chocolate finds

Recently came across these covered almonds.

Meiji, a well-known Japanese candy company & Kameda, a well-known Japanese snack company got together and came up with this.

The almonds are first covered with a thin wafer.

Then, Kameda's kakinotane (spicy rice crackers that look like persimmon seeds) are crushed and used along with Meiji's milk chocolate to cover the almonds.

Satoshi and I both agree, they can do without the almonds in the middle, somehow the flavors don't match.

Another variation of this tie-up is chocolate covered kakinotane.

This was nice and spicy.

Black cocoa baum kuchen with a dark chocolate glaze by MUJI.

Wow, this was rich...good.

Valrhona's Equinoxe series...dark chocolate (55%) covered almonds & hazelnuts.

The nuts are not roasted but are delicious with their semi-dark chocolate covering.

I say semi-dark because I don't feel that 55% can be called "dark".

Another item is the dark chocolate (55%) covered puffed cereal.

Crispies...yum!

As February rolls around, I think there will be more chocolate finds...

salame del cioccolato di stile giapponese

In 2006, I had this delicious salame di cioccolato, which I had found on a foodie trip to Tokyo.

That same year while reading "La Dolce Vita" by Isabel Coe, I found a recipe for it. This one used butter and sounded similar to the one I had tried. It called for amaretti cookies, hazelnuts, dried fruits, and some mixed nuts. I put it on my list of things to try but never got around to it.

Last month, while reading a Japanese blog, I found a simpler recipe for it. This one only used chocolate and "stuff" for the filling.

Here is the recipe:
120 grams (about 4 ounces) of chocolate
120 grams (about 4 ounces) of nuts, cereal whatever you want to put into your salame.
about 50 grams (about 1.7 ounces ) of powdered sugar, you could also use cocoa powder

I looked around at the gourmet supermarket, but couldn't find amaretti cookies, so I decided I would try making it "Japanesey".

This is what I did.

I bought a package of my favorite chocolate covered kaki no tane to replace the amaretti cookies.

I chopped some candied ginger and some dried apricots.

I also chopped some marshmallows and took a handful of hazelnuts out of the freezer.

For the chocolate, I melted several different dark chocolates, but all about the same percentage of 60%.

After melting the chocolate, you are supposed to pour the chocolate into a plastic bag with the filling and meld things together.

This was really messy. I threw the bag into the freezer for 20 minutes and was able to get most of the chocolate off of the bag.

Then on parchment paper, I turned the chocolate out of the bag and formed it into a log. Then put it back into the freezer for 10 minutes.

The recipe says to roll it in powdered sugar, but I decided not to.

I sliced several pieces off with a serrated knife and had it for my afternoon tea.

Delicious. I can't wait to share this with Satoshi.

p.s. I got the title from Babelfish by inputting "Japanese style chocolate salami" and translating it from English to Italian, is it correct?

Hope you have a good week!

nishi umeda

Just want to thank "blogs of note" for featuring us today. We sure have a lot of nice comments. Thank you!!

Yesterday was my 2nd French class. There were more students but the class was still a bit confusing for me.

After class, I went to Breeze Breeze in hopes of trying a new cafe, but because it was peak lunch hour, I couldn't get a seat, in the process though, I was able to help a fellow foreigner understand the seating system of the cafe...(the waiter was mumbling while moving his hands and the foreigner was saying, "what? what?") I explained to him that he had to find a seat before standing in the line to order (which I must rant that it is NOT written anywhere!!) So since I also couldn't get a seat (because I was standing in the line to order without finding a seat first), I went to La Marina de Bourbon instead. I've eaten here before and the menu changes quite often.

I ordered the apple camembert panini. This came with salad and broccoli. The salad had a Japanese sesame seed dressing which sort of didn't match, but it was tasty all the same.

I enjoyed the combination of the sandwich. Crisp sweet apples and saltiness from the cheese. The lunch set came with tea...1470 yen (about US$14.70). I ordered Amour (a blueberry flavored tea), the aroma was sweet and tasted delicious. (UPDATE:2011 this restaurant is now closed)

After lunch as I was walking to the train station I passed the Bulgari and Tiffany clocks. They are huge.

