You know Cha siu bao. It is a flavorful, mouthwatering barbecue pork stuffed wheat flour bun that we enjoy at Chinese dim sum restaurants. In Japan we have a lesser known sister bun called Manju. It is a steamed bun stuffed with azuki beans. The preparation of manju was brought to Japan by naturalized Chinese monk. Luckily and unluckily azuki beans replaced pork because of ban of meat eating was exercised in Japan at that time.
For about 600 years this simple and humble Manju has been a popular Japanese sweet in Japan. I don’t remember when I last time ate Manju in Japan, but decided to make it to see if it is worth a try. In order to cater my audience here – they don’t believe in sweetened azuki beans as an ingredient to make sweet – I made modified chocolate stuffed Manju and the other with nut flavor. Good piece of sweet with a cup of cold passion fruit tea. I am curious to try to make more Manju with other stuffing to see if this low-key sister can come out to a main stage some day.
