SHF: Home-made Men's Pocky

I pondered and pondered as to what I should make for this SHF: The Dark Side. I have been a fan of Kelli's Lovescool for so long, I wanted to make something that would show my respect for her and her inspirational blog. She was also one of my lovely judges during the last DMBLGIT competition, so I wanted to participate with a really nice dish as a show of appreciation for her time...

The problem was that I am not a very big fan of chocolate. I appreciate a dose of good chocolate here and there, but in all honesty, I don't crave it and I don't lust after it like I drool over some of the equally sinful savory treats and alcoholic drinks. I'd rather drink the same calories than eat decadent desserts - so I have a fairly limited repoire of chocolates treats to share... I brainstormed for all kinds of chocolate treats I would want to eat - which didn't produce a very long list. Since I always try to add a little touch of Japan (or at least Asia) when I participate in these events, I decided to go with something uniquely Japanese that had chocolate as a main player...


Home-made POCKY!

More specifically, these are called Men's Pocky in Japan, since they have a dark chocolate coating. For some odd reason, dark chocolate (or anything with subdued sweetness) in Japan is considered either manly or adult - hence, the dark chocolate versions of Pocky are called Men's Pocky...

Pocky is a national favorite in Japan. Ask any Japanese person and they will know what Pocky is. The familiar red box evokes childhood memories in almost anyone who spent any time growing up in Japan. The ubiquitous treats are found in convenience stores around the country, at kiosks at public transportation hubs, brought to field trips, and even served at bars in place of popcorn and peanuts. There is a wide range of Pocky-derivatives, such as those with strawberry chocolate (my favorite), green tea chocolate, crushed nuts with white chocolate to all other variations produced through Japanese creativity. The makers of Pocky, Glico, often bring out 'seasonal Pocky' too, which have boxes and flavors that are unique to the changing seasons in Japan - like the Sakura (Cherry Blossom) Pocky.

Making my homemade Pocky was so easy, I'm amazed I'd never done it before. My Pocky ended up about five times the width of regular Pocky, but I bet I could get them thinner next time. There was sesame in my biscuit, since I just used frozen dough from a previous SHF dish (yes, it was 4 months old... but it was frozen!).

Although my Pocky wasn't quite the same as the boxed Pocky, it definitely had the Pocky spirit. I don't know if I were to serve this to Pocky aficionados, they would recognize it as their favorite treat... I'd definitely do it again as an easy snack for potlucks and dinner parties, since they are very photogenic, cute little chocolate sticks!

Recipe:
Sesame tart pastry was sliced into thin strips, rolled into tubes, and baked until golden (in my oven, 400F for 10 min, but my oven is so messed-up, I have no idea what the real temperature is). Once the strips were cool, I poured microwave-melted dark chocolate on them and let them cool on saran wrap. Once the chocolate solidified, Pocky easily came off the saran wrap.

SHF: Summer-y Left-Over Tart

I'm feeling a little run down and unimaginative these days... Let's see how (un)imaginative I can be with this month's Sugar High Friday, hosted by Life in Flow, a fellow biologist with an interest in the culinary arts...

Today, I'm attempting to make a tart with all the left over goods around the kitchen. I have a mango that is as ripe as the Papa Bear (gracefully aged) and oranges rescued after one of its fellow residents in the bag succumbed to a serious case of mold. I also have a jar of soy bean jam from Kyoto begging to be finished off... I think a jello-y orange-mango terrine (like at Payard) would be nice in a soy jam-sesame crust for a summer-themed tart...

I found out that tarts and pies are different only by the pans used. I don't have a tart pan. And I don't want to buy a tart pan. So... I am going to use Trader Joe's Creme Brulee container, which will give me a straight edge crust (ha! a crust that doesn't drink or do drugs!) instead of a slanted crust, which should qualify this creation as a tart.

