Egraphsen
Stephanie Cullingford
Theatrical Design
Sakuraco
Box Eight - October 2021
Part Two
November 3rd 2021
Welcome to Kambarang, the Wildflower season, the Noongar season of birth - of one day being 20 degrees and the next being thirty, days of sunshine followed by days of rain. Of yellow wattle, Grasstrees/Balga in flower (and if you've never seen a grasstress flower spike - let me tell you, it is nearly as impressive as the Corpse flower, much better smelling - and both relatives of the lily. Isn't biology fun?
Ahem.
And now, without further ado, the review of Sakuraco Box Eight: Flavours of Mt. Fuji
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My picture wall is growing!​
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Ye Old Trip to Jerusalem - Nottingham by Jill Perry
(as is the Statue of Robin Hood, which I only just realised I have never mentioned before)
Fun Fact: Nobody who has ever written a dramatic treatment of Robin Hood has ever been to Nottingham. Ever.
The Food (part two)
Edamame Senbei
Three of our goodies (and two of each kind) are packaged up together by Morihaku, just bundled together in a pack with a pale yellow ichimatsu pattern, not even with a company name or logo . It's a bit odd, but never mind (I wonder if Morihaku got the wrong end of the stick somewhere). Within are three senbei: Edamame; Almond Mochi; Kokeshi. Edamame always reminds me of Aomame, a character from the fantastic 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami: no spoilers, but Aomame, whose name means 'Green Peas', occasionally gets called Edamame, from people who can't quite believe her name is Green Peas. These Edamame senbei are quite small, individually wrapped with a pale green dotted design, forming a clear window for the cracker, and labled with delicate brush caligraphy.
As I said, the senbei are small, bigger than a 50 cent piece, but not by much. The dough is pale green and toasted brown, and lovely and crispy. There is a bean taste, but it's not strong and doesn't have that tooth-on-edge dryness that you usually get with beans or lentils.
Kokeshi Doll Senbei
This is a treat that relies wholy on it's packaging for impact/ name. Kokeshi are a type of wooden peg-doll (to be utterly crude about it): they have no arms (or legs, but they would be hidden under kimono anyway) and all features are painted on, like dolls made from skittles or bottles - if you remember the Kimmi dolls from the early 2000s, they are an evolution of the form.
These Kokeshi are made up of two parts: a white covered peanut and a ribbed brown senbei.
The style of dress looks reminiscent of the Chinese Tang dynasty, or the Japanese Momoyama, with thier cloud eye-brows, pinned up hair and low-and-loose belted kimono (some of them anyway - the scalloped collars look more 1920s). I like the fact that each of the wrappers is different, and that the tasting guide shows four different styles. The coated peanut is salty, then crunchy and sweet (and peanutty). The senbei is crispy and fluffy with a soy sauce taste.
Almond Mochi
Four Seasons Senbei
Like the Kokeshi senbei, the wrappers of the almond mochi four seasons senbei have multiple designs - unlike ... the afore mentioned, the ... previously mentioned ... don't have their different designs displayed in the tasting guide, and it's highly probable that the 'four seasons' actually refers to the wrappers, rather than the senbei themselves. Iris are from spring and plum for winter, so we can assume their are two designs missing - which is a shame.
The wrappers feel papery, and are slightly transparent, which is a nice touch - you feel that these actual works of art - I've saved the iris one to frame when I can find a frame small enough.
The senbei is small and rectangular, slightly ribbed and quite ricey. It tastes' salty and ricey too, but sadly there is barely hint of amonds
Kabocha Pudding Bread
You don't have to look very hard at this to realise it's a close relative of the melonpan from box 7. Like the melonpan it has "a rich pumpkin puree and pudding folded into the dough". I suspect, based on the packaging, which has tone-on-tone illustrations of pumpkins and what I would call a creme caramel, that the puree was folded into the pudding.
Love this - they've done the allergen warning in symbols!
Like the melonpan, it has stripes from the folded custard, and a pleasant eggy/brioche scent. The custard has a a spicy vanilla smell. The actual bread is light and fluffy, with a slightly over yeasted taste, but since it is made withe brown rice yeast, we'll just assume that it was intentional. There's no real pumpkin smell or taste. Might as well be a normal folded custard bread.
White Peach Milk Manju
I doubled checked that these manju aren't made by the same company as the kokeshi senbei (and friends) what with the cute golden ichimatsu design and lack of logo.
The manju is a little golden yellow puck, smelling mostly of manju, overlaid with peach. It's a soft, fluffy cake, a bit thicker and softer than usual, and is lightly peachy. The centre is peach coloured and has a crazy level of peachiness and is clearly made with lots of puree as well as the ubiquitous azuki paste to keep it firm.
Kinako Mochi
There is just so much to love about the kinako mochi. Let me count the ways:
1. It fits perfectly under the Mt. Fuji Oban - so a) perfect packing; and, b) a great game of hide and seek.
2. The actual packaging is really cute, with a paper band with calligraphy holding all the layers together - first a piece of paper with fun motifs that could very easily be used in a card or as piece of crafting (a bit too detailed to frame) - yay, upcycling!, then a loosely fitting lid and the pudding shaped pot that contains the actual mochi.
3. Mochi - nuff said.
I'm guessing this is more of a 'fresh' mochi texture so it feels a bit more jelly-like than the plum or melon mochi that we've had previously, but still very resilient. It's quite chewy.
