#14 Amaranth Grain

Though currently unknown in most of America, amaranth grain has been used for over 5000 years by the Aztecs and South American civilizations., especially duing religious ceremonies. Mexico has used the grain to make a candy called alegria (“happiness”) for centuries, while India currently puts it in some states’ mandatory lunch programs. The US has conducted research on the plant since the 70’s but the product has only gained hold in organic food stores among a very specific clientele. Although it isn’t cultivated, it is very much prevalent in the Americas as a common weed.

A friend (also in this class!) recommended the grain to me as her mom loves to make it in its cereal form for breakfast, and let me borrow a jar of the seeds. While cooking this grain, the kitchen filled with an incredibly homey smell – similar to almonds and oatmeal. That smell by itself attracted people to the pot, none of whom had heard of the seed. The small seeds themselves started out a sandy color and became darker as they simmered on the stove, eventually gaining a consistency somewhere between oatmeal and couscous. I was careful cooking the grain as different sites and blogs online offered different recipes for its preparation as a cereal all with different ratios of water to seed: I ended up using a little more than 2/3 cup water for 1/3 cup seed. I found this recipe for an oatmeal-like cereal to be the most convenient, but you could also pop the kernels like popcorn.

The finished version was excellent: almondy, warm, and grainy was made sweet with a hint of maple syrup for a hearty breakfast similar to a bowl of oatmeal though more savory, like couscous or rice. The texture was very gritty (due to the many small seeds), and reminded me a lot of shaved almonds due to the flavor as well. It had a base kind of aftertaste, like what you experience after eating vegetables or rice. Overall, amaranth was a perfect breakfast, filling and tasty while nutritious and not too heavy.

Sources:

http://www.versagrain.com/amaranth.html

http://www.foodbanter.com/vegetarian-cooking/49553-amaranth-hot-cereal-recipes.html

#12 Wheatgrass

If you've ever been to a smoothie shop, you've probably seen this strangely visually unappetizing drink. Currently popularly consumed as a small shot for a morning boost, wheatgrass holds a strong place in our health debates, and many people across the world swear by its healing properties. I'd never ventured to try this ugly green little cocktail and thought this would be the perfect time for some green grassy energy!

Wheatgrass use can be traced back 5000 years to Mesopotamians and Egyptians who valued it similarly for its nutritional value: it was thought in Egypt that the goddess Isis brought it to the people from Lebanon and thus used in many religious medicines. In modern Western history, wheatgrass first became popular, and insanely so, during the 1930’s as a result of the work of Charles Schnabel, a kind of food evangelist who travelled the country with a powdered supplemental form of the plant and a soapbox spreading the word of wheatgrass but having done little research on its benefits himself. Quaker Oats and American Dairies funded much of his research at the time and both benefited from his speaking tours and the popularization of the plant.

The plant peaked again in popularity in the 1940’s due to the research and diet fad writing of Ann Wigmore, who proposed that the chlorphyll in the plant helped human digestion and that humans could benefit from ingesting often all 4700 varieties of grass. She eventually set up an institute that exists to this day for the research of the medicinal and nutritional properties of grass. Unfortunately, Wigmore wrote in of her works that wheatgrass could cure HIV, and was sued by the MA Attorney General for fraudulent claims. The suit lost her respect and her practice, thus quelling interest in wheatgrass as a nutritional supplement for a while.

Wheatgrass was one of the first “purifying foods” for America and helped establish an ideological trend in the country. This trend posits a food as the most nutritious of all (Schnabel stated that 15 pounds of wheatgrass nutritionally equated 350 pounds of other vegetables, or 32 servings of other vegetables for one shot of wheatgrass), capable of total bodily purification, and goes about promoting its use through popular writers and speakers. Although the plant has a greater diversity of nutrients than most vegetables and particularly high content of B vitamins, studies have not shown that it has a significantly better effect in fighting cancer, detoxifying the body, or preventing aging as these nutritionists claim.

