My first encounter with this was about 19 years back when I first visited Narita, Tokyo. It was at Jusco in a small village where noticed these beautiful delicacies. Not knowing that they are usually meant for eating during Japanese Tea Ceremony, I brought some home with the intention for snacking. Everyone felt that it was too sweet but I feel in love with them. Each trip to Japan, I would definitely seek for these Wagashi Nerikiri. However, my trips to Japan has been cut to just transit at the airport for a couple of hours. I've been missing this for the longest time and it's costs me $36 for just 6 pieces of these in Singapore.
Nerikiri is a dough made of Shiro-anしろあんand small amount of Gyuhi mochi to make pretty looking pieces of Jo-namagashi, where they are normally used for Japanese tea ceremony. Wagashi is the common term for all Japanese traditional sweets such as like mochi or dango. Nerikiri in fact should be under the category of Namagashi. To read more, go to Wagashi Maniac, the text is in German but just it to click the translate bar on the right scroll menu.
I had to do everything from scratch. Making the White Bean Paste (Shiro-an) was really tedious and moulding the Wagashi wasn't as simple as I've expected. In the end, I've just used the cheesecloth to mould the Nerikiri Namagashi. It was really a good experience and here are some of my first few pieces of Nerikiri I've made.
Recipe adapted from 我♥和菓子 by 山崎 彩
Ingredients
10g Glutinous Rice Flour
2 to 3 tbsp Water
300g Shiro'an
Directions
- Mix 2 tbsp fo water with Glutinous Rice Flour and combine into a smooth dough. If water is insufficient, just add a little at a time.
- Boil a pot of water and drop the glutinous rice flour dough and boil until the dough floats to the top and cook for another 2 minutes. (Gyuhi dough)
- Place Shiro'an (white bean paste) in a large microwavable bowl, cover the paste with paper towel and microwave at 600W for 1 min and 30 secs.
- Add the Gyuhi dough into the Shiro'an and mix well. Microwave for 1 minute.
- Pinch dough into small portions and place on a piece of paper towel. Set aside and cool completely. Once cooled, gather the dough together and repeat step 4 and 5 for 3 times. This is to make the dough dryer.
This is a cross section of the Nerikiri where I used Koshi-an (Red Bean Paste) for the filling
Glutinous Rice flour used for making Gyuhi which was mixed with the Shiro'an to make the Nerikiri dough
Koshi'an (Red Bean Paste) bought from Daiso and cooked a little longer to get a dryer paste
Shiro'anしろあんthat was made some time back
