Koikeya Sour Cream and Onion Stick Potato

One of my particularly angry stalkers once attacked me for "micromanaging" my calories whilst simultaneously criticizing my eating habits as ones that would turn me into a fat, bloated mess of an American. Apparently, the inherent contradiction (criticizing me for watching what I eat and asserting that I will become so fat that flesh will drip off my face like molten wax) is not obvious to unhappy people who find me repugnant yet can't seem to resist reading what I write. This comes to mind because I'm about to talk about how I'm not the sort of person who grabs a can of beer and a packet of salty, fried potato goodness and plonks down in front of the T.V. after work. I'm the sort of person who eats a few chips and is satisfied with a small amount.

For people who are happy with small portions, packets of salty snacks like this one from Koikeya are nearly ideal. Well, it's not exactly ideal for me as even this 50 gram bag (1.7 oz. at 271 calories for the whole thing) takes weeks to finish. However, if you are a portion-conscious lover of chips and beer, this 100-yen ($1.24) offering might be right up your alley. I picked this up at a 100 yen shop that sells food, but I've seen it at other places around Tokyo as well (convenience stores, drug stores, etc.).

There are only two ways in which these sorts of things can fail and one is rare and the other common. The rare failure is with the presentation of the fried potato sticks themselves. They might not be crispy enough, or may be too greasy or carry a funky taste from the type of oil they are fried in. Fortunately, that was not an issue. The other possible problem is that the flavoring is strange or too weak, particularly the latter. In Japan, a lot of flavored salted snacks are on the weak side for my crude American palate, but these did not let me down. The onion flavor is potent and the sour cream just about right.

Usually, I rate Japanese treats by how they uniquely present their flavors, but for things like this, I'm really looking for an experience which parallels those that I had back home. For a potato stick, which is pretty much the same across cultures, the best I can hope for is that it tastes the way I want it to taste and doesn't have some bizarre variation meant to suit Japanese tastes. This didn't have any weirdness, and was very satisfying. It was like a taste of home.

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Sometimes I find it nearly impossible to believe that certain funny English naming conventions are merely coincidental. In fact, I imagine that there is some foreign guy who is a native speaker of English working in the marketing department who has the most impeccable poker face in the world lobbing ideas at his Japanese compatriots that have sexual innuendo implanted into them. I can believe that "creaming powder" is just a Japanese English way of talking about non-dairy creamer, but the fact that the brand name is "Rising" stretches my sense that this is mere coincidence. I also wonder if this may be a subliminal message plant by the Japanese government in the hopes of boosting Japan's dismal birth rate.

Shigezo Tofu Burgers

Frankly, I'm not a big fan of tofu, and this came to my attention via a student who shopped at Shigezo's little tofu-laden market before attending my lesson. She pulled a package of burgers identical to the one pictured above as well as a tray of tofu-stuffed pot stickers (gyoza). I told her that the gyoza sounded good, and then she offered the tray to me as a gift. I have to remember not to say things like that to students or they will literally give me the food they had planned to put in their mouths. I thanked her, but told her I could go to the shop and buy my own. I also promised to buy and try the burgers because they sounded interesting to me.

Shigezo is a famous chain of shops in Japan that sells a variety of soy-bean-based products. There are a lot of shops in Tokyo alone. A full list (in Japanese) can be seen here. In my area, there's a shop about 6 minutes from my home. In fact, it took the place of a second branch of Okashi no Machioka snack shops. It's a pretty small and unimpressive-looking place, and very low tech. When I bought my packet of 3 burgers for 198 yen ($2.45), the woman wrote down the cost on a piece of scrap paper along with a bunch of other prices paid for by previous customers. There were items as obscure as tofu melon scones and tofu donuts, and a great deal of little square packages of tofu.

All of you omnivores out there who think a tofu burger is for vegan and vegetarian hippies who can't bear to see an animal suffer so that humans can enjoy delicious meat might think that this "burger" would get PETA's seal of approval. Not so fast... The Japanese aren't big into vegetarianism and their tofu burgers aren't made for people who want to eschew animal products. They're made to taste good and offer people a different eating experience.

To that end, this tofu burger is made with chicken and pork fat in addition to, of course, soy beans, and onion, bread crumbs, sugar, MSG, and various other spices. For something that looks vegetarian and healthy, it's packed with awesome taste-enhancing badness. When you open the package, it doesn't even smell like tofu, but rather like one of those meatloaf-style burgers you get in frozen dinners or shelf-stable plastic packages for heating and eating.

The burgers are very pasty and wet. Moisture collects in the bottom of the plastic tray and handling them doesn't encourage faith that the experience of eating them will be rewarding. I wanted to get a good, possibly crispy, brown coating on the outside of the burger so I put the tiniest amount of butter (about 1/2 a pat) in my smallest non-stick frying pan and cooked it at medium-high heat. I figured the butter would brown and that would transfer to the burger if it wasn't going to brown on its own (which I had no reason to assume it would. It looked good while cooking, and it smelled like meat.

That's my homemade whole wheat bread, the smallest pieces from the end of the loaf.

I had already decided to eat it like any other kind of burger with a bit of cheese and mayo. I picked up some pretty pathetic Kraft "real" cheddar singles several days ago in desperation (thank you, Costco, for being closed for over a month since the quake so that I couldn't buy real cheese instead of processed cheese lying about being "real"). In the picture above, it looks like a lot of cheese, but it's actually a half ounce slice. The burgers are very small, 70 grams/2.5 oz., and probably would not satisfy a hearty eater. Most burgers that you eat tend to be closer to 3.5 oz., and many Americans typically will eat 5 or 6 ounce burgers. This was fine for me though as I don't tend to eat a great quantity for dinner. Each burger, incidentally, is about 170 calories.

