Un roseau pensant: Cooking Chimaki treats with leaves of reeds under the State of Emergency

The Lovers Association for Niiharu Citizen Forest is now suspending our weekly forestry due to the State of Emergency against COVID-19. In forests, this is the time all the plants burst into fresh greens. We should have started mowing now. Especially for those wetlands in Niiharu, it is vital to control the spread of reeds; otherwise, aridification of bogs starts and the ecosystem will be lost. We cannot begin such care this year, at least yet …

A field of reed in a part of Niiharu Forest, May 2020
 … which should not be.
 We have to cut the reed out
 in order to keep the water to flow this area.

“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed,” right? Here is my small resistance against COVID-19. I made sweets using the leaves of reed. In Japan, May 5th (yeah, Cinco de Mayo) is for an annual festival to rejoice healthy growth of kids. The day is called “Kodomo-no-Hi (Kids’ Day) こどもの日,” a National Holiday. Traditionally, we make rice cakes for the occasion. One recipe is sticky rice treat, called Chimaki ちまき, wrapped in fresh new leaves from forests. The common recipe for Chimaki uses new leaves of sasa bamboos, but there is regional variety (; for a research paper about the topic, you can download it from here). I’ve found using reeds is the second popular. Well, I’m a thinking reed in front of COVID-19.

I googled for recipes and combined their suggestions to accommodate the constraints we have now … Thanks to restrictions to visit markets and uber-congestion of on-line shopping, I made a do with ingredients I had in my fridge and the thing I can find in my nearest supermarket. So below is Chimaki recipe purely “Naomi Original.” It’s easy to make. Here is how:

2020 Kids’ Chimaki for the State of Emergency

<Ingredients for 10 Chimaki>

50g Joshinko 上新粉: rice flour made from non-glutinous rice which is available in large supermarkets (even under COVID-19)

50g Shiratamako 白玉粉: rice flour made from glutinous rice which is available in large supermarkets (even under COVID-19, ditto!)

16g Katakuriko 片栗粉: starch taken from the rhizome of Asian fawnlily (Erythronium japonicum). Yeah, we can buy in small supermarket a cheap bag of “Katakuriko” which is potato starch. I do not recommend it. For this recipe, potato starch cannot give us enough stickiness for Chimaki. I happen to have the thing from fawnlily in my pantry.

160g Brown sugar

12g Kudzu powder 葛粉: starch taken from roots of Kudzu. It can give transparent texture to the treat. This too could be difficult to find in an ordinary supermarket. Mine is from my pantry.

150cc of H2O

<Essential Tools>

• Microwave
• Steamer
• Microwavable bowl.
• 15m of kitchen string; cut into 10 pieces, 1.5m each
• 10 boiled leaves of reed: I harvested reed leaves and boiled them. By doing so, we can keep their green in a freezer until we are ready for cooking.

Frozen reed leaves

<Directions>

1. Sift Joshinko, Shiratamako, and Katakuriko, then mix brown sugar well in a bowl. 

Don’t leave lumps of brown sugar.

2. In a cup, dissolve Kudzu powder with water. You should never damp Kudze powder in water at once. If you do that, you’ll have very hard time to make Kudzu water. Add H2O little by little, especially at the beginning, and create 150cc of Kudzu liquid.

When 12g of Kudzu powder is dissolved, it looks like this.
 Now you can add all the remaining water at once.

3. Add Kudzu liquid little by little to the bowl of 1, while mixing all continuously. Avoid leaving any lumpy stuff in the bowl.

The beginning of drizzling Kudzu liquid.

The mixture of dry stuff and Kudzu liquid.

4. Loosely cover the bowl and microwave it at 500w for 3 minutes.

5. Take out the bowl from the machine, and mix well the contents. At this stage, the mixture is still very soupy.

Immediately after the first microwave,
 the content of the bowl looked like this.

Mix well, and the bowl is ready for the second microwave.

6. Cover the bowl and microwave again at 500w for 4 minuets.

7. Now the mixture is stickier, mochi-like stuff. Mix or knead it again until it becomes a smooth ball. Mind you, it’s hot! You’d better prepare cold water near you while you do this.

The result of the second microwave. It’s steaming hot.

Knead or mix it well with a wooden spoon.

8. Divide the dough into 10 pieces, and make 10 elongated cones that can be wrapped each by a leaf of reed. The length of a cone is slightly less than a half of a leaf. The easiest way to make a cone is

8.1. First make a ball.

8.2. Next make a cylinder from the ball.

8.3. Finally, form a cone from the cylinder. You did it in your kindergarten, right?


9. Wrap the cone with a leaf. Below is how to:

Position the treat on a leaf this way.

Wrap it from both sides. Place a 1.5m cooking twine in the middle. You’ll make one side for about 1.2m that is long enough to rolling up the wrapped treat.

Fold the leaf at the half, putting the twine in the leaf. Twist the twine at the bottom of the wrap, and

Wind around the leaf-wrapped cone to the top. Pick the shorter end of the twine. Fasten the twine at the top end of a treat. At this point, if your rolling is not secure enough, the twine could be unfolded. So, make it sure the winding is tight enough.

Or, you can secure the wrap with two twines at once like here. In this method, you place middle of the twine at the folding edge of a leaf, and secure the top,

Like these.

Put them in a steamer and cook it for 4-5 minutes.

Mmmmmm … the contents burst out with the steam …

Dunk steamed Chimaki in a cold water, and pat them dry.

Here they are. 10 Chimaki treats wrapped by reed leaves. Bon Appétit!

I found them easy to eat when we tried it immediately after the water-bath. We could use reed leaves as a sort of burger wrap. In contrast, next day after storing them in fridge, the texture became very gooey. We had to use spoon to scrape the treat from leaf. I may have had to add more kudzu powder … Anyway, they were VERY sweet in complex taste of brown sugar. I guess the flavor of this treat is determined which brown sugar we choose … When can we return to forestry in Niiharu? We’ll have a ton of reed leaves eventually …

If you find a problem in Yokohama’s North Forests, please make a contact with

Office for the Park Greeneries in the North 北部公園緑地事務所

Yokohama Municipal Government Creative Environment Policy Bureau 横浜市環境創造局

Phone: 045-311-2016

FAX: 045-316-8420

If you find environmental issues in Kanagawa Prefecture, please make a contact with Kanagawa Natural Environment Conservation Center 神奈川県自然環境保全センター

657 Nanasawa, Atsugi City, 243-0121
〒243－0121　厚木市七沢657
Phone: 046-248-0323

You can send an enquiry to them by clicking the bottom line of their homepage at http://www.pref.kanagawa.jp/div/1644/