dango 101
It wasn’t necessarily that Breakfast saw herself becoming the next sensation in the dango business, but perhaps moreso a desire to gain the skills necessary to make herself a chewy treat whenever the whim arose. Despite being a lust bun, the whim arose fairly often, and usually at inconvenient times in the evening when Dan’s Dango wasn’t even open for business. At a steep hundred carats a pop, the habit wasn’t really cheap, either.
Thus, when she saw the sign outside the shop, written neatly and in chalk, advertising lessons in making dango, she couldn’t help but let a similar whim guide her hooves inside that day.
It was just a short time later that she stood atop the counter in a perfectly bun-sized apron, watching Dan take chopsticks to begin the process of mixing the rice flour and water together. Once satisfied with how the consistency was shaping up, he set the chopsticks beside the bowl. “You’ll begin to knead by hoof next,” he explained, kneading the dough in quick, experienced motions.
Breakfast watched, in awe of what was clearly years of experience. It was truly an artist working in his favored medium! She remembered seeing him pound mochi with a hammer once, and it produced a similar awe. Without thinking, Breakfast took a drag of the cigarette that she usually kept on her, earning a sharp look from Dan. Oops.
“You’ll get ash in the dough,” he said, as she blew a quick puff of smoke off to the side to be polite.
“Maybe it could be a new seasonal flavor?” she joked, but he wasn’t laughing. “Sorry.” Breakfast made quick work of stubbing it out and tossing the (extinguished, since a kitchen fire wasn’t her goal!) butt in the nearby trash.
Dan sighed, obviously still unamused but evidently satisfied now that she was adhering to food safety standards more closely. “Alright. Your turn. Don’t be shy about kneading the dough.” He scooted the bowl over to her. Breakfast took a deep breath, and palmed the dough with the base of her hoof. “That’s it, like that.”
It was all the encouragement she needed, especially considering this was a decent way of relieving some stress. After just a bit longer of some high-intensity kneading, the dough formed up into a nicely mixed up ball.
“Mm,” Dan reached over to judge the dough, poking at it with a tentative hoof, before nodding sagely. “That’s a perfect consistency. Once it looks like this, you don’t want to overwork it, or the texture will come out all wrong. Let’s start forming it into balls next.” He began to divide the ball of dough, offering Breakfast half and taking half for himself. “You’ll divide it a couple more times, until you have eight dumplings.”
Dividing it up and rolling it out into little dumpling-sized balls was easy enough. After rolling each piece between her hooves, they were well-formed, too. Surely they must be close to finished by now, right? Breakfast felt her stomach grumble. They were getting close to looking like finished dango by now! “Then we skewer them, right?” she asked, beaming at what she perceived to be a job well done.
Bemusement was the best word to describe the look in Dan’s eye. “After that, they’ll need to be boiled,” he explained. She nodded. That made sense. Just one extra step, then.
“Then, we’ll give them an ice bath,” he continued, motioning to a bowl of ice water he’d already set aside for that very purpose. Breakfast couldn’t imagine what importance that held to the process, but Dan was the master, and she was the student, so she nodded again.
“You’ll skewer them, and since we’re making mitarashi dango, I’ll need to prepare the soy glaze. The sugar to soy sauce ratio can be a bit tricky, so that’s for a more advanced lesson.”
Breakfast’s head was spinning. “Can’t you just buy soy glaze? Why would you need to make it fresh?” she countered, the weight of a half dozen extra steps beginning to damper her plans for dango midnight snacks.
Dan didn’t even blink. “Dango always tastes better when it’s preceded by honest, hard work,” he explained. “There’s no taste better than something you can be proud of completing correctly, without cutting any corners in the process.”
“Oh,” Breakfast replied, because she was not familiar at all with a taste like that. The way that he described it sounded exquisite, though, and she couldn’t deny being curious. “Honestly, I’m here because the taste of a hundred carats can be a little bitter.”
Dan laughed, a low sound, but genuine. “You’ll have to tell me if it tastes sweeter when we’re done,” he answered, turning on the burner to begin boiling a large pot of water.
“Yes, sir!” Breakfast replied brightly, newly motivated to finish what they’d started.
