean, sweet aroma in the steamed skin. In Taketa and Bungo-ono in Oita these buns were eaten for Children's Day, Obon, local festivals, and breaks in farm work. They take days, about one for the amazake and 2 to 4 more for it to ferment into a starter, before the red-bean-filled buns are shaped and steamed.
Thickness decides how these rings eat: cut too thin and you get mostly batter, too thick and the coating browns while the onion center is still firm. The lager is split at the start, with one portion for soaking the onions and a cold portion kept clean for the batter. Flour and cornstarch set into a light, thin shell around the soft onion. A crowded pot loses heat, which gives the coating more time to soak up oil, so the rings go in small batches. Piling finished rings in a bowl traps steam against the bottom ones, so they drain on a rack in a single layer.
King oyster mushrooms are cut lengthwise into wide slabs 1.5 cm thick and breaded like tonkatsu, and the thickness gives them a meaty chew without any meat. Like the pork version, they go to the table with tonkatsu sauce.
A topping of butter, honey and sugar boiled together with sliced almonds bakes right on the yeast dough of this German cake, and once cool the round is split crosswise and filled with vanilla cream. The cream is not just whipped cream: it is built on a no-cook instant vanilla pudding mix with milk and gelatin. Pudding powder meant for cooking cannot go into it as is.
Molasses soaks into the lower half while the buttery crumb on top stays loose and dry. Liquid and crumb go into the shell in alternating halves; some of the crumb drinks up the molasses, the rest stays on the surface, and in the oven the two separate into layers. The molasses is unsulfured baking molasses, not the bitter blackstrap.
Small lumps left in the batter make for a fluffier stack. Mixing stops before the batter turns smooth and the cakes turn tough, and the batter then rests a few minutes to hold on to the bubbles from the baking powder. A pan kept at medium-low lets the centers cook before the outsides scorch. Wait for the surface bubbles to burst and the edges to look dry, then flip only once, since an early or second turn spoils the shape.
Soft, cakey rounds get vanilla icing on one half and chocolate on the other, spread on the flat underside that touched the pan so the dividing line stays straight. Any warmth left in the cookies makes the two colors run together.
Bound with wheat flour instead of agar, this red bean paste comes out dense and chewy rather than smooth and jellied like neri yokan. In the Omi area of Shiga the batter is wrapped flat in bamboo sheaths and steamed; the sheath keeps it from drying and adds a light aroma. Only sheaths sold for food wrapping are used, washed and blanched, and they are peeled away before serving.
Unlike a breadcrumb-bound crab cake, these fritters get their body from a batter that puffs as it fries, with chopped clam scattered through the crumb. Canned cooked clams skip purging and steaming, but the drained meat and the liquid are measured separately; tipping in the whole can thins the batter until the fritters spread flat. Large pieces of clam poke out of the batter and scorch in the oil, so everything is chopped small. The first fritter, cut open, shows whether the rest need more time or a cooler pot.
Black rice flour turns these muffins a deep purple and adds a toasty, nutty grain flavor that coconut then sweetens. Coconut milk and neutral oil stand in for dairy and butter, which keeps the crumb soft even after the muffins have cooled completely.
Toasted soybeans are packed tightly into wheat dough sweetened with brown sugar and sanontou, then steamed in log form. The name refers to beans shut inside the dough, and it also goes by tochiko-mame or toshiko-mame. Around Yamaga and Kikuchi in northern Kumamoto it was made at year's end alongside osechi, and it appeared at weddings, funerals, and as a gift or farm-season snack. Chilled until firm and sliced, it shows beans crowded through the brown dough.