OK, so the crust. I like the sweet tart crust we used to use at the bakery at Weaver Street Market in NC, so I found a basic sweet tart crust recipe here and will be modifying as such:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/8 cup sesame
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter
1/8 cup brown sugar

1/8 cup soy bean jam (estimated, I just added the water into the jar...)
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup water

1. Mix flour, sesame, and salt
2. Cut in butter
3. Mix jam, yolk, and water, slowly add to flour mixture
4. Roll out and freeze, ~ 1hr
5. Fit dough into mold
6. Bake, 400F 10 min

MANGO:
1. Slice mangos and layer on top of baked shells, brush on honey
2. Layer on top of baked shell
3. Bake 400F 10 min

ORANGE:
1. Squeeze 1/2 cup worth of orange juice
2. Add 1/2 tbs of gelatin and let stand 10 min
3. Boil, cool to egg white consistency, and pour over mangos
4. Cool pie -oh, I mean, tart - in the frige overnight.

Serve tart with fresh mint:



This turned out so well and very much like the Payard terrine that I went back to take another picture. The mango-orange combination and the consisitency was right on target.



The mint really added a herb-y freshness. The sesame in the crust made an equally bold statement, which I enjoyed very much. I think from now on, I will add sesame to all my pie crusts with sesame-compatible innards. I didn't taste the soy jam much, but there wasn't a whole lot left in the jar.

Over all, a pretty decent spur of the moment creation, esp. considering I started it last night at 10:30 PM... but not good enough to drag me out of this unimaginative, tired feeling... I'm usually a very positive spirit, but lately, I can't seem to shake that feeling of 'blah'.

What I really need is a good weekend. I had a rough week, including news of my proposal getting rejected from funding - it was a REALLY good idea, so I am sad about it. Luckily, my boss thinks it's a good enough idea to find alternate funding sources for it, but it still makes me blah. Coming back to CA from the East Coast always makes me a little bit homesick for the familiarity for where I grew up - the East Coast is so very different from CA and I miss the landscape, the architecture, the people, the attitude... and most of all, my friends. I'm just feeling blah these days - which upon reflection is really for no major reason. I think I just need a good, fun weekend.

Anyone have any great ideas for a blow-out fun weekend to beat the blues?

IMBB: Wafuu (Japanese-style) Green Tea Parfait

Remember how I was telling you about the Japanese obsession with parfaits? The summer is parfait season in Japan with practically every cafe doing some sort of a 'Parfait Fair', featuring gorgeous glasses filled with ice cream, jello, syrups, and sugary goodness. Ice creams and parfaits rule Japan in the summer, and a recent report from my favorite Japanese blogger in Japan shows us how much more advanced the Haagen-datz in Japan is compared to the simple scoop-shops we have here in the US. Ice cream kaiseki! Amazing.

So when I saw this month's IMBB theme, "Has my blog jelled?", hosted by Elise over at Simply Recipes, I knew exactly what I was going to make. Nothing like a cool, refreshing jello/jelly/kanten parfait treat on a hot summer day! Green tea kanten jello parfait!

"Kanten?", you might ask... Kanten is agar, and agar is a seaweed-based coagulant. And yes, biologists. We eat that stuff in Japan. (For non-biologists, we, in the lab, use agar as a solid surface to grow all kinds of bacteria. It's usually mixed with yeast extract, and the stuff smells B-A-D, especially after we've grown some funky E.coli on them...) Agar itself has very little smell and hardly any detectable taste, which is why it is so great to work with in the kitchen!



When I was back in Japan, I came home with some very nice high-quality kanten. Unlike the blocks one gets in the stores around here, my kanten was in fine threads. And it took a lot more work to prepare than the regular kanten, starting with a 8 hr soak in water!

Once the kanten (5 g) was ready, I cooked it in 1 cup of water over low heat for 15 min or so. I saw little chunks of kanten undissolved, and I probably should've followed the traditional method and strained it at this point, but I didn't. Oh well. It added an interesting texture to the final product!

While the kanten was simmering, I made extra strong green tea with my trusted cha-sen, a beater used ONLY for green tea. You see, it's all about specialization in Japanese utensils - a cup to measure rice and only rice, a beater to make tea and only tea... I combined 1 cup of the green tea with 1 cup of the kanten mixture, and let it solidify in the refrigerator for several hours.

