Meiji has once again provided a worthy candidate for my peculiar obsession with kooky Japanese sweets. Tasty Crunch are nuggets of Hokkaido milk chocolate studded with (the packaging doesn’t lie) salted french fry potato chips. And to be honest, they’re actually not that half bad!

I spotted this snack in the Great Eastern (Russell St) and Central Grocery (Melbourne Central) stores around town. So if ya hankerin for both a sweet and savoury snack, this this will surely satisfy - on both fronts - in the one snack.

Waiting for public transport (which, by the way, is fast becoming a Melbournian pastime) is not such a bad thing occassionally.

I was catching up with some mates for a Laotian dinner over in Bridge Rd, and patiently waiting for my ride to arrive at the corner of Collins and Spring Street tram stop. My eyes wandered to the left. Urgh…cowhide cowboy boots are so not cool. My eyes wandered to the right. When is this bloody tram going to get here? My eyes wandered upwards. Hmm. Funky people drinking it up in a rather innocuous second story window, above which the sign, Recorded Music Salon, catches my eye. What the?

Okay, yeah. I may be a little slow on the uptake here, as apparently this one has been around for a wee while (see here and here). But it’s newish to me, so I returned a few days later to sample their lunch.

It’s one of those places that instantly feels “cool”. I hate ascribing to that tenet, because such “feeling” is so overtly contrived. But the designers got it bang on - it is sophisticatedly retro in a seventies kind of way. Think polished timber, earthy walls, natural vinyls (no pun intended), bronze features, and the most kick-arse pottery light features (are they vases and plates?).

But on to the food. EG went the pizza with jamon and manchego. Just look at it. Does anything else need to be said how good those two ingredients on a pizza can be?

I went with a more sedate toasted ciabatta filled with chicken, rocket, roasted peppers and manchego cheese. It too was pretty good with solid ingredients, although at $12ish perhaps a little on the pricey side (for a regular weekday lunch anyway).

I’d like to come back and check this place out at night - but I fear I may be overrun with the-too-cool-for-school crowd; an unfortunate side-effect of such funky places.

Both EG and I absolutely adore tofu - silken, firm, puffed or frozen. We eat it dressed with tamari and sesame oil, or pan fried in teriyaki ginger sauce, or stuffed with fish paste in a soup, or cubed in miso. I could go on. In fact…I will. I have even converted EG into the delights of tofu mixed in with our morning breakfast of five grain porridge!

So we were quite impressed when we came upon this scrambled tofu dish at Invita, an outdoor cafe at the Queen Victoria Market that professes a somewhat healthy, fresh and organic bent. My only problem with the place is my comfort level in the winter. It really is quite chilling to place ones arse on their cold metal seats and basque in the glory of their tofuness.

Despite that, their coffee is hot (and a good brew to boot), and I can highly recommend their fruit toast as well. The not-bacon on the other hand is an acquired taste and should be avoided at all cost. What travesty.

Anyway, back to the scrambled tofu. The first thing that hit me was the sweetness of caramalised onion and carrot - those babies had been cooking for quite some time. Then rehydrated shitake added some earthiness, tumeric some pepperyness, and wilted spinach some body. And it was all freshened up with long thin slices of cucumber. Some toasted sourdough to the side, and baby, it was health on a plate.

I was so inspired after that (..and Invita, don’t hate me), I decided to recreate the dish at home. Well…they are not bloody open for dinner, are they?

RECIPE: Scrambled Tofu (Invita-style)

1 block of firm organic tofu
2 tbs olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced
1 medium carrot, grated
4 dried shitake mushrooms, rehydrated in hot water for 30 minutes, sliced
A couple of handfuls of baby spinach
1 tsp turmeric
Cracked black pepper and sea salt (to taste)
1 red chilli (optional)
1 cucumber, sliced into strips
Coriander leaves for garnish
Whatever bread you love, toasted

Place olive oil, onions and carrots into a fry pan and cook gently on a low heat for approx 10-15 minutes (you want these to caramalise and sweeten). Add the chilli, turmeric, shitake and spinach and cook until the spinach begins to wilt. Crumble the tofu into the pan and heat through, perhaps turning the heat up just a little to give it a last burst of heat. Note: be careful not to turn the tofu into mush. Season with cracked black pepper and salt.

To serve: place the scrambles on a warmed plate and garnish with cucumber and coriander. Add a toasted bagel or some sour dough and dig in.

EG’s parents took a recent trip to Hokkaido, and bought us back some local treats. So let me present one of the specialities of the region, Hori Corn Chocolate.