I'm still not certain about kinako (roasted soybean flour). The tasting guide says that this one has sugar mixed in, so I'm not sure if all kinako is sweetened or just this one. At first it is almost sweet, but then overtaken by the smokey-roasty flavour. The mochi is wrapped around azuki, so you have three layers of flavour (although one wonders how much training you have to go through though as the "mochi is dusted by skilled craftspeople").
Don't breathe out as you eat you mochi as the dust goes everywhere; which makes it a shame that the lid does not fit the tub tightly, it makes it difficult to save for tomorrow's treat-time.
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Peek-a-boo!
Ototo Soy Sauce Chips
Maybe it's because purple is my favourite colour, or maybe it genuinely doesn't show up much on Japanese packaging (or Australian too, come to that) but - hey! this packet is wisteria coloured! It's cute, just a little cartooney and says quite clearly 'fish with soy sauce' (or at least the fish is saying 'soy sauce'). The Tasting guide says that the chips are made with "okara, a soy-bean pulp that is a bi-product [sic] of the tofu-making process": and anything that helps 'reduce, reuse, recycle' gets a tick from me.
Have you seen Red Dwarf? It's a cult '80's - to Now British Sci-Fi Sit-Com, and - um, look just watch the first season, Ok? Especially episode 3 "Balance of Power" - long story short, these would definitely be The Cat's favourite soy based snack: It's all about FISH! Not trout a la creme, but iwashi sardines.
Since we are not lifeforms evolved from a pregnant pet cat, stored safely in the hold of the Jupiter Mining Corp Vessel Red Dwarf, it's probably just as well that these curls don't taste as fishy as they smell. They're sweet, salty and crunchy, with a plesantly lingering taste of soy and sardine (ok - fish.)
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Kyoho Grape Chocolate Crunch
The thing about living in Australia is - you eat grapes. And they're delicious. And then, when you're a bit older, you get a piece of - say - Hubba-Bubba chewing gum, grape flavoured, and you wonder how many chilis that the taste technician ate to destroy their sense of taste that they could mistake that chemical compound as actually tasting like grapes (not to mention deluding the rest of the world to agree). And then you discover you are not alone: to quote Niki Segnit in her cook-book redefining work The Flavour Thesaurus:
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Grape & Peanut: "... Grape jelly is made with Concord grapes, a flavour experienced in the UK [and elsewhere] ... in 'grape-flavoured' sweets that, until you try the fruit itself, invite you to ponder the nature of subjectivity ('Grape? are you kidding?')
Thus, to paraphrase Ron Weasley in Goblet of Fire "You weren't being thick, you were showing the dominance of concord grapes in your childhood experiences".
All of this, in a round-about sort of way, brings us to the Kyoho Grape Chocolate Crunch.
Grapes are not native to Japan, and wineries were only attempted in in the Meji era (although the tasting guide doesn't tell us how long the wineries took to take off - only that they did, indeed, take time). The concord grape, and grape flavoured sweets, therefore, I am going lay straight at the door of the American occupation.
The crunches are wrapped in white and purple plastic with a photographic print of concord grapes. It's... adequate. The crunches are small and a pink/lilac colour, dome shaped. After discussing concord grapes there's not really a lot to say about this - it's a white chocolate crackle flavoured with concord grapes, which give it a highly perfumed sweetness. It's crunchy and it's fun.
Castella Roll Cake
Castella is pretty good, but when you boil it all down, it's just a cake. The packaging is pretty cute with a shippo design in pink, with accents of white and gold, which represents the seven treasures of Buddhism (shippo, not the colours). It's a cute "swiss roll" and it tastes good, but there's not really much more I can say. The tasting guide says that it's filled with buttercream, but it tastes more like mock cream.
Miso Arare
Given that the packaging of the crackers is mostly clear, there's not much surprise as to the look of these miso (Much like Rincewind's "Coconut Surprise" - you open up the coconut and- surprise! There's coconut!). The top and bottom of the packet is black with gold highlights, as well as a few white elements. Obviously these are a savory crackers - and made of rice - so what makes them different from senbei? Now, apparently, senbei are flat - unlike the 'bodies' of the Kokeshi Doll Senbei. Arare are also made with glutenous (like mochi) rice flour, and senbei aren't. Arare are also usually flavoured with soy-sauce (so I imagine a soy-sauce flavoured fat senbei must have some identity issues). Interestingly, the word arare means "snow-pellet" i.e. hail. Which is terrifying. Japanese hail is so frequently the size of fifty cent pieces that it's a unit of measure?!
The arare are dark golden-orange and flavoured with a salty soy sauce, with only a subtle metallic taste, that I think of when I hear miso. Like the tasting notes suggest, they are sweetish and slightly sour.
And what do you do with a bowl full of crispy crunchy salty chippies on a sunny afternoon?
Read some fifth century (BC) Greek poetry translated into Early Modern English!
Just me then? Hey ho.
The Blew-eye'd Goddess
That's all Folks, the Box is done, and I give it 10/10, again for taste, satisfaction, beauty, value for money, all those good things:
I especially like the Mount Fuji bowl - in fact the whole Fuji theme was really cool, especially lining up with our Wisteria flowering. The wisteria blossoms have long since gone but the triffid is very much alive.
Fact: I started writing this page the day Cleo Smith was abducted - I finished it the day she was found alive and well.
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For happy lively time with your friends, let's relax with confectionaries
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See you (later) in November!
~ Steph
