Random Picture #216

For those who don't know my particular regional supermarket options, I'd like to start out by saying that Safeway is a chain of markets that is common in California. It may be available in other areas, but I know it is not on the East Coast as my sister (who lives in Pennsylvania) had never heard of it before I moved to California. It's like Giant Eagle or Kroger's in the East, or Seiyu in Japan. That's my way of saying it's a pretty boring all-purpose market at which you don't expect to find anything especially exotic.

All of that being said, it seems even boring markets in my area carry bontan ame and Pocky. At first, I was really impressed by them, but now I see these items so much that I don't even notice. That being said, a new Safeway opened recently in the Cupertino area and I was shocked to find this Japanese "purin" (pudding) container for sale there. This particular branch also carries bakery items from the Sogo bakery and I'm guessing their range is broader because the area hosts a lot more residents of Asian descent. The lesson for me is to not take for granted that a chain store is a chain store is a chain store. You never know what surprises might be lurking. 

Random Picture #213

Recently, I was talking about Asian bakeries with my sister-in-law. We were talking mainly about a chain called "Paris Baguette" which has a French-sounding name, but is actually Asian and has a focus on Japanese- and Korean-style offerings. Of course, when I talk about baking and Japan, I really mean the European-style confections that Japan has modified for its market's tastes.

One of the things which Japan modified for its tastes was flan, or, if you prefer, pudding, or, even "creme brulee" without the burnt top. I've always been confused about whether this should be called one or the other. As you can see by the side view, this is essentially flan. It has a sweet syrup on the bottom and a thick pudding in the center. Personally, the point at which flan and pudding are separated comes at how thick they are. Flan can stand on its own, though it may wobble a bit. Pudding tends to be a bit more gooey and needs a container to support it. At any rate, the plastic containers of "purin" that you see here were in a supermarket in Tokyo and they have whipped cream as well as chestnut puree (the ones on the right). The ones on the left are "fruit purin", but the curious thing about them is that they have a mini purin on top of the larger purin. It feels like one of those mirror within a mirror deals, only with food.

Nestle Baked KitKats (product announcement)

This is a party I'm a little late to so you may have already heard of this. Nestle Japan is offering a KitKat that you can bake and it won't turn into a melted pile of goo. It's supposed to brown up and taste like custard or vanilla pudding. Apparently, this is availabel at the Chocolate Cafe in Ikebukuro in Tokyo. The cafe is open from 10:00 am to 9:00 pm (except closing at 8:00 on Sundays and holidays) so you can get your baked KitKat on between those hours.

You're supposed to bake them for 2 1/2 minutes in a toaster oven at 1000 W. They say you should put foil down on the tray first and keep an eye on it because it could catch fire if you overdo it.

This is the brainchild Yasumasa Takagi, their chef in residence it would seem. The concept is supposed to yield a result which turns the outside the texture of candy-like sugar, caramelize the flavors, and create a unique textural experience once it has cooled down to safely eat.

This sounds like an absolutely awesome concept, but I have my doubts that it will be a great flavor experience. Still, if these come up in shops around here, I'll certainly buy one and try it.

A bag of 13 bars is 525 yen (about $5.25). It will be available from March 24 for general purchasing at supermarkets. Let's hope that a spate of housefires are not the outcome of this experiment.

Nestle Kobe Pudding Regional KitKat (product announcement)

In November, Nestle increased its line of regional KitKats by just a hair by adding in a "Kobe Pudding" variety. I honestly did not know that Kobe was famous for it's pudding - which is more often referred to as "purin" in Japan and really looks and tastes like flan. My best research reveals that the sauce on Kobe's version is supposed to be flavored with some citrus and the basic pudding is less sweet. I'm betting that this KitKat will be plenty sweet, however, as my experience with white chocolate ones is that they are over the top in their sweetness.

The strongest link between Kobe and pudding is probably the same as its link to wagyu (beef). The cows are supposed to produce superior milk as well as superior meat. However, this is my pure speculation and I'm betting that, no matter how the milk in Kobe might be, it's not going to really be reflected in a KitKat. Nonetheless, I'd be curious if any of my readers have sampled this and what they think of it. Please share in comments if you've had a taste of this.

Kamakura Pudding Cream Daifuku

My husband and I went to Kamakura to call upon the giant Buddha (daibutsu) several weeks ago because that's the sort of thing a person does before leaving a country forever. Honestly speaking, every time I have to write or say that we are going away "forever", I feel strange. I really cannot see us coming back after 23 years here, but you just never know where the winds will blow and compel you to go.

