Before Norie Uematsu became a pastry chef, she waited all year for shave-ice season at home in Japan. Now, she decides when that season begins and ends.
At Cha-an Teahouse, in the East Village of New York, Ms. Uematsu serves refreshing bowls of kakigori — the Japanese shave ice — as soon as the subway stations are hot and sticky. She turns the handle of her vintage shave-ice machine through the end of September, or until she runs out of ripe white peaches, whichever comes first.
All kakigori starts with a block of plain ice. A machine locks the ice in place and spins it against a blade, shaving off soft, sheer flakes. As the ice piles up, kakigori makers add syrups, purées and other sweet toppings. The dessert is endlessly adaptable, which is one reason so many pastry chefs in the United States are not only adding kakigori to their menus but also extending its season.
When prepared with skill, kakigori is a feat of texture — a tall structure of uniformly light, airy and almost creamy crystals that never crunch, but deliver flavor as they dissolve on the tongue.
“To get it really fluffy, you adjust the angle of the blade,” said Ms. Uematsu, turning an iron knob on her machine. “But the finer it is, the harder it is to work with.” As the ice melts, or is worn down, the machine must be adjusted to keep the shavings downy.
In August, at a cafe in Yamanashi, Japan, I ordered a bowl of kakigori made from a block of natural ice. Someone had delivered it from the Yatsugatake Mountains, a volcanic range to the north. It seemed over the top — all that labor for a piece of ice? — but it also testified to the history of kakigori.
Before the development of freezers, shave ice was an extravagant dessert reserved only for those who could pay for the luxury of ice carved from frozen lakes and mountains and transported at great cost.
As Ms. Uematsu pointed out, kakigori has come a long way from its elite roots in the Heian period (from the end of the eighth through the 12th century). “When I was a kid, every house in Japan had a cheap kakigori machine, usually with a cute character on it, like Hello Kitty,” said Ms. Uematsu, who was born in 1980 in Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture. “And you could buy commercial syrups for flavoring them.”
But kakigori masters at cafes in Japan can still be fiercely competitive. Many shops have lines out the door, and attentive hosts to manage those lines. Atelier Sekka, a small, serene dessert shop in the Sugamo neighborhood of Tokyo, buys enormous glassy blocks of natural ice from Mount Fuji to use as the base for its pristine mounds of kakigori. On a recent weekday morning, there was an hourlong wait for a seat.
A vintage shave-ice machine sits at the center of the stylish Tokyo tearoom Higashiya Ginza, where servers layer the shavings with plums poached in honey. At Himitsudo, where you can order while standing in line on the street, cooks turn out bowls overflowing with puréed mango and other fruits.
I found my favorite kakigori of the summer at a cafe called Kuriya Kashi Kurogi, on the grounds of the University of Tokyo. The ice was beautifully shaved with an electric machine and saturated with fresh soy milk and sweetened condensed milk, layered with whipped cheese and finally crowned with a thick, sweet and salty purée of fresh edamame. Every now and then, digging around, I hit a ridge of red bean paste.
Yoojin Chung, the general manager of Stonemill Matcha in San Francisco, added kakigori to the menu in June, about a month after the cafe opened. Though elaborately built kakigori are in style, Ms. Chung remembers tasting a particularly simple version at a cafe in Kyoto, with no toppings or creams at all, just matcha syrup.
“It was this ginormous green spectacle that came on a tray, at least 12 inches tall, and it was very intense,” Ms. Chung recalled. “I was shocked how it kept its shape despite having all this syrup.”
She compared the texture of perfect kakigori to flower petals — not quite powder and not quite grain — making it distinct from other kinds of shave ice. “It’s a simple thing that’s really hard to execute,” Ms. Chung said.
by Tejal Rao, NY Times | Read more:
Image: An Rong Xu
At Cha-an Teahouse, in the East Village of New York, Ms. Uematsu serves refreshing bowls of kakigori — the Japanese shave ice — as soon as the subway stations are hot and sticky. She turns the handle of her vintage shave-ice machine through the end of September, or until she runs out of ripe white peaches, whichever comes first.
All kakigori starts with a block of plain ice. A machine locks the ice in place and spins it against a blade, shaving off soft, sheer flakes. As the ice piles up, kakigori makers add syrups, purées and other sweet toppings. The dessert is endlessly adaptable, which is one reason so many pastry chefs in the United States are not only adding kakigori to their menus but also extending its season.When prepared with skill, kakigori is a feat of texture — a tall structure of uniformly light, airy and almost creamy crystals that never crunch, but deliver flavor as they dissolve on the tongue.
“To get it really fluffy, you adjust the angle of the blade,” said Ms. Uematsu, turning an iron knob on her machine. “But the finer it is, the harder it is to work with.” As the ice melts, or is worn down, the machine must be adjusted to keep the shavings downy.
In August, at a cafe in Yamanashi, Japan, I ordered a bowl of kakigori made from a block of natural ice. Someone had delivered it from the Yatsugatake Mountains, a volcanic range to the north. It seemed over the top — all that labor for a piece of ice? — but it also testified to the history of kakigori.
Before the development of freezers, shave ice was an extravagant dessert reserved only for those who could pay for the luxury of ice carved from frozen lakes and mountains and transported at great cost.
As Ms. Uematsu pointed out, kakigori has come a long way from its elite roots in the Heian period (from the end of the eighth through the 12th century). “When I was a kid, every house in Japan had a cheap kakigori machine, usually with a cute character on it, like Hello Kitty,” said Ms. Uematsu, who was born in 1980 in Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture. “And you could buy commercial syrups for flavoring them.”
But kakigori masters at cafes in Japan can still be fiercely competitive. Many shops have lines out the door, and attentive hosts to manage those lines. Atelier Sekka, a small, serene dessert shop in the Sugamo neighborhood of Tokyo, buys enormous glassy blocks of natural ice from Mount Fuji to use as the base for its pristine mounds of kakigori. On a recent weekday morning, there was an hourlong wait for a seat.
A vintage shave-ice machine sits at the center of the stylish Tokyo tearoom Higashiya Ginza, where servers layer the shavings with plums poached in honey. At Himitsudo, where you can order while standing in line on the street, cooks turn out bowls overflowing with puréed mango and other fruits.
I found my favorite kakigori of the summer at a cafe called Kuriya Kashi Kurogi, on the grounds of the University of Tokyo. The ice was beautifully shaved with an electric machine and saturated with fresh soy milk and sweetened condensed milk, layered with whipped cheese and finally crowned with a thick, sweet and salty purée of fresh edamame. Every now and then, digging around, I hit a ridge of red bean paste.
Yoojin Chung, the general manager of Stonemill Matcha in San Francisco, added kakigori to the menu in June, about a month after the cafe opened. Though elaborately built kakigori are in style, Ms. Chung remembers tasting a particularly simple version at a cafe in Kyoto, with no toppings or creams at all, just matcha syrup.
“It was this ginormous green spectacle that came on a tray, at least 12 inches tall, and it was very intense,” Ms. Chung recalled. “I was shocked how it kept its shape despite having all this syrup.”
She compared the texture of perfect kakigori to flower petals — not quite powder and not quite grain — making it distinct from other kinds of shave ice. “It’s a simple thing that’s really hard to execute,” Ms. Chung said.
by Tejal Rao, NY Times | Read more:
Image: An Rong Xu
