New Year’s : MARKETS : Have a Mochi New Year

Sakura-ya, 16134 S. Western Ave., Gardena, (310) 323-7117. Hours: Wednesday through Monday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Closes on Sunday at 4 p.m.

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“Instead of luscious chocolate truffles or a good bottle of wine, you give mochi and manju for special occasions; they’re like miniature cakes,” explained the woman picking up her New Year order at Sakura-ya.

At this tiny, minimally decorated shop, the weeks before the New Year are some of the busiest, New Year being a very special occasion--the time of year when Japanese housewives traditionally get a break from cooking. Owners Mas and Yuki Fujita, the two brothers who make all the Japanese confections by hand, often trade shifts to keep production going around the clock.

By 11 a.m. on a Monday the shop has the buzz of a See’s Candy shop on Christmas Eve. A little line is beginning to form in front of the plain glass cases. The phone rings constantly and the sales women take orders, scribbling quickly on a printed form. Unflappable and unfailingly polite, they hurriedly gift-wrap box after precision-wrapped box, tying each paper-covered package with the traditional red and silver ribbons that connote happy occasions.

Mas, who’s been working since 2 a.m., sticks his head out of the kitchen to see how many pale green mochi are left; they’re running low. The pink ones are in short supply too. Back in the kitchen he starts working on a new batch of the soft, almost creamy rice cakes, folding each one to enclose a sweet filling. Freshness is a hallmark of this pastry, so only a few of the confections are kept on hand at any one time.

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Crafting these specialty sweets is a laborious, time-consuming endeavor--a declining art on both sides of the Pacific. As mass production of traditional Japanese confectionery increases, you see many brands of them in all the Japanese grocery stores. So it seems remarkable that an old-fashioned family-run place like Sakura-ya, where each pastry and rice cake is made from scratch, can still thrive.

But confectioners, like sushi makers, develop their own style, and many of Sakura-ya’s customers have shopped here since Masayasu Fujita, Mas’s and Yuki’s father, founded the business in 1956. Fujita started developing his skills in Japan at the age of 15 as an apprentice with old-time confectioners. He spent seven years at Kansen-do in Matsue, starting ith the most menial tasks and working his way through all the phases of pastry-making.

Fujita also perfected his art at several other Japanese shops, but opportunities were slim in Japan after World War II. He heard about a position at a shop in San Jose, whose owner was willing to sponsor a confectioner’s immigration. So Fujita, together with his wife (who already had American citizenship) and their children began a new life in California.

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When he wanted to open a place of his own, Fujita looked to Southern California to avoid competing with his San Jose employer. Gardena, with its burgeoning Japanese-American population, proved to have little in the way of Japanese confectionery shops. Fujita acquired a loan and advertised in the Japanese-language newspapers. “On Grand Opening day there was a line of curious customers who used to have to go downtown for confections,” Mas remembers. “My father paid off his loan in just a few months and business has been steady ever since.”

Customers clearly think his wares are worth a wait. “I get them for my friends in Seattle. They used to live in L.A. These are the mochi and manju they crave,” said Brian Tatsuno, sporting a black T-shirt with a white Tommy Tang logo.

Troy Hashimoto, a man in his 20s, has driven up from Orange County to buy mochi for his parents, who used to live around here. “They love the soft, almost fluffy texture of these mochi , which are always very fresh,” he says.

Unlike the kind of fancifully shaped, elaborately garnished mochi you can now find in Asian supermarkets (even ice-cream-stuffed mochi), the kind made at Sakura-ya are classically simple. “We call them Gardena style,” quips Mas. “We are known for the taste and texture of our goods, not the fanciness.”

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But what of the future of Sakura-ya when the old guard passes on? It seems many of Sakura-ya’s customers are young parents, third- and even forth-generation Americans who are as assimilated as hot dogs. Mas says they bring in their children, who tell their parents they want the white mochi , green moch i or brown mochi , not knowing the Japanese names ( daifuku , yomogi , ohagi ). As one observer noted, “The language is the first in an assimilating culture to go; the food is the last.”

Hand-made Japanese sweets may be a fading art, but not in Gardena, California at Sakura-ya.

