What the Hell is This?, Round 5
Jan. 17th, 2003 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynHallo! And welcome to the latest round of What the Hell is This?, a monthly-ish trip through the snack food aisles of Top Quality Food Market and/or Kam Man Foods, two Asian markets in lovely northern New Jersey. Today's round features four entries:
Team Philippines, fielding Ovalteenies brand cocoa candies;
Team Vietnam, fielding Banh Men nuoc cot dua - I can't reproduce the accents, but they're a type of cookie;
And two from Team China, one from Taiwan and one from Shandong. Taiwan's contribution is I-Mei Choco Roll Cookies (Taro flavour), and Shandong's is Chun Xing brand haw flakes.
I'm starting this week with Team Vietnam's entry. These cookies got my attention by looking like, er, maggots. No, seriously. They're about as long as my thumb and crescent-shaped, and they're divided into pale green, pale yellow, and white within the jar. It's a neat little jar with a swing-out handle on top so you can use it as a very small lunch pail once it's empty, but I can't get over the fact that these cookies have ridges running across them the short way that cause them to look like very large maggots. Resemblance to something too scary for Westerners to eat without actually being said product is generally a guarantee for entrance into What the Hell is This?, and these cookies are no exception. According to the label there are three flavours, which I assume correspond to the colours. Unfortunately, I don't recognise two of the flavours - baythoy and soursop - and the third is durian. I assume the durian is responsible for the godawful smell when you open the jar, a kind of combination of garlic and varnish. Despite the stink the cookies taste pretty good. I had one of the white ones; co-workers who have no prior interest in these foods beyond a few experiments with Pocky tested green and yellow. Overall, the agreement was that the cookies were pretty good if you could get past the shape and the fact that they're really, really hard to chew at first. This may be because the ingredients label reads 'sugar, tapioca starch, coconut juice, flavour (durian, baythoy, soursop)'. The sago cookies I had in a prior entry were similarly difficult to bite into. Nevertheless, I gotta say - these aren't such bad cookies, and if you leave 'em out on your desk there's always the chance that the smell will scare off would-be cookie thieves.
Next up are the Ovalteenies. Big disappointment here. First of all, they're basically little pill-shaped hard candies that taste only vaguely chocolatey; second, they're manufactured by Novartis. Even though they are made in the Philippines rather than Novartis' native Switzerland, it still confuses the issue of what team they ought to be. Their only really innovative trait is that they're more chewable than most hard candy. The label says they're fortified with vitamins and minerals, which may account for the pill-like appearance. That in itself is disturbing; I spent quite a lot of time as a child being taught not to treat medicine as candy, so the idea that kids might be eating candy that looks this much like pills touches some basic safety nerves. They cost 25 cents each, but I still feel a touch ripped off.
Next up: I-Mei's choco rolls. I have to admit I thought these were Japanese at first; they look like some of the Collon-type products, and the front of the box features some fragmentary Engrish sentences in the background. But no; manufactured in Taiwan. They're rolled wafer cookies, dipped in white chocolate; they look like the flute-type cookies Pepperidge Farms wants you to dip in whipped cream. These got on the list because they were filled with something purple according to the box photo. I was a tad disappointed when I got them open. It was a sort of mucky light colour that was purple if you thought about it for a bit. I'm familiar with that colour; the bubble tea the store sells has a taro flavour, and that's also light purple. Individually wrapped within the box, they've got a shelf life of 270 days (says so next to the net weight on the ingredients list). They're okay cookies, I guess. My co-worker who tried the greenmaggotcoconut cookies was very enthusiastic about the Choco Rolls. They leave a slightly greasy taste in the mouth after you've eaten them, which may be due to the ... huh. You know, I don't see anything on the label that actually says white chocolate. Unless I'm greatly mistaken that white outer coating is entirely composed of vegetable shortening, which is the only thing that could remotely qualify as coating material. So they're basically cookies dipped in sweetened hardened Crisco. Ew. (Yes, I know, Twinkies are filled with sugared hydrogenated lard and Oreos are filled with vegetable shortening too. This formulation feels kind of nasty.) There are Chinese characters I can't read on the box with a line pointing to the white coating; I can scan them if someone wants to translate.
Finally, the other entry from Team China, the haw flakes. I don't know what haw is. I convinced myself it was a fruit. The ingredients list says 'haw, sugar, water, FD&C Red #40'. There's a place on the label that says 'store in a cool dry place away from direct sunlight', which is somewhat alarming given that every single person who saw the package asked if they were fireworks. Fortunately, when I got one of the small inch-long round packages out of the main package and opened it up, they turned out to look rather like Necco wafers. They're thinner, don't break as easily, have a small amount of chew to them, stick to your teeth a bit more, and taste rather like strawberry Fruit Rollups. Not bad, esp. considering that a package of twelve rolls (each containing around fifteen individual 'flakes') costs 35 cents.
After extensive testing by myself and some of the other folks in my office, the rankings stand:
Team Philippines: Last place. Sorry, but there's nothing of any real note to those Ovalteenies, plus they're disturbing. Not in a good way, either.
Team China: Tied for second place. I really like the haw flakes, but I'm still prying them off my teeth and I'm still not sure exactly what haw is. The choco rolls are okay, but they don't have much to recommend them beyond the weird purple colour on the inside, as there's nothing outstanding about the taro flavour.
Team Vietnam: First place. While the cookies were tough to chew, the fact that they taste okay while looking like maggots counts for a lot. Add to that the royal durian stink in a cookie that really doesn't taste all that bad (ah, yes, I just tried one of the yellow ones - definitely durian), and the fact that the haw flakes are a bit insubstantial for a first-place showing, and it's official: Team Vietnam wins.