To make this drink, I bought a container of frozen wheat grass cubes from Whole Foods and stirred two of them into warm water according to the directions. After an awful sip of the warm concoction, I decided to try again after I’d cooled the drink in the fridge for a bit. On the second go, my impression was a lot more favorable: cold made the drink taste more a like a refreshing summer juice than a hot vegetable mix. The drink tasted exactly as grass smells and had a slightly grainy consistency from the mulled blades of grass in the water. The taste was fine, refreshing even when cold, but the little blades of grass that got stuck in your teeth were annoying. I had always conceived this food in terms of the wheatgrass shots you can get in smoothie shops which look pretty disgusting and I can imagine that, concentrated, this drink could be unbearably grassy and strong. Nevertheless, I'm not adverse to having a larger more-diluted glass of the drink every once in a while, especially since I still have 22 cubes of the grass left chilling in my freezer.

Sources:

http://www.wheatgrass.me/history-wheat-grass

http://altmed.creighton.edu/wheatgrass/history.htm

http://aciddiet.net/2009/10/06/green-alkaline-wheatgrass-shot/

# 11 The Big Mac

There are certain things that come up when you ask a foreigner to list what reminds them of the States: McDonald’s is inevitably one of them. A cultural icon of our nation that has grown with the country for the last 60 years, McDonald’s represents a kind of food production and consumption that is particularly embodied in its signature purchase: the Big Mac. Banned from most fast foods during childhood, and naturally averse to beef to this day, I had never tried this supposedly scrumptious sandwich – I set out to the nearest fast food chain (ironically next to a Whole Foods) for a night on the town with company, Ronald, and a Big Mac.

Apart from the health of the food, the Big Mac represents for me and many others a set of foundational and ideological problems plaguing America and the world at large as a result of the fast food industry. There are too many to list here but some of the more important ones, problems more directly linked to the production of the Big Mac itself, are worth noting. The Big Mac demands a very specific kind of labor for instance: the Speedee Service System created by the McDonald’s brothers as the hallmark model for their franchise and eventually for the world. Further enhanced through the specific partition of mundane tasks by Fred Turner, this system embodies and popularized the assembly line mentality. Each worker is given a specific task done over and over hundreds of times daily, until boredom and indifference set in. The Big Mac requires the fulfillment of very simple tasks in several clearly defined steps: replenishment of materials into the kitchen, placement of frozen patties into a conveyor belt led heater, slicing of tomatoes and lettuce with specific machines, and the dropping of each of these items in a specific order on a bun. Nothing is too tricky or takes any culinary know-how. The effect of this mundane work is seen in the overall trends of the workforce: poorer, socially marginalized, minorities, teenagers, illegally employed youngsters, and immigrants. This becomes a problem when you look at the growth of these once temporary jobs in the job market, especially in the time of a recession, along with a corollary rise in the turnover rates of these jobs as well. Inherent expendability of fast food workers degrades the value of these men and women, their paychecks, and the respect given to them by managers. Banality and a lack of engagement at work depress them, leading to higher rates of crime and violence at home, less will to succeed as there is little real or perceived means of promotion, and less satisfaction with their quality of work and life.

Most Americans do not hear so much about these problems, however, as they do about an equally important issue with the burger: its health ramifications. The burger itself is fairly caloric, though not overwhelmingly so, at 540 calories a burger. More importantly, it is loaded with fat (29 g) and saturated fat (10g). Also, as the primary purchaser of beef in America, McDonald’s burger meat is unfortunately mixed, meaning that meat from one patty can come from dozens or hundreds of cattle from various ranches. This leads to a higher possibility of contamination, especially through E. coli.

In a broader sense, the Big Mac is the lead promoter in a trend of eating in the US. A fast food abundance of high-fat, highly caloric, and inexpensive meals has led to more meals being eaten outside the home (mostly at fast food chains) which has led to a daily intake of more calories, more fat, and less fiber. Furthermore, the promotion of foods like the Big Mac and its prevalence in children’s diets have started higher cravings for fat in Americans that will last throughout their lifetimes. America’s obesity epidemic is currently second only to smoking in mortality rates; although this is an ambiguous statistic, it gives a sense of how much weight plays a factor in causes of death and how much more prevalent those causes are among Americans. Obese people have much higher rates of death, with shocking stats for those at a young age. As a result, we spend more nationally on health care and weight loss programs than any other nation. Even sadder, America’s food culture of Big Macs and fast food has been popularized and spread globally, causing heightened obesity and cholesterol across the globe.

