Welcome to a new series on Teacipes! This section was created to explore one of the most important factors of tea: the kashi (sweets). Sweets are served before the bowl of matcha, and often are created to look like seasonal motifs. They play an important role in setting the mood of the ceremony... Plus, they taste good!
Here at Teacipes, we firmly believe that the role of the kashi is universal in all types of tea. English high tea has scones, Taiwanese tea is served with exotic dried fruits, and Korean tea is served with various types of ttok - sweets is to tea like peanut butter is to jelly. Inseparable!
{preparing little fishies for the jelly}
We would love for you to enjoy our teas in the most enriched, fun, and delicious way possible - and although regular tea cookies would do a great job, we think that a little bit of postmodernism would make :phenomenal:. So, we will be taking traditional Japanese Kashi and translate them into a simple, modern rendition!
For starters, this month's Kashi is the Iwa Moru Mizu, or "water trickling out of rocks".
Iwa Moru Mizu was a favorite of tea master Ennosai (of the Urasenke school of tea), and is a type of sweets created to look like moss-covered rocks in a riverbed. Different sized "rocks" made with green yokan (bean jelly) are topped with clear kuzu-yokan (arrowroot jelly). Just looking at this traslucent dessert can cool guests down in the dead July heat.
While the original Iwa Moru Mizu is made of traditional ingredients like bean jellies and arrowroot, there are modern renditions that use agar agar (or kanten, as we call it) and other fun ingredients. And while being traditional is fine and dandy, we completely understand that these ingredients are hard to get a hold of outside of Japan. So, we created a simple modern version using gelatin! If you're a vegetarian, using agar agar should work fine too.
For the green stones, we used our Blender's Gyokuro Kuki-cha because it's got a sweet & creamy flavor profile that'll go well with the sweet lemon-y soda jelly. The little fishes are optional, but they sure do look fun!
River Stream Jelly - makes about 20 jellies.
1/2 cup triple-strength brewed Gyokuri Kuki-cha, chilled
1/2 cup triple-strength brewed Gyokuro Kuki-cha, fresh brewed
3 cups lemon lime soda
4 packets of unflavored gelatin (we like Knox)
some melon slices
matcha (garnish)
1. Sprinkle one package of gelatin over cold tea and let it reconstitute. Mix into fresh brewed tea until dissolved and pour into a tray. Chill for 3 hours, or until set.
2. Cut some fishes out of your melon slices. We used cantaloupes for a color contrast. Make about 20-25 of these and set aside.
3. Once the tea jelly hardens, scrape spoonfuls and transfer to a larger, deeper tray. Position them randomly, and have fun with it, it's suppose to look like a river bed! Sprinkle tiny pinches of matcha to give a 'mossy' look. Then dot with fishes. Cover, and store in fridge.
4. Sprinkle the rest of the gelatin packets into 1 cup of lemon lime soda and let set.
5. Bring the remaining 2 cups to a boil. Combine the reconstituted gelatin and mix well. Transfer to a bowl and let cool to room temperature.
6. Gently ladel in cooled lemon-lime jelly over the green jelly. Cover and chill for another 3 hours. Cut into blocks and serve.
I couldn't find a large enough casserole dish, so I made them in cupcake trays, lined with saran wrap. They work just fine, and look! Individual sized river jellies!
Full-sun tea leaves VS Ten-cha (shaded tea leaves). Via Gotemba City.
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