“Don’t eat it too quickly,” my mother said with a smile, handing me two spongy brown pancakes and then sliding a can of sweetened red bean down the counter to me. I smeared the bean paste between both cakes as my mother poured another ladleful of batter into the pan. It bubbled gently under the yellow stovetop lights as I took a bite of the dessert. “The dorayaki is perfect,” I said.
“Oh, good. You know,” she replied, pausing to flip the pancake over, “I was thinking of bringing it to the dinner on Saturday. With your dad’s side of the family. But they probably wouldn’t like it. This isn’t really . . .” she trailed off, waving the spatula at the half-eaten dorayaki in my hand, “. . . their type of food. We should bring something Portuguese.”
“But why can’t we bring this, too? Why not both types?” I ripped off another chunk of dorayaki.
She shrugged slightly, turning her attention back to the pan. “That’s just how it is.”
Dorayaki. Photo credit Ocdp, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I have always felt a disconnect between the two sides of my family; one parent being Taiwanese and the other Portuguese. And that disconnect seems to grow the older I get. I feel it when my Portuguese grandparents ask me something in a language I can’t understand or when I stumble when talking about where I am from. I often felt like a fraud. Sure, I partly identify with both cultures, but I don’t seem to fully belong anywhere. I can’t just pick a side and purge away whatever seems out of place. Life isn’t that simple, yet often I feel like I have no other option. However, my favorite dessert dorayaki, also called tongluoshao in Chinese, has taught me a new perspective on culture.
Azuki paste is a common ingredient in Japanese sweet foods. Photo credit Ocdp, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the mid-16th century, the Portuguese began trading with Japan. This resulted in a gradual exchange of Portuguese and Japanese culture over the next century, until Japan limited its trading relationships with other countries in 1639.1 Among other things, the Japanese picked up a Portuguese recipe for “castella,” a soft, spongy cake.2 In the early 20th century, the classic Portuguese cake recipe was combined with sweetened red bean, an Asian food, resulting in the modern Japanese dessert dorayaki—a layer of azuki sandwiched between two thin pancake-shaped cakes.3
Screen depicting European trading ship in Japan, c. 1600. Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Dorayaki is a dish of such unique origin, one that I loved eating, yet it wasn’t until I began researching it for a school project that I realized how dorayaki was created. I had assumed that it was a traditionally Asian dish very popular in Taiwan, but it is in fact a hybrid, the product of vastly different cultures colliding to create something beautifully unique. Its history made me consider that there is no distinct culture, no pure culture—at one point or another, groups of people have borrowed and shared customs, beliefs, and ideals that are still alive today. Moreover, humans are constantly adapting as circumstances change through time, so culture is just as flexible as the people that define it.
Dorayaki, a seemingly simple dish, has brought about a new perspective for me—not just regarding culture and history, but about myself. The main issues I faced from being mixed race have all stemmed from a sense of being a fraud, of not truly belonging, of being separate from the group. But in the end there is no “group” that I have to prove myself to. I don’t have to pick a side or feel like an outcast—because if all cultures are so deeply entwined in each other, I don’t need to fit perfectly into one of them to feel like I truly belong.
Recipe: Dorayaki
The traditional filling for dorayaki is sweetened red bean paste, but you can easily put your own twist on the dessert to create a unique version. For example, Nutella or custard can make tasty alternative fillings.
Ingredients
Desired filling
Directions
- “Japan-Portugal Relations (Basic Data),” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, accessed September 30, 2020.
- “Dorayaki, Filled Japanese Pancakes,” Japan Experience, accessed May 4, 2020.
- “Dorayaki – Nagasaki Sweet that’s Portuguese, Chinese, and totally Japanese,” Hurry Curry of Tokyo, accessed September 11, 2020.