The taste is good. In fact, it doesn't taste like tofu to me at all and resembles a mild meatloaf-style burger. That is, the type which has a lot of fillers and not quite so much meat. The texture is very similar to Japanese "hamburg steak" (like Salisbury steak). It's soft, but still meaty. It even breaks off much the same way as meatloaf when you bite into it.

This is a very good tofu burger. In fact, I would definitely consider buying it again in the future if I want to have something pre-made on hand. The price is good and it's easy to prepare and cook and it is tasty and a little on the unique side. Even tofu haters may find this enjoyable. If you're looking to consume more tofu, but find it hard to stomach, this is an excellent place to get started. It's tofu for meat lovers.

Tiramisu KitKat Mini (Quick Review)

Thanks to the earthquake, I'm going to start a new type of review. No, I'm not looking to dash off a quick review between tremors or before the bookshelf crashes down on me. The truth is that the earthquakes have lessened in frequency as of late, much to my great relief. However, economic circumstances as a result of the quake have reduced my husband's income and I have taken on a part-time job to make up for some of the shortfall.

Working two more days per week (which leaves me working 5 days a week like "normal" people) means I have less time to write reviews and other blog posts. I find myself faced with a choice and that is to either reduce the frequency of posting or to write some shorter reviews once or twice a week as necessary. Fortunately, I've also found that there are some snacks which require very little in the way of commentary anyway so it's all for the good. In fact, KitKats are ideally suited to short reviews since there is little to say about them beyond what they taste like. They're all the same format (wafer + chocolate of some ilk) and require no history or research. So, thanks to the Great Tohoku Earthquake, you will now receive "quick (aka brief) reviews". You may thank the shifting tectonic plates at your earliest convenience.

I saw these tiramisu KitKats for the first time a few days ago at New Days convenience store. They were being sold as part of a medium size bag with a "half and half" assortment. That is, half plain chocolate KitKats and half tiramisu flavor. I've still got plain mini KitKats on hand and didn't want to spend more for something which I didn't want half of so I cased the local 7-11's until I found one with a box of single minis on sale for 42 yen (52 cents). That allowed me to sample this without the delicious chocolate ballast. Note that the box I bought this from was pretty decimated, and only the second 7-11 had them for sale in this fashion. If you want to try a single bar, you may have to search around a bit for the right shop.

The advertising on the package says "cheese plus coffee harmony". I'm not so sure anyone feels coffee pairs well with "cheese", though this is supposed to be mascarpone, which is relatively bland. This is supposed to be .2% coffee, and 1.2% cheese, which I guess makes it 98.6% chocolate and wafer. It's the average body temperature of chocolate, I guess.

The white chocolate-based bar (the bar is white, I'm not taking pictures of KitKats anymore as they all look the same) smells strongly of coffee. There's also some weird artificial flavor that reminds me ever so slightly of rubber which I imagine is the cheese. On the second bite, this develops more into a somewhat gouda-like flavor. I wish I could say I was surprised that the Japanese version of a tiramisu would include a flavor which is too pungent, but it's actually what I expected. You learn a few things after a few too many experiences with "cheese" sweets flavored like cheddar instead of cream cheese.

This is a bizarre little bar. It has complex flavor which comes through with depth and intensity. The coffee flavor is bitter, strong, and well-balanced by the sweetness. The cheese flavoring tastes different with every bite and by the third bite vanishes into the coffee. The first bite was rather unpleasant, the second strange, and the the third pretty good. It's hard to render a verdict based on this experience but I'd recommend curiosity seekers who have access give it a try, especially if they like coffee. I wouldn't recommend, however, that you  buy the whole bag of minis nor that you pay an expensive import price. As a curiosity, this is okay, but I wouldn't buy it again.

Nanao Vanilla Golusia Gaufrette

I've never been to Europe and my first experience with European food is largely through living in Japan. As someone who grew up poor in the deep boonies of western Pennsylvania, I really didn't find much in the way of sophisticated imports, or unsophisticated ones, for that matter. American-made Cadbury chocolate was about as close to "European" as I ever got.

Gaufrette, which is a thin, lightly sweet cookie which is similar to a crispy waffle, is a French creation that is very popular in Japan. While a dictionary of cuisine says they are usually "fan-shaped", they're usually round here and sold most often as souvenirs in stations and department store basements (where food is usually sold). I used to be given these on a semi-regular basis when I worked in a Japanese office and when I saw this box of them on sale at the local 100-yen shop, it was my sense of nostalgia that motivated me to toss them in my basket.

 There's nothing like a cookie to make your life comfortable.

The cool thing about these Japanese-style gaufrette cookies is that there is almost no difference between the more expensive ones that you get in department stores and these cheap versions. The main reason for this is that the cream is very thin in the middle and lends very little to the flavor. Most of the taste comes from the crispy waffle cookie exterior, and it's pretty hard to mess up.

The exterior has a deeply baked waffle flavor. It's like a waffle cone, but less intense in flavor due to the thinness. It is lightly sweet and makes a good accompaniment to tea or coffee. It would also go very well with ice cream. If you want to actually taste the cream, which is very subtle in flavor but richly fatty, you need to slide the cookie apart and place the inside against your tongue. This is what I do, and fortunately the cookies slide apart as if they were stuck together with butter.

These cookies are easy to like, but not so easy to "love". They are mainly appealing for their texture. They are crispy in a way which is very gratifying and also have a pleasant flavor. For 100 yen ($1.24) for a box of 8 cookies slightly smaller than the size of your palm, they're a nice thing to have around for a light tea time treat. They're also only about 45 calories per cookie and that makes them light on the hips. If you're a fan of subtle, crispy cookies that work well with a beverage, I'd say they're worth your shelf space.