Then, the fun part! Assembly!


Since I still have some wonderful wasambon hand-crafted artisan sugar, I knew my sweetener was going to be kinako-sugar powder. Kinako is to soy beans as cocoa powder is to cacao beans. Kinako is a delicate powder full of condensed soy bean taste with a tender nuttiness (as in nut-like, not crazy). With the wasambon sugar, the combination is an airy, heavenly sweetness, rarely found in any other treat.

I cubed the jello and layered kinako-sugar powder, and topped the parfait with soy milk ice cream to match the kinako soy theme. Ice cream is an obligatory component of any Japanese parfait, and voila! A home-made Wafuu (Japanese-style) Green Tea Parfait!



Materials:

Kanten mixture:
5 g kanten
1 cup water

Green tea:
2 tbs green tea powder
1 cup water

Kinako-wasambon:
1/4 cup kinako
1/4 wasambon

Soy milk ice cream

PS:
Yes, this is the same jello I made for my Kyoto-inspired dinner!

PS2:
Here's a link to the round-up!

SHF: My Day-long Rhubard Grapefruit Orange Jam

This week's Sugar High Friday is over at another Alice's blog, My Adventures in the Bread Box. I think it's pretty neat that we have two things in common: Alice and a blog that starts with 'My'. Her theme was Citrus, so today, I'm going to tell you about my recent experiment in jam making!

When I went to Japan last month, my plan was to take a case of Loulou's Garden Rhubard Grapefruit Jam with me as gifts for my family. Loulou's jam is so absolutely wonderful with its subtle sweetness and luscious organic fruits, and jams like that aren't as readily available in Japan. It seemed like the perfect thing to bring to a country that is overflowing with everything else. Sadly, when I went to the Berkeley Farmer's Market a little late that Saturday before I left, to my surprise, no Loulou! Her usual stand was empty!!!!

I'd already made up my mind about bringing my family some really tasty organic jam, so I wondered for a little bit as to what I should do - go find an alternative source? I thought about running over the the SF Ferry Bldg Farmer's Market on Sunday, but I didn't have the energy for that... I really, really, really loved the supreme combination of grapefruit and rhubard, and knowing how much my Mama and my Aunt loves grapefruits, I knew there was only one solution. After a few moments of pause, I knew exactly what I had to do: make it myself!

I've never really experimented with making jams at all. I've boiled down some frozen berries before with sugar to make a fruit spread to go with my biscuits, but jam from scratch? I had no idea if I needed special ingredients like 'pectin' and other jam-related things I hear about. But when I looked to Loulou for inspiration, her ingrediented listed none of those things. What I gathered was that I should be able to make my jam from three simple ingredients: rhubard, grapefruit, and sugar.

Always an experimentalist and never one to hesitate, I bought a humongous amount of grapefruit and a pomello (I wanted to see if there was a difference in taste - the conclusion: a big difference in texture!), along with my usual 10 lbs bag of oranges, a few stalks of rhubard, and went to work. After peeling a few grapefruits and a pomello, I was wiped out. Tired. My hands were sore. I was whining. The Papa got tired of hearing me whine and came to peel some more grapefruits. A few moments later, he was whining too.


Somehow, we got through six giant grapefruits and a pomello, and I started what would turn out to be a whole day adventure - cooking. There was enough grapefruit juice to boil the fruit in, but I added some sake for good measure. Sake. Makes the world go around. (Just ask Anne!) I chopped up the rhubard, added it to the pot, and started cooking!


I learned that fruits also produce that gunky stuff you get when you boil meat - that bitter stuff that floats to the top? We call it 'aku' in Japanese, not to be confused with the other 'aku', which means evil - although I'd say that the gunky stuff is pretty evil. I stood infront of the stove for what seemed like hours clearing the fruit juice of all its gunk. I hate aku!

I cooked the juices down to a jam-like consistency, about 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 hrs later. I lost track of time. It was just me and my soon-to-be-jam fruit juice, meditating on a Sunday afternoon, sitting by the stove, scooping up aku, day dreaming about onsens and Kyoto... The jam looked very good. Very Loulou. Since Loulou listed sugar as one of the ingredients, I figured I'd better add some too. In my case, I added honey, since I don't like refined sugar very much.

