Everyone might have eaten something similar to this at some point in their lives: shaved ice desserts appear under different identities in different places: snow cone in America, granita in Italy, ice gola in India, bingsu in Korea and kakigori in Japan. The Japanese version, kakigori is a shaved ice dessert that's flavoured with syrups, condensed milk and topped with mochi, dango, ice creams, red bean paste, white bean paste.. the list goes on. You can imagine eating a mountain of "fluffy" ice. Usually, whenever I think of dishes, they end up happening a few months later. But in this case, I only read about it last week and since then has become a mini-obsession. Mainly because it was so easy to make and the other that it had really amazing toppings which I had seen before, but never made.

So I hadn't even started with anything and I already was looking at a huge problem: what flavour will this be? Eventually, I settled on lemons because I couldn't find anything else. So yes, this was more of an obligation than a choice. Shaving ice is usually done using a machine but I didn't have one so instead, I used a fork to break the ice to form thin flakes which was not a bad substitute. Now comes the exciting part: the toppings! The only reason this was fun to make was because of the mochi.

Now you can imagine mochi as a sweet, white glutinous cake that's made of glutinous rice flour, sugar and water. Traditionally mochi is made by pounding cooked rice into a paste and moulding it into shapes. An alternative method is to use sweet rice flour (glutinous rice flour). A very important part of making mochi is to make sure that you are using glutinous/ sweet rice flour. Its more or less responsible for the characteristic chewy, sticky texture. Using normal rice flour would give more of a cakey dough. Mochi can either be filled (like red bean paste) or they can be just topped or sprinkled with something like matcha. I decided to glaze my mochi with a matcha syrup. You can use green tea here too, but the only difference would be that you would get less of a robust flavour. Of course, you don't have to make mochi; you can use syrups, fruits or even ice cream!

Japanese Shaved Ice

Makes about 4-5 servings (shaved ice):

• 3 cups water
• 5 tbsp. sugar (adjust if needed)
• Juice from 2-3 medium lemons

Mix together until sugar is dissolved. Pour into a shallow tray and freeze for about 2 hours. Scrape with a fork and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

Mochi (makes 5-7):

• 80 g glutinous rice flour (mochiko)
• 90 ml water
• 30 g sugar
• Cornflour, for dusting

Combine the rice flour and water in a heat proof bowl to form a soft dough. Add more water if needed, a tbsp. at a time (I needed 1/2 a tbsp. extra). Place the bowl with the dough in a steamer and steam for about 20 minutes. Cool for about a minute. In a large pot, combine the steamed dough along with half of the sugar on a medium heat. You're now using the heat to melt the sugar and mix it in with the dough. Once the sugar is mixed, add the remaining sugar. Your dough should be very sticky now. Transfer onto a large plate, liberally dusted with cornflour. Shape the dough into little balls.

Green tea syrup:

• 1 tbsp. green tea or matcha powder
• 4-5 tbsp. sugar
• 60 ml HOT water

Combine to form the syrup. Strain the tea leaves.

Bring it all together:

In a bowl, serve the shaved ice. Glaze the mochi with the green tea syrup and place on top of the shaved ice! Serve quick! 

(This was probably my most frantic plating ever!)

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