Without Adzuki beans (Vigna angularis), there is no Japanese sweets. We eat Adzuki beans in regular meals, of course. But in Japan the most popular usage of them is for sweets. Normally, after cooking the beans, we add sugar in the pan. From there, if we like to have sweet soup, we stop cooking while contents of the pan is still watery. When we aim to have Adzuki paste, we continue cooking until the residual liquid evaporates. The amount of sugar, and the control of heat is a sort of professional secrets for Japanese pâtissiers. I think there is national consensus which defines success of his/her shop depending on the taste of sweet Adzuki.
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| A day in a supermarket. I realized all the sweets in this photo contain sweet Adzuki paste, called Anko in Japanese. Hmmmmmmmmm … |
Having said that, below is the latest method we home-cookers can easily employ for Adzuki beans.
1. Wash Adzuki beans, drain the water, and pat them dry with tea towels, paper towels etc. The bags sold in Japan seldom contain deficient beans or stones so that we consider this process very easy. If you’re nervous, please take the standard approach to start cooking any beans.
2. This is the unique point with this bean: we do not have to soak them. The latest scientific approach from Prof. Jun Kato 加藤淳 of Nayoro City University 名寄市立大学 is, first we dry roast the cleaned beans in a pan for 2-3 minutes. By doing so, Tannin in the bean becomes molecules large enough for our taste buds not to know its bitterness. Bonus: tannin processed in this way keeps polyphenol of which Adzuki has twice more density than red wine.
3. Add less than twice heavier weight of water than beans in the pan and cook them in high heat. When it starts to boil, add the water that makes the total amount of water for cooking is twice heavier than the beans. So, say, when we cook 300g of beans, start with 500cc of H2O, and add the last 100cc at the time the pan starts to boil.
4. Wait the pan to boil again, then put on a lid and reduce the heat to low. Check the inside occasionally and mix it to make the top and the bottom of beans switch the position frequent enough to receive the heat evenly.
5. Ideally, after 30 minutes or so, the water in the pan evaporates, and we can squash a bean with a strong push with fingers. That’s the sign beans are done.
From here, we can use the beans for salad, tacos, or sweets ... Er, that’s that, which is a bit off from the theme of this blog. The thing I want to tell you this week about Adzuki beans is, this year, I’ve found the wild ancestor for Adzuki beans in Yokohama’s forest.
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| These
days, a sort of popular products for sweet Adzuki paste is a bag of paste with a nice piping corner. There are many brands of this type. This one happens to be in a supermarket near my home. |
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| My
indulgent snack under COVID threat these days … I piped sweet Adzuki paste over a mochi rice cake soften by microwave, then pour the kinako (roasted soy flour) … Mmmmm. |
It was a bit of surprise in my weekend stroll near home due to COVID. The wild ancestor for the bean, called Vigna angularis var. nipponensis, is tiny. Cute. The annual plant thrives in a corner of Yokohama’s forest together with ubiquitous mugworts, Cyperaceae, or smartweeds. The bean is so understating. Their yellow flowers are small, and the fruits are skinny 5-6cm pods. Inside, there are 4-5 beans whose size is about 4mm in length. When they mature in fall, the pods turn its color in dark brown or black, and twist themselves to push out the seeds, aka beans. Tiny beans spread out in the bush and sprout next spring. The popular kind of Adzuki beans for sweets, called Dinagon 大納言, is about 6mm long. Could you see how small the wild bean is in below photo?
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| A bag
of Dinagon. You can find it (of many brands) in almost all supermarkets in megalopolis Tokyo. |
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| Dainagon
and var. nipponensis. See? Wild one is tiny. |
Without any foundation, I simply believed Adzuki were imported from China long time ago. Making dish with Adzuki beans is not Japanese specialty, but people in the continent also love it. Have you noticed Chinese mooncakes use lots of Adzuki paste? Well, even so, Japanese have enjoyed Adzuki beans for more than 6000 years. The oldest archeological evidence about Adzuki consumption in Japan is from the site thrived in around 4000 BC, near Lake Biwako 琵琶湖. The ancient beans were about the same size of ours now. It seems to me, scholars are debating the original place where human kids started to cultivate the plant. At least, DNAs for Vigna angularis and Vigna angularis var. nipponensis share the definitive connection, they say. Hmmmmm.
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| Vigna angularis var. nipponensis in a
corner of Yokohama’s forest. I won’t tell you where. 😉 |
So, somebody long time ago tried that tiny bean of var. nipponensis, and thought out how to remove its bitterness just like Prof. Kato of the 21st Century. The first Adzuki eaters utilized Mendel’s Law without noticing this science (hey, it was at least 6000 years ago!) to make the “difficult but tasty beans” larger. They succeeded. I imagined the story and found it so delicious. The first person must have been very brave. S/he collected lots of lots of beans, or so hungry that s/he could not resist trying them. I collected a bit of beans from Vigna angularis var. nipponensis. The dried tiny beans are ready for cooking now … I’ve heard they are tastier than Dainagon … Though, mine is so small amount. I’m hesitating to gulp them down … admiring the spirit of the first penguin.
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| My Vigna angularis var. nipponensis, ready to be cooked … |
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| Vigna angularis var. nipponensis in late autumn |
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