Having said this, I now must admit that I really like the burger. It is a perfect mix of juicy, meaty, salty, sweet, and bready to satisfy all of the worst hunger cravings. You can tell exactly why it is so popular: it is designed to be delicious for the human taste buds as it hits upon all of our major cravings – sugar, salt, meat, and bread. I did try to deny it at first but, coupled with fries and a McFlurry that my Mickey D’s travelling partner enjoyed, I had to admit the whole package (….or value meal) hit the spot. I can see why, if I grew up on this food or could not afford many other options than fast food, it would be so easy to just order a Big Mac instead of cooking or depleting savings on healthier options. The burger fills you up while also tasting really good and leaving barely a dent in your wallet; it is tantalizing and tempting to eat in ways that go beyond taste. Having seen more of the facts about its nutritional value than your average consumer, I know I can't eat this every day, but very few people have access to such information and even fewer can afford to act on these concerns regardless of their awareness. A little disheartened and duped about how good the Big Mac was, we finished the trip with a stop by the neighboring Whole Foods for a drastic change in locale and a guilty raid of their bins.

Sources:

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton, 2001

http://www.freelogovector.com/key-mcdonalds_logo_vector.html

http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutritionfacts.pdf

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650268,00.html

#10 Goji Berries

My brother swears by these little berries and, looking at the recent boom in their popularity on Whole Foods shelves and frozen yogurt chains, they seem to be taking over as the new organic/health food craze. It seems every nutrition guide, smoothie shop, and organic market is selling the idea that these berries can increase our life spans and prevent cancer with anti-aging properties and antioxidants. I wanted to get through the rhetoric around these little fruits, and see if their taste held up to their hype.

Goji berries are known as well as Wolfberries (a name given to them by British colonists) and are found in parts of Southern Europe and Asia. Discovered by the Himalayans, they passed on knowledge of its uses to travelling Chinese, Tibetans, and Indians. Inspired by Himalayan hype and folklore, all of these cultures incorporated the fruit into herbal medicines and attributed long life and health to its nutritional powers.

Today, nutritionists look in particular at the presence and balance of polysacharrides, polynutrient compounds in the berry, which act as good nutrients for various functions in the body, to the antioxidants in the body that work against cancer and the effects of aging, and to its ability to improve eyesight due to the presence of b-carotene. It is unclear the extent of these nutrients’ effects on the body and if they can even be evaluated; it seems, from looking at opinions online, that there may be some scientific evidence of these findings but that research does not have any current means to prove any of this satisfactorily.

As a preface, I love dried fruit: my parents' Christmas present this year was a selection of dried fruits and I make frequent trips to Whole Foods to steal from their bins. I like the sweet and tangy taste of dried fruit that stays true to the fruit but also adds bitterness common throughout different types. Nevertheless, goji berries kind of cloy to your palate with their sweetness: they taste old or stale (like raisins left out in the air too long) and leave a sugary strange after-taste that defeats any original impressions of the fruit. By itself, I could never munch on the bright red stucco-colored fruits as a snack; more than a few leave your mouth in serious want of a glass of water. I don’t think this is only me: the taste of these berries does not seem to me a likely grabber of the masses. Rather, people probably eat this food more out of the belief that each bite is touting powers that will counter aging and keep them from developing cancer, regardless of the legitimacy of the literature that states this.

Sources:

http://www.gojiberryblog.com/history-of-the-goji-berry/

http://www.health-report.co.uk/goji_berry.html

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/goji-berry.htm

#9 Marmite

Marmite is a British condiment very popular for its unique taste and cultural standing. You don’t hear about it much in America but I can’t stress enough the impact it has on the Little Continent. Having worked and travelled with Brits in foreign countries, I’ve known that conversation nostalgic for home foods always winds back to Marmite. The saying, “love it or hate it”, is very applicable to this food: the company itself, creatively named Marmite (originally named The Marmite Food Extract Company upon its creation in 1902), uses this very slogan on its ads. Like Nutella for many other European children, marmite is given to British kids from early childhood, so a culture around and taste for marmite has grown from this kind of childhood nostalgia. People usually use the spread on toast, bread, or digestives (like crackers) with butter, or mix it in with hot water.

