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Japan

Featured Dishes from Japan

Anpan
Dessert, Sweet

Anpan

Anpan is a Japanese sweet roll most commonly filled with red bean paste. Anpan can also be prepared with other fillings, including white beans (shiro-an), green beans (uguisu-an), sesame (goma-an), and chestnuts (kuri-an). Anpan was first made in 1875, during the Meiji period, by Yasubei Kimura [ja] (木村安兵衛 Kimura Yasubei), a samurai who lost his job with the rise of the Imperial Japanese Army and the dissolution of the samurai as a social class. The Meiji era was a period in which Japan was becoming increasingly modernized, and many samurai who lost their jobs were given work that was totally new to them. The role of a baker was one such job. One day, while wandering around the area where many employed in new jobs worked, Kimura found a young man making bread, and decided to start his own bakery, named Bun'eidō (文英堂). In 1874, he moved to Ginza and renamed the bakery Kimuraya (木村屋), now Kimuraya Sohonten (ja:木村屋總本店). At that time, however, the only recipe for bread known in Japan was for making a salty and sour-tasting bread, ill-suited to Japanese tastes at the time. Kimura thus figured out how to make bread akin to manjū, raising the dough with traditional sakadane liquid yeast. He then filled the bread with a bean paste wagashi and sold the resulting rolls as snacks. Anpan became popular not only because of its taste, but also because the Japanese were interested in anything new and foreign at this time.[citation needed]
Berliner
Dessert, Sweet

Berliner

A Berliner or Krapfen is a German jam doughnut with no central hole, made from sweet yeast dough fried in lard or cooking oil, with a jam filling, and usually covered in powdered sugar. Sugar was very costly until the 16th century, and early doughnuts were usually stuffed with savory fillings like cheese, meat and mushroom. When imports from Caribbean sugar plantations made sugar more affordable, fruit preserves gained in popularity. In 1485, the first German-language cookbook to be published in printed form Kuechenmeisterei was published in Nuremberg and remained in print at least until 1674 with 20 editions . It was one of the first cookbooks printed using the Gutenberg press and contains the first known recipe for a jelly doughnut, called Gefüllte Krapfen made with jam-filled yeasted bread dough deep-fried in lard. It's unknown whether this innovation was the author's own or simply a record of an existing practice. The yeast dough contains a good deal of eggs, milk and butter. For the classical Pfannkuchen made in Berlin the dough is rolled into a ball, deep-fried in lard, whereby the distinctive bright bulge occurs, and then filled with jam. The filling is related to the topping:[citation needed] for plum-butter, powdered sugar; for raspberry, strawberry and cherry jam, sugar; for all other fillings, sugar icing, sometimes flavoured with rum. Today the filling usually is injected with a large syringe or pastry bag after the dough is fried in one piece.
Shortcake
Dessert, Sweet

Shortcake

Shortcake generally refers to a dessert with a crumbly scone-like texture. There are multiple variations of shortcake, most of which are served with fruit and cream. One of the most popular is strawberry shortcake, which is typically served with whipped cream. Other variations common in the UK are blackberry and clotted cream shortcake and lemon berry shortcake, which is served with lemon curd in place of cream. Shortcake is typically made with flour, sugar, baking powder or soda, salt, butter, milk or cream, and sometimes eggs. The dry ingredients are blended, and then the butter is cut in until the mixture resembles cornmeal. The liquid ingredients are then mixed in just until moistened, resulting in a shortened dough. The dough is then dropped in spoonfuls onto a baking sheet, rolled and cut like baking powder biscuits, or poured into a cake pan, depending on how wet the dough is and the baker's preferences. Then it is baked at a relatively high temperature until set. Strawberry shortcake is a widely known dessert made with shortcake. Sliced strawberries are mixed with sugar and allowed to sit an hour or so, until the strawberries have surrendered a great deal of their juices . The shortcakes are split, and the bottoms are covered with a layer of strawberries, juice, and whipped cream, typically flavored with sugar and vanilla. The top is replaced, and more strawberries and whipped cream are added onto the top. Some convenience versions of shortcake are not made with a shortcake (i.e. biscuit) at all, but instead use a base of sponge cake or sometimes a corn muffin.
Caffè mocha
Drink