I should note, for no reason other than I want to put it out there, that we're leaving Japan very happy with Japan. There tend to be different ways of exiting this place. One is people who are here on a contract and the clock runs out so they go home with an interesting year under their belts. Another are people who are so fed up that they just want to blow this popsicle stand. Few operate in our situation and that is that we feel fulfilled and are going out on top. Seriously, life here has been better than ever (aside from my thyroid tumor) before. It's an awesome feeling that we're leaving something positive to face a new challenge rather than thinking we've played this scene or abandoning this sinking ship like self-serving rats. It's like a relationship break-up in which both sides mutually accept that it's the best thing to do and that nothing went so wrong so much as it's time to move on.


Anyway, the big Buddha sits there looking serene and peaceful and the shops around him offer souvenirs both tacky and tasteful, and also things that have the potential to be "tasty". (See my obvious wordplay there? I'm not nearly as clever as I would like to be.) My husband and I scrutinized the items on offer and decided to go for this sunnily boxed daifuku. With ingredients like whipped cream, eggs, and sugar, we knew there was a good chance that this would be very right because it sounded so very wrong. Also, the Buddha looks pretty happy holding pudding on the box front. How could it be bad if it pleases him so much? And would a cartoon Buddha lie to us about his authentic reaction to a treat?

When it said "pudding cream", I thought we were getting pounded rice cake (mochi) filled with custard. That is a tasty enough possibility, but not as interesting as what it really was. It is actually pudding and cream. The center is a dense, soft concoction of "whipped cream" which has the consistency of whipped Crisco shortening and a somewhat coconutty flavor. The mochi mainly provides a soft and highly flexible wrapper and the pudding a hint of rich, vanilla custard flavor. This was a little tricky to eat because it is so soft, but it's not incredibly gooey because the fillings are relatively firm for their type. The filling texture is amazingly creamy and satisfying and couples well with the chewy mochi.

I loved these and would definitely buy another box of 16 for about 1400 yen ($17) again if I make my way to Kamakura again. That being said, nutritionally, I'm sure these are pure poison as that filling has to contain hydrogenated oils. Since this was a souvenir, there was little nutritional information on the box (of course). The Japanese confectioners who provide such things don't want to put a damper on your party by letting you know how bad such things are for you. Still, they are rather small (about 4 cm./1.7 in. in diameter) and if you can manage to just eat one a day until the box is done (which is what my husband and I did), then the damage will be minimal.

Morinaga Tanita Restaurant Vanilla Purin dessert

The "Tanita Restaurant" brand of 100-calorie desserts has been on the shelves for awhile in Japan and I'd been hoping to get around to sampling one of them for quite some time. The main thing stopping me was the boring nature of the standard offering. It was pretty much flan or plain pudding with caramel sauce. I like flan as much as the next person, but this is a country that is drowning in plastic tubs of thick pudding with various types of burnt caramel sauce on the bottom. It's a real yawner as a taste option. It's on par with the never-ending stream of strawberry KitKats in terms of the lack of excitement it creates in me. Though vanilla pudding with orange sauce is hardly an exotic flavor combination, it is more interesting than what I can buy at nearly any kiosk, convenience store, and market in Japan, so I took the plunge. Since buying this, some more interesting flavors have come around (e.g., Japanese pumpkin), and I may get to one of those later.

The main selling point of the Tanita Restaurant recipes is that they are low calorie and supposedly delicious. This is a collaborative effort between food-making giant Morinaga and a maker of health-related products called Tanita. Tanita provides a cookbook with meal recipes that are under 500 calories and Morinaga gives you a chance to chase that healthy home-made meal with a processed dessert. The web site for this dessert promises that it gives you a 50-80% reduction in calories.

You can buy these desserts pretty much anywhere, but I picked this one up for 100 yen ($1.30) at a Lawson 100 convenience store. It contains 85 grams (about 3 oz.) of thick, custard-style pudding with an orange sauce on the bottom. You can see a lot of little black specs in it which I imagine are real vanilla beans. This is surprising given that this is a pretty cheap dessert, but the flavor bears out the real vanilla flavoring. The sauce has very mild orange flavor. The pudding is quite sweet and has a slight bit of powdered milk flavor. The texture is creamy but quite solid. You can tell that this was thickened with gelatin to give it some heft. Surprisingly though, it does not have any artificial sweeteners in it, though it does contain high fructose corn syrup.

This is a surprisingly tasty little dessert and well-worth the calories and cost. While it is made with a filler (seaweed-based gelatin, agar agar), it is creamy enough to have a nice texture and the vanilla really shines through. If I had to come up with a complaint, I'd say it is that the orange sauce should have a stronger flavor profile, but I wasn't particularly bothered by its subdued nature. If you're calorie conscious and seeking a pretty nice little dessert, I'd definitely recommend giving this a try.

Fujicco Chestnut Pudding

Pudding or "purin" as it is called in Japan, is sold pretty much everywhere here, and I tend to pretty much ignore it. It's not that it's bad, but rather that the flavors tend to be pedestrian (vanilla, chocolate, and coffee) and also I'm not the biggest fan of pudding. There's also the fact that most of these little cups of thickened goo are full of fat and carry a high calorie punch for their size.

