Preparing for the New Year – Mochitsuki/Rice Cake Pounding

Traditionally, mochi was made from whole rice, in a labor-intensive process. The traditional mochi-pounding ceremony in Japan is Mochitsuki:

1. Polished glutinous rice is soaked overnight and cooked.
2. The cooked rice is pounded with wooden mallets (kine) in a traditional mortar (usu). Two people will alternate the work, one pounding and the other turning and wetting the mochi. They must keep a steady rhythm or they may accidentally injure one another with the heavy kine.
3. The sticky mass is then formed into various shapes (usually a sphere or cube).

Kutia – Ukrainian Christmas Eve Pudding

In early December, I received an ideal postcard for this time of year from a Postcrosser in Ukraine – a recipe card of Kutia or Kutya, a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve dish. I picked this out for the fifth try (as for the 4th, pls read Grechka Soup), and have saved it until today.

As usual, browsed the unfamiliar dish on the internet and learnt that:

Kutia is a sweet grain pudding, traditionally served in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and some parts of Poland. Sochivo, a dish similar to kutia, is very popular in Russia. Kutia is often the first dish in the traditional twelve-dish Christmas Eve supper (also known as Svyatah Vecherya). It is rarely served at other times of the year.

Kutia was also part of a common Eastern Orthodox tradition in the Russian Empire….  (from Wikipedia)

The Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on 7th of January, so Kutia is supposed to be eaten on 6th January. The sweet dish seems like dessert, but served first out of the twelve! Kutia is very auspicious because the ingredients such as wheat berries, poppy seeds and dried fruits symbolise abundance, fertility and prosperity.  (This is like we eat Kazunoko, or herring roe for New Year’s.) Someone mentions on the web that the dish is traditionally eaten with a wooden spoon, but not clear if it’s a special one for Kutia….

It sounds like ‘porridge’ rather than ‘pudding’…. I’m fond of porridge and eat it for breakfast whenever in Scotland, so I happily gave it a try.

 

Ingredients

( For 2-3 servings)

125 g pearl barley, well rinsed and soaked in water overnight
400 cc water (plus 100 cc to adjust)
a pinch of salt
25 g raisins
30 g poppy seeds
50 g honey
50 g walnuts, roughly chopped
25 g dried apricots, chopped

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150 C.
2. Drain and put the barley in a pan with salt and 400 cc water, then bring to the boil over low heat.
3. Place the barley into an uncovered baking dish with the boiled water, and cook in the oven for 60 mins or until the barley becomes tender. Stir occasionally and add 100 cc water little by little as required to prevent sticking and drying out.
4. Meanwhile,  place the poppy seeds in a pan with adequate water and bring to the boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 mins.  Drain through fine sieve, then grind the seeds with a food/coffee grinder (or something). Set aside.
5. Rinse the raisins and soak in boiled water for 10 minutes, then drain and dry.
6. Combine everything and mix well.

 

 

I basically followed the recipe, but altered a bit: reduced quantities of the ingredients, and added some procedures and ingredients. Pearl barley was used instead of wheat berries, which I couldn’t find anywhere, and a baking dish as a substitute for a cray pot.

I should have ground the seeds more finely! They are so tiny that my Suribachi, a Japanese mortar and pestle for sesame seeds, didn’t work well 😦 Anyway, it doesn’t matter as it tasted good. Not sweeter than imagined – omitted sugar from the recipe! – and the sourness of the apricot gives it a good kick. I like the crispy and chewy texture and nutty flavour of the walnuts in the slightly sticky and soft ingredients.

Kutia is one of the twelve-dish supper, which represents the 12 apostles, containing no meat or dairy…. Well, it’s not 6th or 7th January yet, so I unhesitantly poured some heavy cream over the pudding! 🙂

Thank you so much for the wonderful recipe, dear Postcrossing friend in Ukraine! I’m wishing you blessings and joy this Christmas, and hope your dream comes true.

And also thanks a million to another friend in Ukraine for the information and advice. I’m looking forward to your letter!

 

 

Vinegret Revisited (+ Borsch)

 

I’m really into beetroot these days….

 

 

I’ve been making Borsch every single weekend for the last one month since I obtained fresh beetroot for the first time in my life  😀

Here in this country, the vegetable is not that common and not easily available, but I luckily found it IS available during the winter from a farmers market near my workplace, which opens every Friday! That’s why I’m cooking the soup at weekends.

 

Ukrainian Borsch w/ Russian Black Bread (Borodinsky?)

 

The other day, while I had been addicted to the dish, I received an exactly the same postcard from another Postcrosser in Russia: the Vinegret recipe postcard.

 

 

Hmmmm… seems as if it had been sent on purpose to remind me to make Vinegret again, not with tinned one but with fresh beetroot!! Yes, I wrote “I’ll definitely make this again, and it’s a must if I could run into fresh beetroot” on my 10th of September post! (As for the card and cooking, please read Vinegret.) Well, I was too obsessed with Borsch, and it had slipped out of mind….

 

My first Vinegret in September 2015

 

So I was urged to make the Russian salad again. Not reluctantly, of course!! 😀

 

My second Vinegret in December 2015

 

 

How beautiful…. I like the magenta colour, which is more vivid than of tinned beetroot salad. This tastes more fresh and tasty, and its earthy flavour is less intense. I wish it were obtainable in summer as well!

Thank you so much for the reminder, dear Postcrosser in Russia!

 

 

Stollen Teabread

Just wanted to bake something for the upcoming Christmas. Stollen was one of the options, but I usually buy some loaves of ‘NICE’ stollen from my favourite bakery. Hmmmm…. One day, a friend of mine gave me  a piece of Starbucks’s Stollen Cake, which was really good! so I decided to make something similar.

Starbucks’s Stollen Cake

Ingredients

150 – 200 cc dark rum
50 g dried figs
50 g raisins
50 g dried cranberries
30 g candied orange peel
30 g candied lemon peel

200 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground mixed spice
100 g butter
85 g soft light brown sugar
100 g marzipan, cut into cubes
25 g flaked almonds, lightly toasted
2 eggs

To decorate:
25 g butter, melted
20 g icing sugar
dried or glacé cherries
holly springs, washed and dried

Method

1. Soak the figs, raisins, cranberries, orange and lemon in the dark rum overnight. Drain the fruits, and chop roughly the peels and figs.
2. Preheat oven to 180 C.
3. Tip the flour and baking powder into a bowl, and using fingertips, rub the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, mixed spice, almond flakes and marzipan.
4. In another bowl, whisk the eggs and put in the soaked fruits. Stir into the flour mixture and combine well.
5. Spoon the dough into a lined loaf tin/dish and bake for 60 mins until well risen and golden brown, or a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
6. Remove from the oven. Brush with a half of the melted butter and dust with a half of the icing sugar.
7. Allow it to cool for 10 mins, then remove from the dish and place it on to a wire rack. And again, brush the rest of butter and sift the icing sugar over the loaf. Cool completely.
8. Decorate with the cherries and holy springs. If necessary, dust with icing sugar a little more before the decoration.

Hmmmmm… looks like a Christmas fruit loaf rather than a stollen cake…, but it does taste like stollen, and soooo good – even better? 😀 – with the flavour of rum, mixed spices, and chunks of marzipan. I found that, after it sits for a few days, it ripens and tastes better – it gets richer, more moist, and more flavourful. Do try this for the coming festivities!