Mochi-pounding ceremony

Yesterday, I visited Tanaka Jinja Shrine in Kyoto where mochi-ponding ceremony was held. People living around the shrine were gathering on the grounds of the shrine.

He is cooking glutinous rice (mochi-gome) in front of torii gate of the shrine.

After steaming glutinous rice, it is pounded with wooden mallets (kine) in a big mortar (usu). When I was shooting a video, mochi almost leaped out of the mortar, but an assistant of the mochi-pounder nicely caught it before it touched the ground.

After the mochi-pounding, they put small pieces of it into red bean soup (shiruko) and served it to the people gathered there.

Harvesting myoga

Last Sunday, I harvested myoga (みょうが, 茗荷) grown on my balcony. Myoga (Zingiber mioga) that is used in Japanese cuisines is a close relative of ginger (Zingiber officinale). Unlike ginger whose edible part is rhizomes, myoga plants do not have fat roots. The part of the moyga plant that the Japanese eat is flower bud. Can you see the flower of myoga in the photo below?

Close-up view.

I could harvest eleven myoga from three containers last Sunday.

Raw myoga is used as trimmings for tofu, noodles and sashimi, but this time I made sweet pickle (amazu-zuke, 甘酢漬け) of myoga.


Recipe

1. Mix the followings in a container to make pickling solution. A half-cup (100 ml) of vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt. Dissolve the ingredients well.

2. Slice each myoga longitudinally into two halves.

3. Boil the sliced myoga for 40 seconds in boiling water.

4. Drain the hot water off the myoga.

5. Put the boiled myoga into the pickling solution while myoga are still hot.

6. Store the myoga in pickling solution overnight in refrigerator. You can eat the pickle next day. The myoga in pickling solution can be stored for a month in refrigerator. Pickled myoga is usually served as thin shreds since it has rather pungent taste.

Myoga plants can be grown pretty easily in garden and in containers. Roots of myoga are sold in February to April in many homecenters and gardening shops in Japan. Just by putting the roots in soil, you can harvest myoga in summer every year, since myoga is a perennial plant. One essential thing that you should know to grow myoga plant is that it hates direct sunlight, so you should keep the plant in the shade. I am growing the myoga plant in the northern balcony of my apartment.

Green algae in Quingdao city have found the way to go

In the Beijing Olympic, Quingdao (青島, Tsingtao) of China is hosting several events of the sailing competitions which will take place along the coastline by the city.

On July 1, Sankei MSN News reported that an algal bloom choked the coastline of the city and was threatning to impede the competition. In order to remove the green algae, 400 boats and 3000 people were mobilized for cleaning up the algal bloom. Perhaps, nutrients in the wastes flown out of the city caused the heavy algal bloom.




According to Asahi Shimbun on Aug. 1, the Quingdao City Communist Party stated that the algae were found to be green laver (Enteromorpha sp.) that is used for food in Korea and Japan and that they plan to export the algae to South Korea as a test for commercializing them.

I hope they never export the algae to Japan.