Tirol Egg Tart Chocolates

While I was walking around a supermarket on December 26th, the day of after Christmas sales, a woman could not get over the fact that Valentine's cards were already on display. Though it does seem a little fast, like they haven't cleared away the corpse of one holiday before putting the warm body of the next in its place, it isn't too terribly shocking. After all, it is next up on the rotation of heavily commercially exploitable holidays in the U.S.

After a visit to this thoroughly normal market, I went on to Nijiya Japanese market to see if they had anything exciting available and came across a bag of Tirol egg tart chocolates. I was surprised to see them because I had recently researched Tirol's current line-up and this particular option was nowhere to be found. Since it was only $2.49 (212 yen) and I do love real egg tarts, I picked it up without looking too carefully at the packaging.

After getting it home and inspecting it more carefully, I noticed that the motif is for Easter. This is rather bizarre for several reasons. First of all, if the Japanese are releasing Easter candy in December, they are way ahead of the game and making a shop which is already stocking Valentine's cards look like amateurs in the game of holiday gun-jumping. Second, Easter has not yet really penetrated Japan as a secular holiday. When I left last year, Baskin Robbins was the only place with a regular option showcasing things like bunnies and colored eggs. I couldn't figure out what the deal was with this candy. It just didn't fit on two fronts.

Nine candies, four package colors, one flavor. Don't let the variation fool you. It's all the same stuff. 

Of course, the Japanese have never needed an excuse to superimpose a Western motif on a place where it does not belong. There is a somewhat famous story told about a nativity scene at a big department store in Tokyo which was absolutely authentic save for the fact that jolly old St. Nick was standing there along with the wise men admiring baby Jesus. A little mix and match adds spice to life, after all, and in Japan, who knows the difference or cares? It's not like Americans don't do it all of the time as well if the way in which Japanese food is prepared here is any indication.

The answer to this little mystery was printed on the back of the bag in the expiration date. I never check such things before I buy them unless they are on sale, but this said it expires in January 2013. The most obvious conclusion is not that this is an early Easter release, but rather a really really old bag of candy. I'm not sure how this happened but I'm guessing that a case of these got lost in the shuffle or put back after it didn't sell somewhere around last March. That being said, I was still in Japan at that time, and I never saw this on the shelves. Trust me, I was looking. Whatever the case may be, I'm guessing this won't be an easy one to find unless you also have access to a Nijiya Japanese market with some pretty old stock or wait for a new re-release to show up at a more appropriate time later this spring in Tokyo. It'll likely be the same candy, but with updated graphics on the packaging.

My efforts to cut it in half for a detailed shot caused it to totally shatter.

As for the candy itself, I didn't have high hopes because this is a "regular" rather than a premium Tirol candy. These tend to have a much higher failure rate on the flavor meter because they are smaller (equivalent volume to a Hershey's Kiss with a thyroid issue) and less sophisticated. It turns out that keeping my expectations low was a good idea. The candy is comprised of three parts: a semi-sweet base (which the explanation claims is milk chocolate, but doesn't taste like it), a crunchy, a biscuit center and a "custard choco" top. Each morsel is only 34 calories, but it's also just two small bites.

The semi-sweet base dominates the candy such that you can't really get a good handle on the "custard" flavor. The crunchy little cookie gives you a nice textural contrast but otherwise doesn't contribute anything. It was only at the end that I got just a hint of the mildly eggy taste of the white chocolate top. All in all, not a bad little chocolate, but utterly unremarkable.

Chances are that I couldn't buy this again even if I were inclined to, but due to the fact that it really doesn't taste like much other than not terribly sweet semi-sweet chocolate (a good thing, to be sure), I can't see any reason to buy it again short of as a freaky Easter gift of outdated Japanese candy.

Sina Ginger Candy

Like many unlucky souls out there, my body was invaded by cold germs as the weather turned from warm to cold. Incidentally, one of my pet peeves (besides the phrase "pet peeve", which I hate) is people speaking as if cold weather increases the risk of catching a cold. We catch colds because of the abrupt changes in temperature causing stress on our bodies and making us more susceptible to illnesses, not being exposed to cold air. That's why you're just as likely to catch a summer "cold" as a winter one. The fact that a week of coughing, sneezing, and blowing your nose as your immune system struggles to force these invaders out of your system is called "a cold" is probably responsible for this misunderstanding. 