This caught my eye at the local Peacock supermarket for 108 yen ($1.33) because 75 grams (2.6 oz or about 3/4 cup) is only 91 calories and it is "kuri" or chestnut-flavored. Granted, chestnut is a common flavor in autumn and winter in Japan, but I never noticed it in pudding before. That's probably because I wasn't paying attention rather than because it wasn't on offer before. I was probably distracted by all of the chocolate in the next aisle.

This is made by a company called "Fujicco" and it was my first experience with a product of theirs. The company makes a vast array of foods for markets including "Caspia" yogurt (greek yogurt), health and diet foods, nata de coco, and vacuum-sealed bags of things which look like they have been regurgitated by a bizarre sea creature. The last item is my way of summarizing "food that is used in Japanese cooking which I don't consume."

The texture is surprisingly decent considering that it breaks up like a gelatinous blob rather than as a smooth creamy pudding. The smell is really quite nice with a roasted chestnut aroma that also brings coffee to mind. It is the roasting that brings about this comparison, not the actual presence of coffee.

The flavor is incredibly good. Chestnut is a flavor that is easy to screw up because too much is gag-inducing and too little leaves you shrugging. To me, this had the perfect balance of chestnut flavor and sweetness with a hint of something that reminded me of the brandy so often used in mont blanc desserts. I truly enjoyed this, and that surprised me.

As a great fan of Mont Blanc, I really loved this. It was like eating just the top off of a pastry except with a bit more intensity and sweetness and a lot less fat. I will definitely have it again, and would recommend it to anyone who is a great fan of chestnut paste or chestnut pastries.

Kubota Pudding Mochi

Mochi, or pounded rice cake, is a fairly common component in many traditional-style Japanese treats. It doesn't tend to show up that often in the more "glamorous" snacks that are familiar to English-language speakers. Nestlé Japan has made KitKats with "mochi puffs" (that taste like mothballs), but has never made a real "mochi" KitKat. When mochi gets used in chocolates, such as Tirol's mochi sweets, it tends to really just be a bit of a gummy blob and not actual mochi. I believe this is because the texture is delicate and it can go hard, tough, or moldy easily.

Real mochi has a very fine textural element that you can't easily incorporate into things like mass produce chocolates. It's soft, slightly chewy, and delicate when used as a shell to wrap some other filling. It's a bit like a fine dough. You can see why many Japanese people prefer wagashi, traditional sweets made with a variety of indigenous ingredients including mochi, over other types of sweets because the ingredients are used in a way which maximizes their appeal rather than bastardizes them for mass production.

Since I can buy wagashi at many places in Tokyo, I have less of an impetus to buy mass-produced mochi sweets. Frankly, the same applies to Japanese people so the market shelves are not overflowing with a wide variety of them. I've only reviewed two sweets (Yukimi daifuku, yuzu mochi) which used traditional-style mochi. I found this latest entry at Seiyu supermarket for 198 yen ($2.24). There are 10 pieces in the bag and each is about 44 calories for a blob which is about 3.5 cm (1.4 in.) in diameter (that's an average since they're not circular).

These are made by a company called Kubota, which is yet another one of those small snack food makers which squeezes an occasional product onto market shelves and of which I have never heard. Annoyingly, they don't have a web site. I'm guessing their target customer is at an age at which this new-fangled "computer" stuff might seem to only be accomplished with the aid of ghosts or demons in the metal box.

The ingredients for these include barley sugar, sugar, mochi powder, gelatin, eggs, and carotene (for coloring, no doubt). The fact that the list starts with two kinds of sugar should clue you in that these are pretty sweet. When you open a packet, you don't smell anything as mochi is really just rice so it has little smell. After you cut it open, you can smell the rich, eggy pudding inside. If you've had flan or custard, you know what it smells like. I expected this to mainly be a nice textural experience. This is not only because of the soft, chewy mochi, but also the marshmallow lining around the little soft pools of custard pudding.

It was, indeed, a very nice mixture of textures, but it also tasted very good. The pudding itself was more flavorful than expected and the sweetness made up for the bland mochi. You can also actually taste the soft marshmallow. In fact, this is impressive because every component can be detected on the tongue. Everything was soft and seemed very fresh. My feeling about these after sampling one was that these would make a great souvenir for folks back home because the flavor is familiar and palatable to all but the pickiest types, and they remain uniquely Japanese because of the mochi.

The only caveat I can offer to someone before buying this is that they are rather sweet and won't suit those who are sensitive to such things. That being said, these are truly lovely to have as a little treat with a cup of tea. The fact that they are packaged in such a way as to remain fresh over a longer period of time allows you to have a wagashi-like experience without worries about them going hard or stale rapidly. You can keep a bag around for awhile and sample at will. Note that I bought these on July 12 and they're good until September 28, 2010.