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NEW YEAR SPECIALTIES

An essential part of any Japanese New Year celebration is plain mochi . Sakura-ya produces three traditional varieties.

Mochi -making starts with the sticky short-grained rice called mochi-gome . After an overnight soaking, it’s wrapped in a sturdy cloth and steamed in wooden boxes. These are often piled five high on the special industrial-size rice steamers that Masayasu Fujita ordered from Japan when he started the shop.

Next the rice must be ground to a smooth paste. Sakura-ya’s one concession to modern technology is its automatic rice grinder. Before, the rice was placed in a huge granite mortar that had to be turned by hand while an electrically driven pestle pounded the rice. Good timing was essential for this task, which was clearly not without its hazards.

The new machine turns the rice in a huge granite bowl with a thick rotating paddle resembling a one-blade propeller. But the process is not completely automated. The rice can’t be ground too long, or it will get hot and sticky. Too much water, or too little, will also ruin the mochi ‘s consistency. And because each rice shipment differs in water content and absorption powers, only skill and a practiced eye assure the perfect rice dough.

Komochi: These mochi , the size of silver-dollar pancakes, have an extremely chewy texture: “The chewier, the better,” says Japanese food authority Yoko Nishijima. Komochi are eaten many ways, but they must first be softened by toasting or broiling. Toasted mochi puff up to about twice their size. “I microwave them for a second or two, though you don’t get that nice toasty flavor,” Nishijima admits.

On New Year’s morning everyone eats toasted mochi in a clear soup known as ozoni . The hearty dish, brimming with assorted vegetables, chicken and sometimes shrimp, is as symbolic of Japanese New Year celebrations as roast turkey and pumpkin pie are to Thanksgiving. The recipe for ozoni is up to the cook but the toasted mochi is essential. Once the soup gets poured over the toasted rice cake, it must be eaten right away before the cake turns soggy.

New Year’s Day isn’t the only time for ozoni . It’s a popular wintertime dish. “When the weather gets cold, komochi sales really increase,” says Mas. We always keep some in our freezer.”

Mochi , by the way, freeze very successfully--when they thaw, they regain their original soft springy texture. But for some reason, refrigerating has the opposite effect. Refrigerated mochi stiffens and never rebounds.

As a dessert or between-meals snack, mochi is eaten all year long. In a pudding-like, sweet red bean soup called zenzai , it is a traditional winter sweet. Mochi lovers sandwich the rice cakes between two layers of roasted nori seaweed and dip them into soy sauce or they heat them in the oven and top them with peanut butter or even applesauce.

Okasane: For the Japanese, New Year celebrating goes on for about seven days, during which time okasane mochi , a large double-decker mochi that resembles a snowman, sits in a place of honor in every home. This spot may simply be a special corner or a more formal toko-no-ma , a little alcove that may hold a small Shinto shrine or altar.

Sitting out for so long, the okasane is likely to get a little moldy, but Nishijima says people simply wash off the mold and boil the mochi to soften it. Mas suggests that keeping the mochi in the freezer every night and bringing it out in the morning helps discourage mold.

Noshi Mochi: This mochi , from the southern part of Japan near Tokyo, comes in a sheet like bar cookies. It is cut in triangles for eating, but Sakura-ya sells the sheets uncut to help the mochi retain more freshness (you can also order them cut).

MOCHIGASHI: RICE DOUGH

SWEETS

Unlike the plainer New Year’s-style mochi , the dough for mochigashi is a blend of sweet rice flour ( mochiko ), sugar and water, and as a result it’s softer than unsweetened mochi . The dough gets formed into shapes such as balls or ovals, which are often stuffed (like giant bon-bons) with a creamy paste of sugar and bean puree. These sweets were originally developed to complement tea, still their best use.

Pink Mochi: Like a little angelic cloud tinted the palest salmon pink, these kiwi-size mochi are almost fluffy, particularly after they’re just made. Contributing to the lightness of pink mochi is its filling, a strained and sweetened puree of baby lima beans that seems less dense than alternative fillings made from sweet red adzuki beans.

