Egraphsen
Stephanie Cullingford
Theatrical Design
Sakuraco
Box Two - April 2021
Part One
March 22th 2021
Turns out, I'm a liar - It's Equinox, and here I am getting my April box! I'm not complaining, but it does seem just a little bit early in the month to be arriving! I hate spoilers and love surprises, so don't ask me why I snuck a look at what was coming in this box (seriously, why would you do that?), but there was one word that filled me with fear: Matcha. The mainstay. The staple. Green Tea. I dont like matcha. I don't like green tea - I don't like tea! When I was two and a half, my grandparents came to stay with us while my brother was being born, and I would drink tea with Grandma - very sweet, very milky tea. My parents don't drink tea, and hot leaf juice holds no charms for me. The only way I like tea is a syrup/sauce on Honey/Vietnamese Toast as served by Piyawat the Sweetery in Victoria Park. So, with that caveat, let us continue.
I am wearing:
– Cotton tea-length dress with fan motifs, made in the summer of 2006
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– No shoes, but bright red nail polish from TFN - Chez's a Good One
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– Quick Flicks 'Blue Velvet' in Grande
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– Sakura Kitsune Brooch/Pin by CukiCreations (mostly used as a small weight/under-propper)
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– Avon lipstick 'Personified Plum' (dumb name, fantastic colour), also c.2006
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– I Heart Revolution eyeshadow (Cherry Palette) in ‘Alpine’ and 'Hot Chocolate'.
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– Handmade fan earrings (also made in 2006).
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Apparently, it's retro week!
Beaded and embroidered it myself!
It was a lovely warm day today, so I opened my treasure box on the balcony surrounded by wisteria.
But First...
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​Sakura-Cherry Custard Cream Pie!
I used sugar infused with the left over petals from the sakura tea from the first box - in the pastry, the custard and cream
The Box:
Box two is identical to Box one, and there's nothing wrong with that (my sister got a beauty box from a rival company today and it's not nearly as nicely packaged - wrapped in black bio-plastic). Today it is presented on a scarf I bought from an Op-shop two years ago (I go back to this op-shop as often as I can, to this day, I have bought nothing else there. You know what they say about lightning...). As you can see, it is decorated with flowers from the four seasons, on a matcha coloured background and scattered with pink sakura petals.
The Magazine and Postcard:
April's post card is very cute with warm pastels. I'm no botanist so I'm not sure what flower is being represented - I assume it's tea (Camellia sinensis) but the glowy orange in the middle keeps fooling me into thinking it's a lemon flower. Equally, I'm not sure of the building on the front cover, it could be a building in Uji, which is featured in the article on the history of tea in Japan. Next there is an elucidation on the use of matcha and the tea cermony. There are also features on two sweet makers, Tsuruya Confectionary and Aziroan
The Yuniomi (tall tea-cup):
The packaging on the yuniomi was better than the plate in box One, but I can't say I'm a massive fan. The orange sakura are too harsh, unlike the soft peach on the package; in the image transfer some dark dirt has got into the image (a little hard to tell, but its where the largest pink sakura touches the 2nd largest beige flower); the blossoms are flat colour, unlike the gradient on the blossoms on the plate, which leaves them lacking depth. The ceramic is also an odd weight, neither delicate nor chunky.
Kit propping up the yuniomi for the camera
The Food:
Matcha Kintsuba
Our first treat is made by Aziroan (who have a spotlight in the magazine) and is kinsuba - a jelly sweet made of azuki (or sweet potato) with a thin layer of batter over the top. Azuki and matcha - my nemesi! I really like the packaging, with the pale green and the gradient to transparent giving a sneaky window onto the kintsuba. Inside, the sweet is beautifully wrapped in thin clear plastic, perfectly square - which pleases me! It has a moist feel, the smell is subtle and slightly grassy.
I take a bite - yum.
Honestly, that is my first reaction!
Azuki beans, and my first thought is yum!