With anticipation, I had a spoonful after I blended the honey...

BLAH!!!!

It was terrible! It was too sour to the point of bitter with too much rhubard flavor and not enough of anything else.

With a tear in my eye after spending the entire day nursing this pot of jam, I went to repair work. I peeled about 5 oranges and added them in. I poured in some more sake, because... well, it makes the world go around. I also added more honey in it and prayed that it would be edible next time it cooked down.

The Kitchen Gods must have heard my prayers. The next bite after it cooked down to jam consistency (after some more aku scooping) was nothing like the first bite. The jam was fruity with a strong orange top note, followed by the subtle bitterness of the grapefruit, finishing with the tart aftertaste of rhubarb. I don't know where the pomello went, but I didn't care. There were orange rafts of pulp gliding along the red-pink grapefruit-rhubard ocean, since the oranges hadn't quite cooked for as long as the grapefruit and rhubard did. Rhubard chunks were also present, flaking apart when I spread them onto bread. There I had it: my Rhubarb Grapefruit (Pomello) Orange Jam!!


Boiling the jars for sterization and soaking the lids in 100% ethanol were another adevnture in itself, but in the end, I managed to end up with five 8 oz jars of organic, homemade jam.


I saved a jar for myself and took the rest with me to Japan. I enjoyed my jam with croissants, toasts, and in the Papa Yogurt. My Mama and my Aunt were big fans and raved about it over and over! My Mama said how it was more like eating fruit than jam and how she enjoyed the combination of natural sweetness with tartness. My Aunt told me that my Uncle enjoyed it so much, they finished the jar in a few days - she even asked me for the recipe! Not bad, considering I thought this was a total failure at one point!

And you know the funniest part of all this? I'd never had rhubard jam before trying Loulou's, but I was surprised to see "Rhubard Jam" as one of the topics my favorite bread baking boys at "Yakitate Japan" are tackling in the latest issue!

PS:
Bay Area folks: don't forget to check out the Launch Parties going on this weekend! Owen from Tomatilla! and Paper Chef fame is organizing not one, but two, open-invitation Launch events this weekend for his book, Digital Dish. You can find a pdf file of the Introduction, where Owen lists all the contributors to Digital Dish.

I'll be going to the Saturday one at 11:30 AM at the Berkeley Farmer's Market to meet Dr. Biggles, who may be the second funniest blogger on my blog roll. (Can you guess who the funniest is?) I think it'll be so much fun if we can make this into a Food Blogger's Day Out at the farmer's market and actually really meet (as 'in person'!) all the wonderful writers, cooks, and friendly bloggers and blog readers I've "met" over the last few months! I hope to see y'all there!

If you miss it on Saturday, you can catch the same authors at La Fayette at 4 PM on Sunday. More details here!

PS: Check out the round-up for this SHF here!

3 o'clock snack: Sanji no Oyatsu

Japanese kids all beam with delight when 3 o'clock rolls around in anticipation of Sanji no Oyatsu, which literally translates to 3 o'clock Snack. Snack options in Japan is amazingly diverse and kids and adults take great pleasure in snacking. Some snacks are more healthy than others, but the best treats for me were always the Western-style pastries in the numerous cafes in Japan.

One time, I was out with my friend, shopping around downtown Nagoya when we stopped in a cafe for a 3 o'clock snack. The offerings there were SOOOOO good, I literally ate two full plates of desserts. And these weren't any old desserts like a single cookie or a brownie. These could have been served as desserts in the finest of fine restaurants. I can't remember the dishes or the name of the cafe, but I remember the look on the waitress' face when I asked for a second dish... I was probably 12 yrs old or so, and my hearty appetite was already in full force then.


During my last trip to Japan, I explored the parfaits at the cafe in the Nagoya Marriott. Interestingly, unlike the Marriotts here, the ones in Japan are really upscale. And the cafe boasts a French-trained pastry chef, whose specialty is parfaits.


