owa beer

We recently stumbled across Owa Beer.

The maker is Japanese and is making his Belgian style beer in Belgium.

We tried the Amber and Stout. The amber had a bitter aftertaste while the stout had light coffee notes.

We had this with some yakitori as well as other munchies.

Love their label and hope to find their yuzu lambic.

Maybe you can find their beer where you are, check their website.

What have you been enjoying?

a day of chocolate (s)

Today is Valentine's Day, for those of you who don't know, it's a little different in Japan, which I've written about here.

Here's what I gave Satoshi...

A box of baseball shaped milk chocolates...

Here are some other chocolate items we've enjoyed...this Choco-chofu.

A chocolate mochi covered with a chocolate crepe. Satoshi brought this back from one of his business trips to Okayama.

To enjoy this you need to "nuke" it for several seconds, if you nuke it for too long, it gets too oozy and turns into a blob.

Blobby or not, it was delicious, chocolatey but not too sweet.

Belgian Cafe-Tasse's lait & speculoos, milk chocolate filled with a cinnamon ganache.

Cafe-Tasse's noir & speculoos, dark chocolate (54%) with a cinnamon ganache.

Either one is delicious. The ganache is more like a cream with speculoos (spice cookies) bits in it.

Italian Vestri's Vellutata, 30 grams of creamy chocolate hazelnut goodness.

This was delicious on toasted baguette.

Not sure what "vellutata" means, but it sounds like "velvety".

From my host-sister, an assortment of ice creams by Jean-Paul Hévin. There were 5 different ice creams in the assortment, Satoshi and I ate half of each on separate occasions.

One with vanilla & salted caramel bits, one caramel ice cream, 2 dark chocolate and 1 milk chocolate.

All were rich and delicious. (Thank you!)

Lastly, France's Bernachon's 3rd generation, Phillipe, has a line called "B de Lyon", I tried their Gingembre (ginger) tablette.

Dark chocolate (maybe 65%) with ginger gelatin-like sticks...the chocolate and ginger match perfectly though Satoshi said he would nix the ginger.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

'tis the season

Christmas is coming, what a great way to celebrate with all sorts of sweet treats from around the globe.

First off though is not a sweet treat... A french classmate went to Belgium recently and brought back this cute sachet filled with lavender, perfect for Christmas (merci!)

Mini pandoro from MUJI. I had read about pandoro on Rowena's blog, but had not tried it myself.

Have you seen how big Pandoro or Panettone are?! Lucky for me, MUJI had these mini-sized (like the size of a big muffin), perfect for a taste.

This Italian eggy bread/cake reminds me of what we have in Japan called castella.

And if you try pandoro, then you have to try the Italian panettone too.

Another mini-size made by MUJI.

This one was more bread-like filled with raisins and citrus peels.

I preferred the pandoro while Satoshi preferred the panettone.

A small box of La Mere Poulard's Les cookies du Mont Saint Michel (France).

These cookies are packed with chocolate chips...yum!

Weiss Contrella Classic Lebkuchen (Germany)...I had envisioned something more like gingerbread, maybe a little more crisp, but these were soft, a little spicy, very sweet and dipped in chocolate.

With a cup of tea though, they were perfect.

Rounding out our Christmas treats, shortbread from Scotland.

Walker's buttery shortbread are delicious.

What are you enjoying these days?

chocolate finds

It's that time of year, the department stores have brought in TONS of chocolate for Valentine's Day.

All for the "guys"..pfft!

I debated as to whether to check out Salon du Chocolat in Kyoto, but there was nothing that really piqued my interest so I decided not to go this year.

The first photo is something from a lady in my French class, she was so thrilled with the Victoria's Secret lip gloss I gave her when I came back from Hawaii in January, that she gave me and the rest of the class these boxes of truffles from the Hotel Okura.

I ate the dark chocolate ones and gave the milk and white ones to Satoshi. Nothing out of the ordinary about these but I appreciate the thought (thank you!)

She also gave us these 86% chocolates...ack, too bitter and acidic, kinda chalky even. Blah, thank you but sorry, no.

So the other day, I went to the Hankyu Department store, they started their Valentine's fair and had brought in some new chocolatiers this year...like Berger, an Austrian maker.

I tried their plum & pimento bar...1260 yen (about US$12.60)

The 70% chocolate envelopes a plum and pimento filling. You can't taste the pimento but the plum is very noticeable, in a good way.

I loved how shiny their bars were, though it made it hard to photograph because I would always see my camera reflecting.

Baixas, a Spanish chocolatier in Barcelona.

This one is noted in a book I have about different chocolates.

I tried their 3-piece bon-bons...840 yen (about US$8.40)

Coconut, a coconut ganache covered with a dark chocolate & coconut flakes...nice.

Pepper, a black pepper ganache covered with dark chocolate..spicy, my fave!

Raspberry, a raspberry ganache covered with dark chocolate and raspberry bits...tart but nice.

Bachhalm 1928, another Austrian chocolatier.

They were giving out samples while I stood in line, so I got to try their Fruits of the Forest bar. This bar was covered with strawberry, raspberry & black currant powder. The flavors were very bright, nice.

When it was my turn to order, I went with their ginger bar though. This bar is 54% (actually 53.8%) cacao (the highest percentage in their bars) with fresh bits of ginger...1785 yen (about US$17.85)

The guy that was selling these said that usually you find candied ginger or dried ginger used, but this bar uses fresh bits, so these were different.