At any rate, when I catch a cold, I crave strong herbal concoctions. One of the things I used to love having at this time when I was in Japan was their herbal cough drops. Another was access to Korean citron tea (something I've found can be had locally as well via Han Kook markets, hurrah!), which was often available at our local Yutakaraya. And, I would try to drink down ginger tea, as it's the sort of thing which is supposed to boost the immune system.

While still recovering from the invasion of the snot producing demons, my husband and I were perusing a Ranch 99 Market. My energy levels had plummeted through the floor at that time and I didn't have the energy to look around much, but just as we were leaving, I saw these Indonesian ginger candies. It seemed like just the ticket to moisten tissues dried out by copious amounts of mouth breathing as well as provide new armaments to my embattled immune system. I grabbed my taro mochi and this candy and got out of there before crawling into a corner and taking a nap.

The candy looks like it comes in a cigarette pack, but it's actually full of foil packets that contain sticky wads of ginger candy. They're very chewy and sticky, so, if you've got loose fillings, you want to stay away. My fillings, fortunately, seem to be firmly rooted and I could endure them. Note that these are a pretty "pure" candy because they contain only three ingredients: cane sugar, "choice" ginger and tapioca starch. The starch clearly is just dusted on the outside to keep the candy from sticking too much to the foil. The box asserts that this is "a nourishing healthy sweet suitable for the whole family at any time." That's actually more truthful for this treat than for many that make similar claims. 

The first hit on your tongue is of sweetness and then the ginger flavor quickly hits and starts its build. Within about 20 seconds, heat is started to build up from the intense ginger flavor. It'll burn the back of your throat a little and fill your mouth with warmth. While this may sound harsh, it's actually a very satisfying experience if you're the kind of person who enjoys eating candied ginger or garlic so strong it can burn.

I liked this a lot and I'd absolutely buy it again, especially for the price I paid (69 cents for a 2 oz. box with 9 pieces of candy). However, it's easy to see that this isn't the sort of candy that is for everyone. You've got to really love strong ginger and be happy with something relatively simple.

Random Picture #142

Next year is the year of the snake on the Chinese astrological calendar. That means convenience stores and markets all over Japan are selling shelf stable packages of "kagami mochi" with cute little plastic figures of snakes on them. Only in Japan could they make a slithering fanged menace that is the stuff of Indy Jones's (and my) nightmares look adorable enough to want to collect a figure of it.

If I had been paying attention, it might have been nice to collect all 12 plastic figures by buying these cheap and not very tasty bits of mochi each year, but I only picked a couple up when I was in Japan and the figures I got (a tiger and a dragon) didn't make the journey with me. Oh well, they are just cheap plastic figures, and the mochi from these offerings was really pretty much the worst. though no inedible, it didn't compare to the fresh stuff. 

Winner of Tokyo Regional KitKats Contest

Kitty-chan Christmas buckets for the kiddies in Japan, because a plastic bin full of cheap treats is what all the letters to Santa are asking for.

Merry Christmas to all of my readers! I wish that I could give everyone a prize as a demonstration of the spirit of the holiday, but, alas, I have but one gift to give.

The winner was chosen by a random number generator (no favoritism here!) and it is brit_brat100. Please contact me at orchidsixtyfour@gmail.com about sending your prize to you. Congratulations!

Thanks to all of my readers for their entries, and, of course, for reading! Happy holiday!

Yuki & Love Taro Mochi

People tend to believe that something is exclusive to an area or culture because they have no experience with it in another area or culture. When they do encounter it elsewhere, they often assume it is a copy of the food from their place of origin rather than consider that they may be the ones doing the copying. Living in Japan, I encountered many people who believed Japan invented something or some cultural aspect was absolutely indigenous. Later, a little research would often reveal that something was not Japanese at all, but rather a riff or copy of some other country's culture.