Marmite has an interesting history that coincides with the history of biology. Marmite uses up the byproduct of beer production as it can be made from spent brewer’s yeast. For years, yeast was only thought of as a catalyst for the fermentation of sugar to make beer, and a nuisance of a byproduct, until a series of discoveries in the field of biology led to its use for Marmite.:

1680 – Dutch scientist Leouwenhoek notices that yeast is composed of tiny spherical cells and ovoids

1858 – Louis Pasteur points out that yeast is actually an organism kept alive through fermentation. He describes the process of fermentation, and how it turns sugar into alcohol without oxygen.

Late 1800’s – German chemist Justin von Liebeg, inspired by Pasteur, begins using yeast extract from beer companies to make his infamous “Extract of Meat” for vegetarian purposes.

Liebeg’s concoction was apparently not very appealing and he eventually stopped producing it as a meat substitute and made it as cubes of feed for cows. Instead, a group of chemists came together and made the Marmite Food Company Limited in 1902. It was originally advertised, and still is, as a vegetarian alternative to meat: it supposedly can replicate the salty gamey taste of meat in broth, though I wouldn’t say it struck me as coming very close. Marmite became even more popular in 1912 with the discovery of vitamins: the presence of five B vitamins in Marmite made it suddenly a popular feed for children and soldiers during WWII.

The modern version, now owned after many buyouts by Unilever Co., uses the same style of pot (as shown in the picture) but in smaller quantities. The picture is of a French stock pot – which is what marmite translates into in French.

I think I’ve always shook a little at the idea of Marmite simply because it’s a British staple food. I can’t really think of a staple British food I like: gravy, roasts, meat pies. This is under-handing a whole culture of food, I know, but there’s a certain rich, creamy, meaty, and filling quality to traditional British food that’s always turned me off. Descriptions of the substance also lack appeal. People have trouble describing Marmite: a salty spread made from yeast from beer production that foreigners usually hate.

I would NOT recommend trying this on its own or without some butter on the toast as it is incredibly salty. I tried Marmite on toast with more and more butter as I went along. Tried as I might to enjoy the uniqueness of its flavor, there are some battles that cannot be won. I do not know how people eat this stuff, let alone as children or early in the morning. It is like gulping soy sauce, an impression several other friends who tried this agreed upon: one even said, “I imagine this is what overly salted dog food might taste like…” The saltiness of the substance combines with a rancid heavy aftertaste, like very pungent chicken broth. Furthermore, it looked awful, like diesel fuel or something jet-black and chemical. Neither bread nor butter tempered the strength of its salty flavor and I could not find many redeeming qualities to this spread despites its cultural and historical importance. My little bottle was quickly passed off to someone who planned on shocking her boyfriend with its flavor.

Sources:

http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/marmite.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/jan/04/advertising.foodanddrink

http://www.ilovemarmite.com/marmite-history.asp

http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Liebig_Extract_of_Meat_Company

#8 Glögg

For my school’s long weekend, my friends and I headed with my family to the cold and windy VT mountains, the perfect place to try some winter’s foods. To complete a fondue dinner, my mom pulled out a Trader Joe’s mix of Glögg, a Nordic drink of mulled wine. The mix included all but the alcohol: mixed juices (apple, orange, and others) spiced with cinnamon, cardamom, raisons, almonds, ginger, and cloves. Heated over a stove, you slowly add red wine to the mix to create the original thing, a drink fit to keep you both toasty and happy in harsher winter weather.

The drink was first made in Sweden as a popular “health-bringing” drink, but also as a way to mask the taste of bad of spoiled wine with all its spices. The term glödgat (“to heat up” in Swedish) was first coined in 1609 and changed to Glögg over time. It became a Christmas drink in the 1890’s and is now drunk globally during the Christmas holidays and in alpine settings in order to keep warm and merry.

