Count down to a 1000 Dango

 Continued from previous blog.

"A thousand, I'll give it a go."

But when I looked in the freezer, I suddenly found that I had run out of frozen mugwort paste, which I had received as the last harvest of last summer. I had to think about what to do with the greens that would have to be skewered first!

The first thing I did was to contact Namayasai, the Organic Japanese vegetable farmer in Lewis who lets me stock mugwort every year.

Namayasai: "Well, the weather didn't improve this spring, so we're not ready to harvest yet. I'll have another look around the end of next week and let you know."

At that point, it was the end of March.Then, a friend of mine happened to come for tea at the shop and said, "I'm going to Japan tomorrow"! I'll buy it online from a Japanese wholesaler, so bring it back here for me! I plead with him. Even though he readily agrees, his return date is mid-April.

Anyway, as soon as I got it, I could start, so I just waited.

After several sunny days, Namayasai informed me that the crop was ready to be harvested, three days before my friend returned from Japan. I actually got the mugwort from my friend on 16 April and the mugwort from Namayasai on 18 April. Thanks to that, I got enough mugwort to make roughly 3,000 dangos! (lol).

First, we wash the mugwort and use only the tender leaves.After blanching the tender leaves, I make a paste with a blender and roll it up in batches to make yomogi dama (mugwort balls). They will be used to make Japanese sweets until next spring. I made three times as many mugwort dumplings as the amount in the photo.

Once that is done, it is time to make the dumplings.

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Here's a little bit of knowledge.

Three-pastel coloured dumplings are very popular here in London and South..

They are skewered in the order of green, white and pink from the bottom.

They are also popular as hanami (sakura picnic) sweets.

The green at the bottom represents the budding ground, the white represents lingering snow and the pink represents plum and cherry blossoms.

Another explanation is that pink (red) and white are good luck, while green is to ward off evil spirits (mugwort has also been used as a medicinal herb for centuries).

It is also thought that a play on words, with representing greeny summer(Natsu), white winter(Fuyu) and pink spring(Haru), and that the absence of autumn(Aki) is because there is 'no boredom(Aki-nai)'.

The pink colour is a plant-derived pigment, so it is suitable for both vegetarians and plant-based people.

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Without a commercial rice cake pounder, An An starts by steaming a mixture of rice flour and sugar. This is a labour-intensive process of steaming and kneading, steaming and kneading. Each morning, one kilogram of dumpling dough is made for three colours of dumplings at a time, making 3x50 dumplings. Electric dumpling machines are used in most Japanese confectionery shops in Japan. An An does not have such a luxury.

What do we use?

Ta-da!

A traditional wooden ball cutter (kyu-dan ki).

It's extremely heavy, but that weight makes a lot of round dumplings at once, which is great. A Japanese traditional confectioner recommended that I should buy one more than ten years ago, and I immediately bought it from Kappabashi, Tokyo. It seems that there are no longer any craftsmen manufacturing them and new ones are no longer available... How sad!

The 50 or 100 dumplings are brought to the café, and every day my helpers carefully skewer the dumplings one by one, cutting off the pointy ends to avoid injuring guests mouths.

So now we have 350 sanshoku dumplings to go!

If we make 250 this week and 100 next week, we will have achieved our goal!

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 an-an's three-coloured dumplings🍡

Ingredients; White rice flour, rice cake flour, sugar beets, kuzu flour, tapioca flour, mugwort, pink food colour (red beet).

All packaging materials are made from materials that can be decomposed in household compost. However, the solid bamboo skewers take a long time to decompose, so we hope they can be reused for something else.

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Everyone is welcome.

Many people are eager to bring toilets from Japan.

There may be restrictions on installing them, and many people may have given up on the idea here.

This is an opportunity to casually ask an expert. Please come and visit us.

Both dumplings and tea are free 💓