The gift box contains the same chocolate done two ways - in a long finger and a bite sized nugget.

It was a rather interesting snack consisting of popped corn and other chewy corn kernel bits smothered in Hokkaido milk white chocolate. It apparently comes in a regular milk chocolate variety as well.

And taste? Well, my feelings are a little ambivalent. The puffed corn is a little on the stale side, although it does amazingly taste corny (in a good way). The chocolate is also sweeter than we would probably have it here.

I give it points for uniqueness, but wouldn’t be too fussed not to have it again.

I picked up the most gorgeous mochi (rice cakes) at the recent Japan Festival in Box Hill. After developing an appreciation for such things in Japan, I was quite upset that I couldn’t seem to find any freshly-made artisan ones here in Melbourne. Alas, we probably still can’t find them as these ones came all the way from New South Wales.

This is a Sakura (cherry blossom) flavoured mochi wrapped in a real pickled cherry blossom leaf. It imparts a definite fragrance and saltiness to the sweet rice dumpling which is filled with sweetened azuki (red bean) paste. Unlike many of the mochi I have seen, the grains of the rice remain intact instead of being pounded to a paste. Isn’t it just beautiful?

These are kashiwa mochi so named after the oak leaf they are wrapped in. They are traditionally made on the 5th May to celebrate Children’s Day in Japan. Like the sakura mochi above, you are not meant to eat the leaf. Inside the pounded glutinous rice exterior was the same sweetened azuki (red bean) paste, although I detected a definite honey flavour to it.

Finally, an assorted pack of mochi, although I don’t know whether some of these might be called something else (wagashi perhaps?). Towards the back was a green mochi filled with azuki, perhaps flavoured with mugwort (I’m guessing here). To the front were two rather unusual sweets. The one to the left was filled with the honey azuki paste mentioned earlier and the exterior was gingerbread in flavour. Yup, that’s right. Gingerbread. And the one to the right tasted just like white bread, and it too was filled with azuki paste and sprinkled with goma (black sesame seeds). Traditional? Hmm…perhaps someone can enlighten me?

Just as an aside, apparently a new craze has hit Japan, and that is the moffle - a cross between a mochi and a waffle. Ooh…I must try me some! Sugoi!

Sette Bello, a rather funky mish mash of modern styling and retro cool, is an Italianesque cafe that is practically within throwing distance of where I live. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have a decent cafe nearby. My only gripe - they’re not open for Sunday breakfast! Ooh, what I’d give for a decent Sunday brekky joint in the CBD. And before you say it, no, Golden Tower is *not* an option.

Claire over at Melbourne Gastronome was the first to blow the lid on this little gem, and I certainly agree with her sentiments.

The first time we visited was for a post-shopping pick-me-up coffee and cannoli (we already know how much I love a good cannoli). The coffee provided the required hit of caffeine with a decent crema, and the cannoli, crunchy chocolate pastry piped full of citron studded ricotta was absolutely da business.

Impressed as we were with what we had experienced already, we decided to go back for breakfast on Saturday. The choice is small but sufficient - toasted brioche with marmalada (that being from the Italian meaning “jam” and not “marmalade”), tomato baked eggs in cazuela (terracotta dish) with spinach or prosciutto, or breakfast pizettes with egg and spinach or prosciutto. There is also a very good selection of will-power-weakening pastries, fruit brioche etc. to tempt those with a sweeter tooth (which is usually me, but on this occassion I needed eggs).

Our breakfast eggs were delightfully simple - two perfectly baked googies nestled deep into freshly wilted spinach and sweet tomato sugo (sauce). It arrived unseasoned - but it really only needed some cracked black pepper as the warm chunks of foccaccia were liberally sprinkled with flakes of sea salt. I really enjoyed this - more so because it wasn’t crappy, greasy bacon and eggs.

So take that as a warning breakfast people. Don’t go expecting a big menu with fry ups, french toast, pancake stacks, bircher museli or fruit salad. What you will get will be done well, and it may take just a little time to reach you (I don’t quite think they’ve hit their food-serving mojo yet - but cut them a little slack, they’re still new). But if you take a loved one and settle in for some good conversation, or mull over a newspaper with a coffee or two, it’ll be just fine.

nb. you may want to catch the updated Sette Bello.

This is the 20th different flavoured Kit Kat I’ve managed to sample (not including versions we get in Australia), and I’m restraining myself from jumping on ebay to order more to fuel my sick obsession (there is apparently a soy sauce flavoured version!). The first two in this post were sourced locally from Great Eastern on Russell St.

