 They aren’t banana chips. Those are crunchy, not very sweet, and make you thirsty. These are chewy and packed with honey sweetness. They’re as addicting as soft-baked chocolate chip cookies and as healthy as dried blueberries. At least I like to think so when I nibble twenty of them in one go. Chewy dried bananas come in many shapes and sizes. Some were pressed into flat sheets (3-5 bananas to make a sheet), [...] Continue reading Chewy dried banana  The best (known) green tea of China. The cream of the cream of the crop. I feel sophisticated just drinking it. Paired with a tangerine bee pollen truffle and I almost hear little cherubim playing the lyre. You can read the whole story in my journal Tea & Mai. I’m off to dance in my head.  “You girls know how to eat”, our hostess smiled at us, the check attached. Ten things. At a tapas place like Vanessa’s Bistro where everything sounds tasty, I’d say we did a pretty good job narrowing down our choices, and we asked for the house recommendations only three times. All rendered success. The first decision was the easiest: we’d got to get the sweet potato fries. Neither mushy like their orange cousins nor [...] Continue reading Vanessa’s Bistro, sweet and savory the Vietnamese way  Last year I had a great meal at Himalayan Flavors, starting with a reddish purple smoothie whose ingredients I no longer remember and can’t find anywhere on their current menu, and ending with a mango dessert. The owner is Nepalese, so technically, the food is Nepalese, which is too similar to Indian for me to discern because I haven’t had much of either. A quick Google search renders over 6 million results, but [...] Continue reading Himalayan Flavors and the mango art  Technically, ごま蒸し饅頭 (goma mushi manjuu) means Steamed Sesame Bun (as a friend told me), but I’m a firm believer that proper nouns, i.e., names, cannot be translated without losing some of their meaning. Since there is no sufficient translation already, I might as well make the English name suitable to describe the object instead of sticking to the literal translation. Hence, to distinguish these little buns from the gazillion of buns in the Far East, I [...] Continue reading Goma mushi manju (black sesame button)  The third pairing of mochi and Japanese green tea. Perfect! Yes, finally a mochi that goes perfectly with sencha. Yomogi (Japanese mugwort), julienned into tiny strings and mixed with the mochi dough, gives the mochi a clean, refreshing taste, which reminds me of the tip of a Vietnamese bánh ít or a bánh ít gai (*). However, what struck me was the filling: red bean and sweet [...] Continue reading Sencha and yomogi mochi  Another pairing of Japanese tea and Japanese snack. A bowl of matcha is supposed to suffice your daily vegetable need because you’re actually consuming the leaves themselves, in powder form. Matcha is served in a bowl. Mix water (205 F) with the matcha powder using a whisk, whose look reminds me of a yard broom in Vietnam, and there is no steeping time to watch out for, which I like. The whisk makes the tea foam [...] Continue reading Matcha and kabocha mochi  Sencha in yunomi, a typical Japanese thick, tall teacup, whose name I’ve yet to find out, accompanied by a matcha mochi, whose fillings include: satsuma sweet potato, red bean paste, orange juice and walnuts. (Thanks Masaaki for telling me the name of the cup in Japanese.) The mochi, handmade and delivered by a mochi lady every week to Teance, is refreshing both in look and in taste. The green tea flavored chewy coat [...] Continue reading Sencha and Mochi  This dessert requires no skill in the making, but it ranks way up in the chè hierarchy, topping taro che and my own banana tapioca pudding. Beside the fact that Little Mom invented it, I always like things with lychee. Because everyone’s sweet tooth differs, it doesn’t make sense to have a fixed recipe for this simple dessert. One package of halved mung bean (with the green [...] Continue reading Lychee and mung bean che (Chè đậu xanh trái vải)  Who goes to a sushi and donburi house to get dessert? Me. It got it all. Tropical, fried, icecreamy, salty, nutty, fruity. It’s the dessert of Miyuki. Miyuki sweet: eggroll filled with banana and pine nut to pair with vanilla and mango ice cream. Ah, and a dash of chocolate syrup, of course. Address: Miyuki 1695 Solano Avenue Berkeley, CA 94707 (510) 524-1286 [...] Continue reading Miyuki sweet |
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