These parfaits were really works of art. They were breathtakingly gorgeous with white chocolate wings and milk chocolate swirls proudly topping each parfait. What we thought was ice cream on the white chocolate topped 'caramel parfait' was actually a flan-like custard, an interesting twist indeed. Layered with pound cake cubes and whipped cream, along with scoops of ice cream nestled in the center, these parfaits could have been meals.


But the winner dish for my Sanji no Oyatsu was the Mont Blanc. I grew up eating these Mont Blancs, calling them Monburan, never knowing that they were French. So much so that when I ordered a Mont Blanc at Angelina's in Paris - just because that was the dessert they were famous for - I didn't know what I was getting until it was delivered to me and I had a bite. It was a light bulb moment when it finally clicked that a Monburan was a Mont Blanc!

The Mont Blanc at the cafe in the Marriott was very good. Very, very good. It was full of chestnut aroma with creamy smoothness to gently satisfy me. Along side the cup of coffee, I had a moment of epicurean debauchery, fulfilling my desires with a sense of almost sinful luxury.

As I mentioned before, the Japanese are serious Francophiles, and the culinary culture greatly benefits from the French influences. While the traditional sweets of red bean paste and rice cakes, like sakura mochi, are still very much present and loved, the options for 3 o'clock snacks are enriched significantly by the French culinary tradition of exquisite desserts. I haven't quite successfully fulfilled my love for these treats in the Bay Area yet, but I'm constantly exploring. I should stop by Justa Bite again sometime soon! And please, let me know if you have a favorite dessert destination!!!!

The Papa Bear's Yogurt

A few months ago, the Papa Bear was exposed to the concept of home-made yogurt by Shan. Shan was telling us about her silky smooth yogurt, and her stories brought a twinkle in the Papa Bear's eyes. I was not surprised in the least bit when a box arrived from Amazon a few days later; as expected, it was the Papa Bear's new yogurt maker. And the Papa Bear has made yogurt for us every other day since the arrival of the yogurt maker.


The yogurt maker is actually just an incubator. It keeps the container at a temperature for optimal bacterial growth (likely 37 degrees Celsius). The Papa Bear started with the recipe recommended to him by the manual, where he was adding non-fat dried milk to regular milk to obtain that thick, creamy consistency. Surprisingly, the Papa Bear did not know that yogurt was not naturally sweet like one gets at Costco, and you should've seen his face when he ate a bite of his first batch of plain yogurt. His face wrinkled up in pain and discomfort, since the Papa Bear is particularly adverse to sourness! He also refused to believe me when I told him that yogurt should be stirred before consumption to blend the liquid with the solid if it separated. The Papa Bear kept throwing out the most 'nutritious' part of yogurt with the highest concentration of bacteria until Anne also pointed it out to him that the liquid on top was normal and that all he had to do was mix it.


Now, the Papa Bear has moved on to using gelatin to create a creamy, luscious yogurt, cutting the calories per serving by nearly a half. We eat an enormous amount of yogurt, practically finishing a gallon worth of yogurt in a week. We eat it practically every night. Yogurt is extremely versatile as it embraces all kinds of flavors, taking on a completely different taste depending on what we add into it. Some of our favorites are pumpkin butter, Loulou's rhubarb grapefruit jam, maple syrup, honey, and pictured here, blackberry fruit preserve.


Do you see the 'dog' that the Papa Bear pointed out?


One of my favorite spots to be is under my red umbrella, overlooking the trees from my front patio, and having a serving of the Papa Bear's yogurt at my favorite spot is a true treat. My senses relax and my taste buds come alive from the tart freshness. The peaceful moment when I sit outside by myself enjoying my yogurt is one of my breakfast rituals that help me get up in the morning. I start my day off with yogurt and end my day with yogurt for dessert. Maybe that's why we've been going through a gallon of yogurt a week!

I will miss the Papa Bear's yogurt very much while I am in Japan for the next five days. I've got enough of a back-log to update this blog at the usual pace, but I am relinquishing the daily publishing control to the Papa Bear. He may even guest write one post, so stay tuned!!!