Phoebe Ogawa, former pastry chef at New York's now-closed Kajitsu, now makes wagashi on her own schedule (via EaterNY)
The wagashi Phoebe Ogawa sells changes seasonally.
While Kajitsu helped her build her voice with wagashi-making, she has carried that to her own work. At Kajitsu, she was making omakase desserts for 30-45 people a night, plus lunch, in the cafe, and to-go dessert orders all herself. “At the restaurant, you have to simplify the process to be able to make that many,” she says. On her own terms now, she can set the pace and make more elaborate designs and variations: “I make everything from scratch, even the fillings.
Out of a cooking studio in Long Island City, Ogawa handmakes nearly 100 wagashi a week, smaller quantities than at the restaurant. But each requires an extremely laborious process that can take hours, depending on the number of layers involved; you have to soak and cook the beans, steam the mochi, shape, and color, and let layers cool and set. Depending on the rice flour, the texture of the wagashi has different elasticity.
To make the wagashi as she was trained to do, Ogawa had custom wood molds made for her in Japan. Not only is the practice of wagashi underexplored in New York, but the tools in order to make the desserts to her caliber, are almost impossible to find, she says. Getting custom molds made can be pricey, but Ogawa has spared no expense when trying to make wagashi that honors its very long tradition.
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