This a very bizarre fast food option. Well, what do you call it as a start? Noodles? Burgers? This innovative fast food is the brain child of Sadaishi Koji with his burger stand in bright red van at the corner of the car park of the Costa Yukuhashi shopping complex in Yukuhashi, Fukuoka Prefecture. Every day, during after work hours you’ll find women stopping by this van and just buying the ever innovative and obviously delicious Kan-nana Noodle Burger.

It looks like a hamburger but instead of a meat patties, you’ll find roasted pork and noodles that have been fried together into a patty so they hold together in the burger bun. They also have a burger will season chicken balls as its filling too.

Personally, I am not too sure about eating a burger with noodle patties because that’s like eating white rice with potatoes…carbs on carbs just doesn’t work for me that well….i am sure it tastes good but the health conscious me is screaming “ARE YOU NUTS?!”. :P I’d go for the chicken ball ones though :) Do leave a comment if any of you have tried this :)

I know Japanese love their octupi and other cephalopods, namely the squids or cuttlefish. They even think the ink drink-worthy *squirms* Okay, i love eating them as well although i don’t know about drinking their ink. The Japanese calls them tako, you will see them braised in a reddish kind of sauce in sushi places and they are really, really delicious! I have a recipe to share. A curry recipe that you might love, which involves octupi (btw, octupi is just plural for octopus if you didn’t know). It’s very simple as the curry is great with rice or with bread. I know the Japanese love their chicken and beef curry which they slather over plates of rice, perhaps this is something new for you guys to try. Before the recipe, here’s a cutesy (or grotesque) picture from my boiling pot of curried octopi :P

It might just turn you vegetarian eh? :P

Anyway, without further adue, here’s the recipe:

1/4 cup of curry base (blend 3 onions, 1 knob of garlic, 1inch ginger, keep the extras for other curries :))
1 teaspoon of black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon of fennel
1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
1 star anise
3 cloves
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1/4 cup curry powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon paprika powder
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoons oil
5 octopus
2 tomatoes, halved
1 medium sized eggplant, chunks

Method:
1. Heat oil in pan and add all the ingredients in except water, octopi, tomatoes and eggplant. Saute until fragrant for about 8 mins.
2. Add water and let it come to a simmer before you add your eggplant.
3. After that, add your octopi in and tomatoes, cooked for 10 mins under medium heat.
4. Scoop out your octopi and tomatoes and let the broth simmer under low heat for another 10 mins.
5. Serve your octopi curry with rice and freshly sliced cucumbers.

Source: A Series of Kitchen Experiments

I was a little at lost about how to categorize this, should it be strange or savory or both? In the end, what’s strange to me may not be strange to the Japanese people because to them horse meat sashimi is a delicacy. Horse meat is not strange to many culture in the world. Places like France, Belgium, Quebec, Poland, Kazakhstan eat horse meat too.

This delicacy of horse meat is called called sakura (桜) or sakuraniku (桜肉, sakura means cherry blossom, niku means meat) because of the meat’s pink colour. It is very chewy and can be served raw as very chewy sashimi in thin slices dipped in soy sauce, often with ginger and onions added. In this case, it is called basashi (Japanese: 馬刺し). Fat, typically from the neck, is also found as basashi, though it is white, not pink. Horse meat is also sometimes found on menus for yakiniku (a type of barbecue), where it is called baniku (lit., horse meat) or bagushi (lit., skewered horse); thin slices of raw horse meat are sometimes served wrapped in a shiso leaf.

Kumamoto and Matsumoto city are famous for basashi, and it is common in the Tohoku region as well.

Perhaps I WILL name this as strange as there is also a dessert made from horse meat called Basashi ice cream. I’m at lost for words for a few second after reading that line, but I recovered quickly when i thought about other ice cream flavors such as natto in the market as well. The company that makes it is known for its unusual ice cream flavours, many of which have limited popularity.

Source: wikipedia

WHoa…I love wasabi to bits but I didn’t know it existed in beer form :P I don’t really like beer …has anyone tried it? Is it spicy like that kick you get from eating wasabi paste?

