Matcha Cheesecake

Late February. The New York Times essay was published. Online, in the food section, with the title "My Grandmother's Miso Soup Taught Me How to Grieve." The title is not mine — the editor chose it — but the title is accurate. The miso soup did teach me how to grieve. The grieving was the cooking. The cooking was the writing. The writing is now in the New York Times. The circle closes. The circle opens. The circle is the bowl.

The response was — I do not have a word. "Overwhelming" is too small. "Beautiful" is too vague. The essay was shared forty thousand times. The comments numbered in the hundreds. People from every country, every background, every grandmother — writing to say: this is my story too. This is my grandmother too. This is my soup too. The specificity opened into universality. The one bowl became every bowl. The one grandmother became every grandmother. The one grief became the grief, the shared grief, the human grief that unites everyone who has ever stood in a kitchen and made the food of a dead person and tasted, in the food, the dead person's love.

I read the comments for three hours. I cried for two of them. Not the sad crying — the overwhelmed crying, the crying of a woman who sent words into the world and the world answered, loudly, specifically, with names and stories and grandmothers and soups, hundreds of soups, thousands of soups, the world's soup flooding my inbox with evidence that I was not alone, was never alone, that the kitchen at three AM is the most populated room in the world.

The blog gained five thousand readers in a day. Twenty-nine thousand total. The number is a wave. The wave is the essay. The essay is the book. The book is Fumiko. Fumiko is in the New York Times. Fumiko would be mortified. Fumiko would be secretly, deeply pleased.

After three hours reading comments and two hours crying, I needed to be in a kitchen doing something with my hands — not writing, not reading, just making. Fumiko drank green tea every morning without exception, and matcha carries that same still, slightly bitter note that I associate with her kitchen at dawn. This cheesecake is not her recipe; it is mine, assembled in the week after the essay broke open, when I needed a dessert that tasted like Japan without pretending to be something it wasn’t — a little Western, a little borrowed, entirely hers in spirit.

Prep Time: 25 min | Cook Time: 55 min | Total Time: 1 hr 20 min + 4 hr chilling | Servings: 10

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
24 oz (3 blocks) full-fat cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons high-quality culinary matcha powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Pinch of fine sea salt

Instructions

Prepare the crust. Preheat oven to 325°F (163°C). Combine graham cracker crumbs, 3 tablespoons sugar, and melted butter in a bowl and stir until the mixture resembles wet sand. Press firmly into the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove and let cool slightly.
Make the matcha filling. Beat cream cheese and 3/4 cup sugar together on medium speed until completely smooth and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Sift in the matcha powder and flour, then add the salt and beat until fully incorporated with no streaks.
Add eggs and sour cream. Add eggs one at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition just until combined — do not overmix. Fold in sour cream and vanilla extract until the batter is smooth and uniformly pale green.
Bake in a water bath. Wrap the outside of the springform pan tightly in two layers of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Pour the filling over the crust. Place the wrapped pan in a large roasting pan and pour hot water into the roasting pan until it reaches 1 inch up the sides of the springform pan. Bake for 50–55 minutes, until the edges are set but the center still has a slight jiggle.
Cool gradually. Turn off the oven, crack the door open about 1 inch, and let the cheesecake rest in the oven for 1 hour. This prevents cracking. Remove from the water bath, run a thin knife around the edge, and let cool completely at room temperature.
Chill and serve. Cover loosely and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or overnight. Before serving, dust lightly with additional sifted matcha powder if desired. Release the springform, slice with a warm knife, and serve cold.

Nutrition (per serving)

Matcha Cheesecake — The Flavor That Carries Her Forward