Sweets
Ganzuki
Ganzuki — a steamed brown-sugar sponge cake studded with walnut and sesame
Wheat flour leavened with baking soda and vinegar is steamed into a rustic sponge studded with walnut and sesame — its round shape and sesame pattern likened to geese flying toward a full moon, a farm-break snack of southern Iwate.
- Origin: Iwate Ichinoseki
- About 380 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
A confection especially associated with southern Iwate, made by mixing wheat flour with egg, baking soda and sugar, topping it with walnuts and sesame, and steaming it. The texture is chewy and unassuming; there's a brown "black ganzuki" made with brown sugar and a white "white ganzuki" made with white sugar and milk, it is said. Some households add finely chopped rapeseed flower or grated carrot.
How it's made
Wheat flour is mixed with egg, baking soda and sugar, topped with walnuts and sesame, and steamed. There's a brown version made with brown sugar and a white version with white sugar and milk; some households add boiled, finely chopped rapeseed flower or grated carrot, it is said. A baked rather than steamed version, called yaki-ganzuki, is also made.
Why it took this shape
The name ganzuki is said to come from the round shape topped with sesame arranged in an M, said to resemble geese flying toward a full moon. Being filling, it is said to have long served as a favorite for the mid-afternoon farm break called kobiri and as an everyday snack, and it is thought to have endured as a humble treat easily made from ingredients close at hand.
Before You Go
- How to shop in a depachika (department store food hall)A guide to browsing prepared foods and bento, choosing wagashi as a gift with a good shelf life, sampling etiquette, end-of-day discounts, asking for cold packs and wrapping, and finding your way around a depachika floor.
- At Kissaten, Cafes, and Kanmi-DokoroThe difference between jun-kissa and chain cafes, the morning-set custom, and kanmi-dokoro staples like anmitsu and zenzai.
Dishes in the same style
- Abekawa MochiFresh-pounded rice cake is dusted in soybean flour mixed with sugar. Named for the Abe River, it's said to have been famous among Tokaido travelers as a teahouse specialty and to appear in the travel novel Tokaidochu Hizakurige.
- Iga ManjuSweet bean paste is wrapped in rice flour dough, then coated with dyed sticky rice grains. One account ties the name to the grains' resemblance to a chestnut's spiny husk, and in the western Mikawa region it's said to be offered to Hina dolls at the Doll Festival.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Iwate
- Azuki BattoRested wheat dough cut into wide noodle strips is served in a sugar-sweetened red-bean broth — made along the Sanriku coast for building-raising and harvest celebrations, with a custom of eating it seven times on the seventh day of Obon for good health.
- Hecchoko DangoDumplings of millet and sorghum flour, each dimpled in the center, are simmered in a sweet red-bean soup — also called "ukiuki dango," a harvest-close treat from rice-poor northern Iwate where they float to the surface as they cook.
- Hina ManjuRice-flour dough tinted with food coloring is wrapped around red-bean paste and shaped into flowers, peaches or rabbits using wooden molds — tied to a doll-viewing custom in Hanamaki's Ohasama area, offered alongside kirisensho at the Girls' Festival.
- Hizu NamasuThin slices of cartilage from a salmon's head — "hizu" — are salted, cured in vinegar and tossed with daikon and carrot namasu — a rare delicacy from just one small part of the fish, a New Year dish where salmon run up Miyako Bay.
- Dento Mochi RyoriAn umbrella term for some 300 ways of dressing mochi — sweet red bean, edamame paste, walnut, natto, zoni and more. A domain-era custom of pounding mochi twice a month left Ichinoseki with a "mochi calendar" of 60-plus occasions a year and a formal ceremonial mochi course still observed today.
- Imo no Ko JiruAutumn taro is simmered with chicken, tofu, daikon and carrot in a soy broth — a fall favorite of the taro-growing Kitakami river valley, still enjoyed at riverside "imoni-kai" gatherings around Kitakami's Futako district.