Celebrate the start of 2025 with three winter sweets and tea pairings featuring recipes from Wagashi: Season by Season, the latest wagashi cookbook by Professor Emeritus Kimiko Gunji!
Professor Emeritus Kimiko Gunji will be presenting her new cookbook, Wagashi: Season by Season. After a brief introduction about the art of wagashi and their connection to Japanese tea ceremony and Japanese aesthetics through seasonality, you will be treated to three unique wagashi paired with three kinds of tea. These wagashi will be seasonal recipes from the book and each month of tasting events will highlight a different menu based on seasonal ingredients and occasions.
Wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets) hold a unique place in Japanese culture, appreciated not only for their beauty, but for the keen sense of seasonality they represent. Wagashi reflect the natural world, as well as the symbolic world where designs, flavors, and textures represent specific traits and characteristics.
January's tasting menu will feature:
· Hanabira mochi - “flower petal mochi” especially made for the celebration of the New Year. It contains candied gobo and sweetened miso filling.
· Zenzai – traditional sweet red bean soup with shiratamako
· Yuzu roll cake - roll cake made with Japanese citrus and sweetened red bean filling*
· Matcha - Isuzu from Marukyu Koyamaen
· Sencha - Horai from Marukyu Koyamaen
· Japan House 25th Anniversary Cherry Sencha from The Republic of Tea
All items are vegetarian and nut-free unless otherwise indicated. Due to the seasonality of each month's menu, there will not be any substitutions.
*contains gluten
Space is limited to 20 guests. Reservations are required. No walk-ins or observers will be permitted due to the seating arrangements. Cookbooks will be available for purchase at the event.
Questions about accessibility, food allergies, or other topics? Please email us at japanhouse@illinois.edu