Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Ichigo Daifuku
- Advanced
- 60 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
A quiet dish that lets its main ingredient speak: season well and stand aside.
Ingredients
- 100g shiratamako (glutinous rice flour: shiratamako over mochiko for silkiness)
- 180ml water; 60g sugar
- 200g anko (sweet red bean paste), chilled, divided into 8 balls
- 8 small ripe strawberries, hulled, dried well
- A LOT of cornstarch or katakuriko for dusting; mochi takes hostages
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Wrap each strawberry, point down, in a thin coat of anko: the double-center is the architecture.
- Whisk shiratamako, sugar and water; microwave in bursts (or steam), stirring between, until translucent, glossy and stretchy, 2–3 min total. 3 min
- Turn onto a starch-blizzarded surface; cool 2 min to merely hot; divide in 8 with a starched scraper. 2 min
- Flatten each piece thin at the edges, thicker at center; wrap around the anko-berry, pinching closed at the bottom. Eat the same day: mochi waits for no one.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Shaping by hand 85 recipes
- The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
- Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
- The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
- Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
- They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.
Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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