There seems to be a thing about Nama food in Japan.  From what I can work out Nama is either fresh or alive and so it is natural that every food producer wants to get on the bandwagon promoting their product as Nama.  Although I draw the line at Nama Caramel icecream that is so blatantly not fresh or alive that it makes it all a joke.  Although it tastes good and is definitely worth eating I feel like boycotting the product simply because of the misleading advertising (not that I really believed it in the first place).

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Fresh Caramel Icecream

It looks surprisingly docile when you open the packet but there is nothing like a sickly sweet blast of strawberry ice cream to make you realise that this is some seriously sweet food.  It is just 2 sweet pancakes (pikelets, hotcakes depending where you are from) sandwiched around strawberry ice cream.  I am not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this.

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Ichigo ice cream pancake

Hokkaido is famous for it’s dairy industry.  Milk, cream and all the derivatives of these two.  I was lucky enough to snap a photo of a guy heading home from the supermarket with an super-sized family serve of Yakult yogurt, presumably enough to feed his family for the whole week.  If this isn’t enough to make them healthy then nothing will.

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Hokkaido dairy industry

I’ve seen it all now.  This is icecream dressed up as corn.  When you open the packet you get an immediate blast of corn smell, then it is gone.  All that is left is a corn shaped bland flavoured cone filled with vanilla icecream.  Why?  Isn’t icecream good enough without a gimmick?

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Corn Icecream

Pino have just released a new ice cream in a rare cheese flavour.  I am not sure if it is rare cheese because there aren’t many around or because it contains mascarpone.  Can anyone help me.  In Australia I never heard of rare cheesecakes or rare cheese.  I only ever new of cheese by its various names.  Is mascarpone known as rare cheese in any other country?

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Pino Rare cheese

Sometimes I get sick of weird food, other times I can’t get enough.  You may have noticed a string of strange food appearing on noodles and rice recently.  Not to change the trend too soon my daughter found this little gem.  She is only 2 and so to give her a choice in the fridge of the supermarket is a miniature adventure all its own.  I think she went for colour and I doubted that she would like what she chose but she cleaned it all up.

Vegetable yogurt.  Featuring half a dozen vegetables, most prominently tomato.  Now maybe I have lead a sheltered life, but I have never even thought of vegetables and yogurt together except to feed to my baby son.  I tried it and it wasn’t all bad.  Tell me if this is available in your part of the world.  If so have you tried it?

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Vegetable Yogurt

In the picture you see one of my favourite Japanese ice creams.  This particular sized pack contains 2 round balls (sort of flattened) called Dai Fuku.  This name traditionally describes a ball of mochi stuffed with red bean paste.  In this case it is vanilla ice cream filling an omochi ball.

The omochi is actually more like a thin skin surrounding the ice cream but is chewy and delicious combined with the freezing cold ice cream.  It is dusted with fine sugar and looks distinctly snow ballish.  The first couple of characters in the name have something to do with snow but I can’t tell what.

Straight out of the freezer these things are practically useless, unless you intend to throw them at someone (and then they would be lethal).  But after a couple of minutes on the bench it is at the stage when you can just get your teeth into it.  And the fun begins

Last winter I had a special issue green tea one but I can’t remember if the tea was in the ice cream or the mochi.  I’m off to the snow next week and I’ll try and find them again, because they were great.

These ice creams are made by Lotte which is now an international brand, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you could find these in other countries as well.  Has anyone seen them anywhere other than Japan?

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Omochi Icecream

Hokkaido is up the North of Japan, where the Yeti probably takes his holidays.  At the moment it will already be well under snow and the winter is still on its way.  It is no surprise that they make excellent ice cream up there in fact I understand it is easier for the local cows to produce ice cream than ordinary cream.

Hokkaido is a gourmet food magnet.  Every region of Japan has its own speciality but Hokkaido seems to have more than its fair share.  One of their bigger specialities are all forms of dairy products presumably because of the fresh pastures and clear running water.  This image doesn’t seem to be contradicted by the fact that most Japanese cows live in sheds and eat processed food. 

Regardless they make great milk, cream, ice cream, cheese and anything else that you can imagine.  Bare in mind that the litre of ice cream that is in the photo cost about 800Yen, (almost $10) it isn’t cheap but it is definitely worth it. 

We’re due to head up there for a trip next year.  I can’t wait.

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Hokkaido Dairy

Last week I discovered a dish that I unwillingly loved.  Tuna Cheek and Cheese.  I say unwillingly, because I am not one of the “Cheese makes everything better” crowd and I found it hard to believe that a lump of cheese with tuna cheek wrapped around it, bread-crumbed and fried could be anything but disappointing.  How wrong was I.

Straight from the fryer and into some Ponzu sauce, these were absolutely delicious.  The cheese, perhaps some mozzarella, was soft and stringy.  The tuna was just cooked and still moist but flaky.  The breadcrumbs were fine, golden and thinly coated the lot.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

My first thought was “How can I cook this myself at home?”.  My second thought was, “How cool is it to have someone else cook this for me so I can just sit here and enjoy it”

Anyhow, if anyone has tried to make this at home, I’d love some pointers.  How do you get it all to hang together?

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Tuna Cheek and Cheese

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Making Paneer