Yes it’s bloomin freezing in London; time to break into the zenzai gift! For those who don’t remember, zenzai is a sweet, red-bean soup from Japan. It can be served hot, and sometimes with mochi .* I was kindly given two zenzai from Tokyo to try: cook-in-pan; and posh-with-mochi.
PAN
Add packet contents to 150ml water, 50g sugar and simmer for around 6 minutes.
Verdict: Yes, good old red-bean soup! Yum. It is very similar to the delicious Chinese one I used to eat. The flavour strongly reminds me of chestnut – sweet and nutty. Very nice! If you’re eating it ‘neat’ as I did, I would actually recommend using 25g of sugar, then adding small amounts to preferred taste.
POSH
Heat the soup packet in boiling water for 5 minutes. The raw mochi looks like a bar of hotel soap; you need to heat it until it fluffs up (I used the grill). I am told that if you overcook the mochi it can explode, and I think I over-cautiously under-cooked mine – extra chewy! ^^
Verdict: 超おいしい! (extremely yum). The soup is good anyway, but the gooey, neutral mochi adds very nice contrasting texture and flavour.
*Mochi are Japanese rice cakes. Hard to describe in English, but the texture is a bit like uncooked dough of varying gooeyness. Often they’re shaped like little patties, with a filling (for example, sweet red-bean paste). There may be many variations I don’t know of! The mochi for this zenzai was the plain ‘dough’.
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