Craving Anpan

BNA ビー・エヌ・エー made me want to bake Japanese buns stuffed with chunky adzuki beans.

Ah, right, this newsletter exists! Even after all the hand-wringing over my delays and ensuing half-assed entries, I totally forgot to send one the last couple weeks. But let’s be honest; we were all just refreshing the New York Times homepage. Now that democracy has been restored and we have kind, capable people leading us (on a long, hard journey to heal as a country), we can, as Chrissy Teigen says, go back to posting our thirst traps in peace, or in my case, writing weird little newsletters about anime and food. Deep exhale.  

What I watched: BNA ビー・エヌ・エー (BNA: Brand New Animal)

As you know, I loved Kill la Kill and its campy wackiness. BNA comes from the same studio, Trigger Inc., so it is tinged with that same flavor but has a little more gravity. The series is set in a world where humans and beastmen, people whose natural forms are animals, live in opposition, with humans oppressing beastmen. I’d say it’s akin to X-Men, lots of combat, pretty explicit social commentary, but no costumes or cool character names. The story begins with Michiru Kagemori, a regular teenage human girl who turned into a tanuki (a reddish Japanese racoon dog) one day. To figure out what happened, she heads to Anima City, a refuge for beastmen. (In this world, you don’t just randomly become a beastman—you’re born as one.) There, she meets Shirou Ogami, a cold, self-righteous wolf man, and of course gets dragged into his lifelong mission to protect and unite beastmen. 

Like Kill la Kill, BNA is a wild ride, with lots of plot twists but also really strange and interesting subplots that seemingly have nothing to do with the story. Like when Michiru goes back to the human world to party with the dolphin daughter (!) of an Anima City crime boss (!!) and ends up having to save her when the humans put her in a fish tank, not realizing she’s still a mammal and needs oxygen (!!!). Or when Michiru joins a baseball team from a less-resourced neighborhood—here, baseball is bloodsport, more a gladiator-level fight to the death than America’s past-time—and is drawn into this very sad backstory about the team’s manager who was one of the first beastmen to play with the human pros. It’s interesting how Trigger is wading into what feels like a distinctly Western realm of race and racism, with allusions to Jim Crow-era America and even present-day allyism that’s well-intentioned but still damaging. I’m sure there’s a lot more to unpack, especially considering Japan’s own struggle with race and racism, but I don’t a) want to get in over my head on race theory (clearly not an expert!), b) accidentally spoil anything, and c) we haven’t even gotten to the cooking part of this newsletter!

Back to the anime: Along the way, Michiru and Shirou realize Michiru’s beastman qualities are unusual, adapting to take on other animal forms. I feel weird saying this, but that actually makes sense, given general tanuki lore. This discovery leads them to uncover a dark conspiracy (fancy laboratories! Cults! J-pop idols!) that threatens not just Anima City but beastmen as a race. Wow, I feel like I did a really good job of making you want to watch this now. But real talk: Is this the best anime I’ve seen? No. Was it really fun to watch during what seemed like an endless cycle of news that drained me like a Dementor? Yes. If you need a short, energetic pick-me-up, this is a good one. 

What I cooked: Anpan

Confession: Food was definitely a stretch in this anime. For once, it was not an atmospheric crutch! But there is one scene, at the beginning of episode nine, where Shirou gives Michiru what appears to be an anpan, a burnished doughy orb bruised with what I think is anko (that’s the red bean paste). It’s never clarified in this scene, but it didn’t really matter; immediately I wanted anpan. 

There are not many anpan recipes in cookbooks or the internet. So I settled for two, one for the anko and one for the dough. I made the chunky anko from Sonoko Sakai’s cookbook, Japanese Home Cooking. I soaked some Bob’s Red Mill red beans, a.k.a. adzuki beans, in water during the day; at night I boiled them in the soaking liquid, then rinsed, covered in water, and boiled again two more times (apparently this removes the bitterness). After that, I simmered it a little longer (45 minutes) and threw in some brown sugar in three additions, stirring vigorously each time and mashing down the beans to ensure chunkiness. In went a little bit of salt and some more stirring. Apparently, you know it’s done when a little tail of anko forms as you pull your stirrer from the pot. It shouldn’t plop. Dear readers, mine plopped. But I didn’t want to stay up much longer that night. I wouldn’t say I gave up. I’d say I accepted what I made for what it was: chunky enough anko. 

The next day was dough day, and I used this recipe from Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook. (Side note: This place is a treasure trove of Japanese recipes! Worth exploring a bit more.) I combined all the dry ingredients: all-purpose flour because I didn’t have bread flour, all-purpose flour mixed with cornstarch because I didn’t have cake flour, granulated sugar, kosher salt, and instant yeast (I actually had those!). I accidentally warmed up the water and milk way above 86 degrees F, so I left the liquid mixture by the window to cool, then in the fridge, and eventually in the freezer, with my anxiety mounting with each move since I was in a bit of a time crunch. Once the liquids were back to 86, I beat an egg into the dry ingredients, poured in the liquids, and began massaging the slurry into a sticky ball. 

Per Namiko’s instructions, I punched down the dough for five minutes, then stretched it out and added a few cubes of butter and continued kneading. Sometimes the butter burst out of the dough, so I just poked them back in, and when it got oily, I used my...Spam musubi presser...to help me scrape the dough off the counter. I missed my usual HIIT class to make this dough, but a solid 15 minutes of slapping the dough on the counter and rolling it seemed to make up for that (it took me a little longer to get that windowpane effect). I formed the dough into a ball, tucking the seams under itself, and let it rise for an hour and half, while I avoided the news and read All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung, a memoir about being adopted, heartbreaking and beautiful. (Also, context: This was two Fridays ago, the day before Biden and Harris officially won.)

After my dough passed the poke test, I flattened and folded it like a letter, turning it a couple times. I cut the dough, with my Spam musubi press again (not a one-trick pony!), into eight little nubs, rolling them into spheres and resting them for another 15 minutes. 

Once they rose, like my hope that Friday as I still kept checking the news despite my own wishes for mental peace, I flattened them again and placed a tablespoon of anko, closing up the dough around it and pinching the ends. Another 30 minutes to puff up, and we were in the final stretch (metaphor!). I brushed the outside of the dough balls with some beaten egg, swore that I had black sesame seeds and excavated my pantry only to find I had the regular white ones, and just went with that (I have never seen white sesame-topped buns, but oh well!). I very carefully sprinkled the seeds on top to make a circle. 

I popped the buns in the oven for about 14 minutes, turning the pan in the middle, and was impressed with myself when they came out. They were better than the maybe-not-anpan in BNA—golden brown and glossy and positively chock full of creamy anko that somehow did not escape the dough and bleed all over it. I didn’t let them cool, since I was in a hurry but also because I really wanted to try one. I ripped one open like a food influencer, watching the steam escape and the airy layers of buttery dough slowly tear and flutter. The anko had a rough, thick consistency and was pleasantly sweet, like raw cookie dough you want to lick off a wooden spoon. It was the start of what would be a very good weekend.