This is not exactly a criticism of Japan. It's more food for thought which I hope people will set aside and chew on when they have time. Americans, because our country is relatively young and a mutt nation of people and cultures from all over the world, tend to assume things are actually not invented here. We know we didn't invent French fries, not because they have the word "French" in them, but because we didn't invent hardly any of our cuisine (and French fries are from Belgium, right?).

At any rate, I assumed that anything which I first encountered in Japan was, by default, Japanese. By doing this blog, I have discovered that many of those things are of Chinese origin if they appear to be based on foods that tend to be more predominant in Asian culture (rice, noodles. etc.) or Portugal if they tend to be based on things you would find in Europe (wheat, almonds, etc.). That being said, I never questioned the idea that mochi or any type of Japanese sweet for that matter was purely the province of the Japanese.

It turns out that I was wrong. Other Asian countries have their own variations on pounded rice cake with various fillings. I went to a small Asian market not too far from my current residence and found a pretty reasonably priced multi-pack of mochi treats and snapped it up. When I got it home, well, let's say that either I was unlucky or Chinese-style mochi isn't exactly the same as Japanese. The mochi was thicker, tougher, and the fillings were not as finely processed. I was disappointed and rather put-off by future purchases of non-Japanese style mochi treats.

When my husband and I were exploring the 99 Ranch Asian market, I was persuaded to give the whole idea another go by the low price on several boxes of "Japanese-style" mochi. At $1.50 per box of 6, it was a bargain compared to the usual pricing for such things. Also, it says "Japanese-style" on the box, so, you know, it must be the nice, soft little pillows of mochi with smooth fillings that I got used to in Japan, right?

The company that makes these is Taiwanese and their web site is in Chinese, so I have imperfect access to the information about them. They make a lot of interesting looking sweets including some with mochi and others with cake-style enclosures. If I run across other variations by this company, I'm likely to give them a try considering that they include a lot of flavors that I like like sweet potato, mango, and brown sugar. 

The flavors on offer at Ranch 99 were brown sugar, taro, peanut, and sesame. The truth is that they all sounded good, but I chose taro because I'd never had it before. I was also inspired by what I thought was a mention/review of a McDonald's taro pie on the Impulsive Buy, but I can't seem to find said review to link to. Perhaps I dreamed it, or my mad search skills are insanely bad rather than good. I wanted to get some idea of what taro tasted like, so I splashed out the buck fifty for this version.

For those who don't know, taro is a corm. That's a way of saying it's not a potato, but sort of looks like the ugly love-child of a ginger root and a tuber. Before I even sampled this taro mochi sweet, I guessed that it would probably not have much of its own flavor, but would likely be like a potato or other starchy food that tends to reflect the flavors it is prepared with. This rather defeats the purpose of wanting to sample taro, but it's not like I stood in the supermarket deeply reflecting on this when I decided to buy this. Nobody thinks that far ahead about buying a simple box of snacks, right?

The previous paragraph is my way of saying that I still have no idea was taro tastes like. I can say that this mochi sweet tastes very nice though. The flavor seemed to have a bit of a caramel note with a hint of some sort of cream. It was quite sweet, but not over the top. The mochi case was lovely and soft, just as one would expect Japanese mochi to be. This was immensely gratifying as finding a shelf stable mochi snack for a good price has been very difficult since I came to California. The Japanese-made ones that are sold in such packaging costs between $5-$7 (421-589 yen) and tend to be in fruit flavors for some reason.

I really liked these and would buy them again in a hear beat. In fact, I regretted not buying a box of each flavor after sampling this one. While I don't think that I could count on the taste of each flavor being good, I think that the basic textural components would be similar and that is often where a good mochi sweet lives or dies.

As a little reminder to readers who may have missed it, or to those who haven't gotten around to entering, I'm offering a box of the current Tokyo regional KitKats (rum raisin) as a contest prize. You can read about it and enter here. The contest ends on Christmas day 2012, so enter early, but only once, please. Also, please remember that comments are moderated so there is a delay between your making the comment and it being posted. Many people are submitting comments two or three times because they are not showing up immediately. Rest assured that your comment will be posted and it is not necessary to submit multiple times.