“Do you like sweet plum or cherry?”
With those words, the Chairman in “Memoirs of a Geisha” secured his place in young Sayuri’s heart.
Indeed, a coneful of shave ice has the power to warm one’s heart while cooling the extremities. But with more than 15 flavors available at this weekend’s Cherry Blossom Festival, the choice won’t be so easy.
The snow cone’s more delicate cousin, shave ice is especially familiar to visitors to Hawaii, where the treat has assumed an epic reputation. Attentive readers and moviegoers remember it from a pivotal scene in the book and recent film “Memoirs of a Geisha.”
But relatively few people know it’s also a favorite in Japan. Known there as kori mizu, shave ice is a popular item at summertime festivals.
An annual favorite during Denver’s own Cherry Blossom Festival, which celebrates Japanese-American heritage, shave ice starts with the obvious: ice, shaved finely from a block of ice. (Snow cones, in contrast, use crushed ice, resulting in a grainier texture.)
During the festival, you can select from more than a dozen flavors of syrup, from the prosaic cherry to the more daring green tea, cotton candy, and Li Hing Mui (a sour plum flavor that is popular among Hawaiian residents).
Jolie Noguchi spends long hours in front of her family’s store, the Pacific Mercantile, preparing custom-made shave ice for customers during the festival. Of all the flavors, Noguchi says the blue raspberry is the favorite, “mostly among kids who like to turn their tongues blue.”
This year she’s adding a sugar-free flavor or two and switching to an easier-to- use shaver. “Last year we ordered 300- pound blocks of ice that we had to cut by hand into smaller blocks to fit the old machine. That was a lot of work,” she recalls. Noguchi estimates that her family has been making shave ice since the festival debuted in 1973. “We have one couple that comes by every year and says this is the best shave ice they’ve had.”
In Japan, shave ice is often topped with a spoonful of sweetened azuki beans and a dollop of whipped cream. Those additions aren’t standard fare in the Denver area, but you can make shave ice at home and add all the extras you want.
To do so, you’ll first need a shave ice machine. Hand-cranked and motorized models are now available at area retailers and online. The machines come with several small cups for freezing water; during the summer months, keep them at the ready in your freezer. Each container makes enough shave ice for one generous serving. You can also use standard ice cubes in some machines.
To top your ice, you can use prepared shave ice or snow cone syrups or make your own. Start with a simple sugar syrup (one part sugar to one part water, boiled) and add your favorite flavorings, then cool the mixture and keep it in your refrigerator.
Inexpensive plastic squirt bottles work well for pouring the syrup over the ice. If you’re daring, try the green tea syrup recipe.
Be sure to lightly tamp the ice as you shave it into your bowl. That way you’ll get more delicious ice, and it won’t melt the second you sit down to eat it.
Cool noodles
When summertime grilling loses its appeal and a salad won’t hit the spot, think Japanese: Or more precisely, think somen.
Somen are very fine wheat noodles, similar in diameter to vermicelli. Unlike most other Japanese noodles – soba, udon, ramen – they are usually eaten cold to counter steamy summer days.
In Japan there are even “floating” somen restaurants, wherein the cooked noodles float down a hollow bamboo pole and diners grab them with chopsticks as they pass. The noodles are then dipped into a light broth of soy sauce, mirin and fish stock.
Somen take just a few minutes to cook and can even be kept in the refrigerator along with the dipping sauce, ready for when hunger strikes. You can also find pre-made dipping sauces in Asian markets or online.
The Cherry Blossom Festival sells somen mixed with slivered kamaboko (fish cake) and vegetables in its beer garden.
Spam sushi, anyone?
As if cold somen and shave ice aren’t enough tasty, cooling ways to enjoy Japanese food in the coming summer months, we offer here perhaps the most quirky dish of all: Spam musubi (moo-soo-bee).
What’s musubi, you ask? Traditionally, it’s a shaped ball (or triangle) of sticky rice, sometimes stuffed with a dried plum and wrapped with dried seaweed. Musubi have long been a favorite picnic or traveling food among Japanese-portable, slow to spoil, and satisfying.
When the Japanese immigrated to Hawaii, they brought musubi. After Uncle Sam added Spam (spiced ham in a can made by Hormel) to its World War II field rations, its popularity soared beyond the military and into Hawaiian homes. It wasn’t long before someone had the practical idea of joining the two – and Spam musubi was born.
Spam musubi has since become a Hawaiian Islands staple, found at nearly every corner market and group event from Kauai to the Big Island. A few years ago it started popping up at Denver potlucks, and now the Cherry Blossom Festival sells it alongside more traditional sushi offerings.
Once you’ve tried it, no doubt you will want to add it to your summertime repertoire. A quick Internet search of “Spam musubi” brings up a plethora of recipes and methods, but most adhere to the basic triad of sauce ingredients (soy sauce, sugar and mirin) and put little weight on presentation. Musubi is not meant to be haute cuisine, after all.
The recipe here calls for cooked and cooled rice, so be sure to make your rice before you begin. Sushi rice is short-grained white “sticky” rice, now found at most grocery stores. It helps to have a Plexiglass musubi mold, which conforms to the dimensions of a slice of Spam, but lacking this, you can use your hands or a bamboo sushi mat.
Stay well away from the online advice to use a clean Spam can minus its ends – it’s really hard to cut away the can without leaving sharp edges, and blood doesn’t make the musubi taste any better.
Michelle Asakawa is a Lafayette-based writer who volunteers at the Cherry Blossom Festival.
In a cone, parfait or syrup-drizzled
There are various schools of thought regarding how best to serve shave ice.
Minimalists enjoy the simple delights of a paper cone or bowl of grated ice and syrup, served with a spoon.
Others see shave ice as but one part of a grander scheme: the parfait. In that case, you’ll want to layer the flavored shave ice with ice cream or frozen yogurt (soft-serve style works best), fruit (such as blueberry compote or sliced strawberries – or use cooked and sweetened azuki beans) and whipped cream.
Have all the elements ready to assemble before you shave the ice. Enjoy immediately!
-Michelle Asakawa
