About this BookWelcome to Mofusand Café, where the world’s cutest servers dish up adorable twists on popular brunch food! The menu of this official Mofusand cookbook includes nonalcoholic drinks, savory and sweet dishes, and a very special final recipe for your own furry friends.
You’ll find that these recipes feature ingredients familiar to fans of Japanese cuisine. If you have a Japanese grocery store close by, then these elements should be easy to source and are an excellent opportunity to expand your pantry. But if not, don’t worry! There are suggestions for substitutions in case you are cooking with limited access to international ingredients. Some recipes also include store-bought substitutions to simplify the more complicated steps, or to swap in if a particular fruit or vegetable is out of season in your area. The final dishes will still be perfectly delicious.
While this cookbook is especially fun for cat lovers (as well as lovers of everything cute), the recipes include many foods that are dangerous for cats and should never be served to pets—except for the Catnip Treats (page 131), created with cat-safe ingredients. Though, as some pets have allergies, it is always best to check with an animal professional before introducing a new food to their diet.
A Delicious Day On a restless morning in early spring, you decide to put on your boots and wander.
Normally, you would never abandon your desk and its many important papers. But there’s something in the air—perhaps the scent of freshly bloomed cherry blossoms—that draws you out into the city. You walk down familiar roads, past familiar shops. Turning into the park, you follow the same pathways as you have many times before, strolling beneath cherry trees that paint the sky pink. Just as you cross the old wooden bridge over a pond as calm as a mirror, you realize that you’ve rambled right through your lunch hour and are suddenly quite hungry.
Luckily, you spot the little café on the far side of the park. You’ve passed it often, and have always hurried by without stopping, too impatient to reach your destination. But today, since you have no place in particular to be, you cross to the corner, push open the painted door, and step inside.
Bright sun streams through the high windows and skylights, and many potted plants and trailing vines seem to tint the café green. The air smells of coffee and vanilla, cocoa and cinnamon, and freshly baked bread. A lunchtime crowd of diners tuck into their meals, seeming not to care that they are being served by cats—no, not cats (who should never eat pancakes or drink hot cocoa, let alone serve them), but the peculiar waitstaff of Mofusand Café. The little creatures pad to and fro, paws full with plates and glasses. Some wear aprons, or clothing, or even costumes. One server in a shark costume, beneath which hides a lovely coat of golden stripes, is busy placing cupcakes under a glass dome with a pair of tongs.
You do what seems sensible. You sit down on a cushioned stool, and as you do, a nearby tabby approaches with a pair of menus in its paws: one large, one small. The server passes you the former, upon which a childish hand—or, perhaps, a paw?—has written “For People.”
You peruse the menu, but every dish sounds as mouthwatering as the next. “What’s delicious here?” you ask at last.
The server scurries into the kitchens and soon returns with a dish you recognize from the menu. The BTC (see page 50): a bacon-onion jam, tamagoyaki, and cheese breakfast sandwich on a lightly toasted milk bun. A café specialty, as you’ll soon learn. The first bite is a flavorful combination of melted mozzarella and savory jam made with onion and hints of sweet and tangy mirin, heaped inside a very fluffy bun. The most satisfying sandwich you’ve ever had, you declare.
The server purrs happily and then leaves you to your lunch.
You return to the Mofusand Café time after time. When the days warm like dough on a pizza stone, you order the Summer Fruit Parfait with No-Churn Sea Salt Ice Cream (page 103). The ice cream is layered in a glass with crunchy cornflakes, lightly crushed raspberries, chopped mango, honeydew, and homemade whipped cream.
As the leaves in the park turn red and gold, you sample the Apple Crumble Mini Muffins (page 87). Chopped apples are folded into the simple cinnamon-spiced batter, with a crumb topping piled on before baking. It is a perfect autumn treat.
Winter comes, and you put on your heaviest coat to brave the snow for the Silky Edamame and Tofu Bisque (page 43). A sautéed mixture of onion, garlic, and ginger is added to the kombu-shiitake dashi, along with silken tofu, edamame, and red miso. Once simmered and blended, the smooth soup is drizzled with rāyu (Japanese chili oil) and sliced green onions. It warms you so well that you hardly feel the cold on your walk home.
And when spring arrives, you sip Sakura Milk Tea (page 18)—cooled Sakura Wakoucha tea, milk, and tapioca pearls sweetened with kokuto (Japanese black sugar) syrup—while you watch the trees outside the window bloom again.
Alas, you cannot put on your boots and leave your desk behind every morning to visit the Mofusand Café. But with this delightfully curated collection of Mofusandinspired recipes, even the most ordinary day can be delicious—keeping you content until you are free to wander once more.
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