White Mochi: With the same cloud-like exterior as pink mochi, white mochi have a filling based on sweet red adzuki beans. An , as sweet bean fillings are called, are made in both smooth and chunky varieties. Tsubu an (“bumpy an “ is the filling in white mochi .

Kinako Mochi: The smooth filling here is koshi an (“strained an “). Its deep purple-brown color is imparted by the skins of the “red” adzuki beans as the beans cook. Kinako mochi gets its name from its dusting of golden roasted soybean powder ( kinako ).

Yomogi Mochi: An herb, yomogi , known unappetizingly as mugwort in English, gives this mochi its dusky renaissance green tint and a faint hint of herbal tea-like flavor. Smooth red bean an fills yomogi mochi.

Orange Mochi: Fujita Sr. created these mochi soon after he arrived and their popularity has held steady over the years. Orange mochi is unfilled pure unadulterated rice dough with a whisper of orange flavoring. Cut into bar shapes, the faintly sweet springy rectangles are dusted with a veil of potato starch.

Ohagi: In a slightly different twist on the mochi theme, this pastry is a snowy ball of cooked whole sweet rice grains enrobed in a thin layer of dark chunky adzuki an .

WHEAT FLOUR CAKES

White Manju: You know bao , those fluffy Chinese buns filled with barbecued pork or sometimes chicken, or sweet red beans. Well, white manju is one of its relatives. The tiny pastries have the same wheat dough covering (only much thinner) around a Ping-Pong-ball-sized mound of smooth an . The pastries are steamed, rather than baked, so they are snowy white with slight resiliency to the covering.

Inaka Manju: A different rendition of white manju ( inaka manju ) has the same steamed dough covering, but the filling is chunky, and it peeks through the white exterior, giving the little round cakes a ripped and ragged look. This undoubtedly lead to the pastry’s second name, yabure manju (“ torn manju “).

Kuri: Many Japanese sweets mimic something from nature. Kuri , for example, means chestnut, and its pale golden baby lima bean filling is meant to represent the nut. A thin layer of baked pastry with a deep chestnut-colored glaze of sweet rice wine encloses the filling.

Imo: Another example of cake-imitates-nature, imo , is a pastry that resembles a baked sweet potato ( imo means yam). In this case the “yam” has been slit open to reveal a sweet baby lima filling enriched with egg yolk. The cake exterior, dusted with a whisper of cinnamon, bakes to a toasty brown like a yam’s skin.

The Japanese make all sorts of fruit and flower-like confections which may be linked to the evolution of their sweets. Before baked goods were available in Japan, only fresh or dried fruit were eaten as confections. When sweets were first introduced from China, the Japanese called them “Chinese fruit.”

Maruyaki: Mas and Yuki decided to break with tradition when they topped these little cakes with a spritz of tiny chocolate chips or a scattering of peanuts. The bean-filled cakes are traditional in every other way: Made to resemble a flower, their thin cake-like exterior is classically glazed with rice wine. Remember, though, these maruyaki are Gardena style, so chocolate chips are OK.

ASSORTED SPECIALTIES

Kiku: Part mochi and part manju , kiku might be called the combination plate of Japanese sweets. A wheat pastry flour pancake as soft as velvet is folded over a teaspoon-sized oval of mochi filled with chunky adzuki an . A chrysanthemum, one of Japan’s favorite flowers, is imprinted on the pancake.

O-Cha Manju: Stamped with the Chinese character for tea, this little cake looks like all the other pastry-covered manju . But its glazed exterior, a trompe-l’oeil , is actually made from sweet baby lima an . Inside is a smooth nugget of red bean an .

Monaka: A sort of Japanese Oreo cookie. Two crisp rice wafers that melt in the mouth are filled with chunky red bean an .

Yokan: A candy made primarily from agar-agar, a gelatin extracted from sea vegetables, yokan is sweetened with sugar and flavored with crushed adzuki or baby lima beans. If all this seems entirely too weird for the Western palate, think of yokan as a large gum drop. You slice off thin slivers of the delicate-tasting sweet to eat with tea. Each New Year, Sakura-ya makes homemade yokan ; the rest of the year they sell an imported Japanese version.

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