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gurdymonkeyAll my foodie friends are invited to laugh now.
I thought I'd make some kabocha manju for Estrella, using this recipe. http://www.grouprecipes.com/15474/kabocha-manju.html
The recipe calls for 1/2 pound of kabocha. That means that I had enough kabocha for more than four times this recipe, so I sliced it up, steamed it and used about half of it with the amount of sugar, salt and cinnamon called for. That's right, 1 pound of kabocha to the sugar, salt cinnamon needed for half a pound of kabocha. Kannon the merciful on a pogostick, it's a good thing I did. It's plenty sweet at this mixture .In fact it's a religious experience.
The dough, well, the dough is a f****** disaster. Make that a f****** disaster twice over. Proceeding on the logic that rice flour would be the right thing to use, I started with that. It would not become dough, not with that amount of water. After struggling with the rice flour with just turned into strings in a bowl of powder, I tried the same proportions using plain old white flour. It started out looking like dough, it even acted like dough, but it went tough on me way too fast and wouldn't stick to itself.
Roll them into balls, it says. Hah. Right. Like the goo is going to stay in the middle. I ended up making little gyoza-like dumplings, which, wouldn't stay pinched shut! There are ten ugly bastard stepchild embarrassments of kabocha gyoza sitting in the steamer cooling right now. I have no illusions about the dough even being close to right. It can't possibly be.
I should add that my work surface consisted of my ironing board, my postage-stamped counter and my sink. I was rolling dough on a board in my SINK using an old sake bottle as a rolling pin, OK? Sue me, I live in an apartment.
I feel like crying and kicking things. Instead I threw out half a bag of perfectly good flour and half a box of perfectly good rice flour because it makes me feel better. There's a pound of steamed, chunk kabocha in the fridge that may get ground up for soup. But what do do with the rest of the filling? A Pennsic memory of eating syllabub with 'Nilla wafers come to mind. I'm thinking kabocha goo would taste damn fine on graham crackers or digestive biscuits.
I have wasted enough of this damn day on kabocha f****** manju. Teryaki chicken is doing its thing in the oven, rice is soaking and I'm gonna make onigiri.
EDIT. I pried a cooled monstrosity off the steamer. It came apart in my hands. The dough is nothing to write home about and only contributes to the wrongness of concept of this recipe. Every other sort of manju I have ever actually had is cakelike. This thing is not.
I thought I'd make some kabocha manju for Estrella, using this recipe. http://www.grouprecipes.com/15474/kabocha-manju.html
The recipe calls for 1/2 pound of kabocha. That means that I had enough kabocha for more than four times this recipe, so I sliced it up, steamed it and used about half of it with the amount of sugar, salt and cinnamon called for. That's right, 1 pound of kabocha to the sugar, salt cinnamon needed for half a pound of kabocha. Kannon the merciful on a pogostick, it's a good thing I did. It's plenty sweet at this mixture .In fact it's a religious experience.
The dough, well, the dough is a f****** disaster. Make that a f****** disaster twice over. Proceeding on the logic that rice flour would be the right thing to use, I started with that. It would not become dough, not with that amount of water. After struggling with the rice flour with just turned into strings in a bowl of powder, I tried the same proportions using plain old white flour. It started out looking like dough, it even acted like dough, but it went tough on me way too fast and wouldn't stick to itself.
Roll them into balls, it says. Hah. Right. Like the goo is going to stay in the middle. I ended up making little gyoza-like dumplings, which, wouldn't stay pinched shut! There are ten ugly bastard stepchild embarrassments of kabocha gyoza sitting in the steamer cooling right now. I have no illusions about the dough even being close to right. It can't possibly be.
I should add that my work surface consisted of my ironing board, my postage-stamped counter and my sink. I was rolling dough on a board in my SINK using an old sake bottle as a rolling pin, OK? Sue me, I live in an apartment.
I feel like crying and kicking things. Instead I threw out half a bag of perfectly good flour and half a box of perfectly good rice flour because it makes me feel better. There's a pound of steamed, chunk kabocha in the fridge that may get ground up for soup. But what do do with the rest of the filling? A Pennsic memory of eating syllabub with 'Nilla wafers come to mind. I'm thinking kabocha goo would taste damn fine on graham crackers or digestive biscuits.
I have wasted enough of this damn day on kabocha f****** manju. Teryaki chicken is doing its thing in the oven, rice is soaking and I'm gonna make onigiri.
EDIT. I pried a cooled monstrosity off the steamer. It came apart in my hands. The dough is nothing to write home about and only contributes to the wrongness of concept of this recipe. Every other sort of manju I have ever actually had is cakelike. This thing is not.