The drink itself tastes very pungent, heavy and spiced. The various spices and fruit juices mix to give a strong flavor enhanced by the flavor and alcohol of the red wine. It also felt welcomingly warming and thawing after a long day of skiing and being in the cold. It's a delicious drink for the winter, but would probably be heavy any other time of the year.

Sources:

http://www.swedishop.eu/page_8,us,8,8.cfm

http://dimaskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/12/festive-beverages-hot-chocolate.html

#7 Blue Cheese Ice Cream

To finish off dinner, we moved from our Japanese restaurant to a nearby cafe/dive known for its cheeses and focus on local. With our espressos, we indulged in a pear frangipane tart topped with one of the strangest desserts I’d ever tried: blue cheese ice cream.

There is not much to talk about this dessert other than its flavor simply because it does not have a history. Needless to say, the ice cream was excellent: sticky, strong as any really good blue cheese is, definitively blue and veiny, and even a little stinky. Strange as this seems for an ice cream, the effect was phenomenal, especially with the pear tart, savory to its sweeter elements though it sounds impossible for an ice cream to be savory. The proportions of the dessert were just right; much more of this funny ice cream would be overwhelming and as glad as I am to have tried it, it is certainly not a treat I could ever snack for more than a few spoonfuls.

Sources:

http://winecellarva.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/friday-fun-pairings-port-and-blue-cheese/

#6 Eel

Last but not least of our Japanese treats was my most dreaded specimen from the sea: the eel. Even more so than seaweed, I cringed at the idea of eating something so slimy and so like a worm. Not only did the idea sound strange, the fish itself looks awful: wet, dark brown and gray, and layered with puckers like suction cups. I could only think of putting my fork, or chopsticks into a bowl of worms, or tentacles rather.

Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and European cultures have all eaten eel throughout history. Eel is used in many different recipes and forms in Asia, especially the freshwater eel, the unagi. Japanese and Koreans believe the consumption of eel give the body stamina, and thus eat the fish most during the hottest months of the summer. European dishes with the creature have usually been jellied or put in pies: British royalty have historically had an obsession with eel and lamprey, another related species, pies. The eel, however, has risen in price over the years and become more of a luxury or delicacy as changing environmental conditions and overfishing have lowered their numbers in previously popular areas. Greenpeace International has actually added the fish to its Seafood Red List of endangered seafood catch due to overfishing as of 2010.

Nevertheless, it turned out eel does not taste so bad. We had our eel in a sushi roll now popular in the States, the Caterpillar Roll: asparagus and eel on the inside, avocado on the outside. As you would expect, the eel is incredibly slimy chewing and going down. It’s not very difficult to chew, but has a gooey quality that is offsetting at first. Eel tastes like a very well prepared white fish: salty but also savory, and satisfying in the briny way seafood is. Surrounded by rice, seaweed, and vegetables and dipped in soy sauce, the roll tempered the gooiness of the fish and let you enjoy it for its better flavors.

Sources:

http://www.perlgurl.org/archives/2006/05/eating_eels_am_i_a_foodie_freak.html

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/PieHistory/LampreyPie.htm

http://articles.cnn.com/1997-07-18/world/9707_18_japan.eel_1_eeleating-diner-rich-flavor?_s=PM:WORLD

http://www.gowerfishing.co.uk/html/to_fish.html

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/7200/7224/eel_7224.htm

#5 Seaweed Salad

Seaweed, for me, has always been that stringy, slimy muck that gets stuck in your hair at the beach and clumps in piles on the beach reeking of the sea and its inhabitants. Surprise, surprise….seaweed is also edible. In fact, it is not only edible, it is a great source of nutrients that can be ingested for nutritional or medicinal value. Asian and European civilizations have used seaweed for food, nutrition, medicine, and prayer for centuries.

One type of seaweed, in particular, functions as a lettuce of the sea – wakame. Garnished with some sesame seeds, it makes for a great salad appetizer common nowadays in American Japanese restaurants but eaten in Asian countries for centuries. Wakame is grown en masse in Japan, Korea, and surprisingly France, with smaller producers in Australia.

