Years ago I bought a small bag of unsweetened, dried blueberries from Trader Joes and they aren't very good to eat, probably because they're all really dried out now. I had been experimenting with mirin (rice wine for cooking, slightly sweeter than sake, much less sweet than Chinese xiaoxing red cooking wine) this summer since procuring a bottle of it from Uwajimaya's Seattle store.
I wondered if using mirin to rehydrate dried blueberries would impart its flavor to the blueberries when used in another recipe. Well, I can't tell the difference. Perhaps in part because the blueberries were used to make blueberry pancakes. This batch turned out to be pretty tasty.
Method? I heated the dried blueberries with mirin in a small saucepan for a few minutes, then scooped out just the blueberries and put them into the pancake batter.