This was spicy and matched the chocolate perfectly...yum!

Plus on the flaps of the box reads "viel freude beim genießen" (enjoy with much joy), I will indeed!

I also tried these orangette by Club Harie, a sweets maker in Shiga Prefecture.

This seemed to be semi-sweet chocolate and it also looks like it may have bloomed. It was still very nice with coffee.

At LOFT, a store with all sorts of things, New Tree's mini bars, a Belgian chocolate maker.

They had varying cacao percentages and I bought the ones that were dark chocolate, 73% cacao.

Cassis (Black currant) had a nice berry flavor. Poivre Rose (Pink Peppercorn) had a nice kick to it, my fave. Cerise (Cherry) had a subtle cherry flavor.

So, that's the chocolates for this Valentine's season, not as many in the past but some nice finds.

It is Friday here, the weather has started to warm up during the day, but early mornings and the evenings are still quite cold.

Have a nice weekend!

things I'm liking

Things I'm liking...how all the leaves fall off the persimmon trees leaving tons of persimmon to look like light bulbs.

The combination of sasanqua and bamboo.

And sasanqua and fall foliage.

I noticed a lot of trees that were chopped down on one walk and then on the next I noticed that most of the trunks were turned into firewood.

It also seemed that anyone could come by and take some. Wonder how many in our area have fireplaces?

I noticed there were lots of these community farms.

Too bad there aren't any closer to where we live, or I would definitely check into renting a plot.

These white holly flowers had a very nice fragrance.

The fragrance was similar to jasmine (pikake).

Nothing like steaming some sweet potato, which I made into mashed sweet potato.

I've started using the wasanbon-toh, they aren't too sweet.

I've used them in "western" teas but instead I think they go better alongside matcha (green tea).

I tried this Tully's Choco Latte, no coffee just lots of rich chocolate, though it was a little on the sweet side.

And even if I have tons of tea, I couldn't resist getting more Tea Pigs.

This time their Super Fruit and English Breakfast.

I love the deep red-purple color from the Super Fruit and the English Breakfast is perfect when you want a strong black tea.

The arancini (rice croquette) at Capricciosa is HUGE!

We ordered it thinking it was small, and the waitress even asked us if we were sure with all the other items we had ordered, but when it came to the table...eep!

We figured we would have to bring home some of our other food, but in the end since Japan has yet to actually start using doggy bags...we over-ate!

Burdigala's chocolate danish. Love the candied orange slice on top, it was crisp and not bitter like some are.

Plus, the chocolate was dark.

How cute is this Choco-Lion?

I spotted it while passing through the subway station.

I love how the cheeks are made with coarse sugar and maybe some amaranth? to give it a rough texture.

Inside is chocolate cream.

I found some toffee at Seijo Ishii recently. Cocomira, a Canadian toffee maker.

This was delicious, butter toffee coated with dark Belgian chocolate and topped generously with pistachios.

I also ordered some chocolate covered torrone from Dean & Deluca.

This one is by Sorrelle Nurzia.

It is a soft torrone, not sticky, with lots of hazelnuts and coated with a sweet chocolate.

I also ordered panforte.

I had read about panforte on another blog and was interested in trying it.

This is made by Pasticceria Marabissi. Packed with figs and walnuts, it reminded me of a fig newton minus the cookie-cakey outside.

And the sunset the other evening was so beautiful...pink, orange, purple...beautiful! (This photo doesn't really do it justice.)

Kind of a long post with lots of yumminess and beautiful things.

What are you liking these days?

wonton

Since I didn't want to throw out the oil right after frying the andagi on Saturday, I decided to make some wonton for our dinner yesterday.

I don't think I've ever made wonton before...gyoza yes, wonton no.

Anyway, these wonton don't take a lot of filling, so of course, I have leftover filling.

Usually in Japan, you don't see fried wonton, but rather as a soft-type in soups.

With 30 wrappers, I made 13 filled with minced pork and kim chee, 13 filled with an "Italian" filling & 4 filled with hazelnut chocolate paste.

The kim chee version was similar to how I make the filling for kim chee gyoza, except that I left out the shoyu (nampla).

I used 80 grams of pork & 50 grams of kim chee. I put a splash of sake.

This was nice and I loved the crunch from the wonton wrapper.

For the "Italian" version, I mixed 80 grams of pork with several spoonfuls of pasta sauce, several dashes of Italian seasoning, 1/3 of zucchini chopped, 1/4 of chopped red bell pepper and several pinches of chopped up shredded cheese.

I liked the flavor of this. It wasn't oozy cheesy but the seasoning was nice and basil-y.

Dessert was the wonton filled with the hazelnut chocolate paste (1/2 teaspoon each) I got from Barbero.

It wasn't oozy by the time we ate it, but it was delicious, what's not to like about fried dark chocolate with hazelnuts??

We had these wonton with Trappistes Rochefort 10, a dark Belgian beer, 11.3% alcohol.

This beer had sort of a chocolatey taste, but the thing that I didn't like about it was that there was residuals at the bottom of the cup.

Other than that, I really liked the taste of this, it was easy to drink without being watery.

I liked these wonton, plus, clean-up of the oil was a snap!

Have a nice week.