Our seaweed came through a dish titled the “Chuka Salad”, which entailed a sprinkling of sesame seeds and aga-aga powder, a gelatinous powder made from algae. The salad had a salty yet sweet kick to it: the saltiness of the plant mixed with a lemon-like sweet & sour taste that may have also been part of a dressing. The texture required a lot of chewing, as the thin rubbery strands were not easily broken down. Sesame seeds added a nice nuttier aspect to the salad and tempered the sugars and salts.

Sources:

http://vegetarian.about.com/od/glossary/g/Wakame.htm

http://www.tradekorea.com/products/Seaweed.html?pageNum=2&linkFlag=2&outMax=20

#4 Sake

The most important aspect of our Japanese meal was, of course, the drink. Growing up, my family always tried different drinks as well as food; it was important for my parents that we learned about drinking as well as eating culture so my family got a mix of beverages at the dinner table at an age US standards would not be happy with. Nevertheless, my parents’ knowledge and interaction with Asian foods was/is limited, and I’d never tried sake before. Furthermore, sake is not readily available or drunk in America; it does not seem to have crossed cultures to be served with meals in the way other drinks have. I had not thought much about having not tried the alcohol, as it is neither popular nor exoticized, and thus flies under the radar of exotic eaters.

A few things I did not know about sake which our waiter explained:

-sake is served hot when with fish, vegetables, or generally lighter meals, and cold with heavier rice-based meals

-like vodka, you can have sake infused with everything from lemon to hazelnut to pomegranate

-there are sets of containers and cups that go with sake; they usually are simple in appearance but often have beautifully minimalist depictions of rural landscapes or mythical creatures drawn on them

Sake is a rice wine and was first made in Japan over 2,000 years ago, around the time that wet rice cultivation first began around 300 BC. It used to be made by whole villages who would, often during a Shinto religious ceremony, chew rice kernels, spit them into a vat, cook the mixture, and let the enzymes introduced through the spit induce fermentation. This ended when it was discovered that a mold called Koji could also ferment the kernels. Mass production of the drink became viable at the discovery of the ability to refine its cloudy particles: apparently, a disgruntled employee of a local brewer put ash into the mix to ruin it and thus jumpstarted the discovery and industrialization of the refining process.

Sake held an important role in Japanese culture, and was drunk in order to celebrate life – at marriages, religious ceremonies, and funerals particularly. This still holds true today, though it is now more often drunk with dinner nationally and abroad.

Our sake came in a jar with a landscape scene painted on it and small glass cups shaped like big thimbles to drink from. Our waiter told us the brand name was Geikkakan and showed us how to pour smaller amounts into the cups so as to retain the heat of the drink. It's hard to complain about the taste as both my dining partner and I found sake to be kind of bland. It had a nutty taste that lasted after you finished, but otherwise was very base for an alcohol. You did not feel the sharp bite or sting that alcohol usually provides. Instead, it was a very soothing drink for the winter: warm and nutty, giving us a little courage for the walk home.

Sources:

http://www.asianartmall.com/historyofsake.htm

http://steamykitchen.com/3994-00-japanese-sake.html

#3 Oba

This week, my friend took me on a night out to try as many exotic foods we could find, snapping photos and faking culinary expertise the entire date. We ended up eating at a Japanese restaurant and finishing with dessert and coffee in a small café-like restaurant known for serving locally grown food. The next few items will be a few foods we found that night. Our first comes from a sushi roll we tried partially filled with the Japanese vegetable oba.

Oba is the Japanese name for perilla, a plant and herb common in Asian foods particularly in Japan. It is used to spice Japanese dishes with its sweet yet bitter taste. It is also very common rolled into sushi. My friend and I tried some at a sushi restaurant in a “ume shiso” roll with cucumber and plum paste. The plant could be taken out of the roll and tasted more bitter than sweet, and gave the roll an overall kick that it needed in comparison to its more blander components.

