Sakuraco
Box Seven - September 2021

Part One

August 28

It's just starting to think about being Spring at my house, the almond tree at the back is flowering, but not the wisteria. Either way the day was so balmy I decided to enjoy my box on the the balcony.

I am wearing:

– Burnt Orange and White Komon with wave and fan pattern (possibly a Ougi-nagashi)

- Indigo blue pre-tied nagoya obi with peony and kikyo design

- Blue and White striped knit-top from Temt with complentary bow and 'crystal' brooch

– Coral-coloured earrings bought at an Op-Shop for $2

– Make-up inspired by Rae Morris' "Burnt Copper Eyes" in Make-up: The Ultimate Guide

– Quick-Flicks blue eyeliner over layed with essence LONGlasting eyepencil in 'I have a Green'

– Avon 'Personified Plum' - can you tell it's my favourite?

- Mixture of bronze, copper and coral colured eyeshadows from a make-up palette c.2011

- BYS bronzer in 'Baked high'

Big vase of Irises, Freesias and Geralton Wax.

Theoretically all these flowers could have come from the garden - or railway reserve - and some of the freesias do. Irises are a bit earlier in the year in our garden, and a lot paler

The Box:

Twice a year or so we have 'Verge Collection', which is where everyone brings out the things that they no longer want and pile them up on the verges for everyone to go through until the council comes pick it up. Some people have no clue what Op-Shops (thrift shops) are for, so you can pick up some real gems if you're willing to fossick.

Behold! My new vintage yellow cardboard suitcase!

Some time in the next decade I'm going to upcycle it with a Hogwarts/Ravenclaw theme.

"I shall take it home and see if I can't make it up any better"

The Magazine and Postcard:

September's postcard is a close-up of a round Japanese lantern. I'm not sure if the picture is old, or modern with an aged feel. Doesn't really matter I suppose! The Magazine shows a multilevel red and white stage surrounded by lanterns. Matsuri means 'festival' in Japanese (the magazine implies this, but doesn't make it explicit). I assume that at least one of the 'Great Edo Festivals' highlighted in the magazine take place in August/September, mostly because our coverage of the Olympic/Paralympics also mentioned Matsuri, and the 'Lympics, are, after all, the greatest festival in the world.

Japan's 4 Seasons Side Dish

I guess I'm a little bit disappointed in the side dish. After having three black lacquer-ware dishes I was hoping for something a bit different. More importantly, it is very clearly not representing the four seasons (and doesn't match the previous Four seasons designs): it shows autumn's maple leaf (kaede which has turned red = momuji) and spring's cherry blossom. I'd like to be petty and ask how one tells the difference between kaede and momuji when the leaf is depicted in a full colour, but I'm pretty sure that would get me marked out as an idiot. The side plate is approximately 12.5 cm across. I think I'm feeling grumpy.

So, here we go! Sakuraco Box Seven!

The Food:

Tiramisu Baumkuchen

There's a lot to like about this: a German sweet crossed with a Italian dessert made in Japan (...don't mention the war...) After a bad experience in 2014 or so, Coffee and I parted ways. Tiramisu got caught in the middle. Sometimes we get along, other times we don't. This one is just right. Firstly, the packaging is red/gold on the front with a simple gold back, giving it a great autumnal feel. The whole thing has a soft, creamy mocha smell, and it tastes like tiramisu - no really! Since tiramisu can suffer from soggy-cake syndrome (as well as mine and Coffee's history) I don't often order it or make it.

This is just perfect, perfectly balanced flavour, perfectly balanced cake.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

The white ring is a simple vanilla cake, so probably the best way to eat this is by biting into it, not unwrapping it.

Tokyo Banana Manju

In my seven boxes, so far I have come to the conclusion that apart from the obvious 'white friendly' sweets (castella, baumkuchen) my favourite sweets are the manju. And these banana ones are just so stinking cute. There is just no way to see these without knowing that they are banana flavour - adorable simplified fruit on the packaging, all in monochrome yellow, with just a punch of pink to shake it up. The cakes/manju themselves are also banana shaped (though the centre is about the same yellow; it would have been cool if it was paler)

In fact there are really only two problems - firstly that the favour tastes rather fake (think Allen's Bananas, which they really resemble) and second, that there are two of them! Because I don't like banana - I'm like that cat that gags at the smell of broccoli.

The coating is peeling a little on the wagashi (I pressed it back on so you can't really tell) and this is more bananary than the white bean and banana filling.

Kobayashi Mentaiko Beans

I'm not a Star Trek person (sometimes I find the militant humanism a little irritating), but even I know the famous Kobayashi Maru test (sum: it's a computer simulation of a no-win scenario, and is presumed to be named after Teruhiko Kobayashi). This Kobayashi is a little more famous for snacks than philosophical conundra (I assume) and I love the maiko on the packaging (the irony being of course that geisha are not allowed to eat publicly).

The 'cod roe' from the tasting notes, menitaiko from the title and caviar from the packing all mean the same thing (just in case you were wondering). When the packet is opened there is a smell of peanuts and a hint of spice. The actual contents look like squashed popcorn (a bit) and some of them rattle. Despite the smell, that is the soy bean in the middle (not a peanut).

