Beyond mochi: the art of wagashi or traditional Japanese pastry
the last thing i could think of Takashi Ochiai , native of Niigata (the most important coastal city on the sea of Japan and agricultural muscle par excellence), when he opened in 1983 his Pastisseria in Barcelona , is that he was not going to stop making dorayakis.
The second most unlikely, perhaps, is that your bakery He was going to win awards like the Best Artisan Butter Croissant in Spain (2013), the Best Master Pastry Chef Award (2014) or the recognition to the Best Artisan Panettone from Spain (2018). Or that it was even going to become one of the scenarios chosen by Isabel Coixett to delight the viewer with playful gastro-amorous fantasies in an HBO series.
Surely he did not imagine that in the summer of 2019 the great wagashi master Toshinaka Shimizu I was going to spend a few days in his workshop; spreading the art of traditional Japanese confectionery thanks to the Consulate General of Japan in Barcelona. Which, of course, also happened. And in that space-time gap of his life we sneak into another improbable carom of fate.
Although perhaps the shinto symbology would tell us that all this has to do with the “ red threads ” of fate or with the musubi (結び), the bond that unites human beings through time. If this concept were wagashi , the red bean paste (anko ) I'm sure she would be the protagonist...
TAKASHI OCHIAI: DORAYAKI AMBASSADOR IN BARCELONA
Yes ochiai was the confectionery superhero , his archenemy would be immediacy. The teacher wages a battle against the fickle and inconsistent since he realized that the world was paying more and more attention to productivity than to the pursuit of perfection.
But persistence is the elixir of romantics . And Ochiai's philosophy of life works for him. So much so that approaching 70 years retirement does not interest him ; eager at present to pass the baton to his son ken ochai , also trained as a confectioner in Japan.
son of a working family dedicated to the field (or as he himself reformulates with the elegant sarcasm that characterizes him " peasant of japan "), at age 15 he was already very clear that his destiny was not suffocating in a rural environment. And he left for Tokyo in search of prosperity.
Takashi Ochiai
By coincidence of those that fascinate us so much (oh, the musubi, which does not stitch without red thread), his first job was in a pastry shop. But it didn't last long: teenage abulia spat him out of there a year and a half later.
Until he was 19 he was stumbling in different companies trying to understand what was life about . At that moment it came to his mind that that first job really had something that he had never been able to forget... And he entered the Pastry School . But not so fast: to do so, he first had to save up six months of working the night shift at a Nissan factory.
The rest of his story is best understood in the sensory plane : for instance, letting his mochi "squeeze" our palate with that perfect mix of tenderness, nostalgia and sophistication.
But when one enters the realm of Ochiai he must never lose sight of the delightful experimentations with French and Catalan influence . Or the fluffy nest of your kastera (castle , reference to the Kingdom of Castile) (カステラ), sponge cake of Portuguese descent . Because in the Japanese confectionery universe, the roots and fascination for the foreign have fed back to comfort and ecstasy of our senses.
What do we talk about when we talk about wagashi?
WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT WAGASHI?
When in the same space the energies of Toshinaka Shimizu and Takashi Ochiai , something very special runs through the atmosphere and makes you want to fantasize about stories of alchemists.
To briefly contextualize, Mr. Shimizu is an advisory director of the iconic Ryoguchiya pastry shop and he received in 2018 the Medal of Honor with Gold Ribbon awarded by the Government of Japan on behalf of the Emperor . (After reading the title of the magnanimous award, let's catch our breath).
He attends us humbly, patiently and without the feeling that time is upon him with the preparations for his conference-workshop. explaining ourselves the keys to japanese pastry art , the link of its original ingredients with the digestive health (we are ojiplático) and its great significance as cultural heritage of Japan.
Two concepts are essential to understand the various manifestations of Japanese pastry. The yogashi (洋菓子) refers to the western style of baking developed after World War II. And the wagashi (和菓子) is the Japanese classic confectionery style , whose golden age is between the 17th and 19th centuries of our era.
The key on which everything revolves aesthetic, sensory, palatal and digestive universe of wagashi is “seasonality”. Japan is a country that lives in tune with the four seasons of the year. Feeling them and revering them.
That attachment to the rhythms and flows of nature in spring, summer, autumn and winter explains the content, form and essence of wagashi . Mark, therefore, types of sweets that are conceived and consumed in each season. and allows us to understand narrative, poetic and evocative capacity of their forms and names.
The most common ingredients for its preparation, as Master Shimizu explains, have a strong link with the search for healing through the digestive process : rice flour, glutinous rice paste, anko (sweet red bean paste), shiroan (sweet white bean paste), agar-agar, matcha tea…
Moreover, a beautiful historical and legendary anecdote ( myths and reality are always interwoven to make sense of our fickle existences) suggests that the most primitive forms of wagashi are found in the fruits and nuts that the Emperor's emissaries brought to Japan, after their journey through India, in search of a supposedly miraculous fruit tree . For it sank its roots in a land where neither old age nor death was known...
Chinese and Portuguese influence (remember here the great imprint of the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in Japan) were decisive for the conception of the wagashi that has survived to this day. Its refinement and maximum splendor was reached, then, in the Edo period (1603-1868), in the heat of the tea ceremony . Another key to the game subtleties on the palate (and that takes them light years away from the cloying Westerners) is precisely their role as accompaniment with the green tea (matcha) . The astringency of this product should not be lost in a sugary flood. And the Japanese confectionery knows exactly what its place should be.
The poetics of wagashi
FIREFLIES ON A LANGUID SUMMER NIGHT: THE POETIC OF WAGASHI
In its origins (and until well into the 20th century), Japanese sweets respected the traditional division of the hours of the day and the intakes. The day was divided into eight parts , and the wagashi sneaked in frugally as oyatsu (お八つ) or snack . Another big difference with the western conception of 'dessert' or putting a sweet end to one of the important meals of the day. The wagashi has entity by itself.
Which allows us to engross ourselves with his particular cosmology . And it explains its elevation to an artistic object: the mastery and advanced levels that Japanese pastry chefs face, turns them practically into goldsmiths . In fact, the ultimate exam a Japanese confectioner must take to truly become a pastry chef (and earn the national diploma) is to precisely chisel a chrysanthemum. Each petal of the hasami giku (鋏菊) is sculpted by hand using special scissors…
The fresh sweets that most eloquently reflect the poetics contained in the “art of the five senses” are known as namagashi (生菓子). and transmit a tenderness so irresistible that some, instead of eating them, make you want to sleep hugging them.
The namagashi are 'fresh' confectionery , which has not been subjected to any baking process, and contain a percentage of water around 30%. They require great dexterity and skill of poetic evocation. On the one hand, the pressure that a fingertip exerts on them can make the difference between a suggestive detail or a true national catastrophe.
For another, these candies seem to whisper a haiku to us : a simple verse of 17 syllables capable of awakening memories and sensations; starting from the contemplation of something everyday and earthly and reaching a universal dimension. One more time, we return to nature and seasonal change as the engine of poetic creation . Not as an excuse, but as a carrier of meaning.
Can a firefly on the edge of the lake emit a golden flash as fleeting as the summer of our childhood?
While we ponder, we can bite into a rabbit-shaped manju as white as the autumn moon at Takashi Ochiai's patisserie. Because he is not in a hurry. and neither do we.
Rabbit-shaped 'Manju'