Sakura mochi is Japan’s spring sweet: sweet red bean paste wrapped in pink mochi and a salted cherry leaf, with a gentle floral, slightly salty aroma. There are…
Yes, plain mochi is gluten-free. It is made from glutinous rice, and despite the name, glutinous rice contains no gluten. But not every mochi product is plain mochi:…
You can find mochi in the Philippines, but Japanese mochi is harder to come by than it looks. Most “mochi” shops in Metro Manila sell their own local…
You can buy matcha powder in the Philippines, but only what someone has already chosen to import. In Metro Manila that means a couple of Japanese matcha café…
The easiest mochi recipe needs three ingredients and a microwave: glutinous rice flour, water and sugar, mixed in a bowl and heated twice. In about ten minutes you…
Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made by steaming glutinous rice and pounding it until the grains disappear into one smooth, stretchy, sticky mass. It tastes of very…
Most matcha problems are measurement problems. Too much powder and it is bitter, too little and it tastes of nothing, water off the boil and it turns harsh,…
Organic, additive-free and unsweetened get used almost interchangeably in matcha marketing, and they are three different claims about three different things. A matcha can be certified organic and…
Japan sells a lot of matcha latte powder, and from the outside the bags look interchangeable. They are not. Some dissolve in cold milk and some only work…
Uji matcha carries a premium over matcha sold without a region on the tin. What most buyers do not know is that the term has a formal definition,…