Is it possible azuki beans could be growing on me? It's not what I would have classified as a jelly, either as a jube (jelly-baby) or as a dessert (like fruitpieces in a tub) - it doesn't, to put a fine point on it - wobble. The kintsuba is absolutely chock-full of azuki, whole beans (possibly why it can't wobble!). It seems sweeter this time, and the beans seem to have a better texture, not so doughy, not cooked to flour like red lentils, but whole and smooth like brown lentils. The texture is really interesting with the beans, still whole, adding a new dimension - I wonder if they have been cooked less to keep their shape? Unlike the one dimensional sweetness of other azuki sweets, this seems to have a slight sourness. Matcha is quite bitter, but I can't seem to taste it in the kintsuba, and I can't help but wonder if it's really just there to provide a colour contrast - which, frankly, it does very well.
So here we go: Sakura Box Two!
Yokan Roll Cake
Very simple packaging, almost boring, but I love yabane (feather/arrow pattern) that I'm going to give it a pass [although I just realised, you can't actually see the yabane pattern in my photo). Yabane is usually colour on a white background, so my poor little mind was having fun being blown trying to decide if the white was the white, or whether the translucent was the neutral (I spend a lot of time in my mind, exciting things happen there) Another castella, but very different from the ones in the first box, not as moist as the two 'traditional' slices, but less dry than the strawberry 'sandwich'. As you can see, it looks like a mini jam/cream roll - just like Grandma used to buy, but with a square of azuki jelly in the middle. For some reason, the photo makes one of the mini-cakes look bigger than the other. What is quite clear is there is not a lot of cream between the spirals, which is a pity, I think it would have added something. Smell wise, well, it's cake. Good cake, for sure but cake. Nothing to write home about. There is a slight bitterness in the taste, which is pretty much negated by the overall sweetness. I don't get any of the grassy/liquorice-y notes that I did in the matcha and azuki bean castella of the first box. The cube of azuki in the middle is very smooth, very sweet; the whole treat is really a contrast of softnesses, which is why I think cream, used more than just a binding agent would have been interesting. Design wise, with the spiral and the square, it's very chic and geometric.
Matcha Mochi Monaka:
These monaka also have a very boring packaging, and don't make up for it with a chic design. The wafer is pale and round, except for a thin stripe across them (from the cooking process). The only real smell is from the rice-paper shells, even when I open the clam-shells. The deep green inside reminds me of the mer-people trapped in Ursula's cave in The Little Mermaid, thick and gloopy, and I think I can see a pearl, glimmering palely in the gloom.
Very poetic.
At first lick, it is all grainy sweet azuki, then the bitter grass of the matcha develops.
When eating it all together the matcha develops a spinach-like profile, if spinach can be sweet, perhaps with a minty element. The mochi pearl is very noticeable, but by texture (and colour) not by taste. It's an odd change of resilience in the mouth, and it is so strangely familiar. Before now, I haven't eaten much in the way of Japanese sweets, so I can't place it except to be absolutely certain I have eaten mochi before. Perhaps I shared some with my best friend in high-school, who studied Japanese.
It really was like deja vu.
Yamecha Monaka
The first (and only) casualty in box two is a monaka, and I'm really getting used to the concept of monaka. The smell is roasted rice but with an almost meaty scent, umami-like. The taste is like that too, meaty and yet grassy, and it's a sweet and savory flavour. The herbal taste is still there, but it's not so strongly minty, more like dried herbs, dried mint than fresh. The thing that really surprises me is how ... normal ... this feels. Before, there was always a feeling of something new, exploring. Now, I am walking familiar streets in a foreign city. I feel comfortable here. I can let my mind wander, enjoying the day. The texture is thick and pleasantly chewy. It's a shame that the wafer has broken, because the design on it is clearly very cute - I guess it's a little bag. The packaging is quite boring really, with a plain white tea-cup - it looks like a package of tea, and I think it's a pity they didn't incorporate the debossed design on the packet.
