Last Thursday was my friend Carol's birthday. In addition to being a fellow appreciator of Japanese candy, Carol is a big fan of kurogoma (black sesame), so I decided to surprise her with some kurogoma cupcakes. Luckily, it's easy to make almost anything kurogoma-flavored by adding a few tablespoons of black neri-goma -- a tar-like paste of pure toasted black sesame seeds -- and some roughly-crushed whole black sesame seeds.

It's not every day you get to make something that looks like it belongs in a cement mixer....

I was pondering a kurogoma buttercream frosting, but went with a matcha cream cheese frosting instead. It was a good choice: the green tea flavor contrasted with the kurogoma and the tang of the cream cheese tempered the cupcake sweetness. Also, the green made them kind of half-leprechaun, just like Carol. These were yummy! Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to the birthday dinner, so I don't have any pictures of Carol enjoying the cupcakes, but maybe she'll leave a comment testifying to how they made all her kurogoma dreams come true...

Kurogoma Cupcakes

If you don't have access to neri-goma, omit the paste, increase the amount of whole sesame seeds to half a cup and use a food processor to grind them to the consistency of wet sand. It won't quite be the same, but it will still be kurogoma-licious.

1 1/2 sticks (170 g) salted butter
1 1/2 cups (340 g) sugar
3 tablespoons black sesame paste
1/4 cup (35 g) black sesame seeds
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/2 cups (310 g) flour, sifted
1 1/4 cups milk

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring or tossing them constantly, until they are fragrant, about two minutes. (If you buy already-toasted sesame seeds, iri-goma, you can skip the previous step.) Crush the seeds with a suribachi or spice grinder until they are the texture of damp sand and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the sesame paste and seeds, eggs and vanilla and beat until combined. Gradually beat in the dry ingredients, then the milk, and beat for a couple minutes.

Fill cupcake tin and bake for 16-18 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

Matcha-Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8-oz (200 g) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 stick (55 g) butter, softened
2 tablespoons whipping cream
1 cup (125 g) sifted confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons matcha

Beat together the cream cheese, butter and whipping cream until creamy. Add the sugar and matcha and beat until glossy and smooth.

It's early April, the sakura are in full bloom, and spring is in the air. Except that it's raining right now and an icy wind is blowing all the blossoms off the trees. Oh well, at least I have my shin-shōga. Shōga is your average piece of ginger, brown-skinned and sharp, and shin-shōga is its younger, springtime version, pale, thin-skinned and mild. It's this ginger, sliced and pickled, that is mounded up next to the green plastic leaf in your box of lunchtime sushi.

But pickles are only the beginning for shin-shōga. Because it has the fresh astringency of ginger without the bite, you can use it raw, and it is especially tasty when julienned and added to salads. When cooked, it loses its bright crunch, but the delicate fragrance wafting up from any dish you've added it to makes up for it. With soups and rice, you can toss in the shin-shōga right at the end of cooking and let it soften a bit in the residual heat. That's what I do when making this early-spring rice, a mix of young ginger, fresh crab and thin green onions.

Some notes about ingredients: Young ginger is a popular ingredient in other Asian cuisines, so you should be able to find it at Asian supermarkets from spring through early summer. I buy my cooked crab meat in the sashimi section of my local grocery store, where I sometimes want to cry when I see how beautiful and cheap everything is. Imitation crab meat is not a suitable substitute. Finally, the green onions in Japan are typically much thinner than in the U.S., about half the diameter; look for the thinnest you can find or just use one thick one.

Kani to shin-shōga gohan (Crab and young ginger rice)

Makes 2 servings

1 cup Japanese rice, washed and drained
2-inch (5-cm) piece of young ginger
3.5 oz (100 g) cooked crab meat
2 thin green onions

Cook the rice in a rice cooker or on the stovetop as usual. (See the directions for cooking Japanese rice here.) When the rice is almost cooked, peel the ginger, cut in half crosswise, and julienne. Thinly slice the green onion. When the rice is cooked, add the ginger, crab and green onion to the cooker or pot and stir to mix everything in. For best flavor, serve immediately.

Kuro means black and mitsu means honey, so for the longest time I thought kuro-mitsu was just a dark type of honey, perhaps buckwheat, and I wondered why I could never find it in the honey section of the supermarket. In actuality, kuro-mitsu is a syrup made from black sugar (kuro-zato), the famously healthy dark brown sugar produced in Okinawa, and sold next to the other sugars on the shelves. While mass-produced brown sugar in the U.S. is often made by simply coating refined white sugar with molasses, black sugar is unrefined, resulting in chunky, sticky granules with a pronounced molasses flavor.

Kuro-mitsu is thinner and milder than molasses, making it an ideal substitute for honey, whether spread on toast, drizzled over yogurt or stirred into tea. Kuro-zato is known for its throat-soothing qualities, so I use it in my favorite sick-day tea: I boil sliced ginger in water for five minutes, let it sit for ten minutes, reheat, and pour the resulting liquid over the juice of one lemon and one tablespoon of kuro-mitsu. It's spicy, sweet and citrusy and always makes me feel better.