You know, i think the japs should have a wasabi+soysauce beer…cos the flavors go so well together :P

I never thought I’d see the day where soy sauce is made into ice cream. I have one question- WHY? I’ve seen many weird stuff being made into ice cream, even stuff like asparagus but soy sauce is just weird. I can understand the salty factor which a little of it do enhances flavors but to make a whole tub of soy sauce ice cream is just weird and beyond me.

Has anyone tried it yet? I would give it a go, seeing that I’d eat practically anything but I don’t think it’s a very popular flavor here.

Source: MSN Mainichi Daily News

I know the term weird is purely subjective so I am going to showcase a list of Japanese drinks that are weird to me:

1. Hoppy- Now, Hoppy is actually a beer flavored non alcoholic drink. If anyone’s tasted beer, it’s bitter aftertastes can make you feel like throwing up. I don’t know why anyone would want to have a non-alcoholic drink that tastes like beer? I thought ppl drink beer because it’s a cheap source of alcohol. But this drink sorta defies it purpose for me. But I suppose, it’s easier to accept that some peoople just like the taste of beer. The only beer that I can tolerate and actually like is Bud Light. I guess Hoppy is mainly a mixer drink - most commonly with Shōchū (a Japanese distilled alcoholic beverage).

2. Aojiru - I don’t know about you, i love my veggies but I don’t like drinking them. Green drinks that looks something out of the sewers just don’t appetize me much….:/ Aojiru is actually liquidfied kale that is very healthy for you. I suppose if I close my eyes, I’ll swallow it.

3. Calpis - This carbonated drink is milky. MILKY! The only time i tried something carbonated and milky, my stomach almost gave up on me. I did the coke and milk combo out of curiousity when I was a kid. I was a curious kid and curiousity almost killed me, i kid you not. This drink tastes like vanilla, so I supppose you can imagine vanilla coke and milk together. It might not be too bad I suppose but the gas and the milk just ugh…doesnt’ do it for me. I think it’s a weird drink because of it. Calpis gains a humorous connotation with English speakers because the name sounds like cow piss when spoken aloud. In Norwegian and Swedish the name sounds similar to ‘cold piss’. LOL.

I have three today. I’ll post moreif I can find more that I find weird. Maybe some of you might want to tell me your experience with these drinks. They may seem weird to me but to some of you out there, I am sure you have your happy stories to tell about them :) If you do, that is.

I have to run, i have to be off somewhere! See you guys next week!

When I was a little girl, I want to eat dorayaki so much that I begged my mom to find it for me. At the time, I was a big fan of the comic Doraemon. And Dorayaki is Doraemon’s favorite food! The comic’s translated from Japanese, of course. I love Doraemon, the cute little robotic cat that doesn’t look like a cat because its ears got eaten by mice, hence it explains Doraemon’s eternal fear for rodents.

Anyway, about Dorayaki, it looked absolutely delicious in the comic book - i used to imagine how it’d taste like. Little did i know that dorayaki’s actually made out of two pancakes sandwiching red adzuki bean paste (or just simply red bean paste). Red bean paste is used in both Chinese and Japanese cuisine for desserts, mostly.

It’s been years since I craved dorayaki after I knew what it’s made of. I could roughly imagine how it’d taste like. I like red bean paste, I have had them in Chinese pancakes, mooncakes and such. But with pancakes? I rather stick to my maple syrup and butter :)

Here’s a simple recipe of Dorayaki from About.com:

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 cup flour
* 2/3 cup sugar
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 3 tbsps water
* 3 eggs
* 3/4 pound anko (sweet azuki beans)
* *vegetable oil for frying

PREPARATION:
Put eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk very well. Dissolve baking soda in water. Add the water in the egg mixture. Add sifted flour in the egg mixture gradually. Heat a frying pan and lightly oil it. Pour a scoop of the batter in the pan and make a small pancake (*about 4 inches in diameter.).

Turn over when bubbles appear on the surface. Repeat this process to make 8-10 pancakes. Cool the pancakes. Make pairs of pancakes and put a scoop of sweet red bean paste (also called anko red bean) between them like a sandwich.

*Makes 4 servings.