Sakura Sugar Candy
I had to take this photo with a filter to try and get the sugar-grain texture on the 'candies' (being Australian I loathe the word 'candy'). They're very small and delicate - they look like chips of turkish-delight in marshmallow, or terrazzo flooring (I don't like terrazzo, but lots of people do!) then rolled in sugar. They're very soft to feel - and you do want to squish them a little - about half-way between a home-made marshmallow, and a shop marshmallow. The packaging is very simple, but the 'candies' are very small - I wish they used the Japanese word for it, because I'd love to do more research on them. The smell is just generically sugary, perhaps with a small fruitiness. The taste is pretty much the same! The agar is very soft (for agar) and the sugar crystals add a good crunchiness. The fruitiness of the taste is somewhere between cherry and bubblegum which works for me.
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On a related note, on the scarf you can see a little rabbit on a 'tasting board' - I believe she is a wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets) bunny, possibly made of mochi, probably for the Tsuki-mi (moon viewing) which takes place in autumn: she's next to what I think is a kikyo (Japanese Bell/Balloon Flower) which are one of the seven autumn flowers. I hope the September/October box will be rabbit themed!
Plum Yokan
You may have guessed from the amount of photos, how much I love this plum yokan. It's packaging is adorable, with just the right mix of traditional (the sumi-e style branch) and the graphic (the plum blossom), it's paper, not plastic and when you open the wrapping paper, it's dead cute on the inside. It kind of looks like what people in the UK call 'Jazzies' and we call 'Freckles', with itty-bitty 100s-and-1000s on top made from rice paper. Underneath, it looks like a piece of white chocolate, presumably for easy breaking and sharing with your friends. It has a lovely sour plum taste and smell, with a caramelised undertone in the taste. Overall, it reminds me of a monaka, with the 100s-and-1000s substituted for the upper shell. The texture of the filling is thicker than jam, probably approaching quince paste. It's golden and translucent with little flecks of fruit through out.
Soft Milk and Strawberry Baumkuchen
After the Castella revelation, I had a good sideways look at baumkuchen - 'that sounds Germanic', I said to myself. Turns out, it is - it translates to 'tree'/'log' cake (think 'Tanenbaum' 'O Christmas Tree'). Why? because it is made of concentric rings. The yellow and pink are obvious, but each of them is made from seven or eight layers of batter (this is not really clear in the product image) - I thought they were made with 'cookie-cuttered' pieces slotted inside the other. Once I had opened the baumkuchen up (after admiring the by-line 'For happy lively time with your friends, let's relax with confectionaries' - words to live by) the thin layers became very noticeable (the packaging, while simple, really allows the colours of the cake to shine). At first I thought it was a really really anal version of a sponge roll, but after peeling off a few layers I realised they are concentric, not spiral. The only way I can think of to do this would be to pour the batter onto a horizontal tube and cook each layer while rotating to cook evenly. Turns out - that's what they do - (Wikipedia calls it a 'spit-cake' which sounds severely un-appetising. Let's call it a rotisserie cake!) I love working things out from first principles! This Germanic cake's introduction and popularity, unlike the Castella, can be attributed to one person (and his wife). Karl and Elsie Juchheim, German bakers living in China during WWI became prisoners of the Japanese and were sent to Ninoshima island in Hiroshima prefecture. For the Hiroshima Prefectural commercial fair the POWs were invited to showcase their nationalities delicacies and goods. The Baumkuchen is now more commonly baked in Japan than in Germany in the traditional style.
It really is that awesome
Now, I'm not saying this cake is not delicious - it is. But the best part of it is peeling it, layer by layer (perhaps while watching an 80's fantasy movie...). It's moist but not squishy and it has a pleasant strawberry smell. There isn't a lot of flavour difference between the two colours, it's subtle, but it is there. Since milk is not (or was not) commonly drunk in Asia until recent times, Westerners are said to smell like spoiled milk, so I wonder if the milk flavour is stronger for them.
That's all for today, but I'll see you soon!
