"Sekihan", red rice 赤飯

As mentioned before,  I found Japanese red beans or azuki at a newly opened neighborhood gourmet grocery store. Despite the fact that I do not particularly care for it, I ended up making a rice dish called "sekihan" meaning "red rice". Japanese consider red an auspicious color especially in combination with white. Sekihan 赤飯 is the traditional celebratory food especially when served with a grilled whole Japanese red snapper or "tai" 鯛. In the old days, when you had something to celebrate in your family, you made sekihan in large quantity and distributed it to the neighbors and your friends. I do not remember my mother making sekihan when I was a kid. Maybe my family didn't follow this tradition (or perhaps, we did not have much to cerebrate). I do remember, however, we were often the recipient of sekihan.

For most of Japan, un-sweetened azuki is used to make sekihan.  In Hokkadio, where I originally came from (also reportedly in Yamanashi 山梨 and a part of Aomori 青森 prefectures), sekihan is often made with "ama-nattou" 甘納豆 which is types of beans cooked in and coated with sugar. Although it contains the word "nattou", this has nothing to do with natto that fermented, sticky and smelly soy bean every(no)body likes. These sweetened beans are usually eaten as "sweets" rather than used in cooking. It appears the inventor of this recipe is known and her recipe was popularized by the local Hokkaido Newspaper. (This was discussed in detail in a digital food column of Nippon Keizai Shinbun, in Japanese). People in the Kanto 関東 area (Tokyo area) supposedly prefer to use another kind of bean called "sasage" ささげ in leu of azuki. This is apparently a type of cowpea. I am only familiar with black-eyed pea in this category of beans/peas in the U.S. but I assume there must be red or brown colored varieties in Japan used in sekihan. I read that the reason Kantoites prefer not to use azuki is because azuki tends to rupture while cooking and for those who may have been samuri descendants, the  rupturing beans reminded them of "seppuku" or "harakiri" (they are so sensitive!). It is also common to use red food coloring especially for commercially prepared sekihan or the kind made using "ama-nattou"--to heighten the color of the commercial product and because ama-nattou does not color the rice. Anyhow, I decided to make the dish in the traditional way (for most of Japan) with azuki beans.

Azuki: I prepared azuki as posted before and set aside the cooking liquid and cooked beans before I sweetened the rest. I had about 1/2 cup each of cooked azuki and the cooking liquid. I separated the azuki and the cooking liquid and set aside. 

Rice: I used sweet or glutenous rice (1 and half cup) and regular Japanese short grain rice (half cup). I washed both together until the water became clear. I drained it and set it aside.

In an electric rice cooker, I added the washed rice and the azuki cooking liquid. I added water to the 2 cup mark. I added the cooked azuki. After the rice was cooked (image below left), I mixed the azuki and rice with a wood spatula called "hera" へら trying not to break the azuki.

I also made a traditional seasoning for sekihan called "gomashio" ごま塩．To enhance the flavor, I dry roasted black sesame seeds (2 tbs) with Kosher salt (1 tbs) in a dry flying pan (right image below).

I sprinkled gomashio over the sekihan and served. I do not think this is worth the effort but the roasted sesame and salt indeed added a lot.  The nutty and salty flavors were definitely needed here.  After making sekihan, I felt like, at least, I paid adequate respect to azuki beans and this is the last of my azuki dishes.