First up is Strawberry flavour, which is not my favourite. It is a little too sweet and fruity and kind of like doing a triple shot Strawberry Quik.

Simple white chocolate Kit Kat - simple in design and taste.

This Bitter Green Tea Kit Kat came via EG’s parents who recently came back from Hokkaido. They found it at Narita airport, and apparenty it is limited to the Tokyo region.

I absolutely adore the green tea flavour, which happens to just go ever so well with chocolate in the Kit Kat form. I think this version was done in conjunction with Itoh Kyuemon, a famous sweets shop in Kyoto.

You can look at my other Kit Kat posts here, here, and, oh yes, here.

Two morning markets are held in Takayama daily, the Jinya-mae and the Miyagawa market held along the Miyagawa River in the old part of town. They started in the Edo period and sell everything from fresh fruits and vegetables to pickles, fish, flowers and crafts.

You can sample most of the food too, which made the walk around very enjoyable indeed. The table above was covered with Japanese pickles, which is something I sorely miss. Why can’t we get good, fresh, msg-free and artificial colouring-free pickles in this town? Well we can…I just have to learn to make them!

These beautiful silver saltwater fish come from the smelt family. They are usually grilled and filled with fish roe, commonly known as shishamo. You eat them whole from tip to tail (and yes, that means the head also!). Mmmm…good.

I think this is dried cuttlefish, athough it could very well be another form of cephalopod. I’m not too sure what they do with it, but we did see them shredded and seasoned to eat as a type of beer snack.

Some unusually shaped gourds…

…and some regularly shaped gourds.

And these? I have no idea. If anyone does, please feel free to tell me in the comments.

Dried magnolia leaves (hoba) are popular in the region, both for making the local hoba miso (below) and for cooking miso on a hibachi brazier (see breakfast at Sosuke).

The magnolia leaf acts to permeate the dark red miso with a leafy fragrance, especially when cooked on the brazier.

Small purply black nasu (eggplants). Did you know that eggplants contain nicotine? And eating 20 pounds of them equates to smoking one cigarette? Well…now you do.

Super fresh daikon for 100 yen (equivalent $1AU) each. Look how perky their tops are. They must have been pulled out of the garden fresh that morning.

Three types of dried corn. I’m not too sure if these were for decoration or eating.

Fresh red chillis strung up with leaves (or is it stalk or fronds?) of rice.

Perfect little cherry tomatoes still on the stalk.

Cute cape gooseberries doing their best interpretation of a cherry tomato.

Fresh edamame (soy beans) at $2AU a bag. I could seriously eat a truckload of these things.

Fuji apples of varying quality and weights (and prices). What an excellent selection! And they are so much darker and sweeter than the insipid Fuji varieties we get here.

Now I must admit I wouldn’t have recognised this if I hadn’t been a fan of Iron Chef. These are the famed matsutake mushrooms, which are kind of like the truffle of Japan. The wild specimens had been picked locally from the pine groves and were $50AU a tray. The seller was very excited and impressed when I pointed at them and timidly enquired “Matsutake?”. Arigato Iron Chef.

There was a real carnival atmosphere on the streets of Takayama, with many stall fronts offering a myriad of food for hungry festival-goers. It was an interesting mix of the traditional and the not-so-traditional (as this post will capture). I always find fascinating what people eat during celebrations.

These conch (sea snails) were bubbling away in their own brine, apeture side up, over hot coals. The molluscy gastropods were very popular - the big pile of empty shells testament to that fact.

These local river fish were salted, spiked, smoked over ruddy coals and absolutely delectable. In the days of yore, the fish were cooked over the irori, or traditional hearths found in Japanese homes (especially the thatched ones). We had them for dinner one night, and I practically picked the bones clean.

The okonomiyaki I am used to are normally round, thick, flat and covered with katsuobushi shavings and aonori. This version had been rolled around a stick (for ease of eating on the street I guess), and came with ketchup and mayonnaise or okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise.

What the? Toffee apples in Japan?! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering the proliferation of other Western imports into the country. We didn’t sample these (if memory serves me correctly, I was eating a choco-banana at the time), but looking back, I wonder what flavour the opaque white toffee could have been?

Choco-bananas are pretty self explanatory. Banana, spiked and dipped in chocolate and decorated with different flavoured/coloured chocolate splodges. I actually saw these for sale at the recent Box Hill Japan Festival.

Don’t these toffeed grapes look like jewels? OMG..they were absolutely wonderful. Plump, juicy tom-bowler sized black grapes, covered in crisp toffee that shattered when you bit into them.