Handsome boy (who recently likes to hide in the improbable space between the bookshelf and the chair) is *extremely* optimistic about the odds that at least one of these is for him. He's absolutely deluded, but I can't blame him; they are delicious. I'm not even much of a cookies & cream person, but they are so intensely flavored, it's very satisfying.
A little bit obsessed with this very intense poster:
Bonus:
What are some nice things I can do with fresh mint?
All I can really think of is mint tea, cocktails, fresh spring rolls, and Thai beef salad.
A pretty perplexing conbini find: a mix of Japanese-style fried chicken and vegetarian “chicken” nanban. The perplexing part is that the veggie chicken would’ve been just fine if they didn’t give me anything to compare it to. And they didn’t have to! It just tastes like super-processed chicken nugget… until you eat it immediately after a bite of actual chicken. Actual chicken which, again, they didn’t have to give you! I guess this is significant in that it represents a new frontier in the fight to keep Japan confusing for vegetarians? Not to imply that it’s bad—just don’t go out of your way to try it maybe.
Iggy had a hard day and is exhausted and wants zero love, but despite his choice of all the different beds and cushions and furniture, he just wants to sleep on top of my unwashed shirt 🥺
Tom yum kung dipping noodles! The clear soup on the right is to dilute the tom yum broth if it’s too strong. It wasn’t but it was nice to have a second soup!
Was oddly anxious to leave the yakitori restaurant, even though it was cheap and delicious and I kinda wanted another stick or two. Then I stood up to pay and suddenly realized:
Oh, it was pain! It dawned on me that I had been super uncomfortable the whole time. My bones are nearly 36 years old—that’s three cycles of the Chinese zodiac, officially too many to spend the evening sitting on a folded-over pillow tied with twine to a milk crate. No matter how delicious their chili pepper miso is......
Is this not the cutest thing? A little cake shaped like an ayu sweetfish. It's filled with red bean and mochi. So many pretty but forgettable wagashi are some combination of cake and red bean, but the mochi in the filling gives this a really unique and appealing texture. I'd absolutely get it again!
Our little dauphin is intently, intensely focused on receiving his due portion of my dacquoise. Which was very tasty, poor thing. I enjoyed all 100% of it.
Post-workout conbini haul! Lemon sour, two packs of the food topping goo Iggy goes crazy for, tough gummies in “grapey punch” flavor for the husband, and impulse buy: Pride hand towel that was always sold out last year. Gummies are great, booze is good, doggo *loves* the goo, haven’t used the towel yet but Imabari cotton is supposed to be make the best towels!
Shirokuma Kinako frozen dessert from 7-11! Kinako is sweet roasted soybean powder (tastes not unlike peanut butter). This is a thick, crunchy shaved ice flavored with kinako, topped with shiratama mochi, red bean, kinako-dusted warabi mochi, kinako whipped cream, condensed milk, and molasses. I don’t even usually like condensed milk or molasses but I really enjoyed this! Will definitely get it again in the summer.
Forgive the glamour shots and the wall of text—it’s just that I’ve been in Japan since 2009 and this is the first time I’ve ever baked cookies here. For years, I didn’t have an oven (practically no one did), and then I had a very low-powered oven, and now my expensive, electric, relatively-low-powered oven can only fit 6 at a time and it takes forever and they bake unevenly so it rarely seems worth the work, but….. look, cookies!
The recipe is these brown butter sourdough discard chocolate chip cookies. They’re very tasty (and a good balance of crispy-chewy), but quite sweet with the Japanese chocolate. I topped them with a little pink flaky salt but they would be great with a lot. I’d also reduce the sugar next time, maybe substantially, but I know sugar is a structural component in cookies and don’t wanna fuck them up. How much can I cut, I wonder.
Also the sour flavor wasn’t at all noticeable, even after letting the dough sit about 24 hours (recipe recommends 4 to 24). I still have tons of dough waiting to freeze so maybe I’ll see if it’s sourer tomorrow and then freeze it once the flavor gets interesting. That’ll be nice—I won’t have to wait 13 years for the next batch :)
So do these cookies actually get sour? I never noticed any difference in flavor, and I baked after letting the dough sit for 1, 2, and 5 days, and then again after freezing it. It could be because the discard I used was quite young, so you might get a more pronounced sour flavor with older discard, but I feel confident that it doesn't continue to ripen after the dough is mixed (or at least not beyond the 24-hour mark).
Next time (since I will be making these again), I would use older/sourer discard, nicer dark chocolate, less sugar, and flaky salt on top. I'd also like them a bit crispier—maybe that means I skip the resting? Slightly reduce the wet ingredients? Someone who actually bakes, feel free to tell me what!
Even though I can’t take a good photo, I had to stop and appreciate the night hydrangeas, who might not be here after the typhoon
Still here! So I will also try to make it through another week
i like the typography on this sign, it's like an old internet rant page