Kuro-mitsu over yogurt.

But there's no need to stay virtuous in your kuro-mitsu use. The dish that inspired me to buy my own bottle of kuro-mitsu, in fact, was a strange and wonderful dessert named, alluringly, Honeycube, the special of the day at a cafe in Nagoya. (Just try saying it: Honeycube. Don't you want to eat it even though you have no idea what it is?) Honeycube turned out to be a plate piled high with the most unlikely ingredients: cubes of just-toasted white bread scattered over a heaping portion of vanilla soft-serve ice cream, then topped with a drizzle of kuro-mitsu and a dusting of cinnamon. Oh, and there was a scoop of fresh whipped cream in there somewhere, too. Surprisingly, Honeycube as a dessert lived up to Honeycube as a name. The cinnamon-scented crunch of the warm toasted bread with the cool softness of the ice cream was something like eating an ice-cream-stuffed churro and led to the realization that kuro-mitsu and ice cream go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Or strawberries and cream. Or kinako and fresh mochi. Whatever -- something synergistically delicious anyway.

This realization is why, while out for post-dinner drinks at an izakaya last week, when I heard the waiter say the only dessert they had was ice cream topped with kuro-mitsu and kinako, my reaction was one of such deep and sudden enthusiasm the man scooted back about a foot in surprise and four of my friends ordered the same, having no idea what they were getting, but unable to resist my breathless excitement. It was like a Japanese hot fudge sundae. I ate every bite.

My favorite supermarket discovery this winter was daikon greens, the leafy tops of the giant white Japanese radish, sold with immature daikon still attached. They are sturdy and bitter, with a faintly spicy radish flavor, a welcome change from the usual vegetable suspects like komatsuna, spinach and mizuna, which are quite watery and mild. Usually, after thoroughly washing the daikon greens, I roughly chop them up and briefly blanch them in boiling water, adding the white radish nubs first and waiting about a minute before adding the leafy parts.

As with all vegetables I parboil, after draining I don't cool them by rinsing them or putting them in ice water. Instead, I use the traditional Japanese method of fanning them for a minute or two with an uchiwa (paper fan), which keeps them from becoming water-logged and flavorless. I use one of those promotional uchiwa handed out on the streets of Japan during the summer alongside the promotional tissue packets. (If only all advertisements doubled as kitchen and/or beauty aids....)

To season the greens, I normally just pour on a little soy sauce and sprinkle on some toasted white sesame seeds for a quick and lazy ohitashi. They'd also be delicious tossed with a miso-sesame dressing. But my very favorite way to eat daikon greens is to wilt them, raw, with a little salt, then mix them with freshly-cooked rice, where they cook in the residual heat. It's a method I picked up from Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art and it brings out the warm, spicy aroma and flavor of the greens like nothing else.

Nameshi (Rice with greens)

Adapted from Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji

Makes 2 servings

1 cup Japanese rice, washed
1 cup daikon greens or other bitter leafy vegetable, washed
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cook the rice as usual. (See the directions for cooking Japanese rice here.) While the rice is cooking, chop the greens into 1-inch pieces, including the immature radishes if attached. Put into a bowl and sprinkle with the salt. Rub the chopped leaves with your hands, squeezing them and dispersing the salt until they are slightly wilted. Drain any accumulated liquid.

When the rice is cooked, add the wilted greens and radish pieces, then lightly stir the rice until the greens are evenly incorporated. Replace the lid and let sit for a couple minutes before serving.

It's wintertime and buri is king. Buri is yellowtail, that pink-edged sushi staple also known as hamachi. But buri is a grown-up hamachi that has eaten too much over the holidays and is now cloaked in a warm layer of yummy fat that it swears to god it is going to shed once the weather warms up and it can make it to the gym. For now, buri is buttery. Raw, it nearly melts in your mouth. Cooked, it is meaty and flavorful, especially when coated in a dark miso marinade and grilled, which is how I eat it about once a week during the winter.

Hatchō miso, favored by those in the central part of Japan, is so dark it is almost black. Hearty, salty and strong, this is not the sweet, pale stuff most often served at Japanese restaurants abroad. I remember my first bowl of miso-shiru (miso soup) here in the heartland of Japan. I felt like I had been punched in the tongue. But, you know, in a good way.

Another dark-food favorite of mine is kuro-zu, brown rice vinegar, which is the good-boy vinegar to Hatchō's bad-boy miso. Extremely mild and supposedly extra-nutritious, kuro-zu is hyped here as a healthy drink and all-around tonic for what ails you. I like to sprinkle it on raw vegetables. If you can't find it, about half the amount of regular rice vinegar is a suitable substitute.

And finally, if you don't have any buri nearby, you can try this recipe with salmon, black cod, swordfish or other meaty, oily fish.

