matcha scones

Awhile back, Kirk asked if I had made matcha (green tea) scones, which I had not.

Well, I finally did.

This recipe is relatively easy. The scones are not sweet, you may need jam or something sweet (maybe a sweet beverage) with them. We liked them as is.

Kat's matcha scones: makes 10-12

180 grams flour
8 grams baking powder
1 tablespoon matcha (green tea)
50 grams butter
20 grams sugar
1/2 egg
50-75 mililiters of skim milk*

Cut butter into the flour and baking powder
Add the matcha and sugar, mix
Add the egg and milk
Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in refrig for 30 minutes
Roll out to about 2 centimeters thick and use your favorite cookie cutter
Bake at 180C (350F) for 15 minutes

NOTES: To get half an egg, I scrambled a large egg then weighed it then divided the amount in half. The amount I used in this is 26 grams.

*As for the milk, first use 50 mililiters and if the dough is too dry, then add a little milk at a time while mixing.
The dough should be moist but not runny.
The cutter I used was a 5 centimeter (about 2 inch) round.

If you want to make these scones richer, use cream instead of the skim milk.

You could easily double this recipe so that you won't have to "half an egg"...

I hope Kirk makes these for his wife and I hope she enjoys them!

ekchuah

It had been 8 years since visiting the cafe at Ekchuah, which at the time was my very first post on this blog.

This time around it was my first time trying their lunch...1050 yen.

Their lunch menu changes daily.

On this particular day, it was a BLT (though the "bacon" wasn't crisp, it was more like proscuitto) and I think there was a thin omelette in there too, making it more of a BLET.

With lunch there was also some pickled veggies, some potato salad and a bowl of vegetable soup.

Oh and you also receive a truffle to snack on while you wait for your meal, I ate it after I finished my lunch while I waited for dessert.

Dessert was a slice of their kinako (soy bean powder) cake. It was nice and had lots of azuki beans on the bottom. There was a dollop of whipped cream and a drizzle of coffee.

Kind of like an Asian tiramisu.

And for 105 yen more I added a cup of their chocolat chaud (70%).

I'll be back.

Ekchuah
6-17-43 Tanimachi
Chuo-ku, Osaka
Phone: 06.4304.8077
Closed Wednesdays
Hours: 11:00-22:00

p.s. It's Friday here, hope you have a nice weekend!

dentist

I went for my regular 3-month dental check-up the other day.

The hygenist asked me if there was any changes. I told her whenever I floss a certain area, the floss gets stuck.

She checked it out...she thought it may be a cavity so we had to x-ray the area.

Yup.

The filling on a particular tooth cracked so they need to treat the cavity then re-cap it.

They numbed the area...

Technology these days...x-rays, just bite down on this spongy thing. None of those cardboard films that used to make me gag!

And computerized anesthesia! There is apparently still a thin needle but you don't even feel it. (they made me close my eyes so I didn't actually see, I found out about this by talking to a friend about it)

The down side to using this type of anesthesia is that it takes some time for it to take effect.

Boy, almost 5 hours afterwards it was still working!

Anyway, I need to go back next week and then another time after that.

I really dislike Japanese dentistry because they like to drag procedures out. For now, they told me not to floss that area.

Take care of your teeth people.

"warm" days

We had a couple of "warm" days the other week.

The temperature went as high as 15C (59C). You may not think that is warm, but when the temps have only been in the single digits (at times minus), 15C is pretty warm.

Anyway, on those "warm days" I tried two beers.

This one by McSorley's was kinda too watery for my liking.

While this Brekle's brown ale by Anchor Brewing was nice.

A little fruity.

By the time this post is uploaded, we'll have headed back towards the single digits...Is it warm where you are?

chocolate finds

February in Japan means there are lots of chocolates to be found.

I picked up these three recently.

Charbonnel et Walker's truffles.

You can really taste the alcohol in these champagne truffles, too bad they don't use dark chocolate in any of them.

Peters bon-bons are thin and delicious.

From top to bottom: Prosecco-Raspberry, Orange and Latte Macchiato. My fave was the orange.

The container makes a nice pen case, though it isn't too "thick", so you can't put a lot in there.

Dufflett's Nutt-e Dark chocolate with maple coated cashews.

This was more like a brittle coated with chocolate.

Everything was good, hope to find more chocolates in the coming weeks.

camp

We tried a new curry place called Camp.

The decor was outdoorsy, and the restaurant is very tiny. Counter seating only 12.

Everything is made to order. You can watch them cook your curry in woks and then transfer them to piping hot cast iron skillets.

Everything comes sizzling.

How cute is having ice water in these thermos bottles?!

I ordered the onion, potato, cheese curry...890 yen.

This also had pork and corn in it.

And how cute are the little shovel spoons?

Satoshi went with their Daily Allowance (350 grams) of veggie curry...990 yen.

This had 14 different veggies in it.

His curry was a little on the sweeter side while mine was pretty spicy.

There are other curries we want to try and the veggies in Satoshi's curry also change with the seasons so it will be fun to see what they will use....we'll be back.

Camp
Osaka Eki Marche
Phone: 06.6940.7155
Hours: 10:00-22:30

toumyo

There is a food item that is trending here called Toumyo which translates to snow pea shoots.

Apparently this is a high grade ingredient in Chinese cuisine.

I recently picked up a packet to try it was 98 yen for a package.

I snipped some off, rinsed it...

and put it into some kinpira, because the package said it was good in a stir-fry.

After cooking all the other veggies, I added the shoots at the end to keep some of its crispness.

It was delicious.

And then we had the rest in sandwiches...pastrami, egg salad and toumyo.

The crunchiness of the shoots was nice.

On the package it says to put the roots into some water and in about 10 days it should sprout up again.

So that is what I did, hope we'll be able to eat this again.

p.s. today is Setsubun, we'll be eating ehomaki for dinner. By the way, this year's lucky direction is nan-nan-to (south-south east).