I read in one place that the smaller beans were a finer, smoother texture with a sweeter taste, so I tried that first. The lima beans are "suppose" to be bland tasting, but if they are easier to work with as you say, I should try them.
Do a small test batch. (Because I ended up with stupid amounts of bean paste in the freezer at one point!) You can add sugar or honey to taste if they need a little sweetness.
Your suggestion was wonderful, the lima beans worked very nice and were not as bland as excepted, though this could have been due to the method I used to make the shiro-an. I also made a small batch as suggested.
Since Kagami Tomoko wanted to know, this was the recipe and method I used, with a few tweaks of my own.
I called it, Kuri namagashi, "Fresh Chestnut Sweets" 栗生菓子
Shiro-an;
200 gms of lima beans (shiro-ingen mame)
200 gms of sugar (100 gms kurosato* and 100 gms white granulated sugar)
Local soft spring water (I use only spring water for soaking and cooking as tap water has too many chemicals in it and did not want to impart those flavors)
1 Soak beans in 3 times that of spring water for 1.5 days, they expand 3 times, add more spring water if necessary.
2 Heat rapidly to boiling, lower heat, boil 5 min., add 1 cup cold spring water, drain and rinse. This removes scum and the bean smell.
3 Peal the skins and remove the sprouts. (This step took FOREVER when I used the small navy beans, I skipped it the second batch I tried)
4 Add the bean meats back to the pot with spring water to cover about 1 inch, heat rapidly to boiling, lower heat, boil 5 min., add 1 cup cold spring water, drain and rinse. Repeat 1 more time, again, it's suppose to remove the bean smell.
5 Add the bean meats back to the pot with spring water to cover about 2-3 inch, heat rapidly to boiling, lower heat, simmer for about 1.5 hours, add more spring water if necessary to keep covered and skim any scum that raises (if you did the previous steps above, there should be no scum raising).
6 Pass the beans through a bamboo strainer into a large clean bowl, mashing with bamboo spatula to get everything through, adding some water to make it easier, removing any hard bits (sprouts) or skins that you forgot to remove in 3 above.
7 Pass the beans through a fine strainer into a large clean bowl (I used a metal one but have a horse hair strain in the making), mashing with bamboo spatula to get everything through. Fill the bowl with spring water, mix thoroughly and let stand about 15-20 min, slowly and carefully drain off the top water, leaving the bean paste at the bottom.
8 Add more spring water to almost full, mix thoroughly and let stand about 15-20 min, slowly and carefully drain off the top water, leaving the bean paste at the bottom. Repeat 1 more time. By the end of the third time, the water on top should be almost clear.
9 Place a clean cotton cloth over the bamboo strain, over the pot and slowly drain the wet bean paste into it. (I used the bakers cloth you can buy at Walmart, 4 for $2.99, all cotton, just thoroughly washed them, soaked in a bit of bleach water and rinsed clean). Gather up the sides and corners of the cloth and squeeze out as much water as you can. This was so much easier than the navy beans I tried before, the resultant been mash was very dry.
10 Add the bean mash and sugar to a heavy pot, heat over low heat stirring constantly to continue to dry the bean paste and melt the sugar. Again, this step was far faster then the previous batches with navy beans, about 15 min. the only problem was that the kurosato was in chunks and took longer to melt, next time I will break the kurosato into smaller shavings.
11 Once you have a firm bean paste (think soft and firm like an ear lope) spread out on a sheet pan that has parchment on it to cool.
This created a sweet, tasty, dark brown bean paste, which was what I was looking for.
Chestnut Paste;
100 gms of chestnuts (kuri 栗)
100 gms of sugar
1 I got pre-cooked sweet chestnuts from a local grocery (real one I could not find, out of season), mashed them into a fine paste wiht still a bit of chunks in it.
2 Added the sugar, cooked over low heat to melt the sugar and dry the mixture a bit.
3 Spread out on a sheet pan that has parchment on it to cool.
A nice tan colored filling.
Shaping the Kuri namagashi
1 Make a ball of the shiro-an, flatten it.
2 Make a smaller ball of the kuri paste, but in the middle of the shiro-an disc, cover the kuri ball with the shiro-an and form in to a ball.
3 Place the ball in a clean cotton cloth, twist it up and form it into a chestnut shape. The twisting of the cloth gives it the natural variegations and helps with the shaping of the ball into a chestnut shape.
4 Roll/dip the bottom of the now shaped Kuri namagashi in kikano (parched soybean flour) to color the bottom. I found that the kikano offered no taste addition and instead rolled/dipped the bottom in ground toasted sesame seeds, which gave it a nice fragrance and nutty taste.
What I achieved was a nice looking namagashi, in the shape of a chestnut, that tasted, smelled and looked of autumn, hopefully good enough for an autumn tea ceremony. I didn't get any pictures, (I ate them all), but they looked like this (the one in the photo is dipped in chocolate, but you get the idea);
Bun'ami
* Kurosato, "black sugar" 黒砂糖: Unrefined cane sugar, the extracted juice of cane sugar, filtered to remove contaminates, then boiled down to a thick syrup and allowed to cool/harden. Supposedly Nara period.
I used Okinawa Black Sugar obtained from local Asian grocery store, beware, it is very tasty and addictive.