They're dark with chilli in all the crevasses, and deep orange around (they kind of look like Jupiter or Geonosis). The taste moved in waves, from spicyness to peanut/ soybean, then very spicy, and on to a sweet and spicy finish, with a bitter-spicy aftertaste. There's an interesting hint of tomato; that is, a sour-sweetness. Strangely, there is no real fishy flavour. Because the 'beans' have been rolled in the coating, each has a different level of heat. At the hottest level it was a bit too much for me, but mostly about right. I originally thought that the sweetness must be coming from the soybean, but that seems to be just from the crunchy shell.

Kaminari Ginger Okoshi

The tasting notes tell us that Kaminari-Okoshi are named after Asakusa Kaminarimon.

*frantic Googling*

Asakusa is a district of Tokyo - it is famous for the Sensoji temple, of which the Kaminari Gate forms the main entrance. It is decorated with an enormous red lantern which has the kanji for "Thunder Gate" on the front (Kaminari means Thunder Gate), and the gate encloses Buddhist and Shinto gods of water, wind and thunder. Read more here. The okoshi packets display part of the roof of the gate.

The plastic wrappers fade from opaque to transparent, with a washi-paper look applied to it, even at the back of the package. There is a sharp ginger smell, like dried/ powdered ginger, rather than fresh or candied ginger to the okoshi. Okoshi basically look like LCM bars made with mini rice (apparently it is cooked and then dried), but is rigid and not sticky, more like an edible building material. Which is not to say it's bad - on the contrary,

my suspicion is that Japanese witches use houses of okoshi to lure in woodcutter's children so they can cook them. These ones even taste like ginger! There are also peanuts and sesame mixed in with the rice, but mostly the flavour is like a ginger tea when it's been steeped just a bit too long and it gets those honey flavours. The peanut's had been inadvertantly omitted from the allergens in the guide - Sakuraco published a correction later on their social media.

Festival Castella Bites

As we remember, castella is a cake that has made it's way to Japan from Spain via Portuguese traders. It's eggy and fluffy. These bites are a different way of eating them than the usual cake/ pancakes we've encountered. These are probably a more evolved form of the doriyaki - from batter poured in circles on a hot plate, to batter poured into a mold. I suspect that they are made with a 'folding' mold - that is the half cooked batter is folded over on it's self which accounts for the denser texture in the middle (the air bubbles have been squeezed out) and the pattern on both sides. The designs on each bite are good fun, if a little strange - crabs, lobsters, jellyfish, corn, bananas...

Penguin... Lobster..? Corn/ Strawberry

The packaging is simple and fun, done basically in three colours (red, yellow and white) with accents of purple, with drawings of some of the shapes you can find - pumpkins, seals, radishes. And they're very nice, but after a few they get a bit... dull.

So.

One of the things I love to do is get a dozen supermarket cinnamon doughnuts, which are never cinnamoned enough, heat the oven, roll them in Housemade doughnut sugar TM and heat them until they are crispy and crunchy!

I had some left over Housemade doughnut sugar TM so I rolled my castella around and popped them in the oven (and then forgot about them - ooops. A little bit too crispy).

Doughnut Sugar.

2 Tbs caster sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp mixed spice

1/4 tsp cardamom

Shake it up, roll your bites around, place them on a tray, into a 180 degree oven, turn them over, heat a bit more and Wagashi's your uncle.

that one is definitely a banana

Hanabi Jelly

Hanabi means 'Fireworks', and mostly has do do with the refractive nature of the domeshaped jelly/pot warping the jelly beads at the bottom.

Like most places in the world, Japan use fireworks during summer festivals (although, when you think about it, it makes more sense in winter when it gets dark earlier and things are less likely to catch fire. We were staying with some cousins of my Mum in England several years ago, during the winter when they let off some leftover fireworks for us. When we explained that Aussies can't buy fireworks privately, they nodded sagely '...because of Health and Safety'. When we told them that it was because things were so dry that they would burn, they gave us a look like a duck contemplating merchant banking...*)

Anyway.

This is a jelly and it was insanely difficult to open: the little sheet of tearable plastic refused. I had to cut it open with scissors. As for the taste... Well, the jelly has a soft, generic fruitiness, appley etc., but that didn't surprise me after the previous boxes. What did surprise me were the jelly beads. I expected them to be the "green plum, orange, grapefruit, raspberry and melon" mentioned in the tasting notes. They were pretty much same-same-but-firmer than the surrounding jelly. There was no real 'oomph', which was a real shame.

*If you get that reference, we can be friends!

Roppo Manju

Strangely enough, these super simple manju were my favourite things in this box. Simple, witty and artless**, they weren't trying to be clever or fancy. "We are cubed shaped manju, and we do it very well". They're wrapped in clear plastic with two bands of brown at the sealing ends and a roundel of the company logo in the middle. We get three in the box, and remind me of dice, like we should play some kind of delicious game with them - Roppo means 'six-sided' (I wonder if that always refers to a cube or can be used for a hexagon?

*googles*

No, but it still has the 'Ro' element, which, I assume means six.)

I don't know if I will ever love azuki as a flavour, seeking it out, but the way it is used in manju, bringing out the spicy-vanilla flavours, and the inherant dryness, is something I like

** the art of making things that are insanely difficult look easy