葩餅（はなびらもち）
Hanabira Mochi / Soft Rice Cake Stuffed with Sweet Miso Paste and Burdock Conserve

This is known as the sweet used in the Urasenke style tea ceremony for celebrating new year. The original is 菱葩（ひしはなびら） (Hishi-Hanabira), a special dish for new year's day in the Japanese imperial house. The Hanabira Mochi has pretty beautiful look with an inner red 求肥（ぎゅうひ） (Gyuhi / very soft rice cake) and an outer translucent one, which shows transparent pink color. The taste is similar to 雑煮（ぞうに） (Zou-Ni / new year's soup) in Kyoto style, which has some vegetables and round rice cakes in 西京味噌（さいきょうみそ） (Saikyo Miso　/ white and sweet soybean paste) soup. (Cooking Time: about 30 minutes except cooking Gobou conserve and Miso An)

Directions

1. Make Gobou conserve. Peel the skin of Gobou off by rubbing with a scrub brush. Cut it into sticks with 4 inches in length and 1/5 inches in square. Soak them in water and boil until they become tender. Strain off the water from them with a basket.
2. Put sugar and water into a pan and heat until the sugar is dissolved. Add the Gobou sticks into the pan. When the syrup is boiled up, turn the heating off and leave it for overnight.
3. On the next day, pick the Gobou sticks out from the syrup and boil it down. Put the sticks back into the pan and boil them in the syrup again. Strain off it from the sticks. 9 of them will be used in the following.
4. Make Miso An. Put water into a small pan and boil it up at high heating range. Add Shiro Koshi-An into the pan and dissolve into the hot water.
5. Reduce the heating range to middle or low. Add Shiro Miso into the pan and mix them well with a wood spatula in order not to burn the Miso paste.
6. When the Miso paste dissolves uniformly, turn the heating off and pour it into a tray with a small amount of each. Then, leave until it is cool down. About 50 g of the paste (Miso An) will be used in the following.
7. Sieve potato starch once and make a flat layer of it in a large tray with a a spatula and so on. Prepare extra potato starch for the following steps.
8. Make Gyuhi as like 餅（もち） (Mochi) shown in the recipe of Daifuku Mochi. The Gyuhi is softer than Daifuku Mochi. Mix well with including air until it drips down easily from the wood spatula (please see the right photo). If it is still firm after mixing all of the syrup, add a small amount of extra water. If you have 水飴（みずあめ） (Mizu-Ame /Starch Syrup), please add it at final. It makes the Gyuhi much softer, so, please treat the total amount of water in the Gyuhi.
9. Pour the Gyuhi onto the layer of the potato starch in the tray. Sift potato starch on the Gyuhi and extend it about 12 square inches and about 1/6 inches in thickness.
10. When it cools down, cut it out with a round cockie cutter (3 inches in diameter) into 9 disk sheets. Make another tray with a thin potato starch layer and move the Gyuhi disk sheets into the tray.
11. Put the rest of the Gyuhi into a riddle and remove extra potato starch from them well. Put them into a glass/ceramic bowl and add heat in a microwave oven for about 1 minutes. During heating, make the layer of the potato starch flat again in the large tray.
12. Add red colorant dissolved in water into the bowl during it is hot. Mix well with the wood spatula and color the Gyuhi red uniformly.
13. Pour the red Gyuhi onto the layer of the potato starch, and add potato starch on the Gyuhi. Then, Extend it over 5 square inches and less than 1/12 inches in thickness.
14. When it cools down, cut it out into 9 sheets of 1 and 1/2 square inches with a knife, etc.
15. Brush the extra potato starch off from both white and red Gyuhi sheets with a kitchen brush. Put a red square sheet on a white disk one. And put a stick of Gobou conserve and a tea spoon of Miso An. Fold it up as shown in the photo on the top of this recipe, and serve.

Notes & Arrangements

• Please sieve the potato starch once in order to remove lumps of the starch. The Gyuhi may have uneven surface if there are the lumps in the bed of the potato starch, because the Gyuhi is very soft.
• The Mizu-Ame makes the Gyuhi silkier and protect it from drying up.
• Only Gyuhi can be served as a sweet, with your favorite toppings or sauces. You can freeze it, too.
• There are several kinds of Miso pasete, such as red, deep-red (Haccho type), etc. It is better to choose white and low-salt type to use for this recipe.
• The formal style of the Hanabira Mochi has two Gobou sticks which are instead of salted fishes. Many of Japanese sweet shops, however, seem to make it with only one Gobou stick shows in the photos on their website.