Sources:

http://www.herbsarespecial.com.au/free-herb-information/perilla.html

http://www.canalphotos.net/photopage_373.htm

#2 Daifuku

In middle school, my friend’s family used to babysit me once a week after school while my parents worked. Her parents were Chinese by background and their house was always stocked with Asian snack foods sent en masse to their house and organized in stacks in their kitchen closet. When we came home, we were allowed one snack from this closet. This became a weekly adventure, not knowing what any of the labels meant or even being able to guess the ingredients from the foods’ odd shapes and colors. One day, deciding upon a round innocent cake-looking pastry wrapped in a plastic wrapper, I chomped down into a Daifuku and, though I don’t remember the taste, my 13 year old self apparently turned green and spit it all out, thus becoming the family’s joke for year and years to come. After calling my friend and talking about this project, she reminded me of Daifuku and I headed to Haruki’s Asian mini-market to get myself some.

This Japanese pastry is made of a mochi, glutinous rice cake outer layer surrounding a filling of anko, sweet red bean paste made from asuki beans and covered in a sweet powder called kinako. Haruki’s had four types: plain, plain layered with sesame seeds, a dubiously cotton-candy pink one flavored strawberry, and a green one which the woman at the counter highly suggested. I couldn’t understand what the flavor was so I looked it up at home.My green Daifuku uses yomogi mochi, which has the crushed lead of the flower plant yomogi in it, otherwise known as Japanese mugwort. Kusa mochi, and yomogi mochi, are considered spring seasonal dishes.

I’ve gained a pretty big sweet tooth since I was 13 strangely enough, and I found the little pastry to be delicious for the first few bites. The dough of the mochi is incredibly chewy, a lot like raw pie crust, and was not my favorite part of the sweet, but the sweet red bean paste was interestingly grainy yet creamy at the same time. A blogger tried to explain the little difference that yomogi made which I agree with: a bitter leafy taste he said he preferred. I didn’t find the pastry to have any leafy aspect to it, but there was a bitterness to the mochi that could not have come from the dough. I’m not sure if this was due to the packaging of the product, but my Daifuku was covered in kinako powder, which exploded all over my desk and made the sweet very messy to eat. After a while, however, a single daifuku can make you pretty full and in need of some water: it is, after all, like eating a large ball of uncooked dough.

Final analysis: a delicious treat with many an interesting and which I will definitely eat in the future, though best split between friends.

Sources:

http://slowfoodfromjapan.blogspot.com/2010/04/tea-time-with-kusa-mochi.html

http://shizuokagourmet.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/japanese-cakes-wagashi-15-daifuku/

#1 Dried Shredded Squid

When you think of squid, you think slimy, gooey, rubbery, something that squirms along the bottom of the sea. Calamari, fried squid served in rings or whole, is just this, and many hate it for its chewiness and that feeling of wriggling plasticity going down your throat.

Part of this was due to the fact that, as my friend and snack-sharer pointed out, the package was several months old and not very tightly sealed. Normally, these snacks are a little closer to what I would have expected - slightly chewier, or gummier even – but they never really have the kind of elasticity you would expect from a squid.

Dried, however, goes against all preconceptions: tough, crunchy at parts, and difficult to chew but for its toughness. These little morsels aren’t really whole squids, but seem to be tentacles or chopped pieces shredded into strips resembling shaved ginger. Each is a sandy color with purple segments. They taste a lot like what I would imagine seafood jerky would taste like; you need to chew them for a long time all the while getting that salty fishy taste of seafood. I love seafood but that salty-sweet mixture so intensely diffused – I think as a result of the drying process? – for so long grossed me out. It was like a culinary version of the briny smell of piers, pungent and interesting but not pleasant for very long.

The little history available on this snack shows that it only became a more popular snack in coastal Asian countries with the mechanization of shredding and drying practices. Japanese companies eventually packaged the product and sold it globally. It’s also now very popular bar snack in Japanese bars that is apparently catching in American and European Asian fusion restaurants. Much of its popularity comes from an exoticism of Asian foods: its first surge in popularity came in the 60’s with a rising hippie interest in Asian culture, culinary in particular and its current popularity is as an exotic version of bar peanuts. Ironically, the food’s history has no basis in traditional Japanese fare: it was only made popular within the last half decade and mainly produced to satisfy the global economy.

Sources:

http://humanoemapuros.blogspot.com/2008/09/dried-shredded-squid.html