Another favourite of mine for merienda and/or breakfast is Taho. I never tire from eating Taho every morning the last time I visited my folks in the Philippines (which was 2 years ago!). I can’t help it! The vendor is just right outside our doorstep, the same way it’s always been when we were kids. Believe it or not, the same vendor sells it to this day. He used to carry the oversized aluminum tins by way of a wooden plank over his shoulders, on foot, inside our village. Nowadays, he’s got them on board his customised bicycle. His bike …read more

..to eat Takoyaki?

Believe it or not, these contain diced baby octopus coated in a specially prepared batter.
They immediately caught my eye when I took my son to town for a stroll and decided to have lunch at this small fastfood Teppanyaki eatery. I just had to tell my husband about it. And what do you know, he was excitedly fond of it too! We shared each other’s good old memories of our last helping of Takoyaki balls. I remember enjoying this tasty Japanese snack back in high school. Whenever the school fair is on, I look forward to finding the …read more

Unlike Superman, Ultraman, Anpanman and all of the other superheroes, Nikuman is just plain lazy.  You will often find him lying around in a glass cabinet in a convenience store or in the front of a specialist nikuman shop.  He is often found in the fridge or the freezer of a supermarket and will benefit from a few turns in the microwave or a sauna in a steam pot to bring him back to life.  No, Nikuman is not a courageous or active crime fighter but he can sure be a life saver, to a lonely and starving pedestrian on …read more

This is the last post I will be writing in my loose series on Matsuri food (but I am heading to another Matsuri this weekend so I reserve the right to go back on my word).  I have left this to last, because I wasn’t sure that I should let the world see the bad side of good food.  I’ve decided that I will let the cat out of the bag, today, and let you see the Japanese version of fried chicken.
Japanese food has a great reputation for clean, healthy eating.  The most popular dishes that the rest of the world …read more

Now before anyone  jumps down my throat to tell me that this is not what they are called… I know.  What I don’t know is what they are called.  These guys are available at festivals all over Japan and I expect to bump into another crowd of them this weekend at the University of Tsukuba Festival, but I don’t know what to call them.  Last week I even bought a box of ice creams that were designed to look like them but made with red beans, ice cream and ice cream cone material, but I still don’t know what to call …read more

Some would say that I am scraping the bottom of the barrel of classic Matsuri food, by writing about potatoes.  However, I’ve decided that I owe it to you all to write this, not so much as a recipe, a description or even a cultural message, but more as a warning.
These potatoes are steamed in the beautiful wooden steamers that you see in the photos, which could make you think that these are one of the more healthy of the Matsuri options.  I am sorry to disappoint you, but even if the potatoes are healthy, the topping is not.  I …read more

The next in our series on Japanese Matsuri food is an easy, chewy, portable and slightly anti social food – whole BBQ squid.
The cook simply cleans and slices half way through the whole squid before throwing it flat onto the BBQ plate.  Depending on how long it has been on there it can either be raw and inedible, overcooked and inedible or somewhere in the middle and perfect.  It is served up on a skewer and drizzled with sauce and you can walk around nibbling on it as you go.  However it pays to be careful because these guys develop quite some elasticity and the …read more

Above you can see Dungo in all its glory.  In this case it is the three balls on a stick that have just been grilled and are ready to eat.  Dungo are a very simple concept and not too much more complex to make at home.
Firstly you must mix fine rice flour (ground raw rice) with ice cold water until you get a firm paste sort of like biscuit dough consistency.  Then you roll it in balls and drop into boiling water.  They are boiled until they float and are then drained and re-shaped if necessary. 
Dungo can be eaten like …read more

Tako Yaki has nothing to do with the Mexican Taco that most of the world knows.  That is unless you include the mess that it makes of your shirt front when you try to eat it on the run.
Tako Yaki is BBQ octopus balls.  Now some would claim that octopus balls aren’t big enough to BBQ but these ones are.
They are made of a mix of Boiled Octopus chunks, batter, shaved dried bonito, Nori lava, and usually some pickled ginger, dried shrimps and sauce.
The basic batter and octopus chunks are poured into semi spherical moulds over gas and as the …read more

Today I am presenting one of the less classy of Japanese Matsuri foods.  It is something that no doubt you will see in many other countries as well, but I am not sure if you will experience such a fanatical following elsewhere.
It is Banana Chyoko (which of course is a chocolate banana).
What these fruit torturers do is they stick a sharp stick into the unsuspecting banana and plunge it head first into a steaming vat of molten chocolate.  If that is not enough to get a confession from the helpless fruit, then they ram its face into either chocolate or coloured …read more