Thank you for tuning in! And if any of you can identify the kid on the Vietnamese cookie label, I'd appreciate it. He's got a big ol' red carp or goldfish behind his head looking over his left shoulder, and appears to have a blue dragon sprawled out behind him. The printing's kind of mucky on that part of the label, and I can only make out the first and last Chinese character under him; the first one is jing1 and the last one is zi, with no tone. Again, thanks.
Team Philippines, fielding Ovalteenies brand cocoa candies;
Team Vietnam, fielding Banh Men nuoc cot dua - I can't reproduce the accents, but they're a type of cookie;
And two from Team China, one from Taiwan and one from Shandong. Taiwan's contribution is I-Mei Choco Roll Cookies (Taro flavour), and Shandong's is Chun Xing brand haw flakes.
I'm starting this week with Team Vietnam's entry. These cookies got my attention by looking like, er, maggots. No, seriously. They're about as long as my thumb and crescent-shaped, and they're divided into pale green, pale yellow, and white within the jar. It's a neat little jar with a swing-out handle on top so you can use it as a very small lunch pail once it's empty, but I can't get over the fact that these cookies have ridges running across them the short way that cause them to look like very large maggots. Resemblance to something too scary for Westerners to eat without actually being said product is generally a guarantee for entrance into What the Hell is This?, and these cookies are no exception. According to the label there are three flavours, which I assume correspond to the colours. Unfortunately, I don't recognise two of the flavours - baythoy and soursop - and the third is durian. I assume the durian is responsible for the godawful smell when you open the jar, a kind of combination of garlic and varnish. Despite the stink the cookies taste pretty good. I had one of the white ones; co-workers who have no prior interest in these foods beyond a few experiments with Pocky tested green and yellow. Overall, the agreement was that the cookies were pretty good if you could get past the shape and the fact that they're really, really hard to chew at first. This may be because the ingredients label reads 'sugar, tapioca starch, coconut juice, flavour (durian, baythoy, soursop)'. The sago cookies I had in a prior entry were similarly difficult to bite into. Nevertheless, I gotta say - these aren't such bad cookies, and if you leave 'em out on your desk there's always the chance that the smell will scare off would-be cookie thieves.
Next up are the Ovalteenies. Big disappointment here. First of all, they're basically little pill-shaped hard candies that taste only vaguely chocolatey; second, they're manufactured by Novartis. Even though they are made in the Philippines rather than Novartis' native Switzerland, it still confuses the issue of what team they ought to be. Their only really innovative trait is that they're more chewable than most hard candy. The label says they're fortified with vitamins and minerals, which may account for the pill-like appearance. That in itself is disturbing; I spent quite a lot of time as a child being taught not to treat medicine as candy, so the idea that kids might be eating candy that looks this much like pills touches some basic safety nerves. They cost 25 cents each, but I still feel a touch ripped off.
Next up: I-Mei's choco rolls. I have to admit I thought these were Japanese at first; they look like some of the Collon-type products, and the front of the box features some fragmentary Engrish sentences in the background. But no; manufactured in Taiwan. They're rolled wafer cookies, dipped in white chocolate; they look like the flute-type cookies Pepperidge Farms wants you to dip in whipped cream. These got on the list because they were filled with something purple according to the box photo. I was a tad disappointed when I got them open. It was a sort of mucky light colour that was purple if you thought about it for a bit. I'm familiar with that colour; the bubble tea the store sells has a taro flavour, and that's also light purple. Individually wrapped within the box, they've got a shelf life of 270 days (says so next to the net weight on the ingredients list). They're okay cookies, I guess. My co-worker who tried the green
Finally, the other entry from Team China, the haw flakes. I don't know what haw is. I convinced myself it was a fruit. The ingredients list says 'haw, sugar, water, FD&C Red #40'. There's a place on the label that says 'store in a cool dry place away from direct sunlight', which is somewhat alarming given that every single person who saw the package asked if they were fireworks. Fortunately, when I got one of the small inch-long round packages out of the main package and opened it up, they turned out to look rather like Necco wafers. They're thinner, don't break as easily, have a small amount of chew to them, stick to your teeth a bit more, and taste rather like strawberry Fruit Rollups. Not bad, esp. considering that a package of twelve rolls (each containing around fifteen individual 'flakes') costs 35 cents.
After extensive testing by myself and some of the other folks in my office, the rankings stand:
Team Philippines: Last place. Sorry, but there's nothing of any real note to those Ovalteenies, plus they're disturbing. Not in a good way, either.
Team China: Tied for second place. I really like the haw flakes, but I'm still prying them off my teeth and I'm still not sure exactly what haw is. The choco rolls are okay, but they don't have much to recommend them beyond the weird purple colour on the inside, as there's nothing outstanding about the taro flavour.
Team Vietnam: First place. While the cookies were tough to chew, the fact that they taste okay while looking like maggots counts for a lot. Add to that the royal durian stink in a cookie that really doesn't taste all that bad (ah, yes, I just tried one of the yellow ones - definitely durian), and the fact that the haw flakes are a bit insubstantial for a first-place showing, and it's official: Team Vietnam wins.
Thank you for tuning in! And if any of you can identify the kid on the Vietnamese cookie label, I'd appreciate it. He's got a big ol' red carp or goldfish behind his head looking over his left shoulder, and appears to have a blue dragon sprawled out behind him. The printing's kind of mucky on that part of the label, and I can only make out the first and last Chinese character under him; the first one is jing1 and the last one is zi, with no tone. Again, thanks.
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Date: 2003-01-17 02:21 pm (UTC)