I also went to my favorite gourmet supermarket and picked up this dark chocolate with salted caramel by Marquise de Sevigne (the chocolate wasn't really dark, I think it said that there was only 51%, but the salt and sweet combo were good) & chocolate covered kakinotane by Naniwaya (again salty and sweet) ...delicious.

boo!

Today is Halloween. They don't do house to house trick-or-treating here (at least not in my neighborhood anyway), but slowly there are more and more decorating of houses and stores and the assortment of candies are also improving for this time of year.

I found this malted milk candy at the gourmet supermarket recently. It made me remember something that Bourgogne wrote in the comments about adding Milk Duds to popcorn.

So, after buying a bag of the malted milk candy, I then remembered that Milk Duds weren't malted milk candies but instead were chocolate covered caramels...sigh. Overall I was disappointed with the malted milk candy, it didn't have that scratchy texture in your mouth like Whoppers have. Still, I added it and chocolate covered kakinotane (spicy rice crackers that look like persimmon seeds) to freshly popped corn...delicious! The chocolate slightly melts while touching the hot popcorn, gets kind of messy and you gotta lick your fingers while eating everything...it is yet another addicting way to jazz up popcorn. (Thanks Bourgogne!)

Last week, my student gave me these delicious Halloween-y cookies...which are now long gone, right after I took the photo...gone. (Thank you!)

I'm not sure if it just the season for pumpkins or if Halloween is the reason that there are more foods with pumpkin around, though I think the former is probably the reason, but I found this foccacia that was loaded with pumpkin, eggplant, red bell pepper, onion and a little cheese...delicious!

Hope you have a safe but fun Halloween, if you celebrate where you are.

ogurasanso, palet d'or & crochet

On Tuesday, it was Ladies Day at the Meifu Cine Pipia (a movie theatre at Meifujinja station). There was a Japanese movie that I was interested in seeing, "Haru no Yuki". I went to the first show at 10:30am, what I didn't realize was that the movie was close to 3 hours long...sigh. It was a love story type movie with a not-so-good ending, but it was still a good movie.

What I've come to notice in Japan is that there are a lot of people with weird habits, some talk to themselves, some have weird twitches, but while waiting in the lobby of the theatre, there was one lady who had a sniffing habit.

At first I thought she had a runny nose or something, but she kept sniffing every few seconds, "sniff sniff" "sniff sniff"...it got to be quite irritating, so I move away from her. When it came time to be seated for the movie, I waited for my number to be called and hurriedly entered the theatre so that I could find a seat FAR away from her...she unfortunately sat at the end of my row...during the quiet parts of the film you could hear her, "sniff sniff"....ugh...

After the movie, I walked towards Nakayama and went to my favorite arare (rice cracker) shop, Nagaokakyo Ogurasanso. Previously, when Satoshi and I went to the movies, I came upon the store when we were walking to have lunch at an Italian restaurant, Fraulein.

This time, I bought my favorite--chocolate covered kakinotane(a spicy rice cracker in the shape of a persimmon seed (kaki)). Ogurasanso uses the highest quality Belgian chocolate from OCG Cacao, called Chocolate Couverture which means chocolate covering. This chocolate has more cocoa butter than regular chocolate and is good for coating things like truffles...if only they would use dark chocolate only. :)

Nagaokakyo Ogurasanso-Takarazuka store
12-1 Meifuhigashinomachi
Takarazuka, Hyogo
Phone: 0797-83-0030

Today was my bead crochet class. I had to catch-up since I missed the last lesson. This was the project that I finished today. A very gaudy bracelet...I have some other "homework" to do before the next lesson, so that I can catch-up with the others.

Since I was in Umeda for my beads lesson, I stopped at a favorite chocolate shop, Chocolatier Palet d' Or. They are celebrating their 1st anniversary with a chocolate called Marl Chocolate. It is 100% Cacao mass with a hint of sweetness from different types of honey.

They had 5 dark types and 5 milk types. I wanted to buy the 5 dark types, but ended up only getting 3 dark types and 1 milk type. The dark types: Rouge (raspberry puree with berry honey), Citron(lemon paste with French lemon honey) and Orange (orange filling and Spanish orange honey). The milk type: Provence (Assorted South France floral honey)...can't wait to try them. :)

Chocolatier Palet d'Or
Herbis Plaza ENT 4F
Phone: 06.6341.8081

With a holiday in the middle of the week the week seems to have flown by. Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving and have a great weekend.