Caffè mocha

A caffè mocha , also called mocaccino ( Italian: [mokatˈtʃiːno]), is a chocolate-flavoured warm beverage that is a variant of a caffè latte, commonly served in a glass rather than a mug. Other commonly used spellings are mochaccino and also mochachino. The name is derived from the city of Mokha, Taiz Governorate, Yemen, which was one of the centres of early coffee trade. Like latte, the name is commonly shortened to just mocha. The name "mocha" is derived from the Yemeni port of Mokha, which was a port well-known for its coffee trade from the 15th to 17th century, and where small quantities of fine coffee grown in the hills nearby was exported. When coffee drinking culture spread to Europe, Europeans referred to coffee imports from Arabia as Mochas, even though coffee from Yemen itself was uncommon and frequently mixed with beans from Abyssinia, and later coffee from Malabar or the West Indies were also marketed as Mocha coffee. The coffee drink today called "mocha," however, is made by adding chocolate, and some believe that this is the result of confusion caused by the chocolate flavor that may sometimes be found in Yemeni coffee. Chocolate has been combined with coffee after chocolate drink was introduced to Italy in the 17th century; in Turin, chocolate was mixed with coffee and cream to produce bavareisa, which evolved in the 18th century into bicerin served in small clear glass where its components may be observed as three separate layers. However, prior to 1900s, Mocha referred to Yemeni coffee, and its meaning began to change around the turn of the 20th century, and recipes for food such as cakes that combined chocolate and coffee that referenced mocha began to appear. In 1920, a recipe for a "Chilled Mocha" was published with milk, coffee and cocoa as ingredients.
Cider
Drink

Cider

Cider is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. Cider is widely available in the United Kingdom (particularly in the West Country) and Ireland. The UK has the world's highest per capita consumption, as well as the largest cider-producing companies. Ciders from the South West of England are generally higher in alcoholic content. Cider is also popular in many Commonwealth countries, such as India, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and New England. As well as the UK and its former colonies, cider is popular in Portugal (mainly in Minho and Madeira), France (particularly Normandy and Brittany), Friuli, and northern Spain (specifically Asturias and Basque Country). Germany also has its own types of cider with Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse producing a particularly tart version known as Apfelwein. In the U.S. and Canada, varieties of alcoholic cider are often called hard cider to distinguish it from non-alcoholic apple cider or "sweet cider", also made from apples. In Canada, cider cannot contain less than 2.5% or over 13% absolute alcohol by volume. The juice of most varieties of apple, including crab apples, can be used to make cider, but cider apples are best. The addition of sugar or extra fruit before a second fermentation increases the ethanol content of the resulting beverage. Cider alcohol content varies from 1.2% to 8.5% ABV or more in traditional English ciders, and 3.5% to 12% in continental ciders. In UK law, it must contain at least 35% apple juice (fresh or from concentrate), although CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) says that "real cider" must be at least 90% fresh apple juice. In the US, there is a 50% minimum. In France, cider must be made solely from apples. In 2014, a study found that a 1-US-pint (470 ml) bottle of mass-market cider contained five teaspoons (20.5 g) of sugar, nearly the amount the WHO recommends as an adult's daily allowance of added sugar, and 5–10 times the amount of sugar in lager or ale.
Cortado
Drink

Cortado

A cortado is a Spanish beverage consisting of espresso mixed with a roughly equal amount of warm milk to reduce the acidity, although the exact ratios have considerable regional variation. The milk in a cortado is steamed, but not frothy and "texturized" as in many Italian coffee drinks. The cortado is commonly served all over Spain. The word cortado is the past participle of the Spanish verb cortar , in the sense of "dilute", and can refer variously to either coffee or espresso drinks throughout Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries. In Spain a café solo corto is a small amount of black coffee (usually a single shot of espresso), while a café cortado or more commonly just a cortado is an espresso with a splash of milk. The term cortado is itself broadly associated with various coffee or espresso beverages having been "cut" with milk. The cortado is very similar or the same as the Italian macchiato or the French noisette. The cortadito in Cuba specifically implies a small beverage similar to the café solo corto consisting of a standard 30 mL (1 US fl oz) espresso shot; however, unlike the solo corto, the Cuban cortadito is generally cut with heated sweetened condensed milk, being a more available preserved form of milk, as fresh milk was historically often unavailable. A cortadito is usually served in a special glass, often with a metal ring base and a metal wire handle. There are several nominal variations, including cortado condensada, café con leche condensada or bombón (espresso with condensed milk); leche y leche is a similar variation, but with both condensed milk integrated throughout and a dollop of cream resting on top. Brought to the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, Florida, by Cuban-Americans in the 1960s, the cortadito drink is now found throughout the city, and is an important part of everyday culture, particularly among Cubans. However, the cortadito is a drink distinct from Cuban-style coffee, which includes sugar in addition to milk, and has its own brewing method as espresso.