Anmitsu - Japanese dessert

Dear bed,

You're so warm and toasty, and I almost wish you weren't this comfy making it so hard for me to get up in the morning.

Dear rain,
Please can you re-think your forecasted long stay this week?

Dear pizza delivery boy,

Please don't deliver anymore pizzas to my place. *burp*

Dear treadmill,

You make me sweaty and my heart beat faster than anything else. And you challenge me like no-one does. That's why I like you. 

Dear friend,

Thank you for your 'surprise'. Now I can watch Ugly Betty and The Mentalist whenever I want!

Dear poodle in cooking with dog,
Your hair is slightly wonky at times but I admire your patience and self control whilst your owner is cooking.

Dear Australian winter,

Your baldness (on trees) is starting to appeal to me. I also like how I can turn up my heater and eat summertime desserts when you're around too. 

Have you seen the youtube cooking videos: cooking with dog? 

I've been a fan for a while now. Not just because I am fascinated by a sleepy poodle who sits by the stove like a rock, but I adore all the mouth-watering Japanese dishes featured on this channel.

So remember how I was sick a few weeks back? I watched the clip for Fruit Cream Anmitsu then and it immediately took me back to my unforgettable Japan trip (where I had anmitsu every single day) and I wanted to recover from the flu faster than anything else. (Talk about the most effective 'medication'!)

Anmitsu is a popular Japanese dessert made of small cubes of agar agar in a brown sugar syrup. It is also served with sweetened red bean paste, pieces of gyuhi (mochi-like sweets) and a scoop of ice-cream. Oh and decorated with seasonal fruits too. Yummo!

Ok, wanna see how it's made?

First you'll need to make some agar agar. Not flavoured or sweetened. Simple as!

Then dice them up into dainty fine cubes...so translucent that it's almost like they're invisible!

To make the kuromitsu (Japanese sugar syrup) to go with the agar agar, you'll need to melt some dark brown or muscovado sugar with corn syrup.

Pour it onto the agar agar...

To make the gyuhi (which is a type of traditional Japanese mochi), get some glutinous rice flour in either powdered form or granules...

...add a bit water to the rice flour and heat it up and eventually you'll get something like this...

To prevent the glutinous rice flour mixture sticking to everything else, you'll need to dust some potato starch all over!

Then you make some anko - sweet red bean paste (just because red beans and green tea ice-cream are a match made in heaven!) If you don't have time, just buy them canned (sweetened) at your local Asian grocery store. Recipe (or rather, another youtube video with the poodle) for anko can be found here.

Then it's just a matter of slicing up the oranges wedges and strawberries...and adding a scoop of the green tea ice-cream! You might want to use an ice-cream scoop for this. Sadly I don't own one. I wonder why? Definitely not because I eat ice-cream out of the box! How unladylike!

If you generally love Japanese desserts and can never get enough of the red bean and matcha (green tea) combination, I think you might totally adore this...even on a cold winter's day :)

Fruit Cream Anmitsu

From Cooking with Dog

Serves 3

• 4g/0.141 oz Agar Powder
• 500ml Water (2.11 us cup)
• 1 tbsp Mizuame - Thick Starch Syrup (I used light corn syrup)
• 100g Kurozato - Muscovado or Unrefined Brown Sugar (3.53 oz)
• 70ml Water (2.37 fl oz)
• 30g Shiratamako - Glutinous Rice Flour (1.06 oz)
• 50g Sugar (1.76 oz)
• 60ml Water
• Potato Starch
• 3 Strawberries
• 3 Navel Orange wedges
• 3 tbsp Anko - Sweet Red Bean Paste (buy canned or recipe here.)
• 3 scoops of Matcha Ice Cream (I bought mine but you can make it using this recipe)
• 20-30 Boiled Aka Endomame - Red Endo Beans (I omitted this).

The simple instructions for the recipe can be found from the linked videos! :)

Watch them! They're kinda...cute?! 

Might also make you want to get a dog to cook with too!

Have a blessed week ahead :)

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Mizuya - Sydney CBD

Agedashi Tofu - $5.8

I've been hearing a lot about Mizuya on Geroge Street ever since the beginning of the year with its izakaya dining hall, touch-screen menus and the karaoke rooms. Not another Japanese touch screen restaurant, were my first thoughts. I am not a big fan of it and prefer having my menu printed out in front of me (just like how I've not yet come to terms with reading a book using Kindle or iPad). However whenever I walk past the restaurant during my lunch breaks, the dark decor always piques my curiosity and tonight, I was keen to give it a try when a friend suggested it.

First up was the agedashi tofu. The batter was thin as I like it but very chewy as it must have a lot of corn flour.

Touch screen menu

Soft shell crab salad - $9.8

It is always good to have something healthy like a salad to offset the not-so-healthy deep fried soft shell crab, right? ;)

Cheese potato mochi - $5.8

I thought this was an interesting dish. It tastes like a cheesy mashed potato cake (I couldn't really taste the mochi) and was very filling.

Wagyu Beef sukiyaki (small) - $15.8

We ordered a suikyaki as well (which is like a hotpot with sweet soy broth - as opposed to the clear broth in shabu-shabu). We were told that it would be enough for two, but I could see myself easily finishing this myself if we didn't order anything else. The beef was lovely, however the broth was a bit on the salty side even after we put in the water to dilute it.

Additional vegetable for the hotpot - $7

Great Tea Shiratama Sundae $6

This is probably my favourite of the night. Green Tea ice-cream with lots of red bean paste and mochi balls, as well as your breakfast corn flakes at the bottom for that extra crunch.

I guess people don't come to Mizuya for authentic Japanese food, but rather the ambiance (it was actually very similar to the izayaka halls I've been to in Japan) and the alcohol accompanied by the large selection of side dishes like yakitori and kushiyaki.

Mizuya

14 George St

Sydney NSW 2000‎

Tel: (02) 9266 0866‎

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