In the Kanto region, these white dango will often be found stacked in a small pyramid while in Kansai, the dango are coated with red bean paste. Tsukimi Dangoĭango is also very much part of tsukimi, Japan’s moon viewing party tradition. While it is common nowadays to use food colouring, more culinary minded places will use plum for the pink and mugwort for the green.Īnd interesting titbit is that, depending on the region, this dango will be eaten after having been seared with the flames used in the custom of burning New Year’s decorations. Sanshoku dango is prepared with three different colours: pink, green and white. There are a number of multi-coloured dango styles available. Teppanyaki dango is dango that has been coated with an often smoky but sweet teppanyaki glaze. Kuri dango is a dango that has been coated with chestnut paste. Kurumi dango made with walnut paste while ayame dango is an obscure dango from Toyama City that is completely covered with the nectar of the iris flower. Even then, one of the most common dango styles is chadango which is, that’s right, dango flavoured with green tea. Zunda dango eschews the red bean paste though and is instead coated with a sweetened mashed edamame bean paste and is common in the southern part of the Tohoku region.ĭango is almost the perfect sweet accompaniment to the slightly bitter taste of Japanese green tea (macha). A variation of this is kusa dango, or grass dango, where the paste comes as a dollop on the side or as a bed that the dango is placed on. The most common is sweetened anko, a with red bean paste. In any case, it has been many a year since those times and the variety of dango that is now available is truly staggering. This attempt to satisfy the divine may be the reason why the supposedly ‘perfect’ ball-shape eventually became the prototype for all dango to follow.
In this way, dango was thought to be an important part of a village’s offering to the gods in the old days. Not limited to rice flour, dango were also made with barley, wheat, various kinds of millet, buckwheat, corn, beans, sweet potato, and chestnuts.Īs a result, you will find that nowadays differing regions will use differing ingredients for their dango.īut more than just a survival food, one of the peculiarities of dango is that it was (and still is) often used as an offering during religious services, particularly during Buddhist memorial ones. In a classic case of waste not want not, these ancient staples were made with the leftover pieces of rice and grain husks. References to dango can also be found in the 12th and 13th century Buddhist parable works, Shasekishu and Teikinourai and in the 14th century encyclopaedic work Shuugaishou. It is even mentioned in that period’s famous dictionary, Wamyo Ruijusho as well as in a cookbook titled Chuujirui Ki.
Said to have originated with modak, an Indian sweet dumpling used in offerings to the Hindu deity Ganesh, there are records in Japan of dango as far back as the 10th century in a Heian period work of fiction known as the Shin Sarugaku Ki. Extraordinarily popular now, it is easy to forget that dango is an old food with a long history.
0 kommentar(er)