Buri no Hatchō yaki (Miso-marinated grilled buri)

Makes 2 servings

2 buri fillets
1 tablespoon dark miso, preferably Hatchō miso
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon kuro-zu (brown rice vinegar) or 1 1/2 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons mirin
Chopped green onions or pickled ginger shoot, for garnish

Make marinade: In a shallow container, stir together the miso and soy sauce until smooth, then add the vinegar and mirin. Taste for seasoning and add more soy sauce or mirin as needed. Put the fillets in the marinade and coat completely. Cover the container and put in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. (Or, if you live in an unheated Japanese apartment, just leave it on the counter while you assemble the rest of your meal.)

Grill the fillets on a grill or in the broiler for 6-10 minutes, flipping halfway through cooking. Test for doneness by pressing the fish with a finger or chopsticks. It should be firm with some give, like a medium steak.

Gobō, or burdock root, really looks like a root when you buy it in the supermarket. About one meter long, coated with a layer of dirt, gobō will poke conspicuously out of your shopping bag and most likely not fit inside your Japanese-sized refrigerator without first being cut in half. But the flavor of gobō is as singular as its appearance; "earthy" is the word that comes to mind, or maybe "rooty" (which actually is a word, believe it or not). Like mushrooms, it is a good thing to eat in autumn.

Though gobō is full of fiber and other nutrients -- it's used as a medicine in China -- Japan is the only country in the world where it is a traditional part of the diet. This may be why I once received a spontaneous round of applause for eating a gobō sushi roll. It may also be why, when I asked my mother what her favorite food was during her trip to Japan, I was so happy to hear, "That gobō thing!" She's no wishy-washy California-roll-and-tempura-only-eater, my mom.

To prepare gobō, rinse it under running water while scraping away the dirt with the back of a knife. Most of the flavor is found in the skin, so avoid peeling too much of it away while cleaning the root. (The gobō pictured here is clean and unpeeled.) After being cut, it will begin to discolor, but it will turn brown in cooking anyway, so this is not a problem. Some people prefer to soak the cut pieces in acidulated water to reduce the earthiness, but I am not one of these anti-rooty people.

A popular gobō dish is kimpira, a mixture of gobō and carrots sauteed in sugar, sake and soy sauce, and sprinkled with chili powder. Lately I've been eating it in gomoku meshi, rice cooked with assorted vegetables in seasoned stock. You can also throw it into stir-fries or stewed vegetable dishes, anything begging for a bit of earthiness during these cool autumn nights.

In an effort to expand my tofu horizons, I've been scanning the shelves for interesting-looking products, and this green and lovely cake of edamame (fresh soybean) tofu caught my eye. Unlike plain tofu, it has a fairly pronounced flavor, kind of sweet and nutty, helped along by the actual beans studded throughout. To prepare it, I just patted it dry, added some grated ginger, chopped myoga and green onions and a splash of tsuyu. Oishii, yo!

The texture is soft, more like a kinugoshi (silk) tofu, because it was made using nigari*, a coagulant derived from seawater. Since it is so delicate, it's officially okay to eat this type of tofu with a spoon, but -- as when I eat sushi with my fingers -- I never feel quite right about doing it. I feel like, if I were a real chopstick master, I'd be able to manage it with ease. So I usually end up using chopsticks anyway and sacrificing the little bits of errant tofu that end up at the bottom of the bowl for the cause of my future chopstick champion status.

*For a truly interesting read/listen, check out the The Food Issue of The New Yorker, which has an article about artisanal tofu makers in Japan. It's where I first learned about nigari.

Kinako is toasted soybean flour or, as I thought of it for the first few months in Japan, that weird powder they always put on mochi. It has a nutty flavor that reminds me a bit of peanut butter, especially when I sprinkle it on buttered toast, which is a favorite way to eat it here. Mixing it with some brown sugar and cinnamon before putting it on the toast makes a more substantial version of plain cinnamon-and-sugar-topped toast, but, since my prime kinako-toast-eating time is right after work, I am usually too lazy to do more than just dole it straight out of the bag. Kinako is also good as a yogurt or ice cream topping, especially when that ice cream is additionally topped with an (sweet bean jam). According to the back of my kinako package, it also makes a nutritious drink when mixed with milk, but I'll have to take their word for it since the thought of drinking a tall glass of milk always makes me want to gag. Unless there are brownies involved. I'm willing to make a lot of exceptions for brownies.

Kinako on toasted azuki-bean bread.

Since it is made of ground and toasted soybeans, kinako is full of protein, B vitamins and other soy-licious things, so in addition to finding it at Japanese or Asian grocery stores, you can also find it at natural foods stores.

Pocky has a kinako flavor, but unfortunately it was only in stores during the That Weird Powder phase, so I haven't tried it.

Some kinako recipes:
Kinako pancakes
Kinako ice cream
Kinako frosting