Well, I think I am gonna try this out and see how it goes. First, I’ll need to make my own red bean paste. If any of your have tried them out, do let me know how they’re turn out. :)

Source: Wikipedia; Go Japan

It says on its package: “Hi Technical Taste”….whatever that means. Anyway, this gum is loaded with all the caffiene goodies that will jolt you right up when you need it. It contains, Vitamin B-3, ginseng and oolong tea. Now how about that for a triple shot? The ads for this gum is real funny too with Jean Claude Van Damme hyping it up with his kungfu kicks and moves. The most I saw of a commercial for a gum was two people chewing their teeth off and grinning like nuts.

The flavor for both is intensely minty. Ingredients in Black Black Gum are: sugar, starch syrup, grape sugar, erisuritol, oolong tea extract, gingko extract, chrysanthemum flower extract, gum base, flavorings, coloring agents (cacao, gardenia), caffeine, niacinamide.

Get some of those gums today if you can - I can safely promise that it will not be like any gum you’ve tasted before. Promise.

:P

Source: ThinkGeek

When I was a little girl, I loved watching the Ghostbusters and the one character that I remember most is Slimer. He’s this green little slimey ghost that oozes and leaves trails of green goo everywhere he went. Now, I was fascinated by the goo even though I can safely say that I was also disgusted by it - fascination and disgust can bring a very interesting combo of feelings in a person.

I find that that combo of mixed feeling came in handy when I was given Nattō in a Japanese restaurant - a type of preserved soy beans. It’s not green but the texture of the slime reminded me of Slimer’s trail goo. I was fascinated as I played with it with my chopsticks - swirled it around and poked at it - and in all those times, it just gets slimier and slimier till I could bear it no more. I had to taste it.

Now why would I want to taste something that smells like funk and looks like the filth left behind by a fictional cartoon character? I don’t know. I was mortally digusted but I wanted to also try.

And so I did.

I didn’t vomit but I didn’t like it all that much either. It’s slimey inside your mouth but it has a little nutty taste with the perfume of sewers to round up the taste. If you drink alfalfa juice, you’ll find it tastes almost the same - almost. But the natto has a slight sourness to it…let’s just put it this way, natto tastes like a combination of alfalfa juice, peanuts and blue cheese.

I ate it with my rice and with lots of soy sauce - it didn’t taste half as bad.

It appears that Nattō is a very nutritious food. It’s got a very high protein content and vegetarians would benefit from it greatly. Nattō is most commonly eaten at breakfast to accompany rice, possibly with some other ingredients, for example soy sauce, tsuyu broth, mustard, scallions, grated daikon, okra, or a raw quail egg. In Hokkaidō and northern Tohoku region, some people dust nattō with sugar. Nattō is also commonly used in other foods, such as nattō sushi, nattō toast, in miso soup, salad, as an ingredient in okonomiyaki, or even with spaghetti or as fried nattō. A dried form of nattō, having little odor or sliminess, can be eaten as a nutritious snack. There is even nattō ice cream.

I shuddered to think about natto ice cream. Anyway, I think it would be find for savory food but not for the sweet…it would just be weird. Imagine have fried chicken flavored ice cream. Along those lines yea.

But would i eat natto again? Sure. I didn’t hate it and would certainly love to try it with other ingredients. I am thinking Nattō with…I don’t know any other way of eating except with rice really. Oh well.

Source: Wikipedia

I don’t really know what to make out of this. I got this from this site. All I know is how wasabi tastes like and how chocolate tastes like, individually. But i just can’t quite seem to put the two flavors together. I know that it’s normal to add some chili powder into chocolate cakes because it enhances the flavor but wasabi isn’t like chili…the type of hotness is just totally on a different level.

I just can’t fathom how it’d taste like. And it seems like even American chocolate makers are adding wasabi as a flavor to their confectionary. It must be good, otherwise, they wouldn’t be making it. Look at this American chocolate brand, Vosges Haut’s wasabi, ginger and black sesame seed chocolate bar:-

That must be one HOT chocolate bar….the packaging looks good though. Vosges Haut is a well known maker of exotic chocolates. Check out their site for other flavor while i try to imagine wasabi and chocolate still.

Vosges Haut’s Exotic Candy Bars