Petit Riz

During the hot Australian summers my mother and I ate strawberries pressed into yogurt. Later, when there was cream in the house, we ate them with a trickle of cream for dessert. On the other side of the world, in France, my grandfather picked strawberries from his garden and sliced them into two bowls. He added yogurt and sugar and placed the bowls in the fridge for after dinner. My grandmother ate her yogurt and strawberries every night until she could no longer eat.

In Japan I learned to make strawberry shortcake. I was fifteen and studying abroad in Tokyo. My host family lived in Nishi-Hachioji, in a big house attached to a temple that rested upon a hill. School started at eight but I had to ride the train an hour and a half with my host sister, so we were pulled from bed at five for a full Japanese breakfast of fish, rice, soup, and pickles every week morning. At school I sat through the language classes and watched students fall down on their desks like flies and sleep while the teacher spoke in a dull voice. My peers were exhausted from after-school school. I sat on my knees for an hour in a “manners” class until my legs were numb. I learned to peel mandarins like flowers. We stored the seeds in the peel petals once we were finished eating. Then there was the cooking class, where we were taught how to make strawberry shortcake.

I can’t remember the recipe. Each group was given an impeccable stainless steel stove and countertop. We rolled the cake and lathered it with cream. It was an all-girls catholic school, and we must have looked funny with our aprons as we licked cream from our fingers and elbows and bit on strawberries when the teacher wasn’t looking.

For the first time I kept a journal of everything I ate: the omochi I made on New Year’s day, the seaweed salad I had for breakfast on my first morning when I woke up jetlagged and stumbled into the temple while my host family slept, the piping-hot tempura we devoured at a tiny restaurant with only a counter (and how we smelled of fried food when we stepped out onto the pitch-black street!), the fried onions and burger in Shinjuku, the curry rice I ate at the university cafeteria during orientation week, the elaborate meal of sea urchin and raw fishes at a fancy restaurant on the the top floor of a building, the onigiri from combini stores and the Pocari Sweat I gulped down when I got sick…

I’ve thought back to the strawberry shortcake and I’ve dreamed of the delicate cream cloud, the shiny strawberries, the yellow cake hidden beneath, I’ve told myself many times that soon I’ll make a strawberry cake. My mother and I were searching for a dessert for my nephew’s birthday. We wanted a cake that wasn’t too sweet. It was my mother’s idea — she secretly loves cream (her favorite expression is crème de la crème, and her favorite “motherhood” anecdote involves a choux à la crème). We slightly adapted a recipe from here, cutting out the sugar syrup and only lightly sweetening the whipped cream. We made the cake large and very thin and cut the shortcake into two thin disks. By the end, the strawberry shortcake was mostly cream and strawberries with two slender shortbread disks wobbling inside. Leo decorated the top with fat strawberries. Nina, his little sister, grabbed her plate and licked it with her tongue and nose once she was finished. The cake was a success — light, airy, beautiful — I could almost see us in the Yokohama school kitchen, thirty fifteen-year-old girls laboring over our cakes like little housewives.

Japanese strawberry shortcake

           

Ingredients:

2 eggs
60 grams sugar
60 grams cake flour
20 grams unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 containers of strawberries
1 to 1.5 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp. powdered sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Sift flour three times and set aside. We use a Japanese wooden strainer made with horsehair for very fine sifting! In a bowl, whisk eggs and sugar. Place over a bain-marie (a pot of hot, steaming water) and continue whisking for a few seconds until the sugar has melted into the eggs. Careful that the eggs don’t cook! Remove from heat and beat at high speed until white and frothy. The batter should form ribbons. Add the melted butter and sift the flour into the bowl and fold gently. Pour the batter into a buttered cake pan lined with parchment paper. Tap the pan on the counter to remove air bubbles (they’ll rise to the surface and pop). Bake for ~25 minutes until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

Let the cake cool and then cut it in half. I find it easiest to use a bread knife. You will have two very thin disks.

Beat heavy cream with powdered sugar until firm peaks form, but careful not to overbeat otherwise you will end up with butter. Cover the first layer of cake with cream, then sliced strawberries, then more cream. Add the second layer of cake and cover with more cream. Make sure all the sides of the cake are lathered with cream. Decorate with whole strawberries. You can chill the cake in the fridge for a few hours, or enjoy right away.