Thanks everyone for coming out to our first tea demonstration of the 2023-24 school year! We were thrilled to see new faces and some familiar ones too. Everyone is welcome to join practice starting this Thursday, 5-8pm, drop in and leave when you need to is perfectly fine. Please do RSVP though so we can try to prepare for numbers. No experience is necessary to join!
WHAT TO EXPECT AT PRACTICE:
We will be introducing the basics of Urasenke school chadō practice, starting from how to receive sweets and tea and how to make matcha in the procedure called ryakubon. We will be using tatami mats, in which participants sit on the ground, typically kneeling, so be prepared to take off your shoes and get up and down off the ground. If you have any mobility issues that would make this difficult or impossible, just let us know and we can modify the practice for table and chairs.
Here’s what you should prepare when you come to keiko (practice) sessions:
Bring a pair of clean socks, ideally white, to change into for being on the tatami.
Try to avoid wearing jeans - it’s really hard to kneel in them!
Softer fabrics and longer skirts and pants may be the most comfortable for kneeling and bowing on tatami mats.
Finally, quite a few guests at the kickoff demonstration asked about the mochi we served– it’s a super easy Butter Mochi recipe from Hawai’i – not really standard for a traditional tea gathering, but fun for a crowd! If you want to remake it yourself, you need an oven and some simple ingredients – only mochiko is hard to find in US grocery stores but even that is usually pretty easy to find in Los Angeles. Here’s the recipe:
Butter Mochi #2 from Hawaii’s Best Mochi Recipes by Jean Watanabe Hee.
1 pound mochiko [sweet rice flour] (1 box)
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 cups milk
½ cup butter, melted (1 stick)
5 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 can coconut milk (12 oz *note that most US cans are 14.4oz~)
Combine and mix dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add in remaining ingredients. Use a wire whisk to thoroughly mix until batter is smooth. Pour into a greased 9x13in pan. Bake at 350º for one hour. Cool completely before cutting into the size you like. Plastic knives actually usually work best for cutting mochi.
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