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camwynHallo, all! And welcome to this week's installment of What the Hell is This? Today's snack foods fall into a different category from our usual. On my last trip to Canada, back in October 2002, I came to the conclusion that it simply isn't fair to compare the products available in the Asian market in Parsippany to the choices available in a Chinatown grocery. No competition there; the Chinatown grocery selection would squash Parsippany's flatter than a falling piano. However, today I went into New York City to see the Chinese New Year Parade - more on that in another post - and on the way back stopped at Munchie Paradise (I think that's the name), on Mott Street. The store sells snack food in bulk, and it's about 2/3 candy and sweets, 1/3... er... salty fish products. No, really, that's pretty much the other third of the store... anyway. The voice in my head that normally tries to dissuade me from going gaga over other cultures' stuff - the one that normally yells at me that I'm so far from normal I couldn't poke it with a very long stick - chimed in with 'this is the PERFECT place for you to play What the Hell is This?', so who am I to say no?
No national teams today. I tried to get candy that was all made in China rather than France or similar (some of the wrapped stuff was from Europe), but since it's sold in bulk and comes from a company named Aji Ichiban of Hong Kong for the most part, I have no real idea. Our entrants this week, therefore, are:
The Chocolate Rocks - Melon Flavour
The Preserved Hawthorn Balls
The Preserved Licorice
and
The Squishy Rice Cakes - one blueberry, one some sort of bean flavour, and one green tea.
The chocolate rocks do not score very highly with me. They strongly resemble the strawberry flavoured chocolate gravel from a few entries ago - the store also had multicoloured chocolate gravel in stock - and their supposed melon flavour is difficult to discern. I would probably have had a more interesting experience had I gone to the adjacent bin, which contained the chocolate sunflower seeds. (Think peanut M&Ms, only a lot smaller and less likely to set off weird modern allergies.) Still, they're chocolate, they don't taste too bad, and they have a nice crunch.
The hawthorn balls, on the other hand, are really nice. This is what the haw flakes were made from, I'm sure of it. They're about a centimeter and a quarter across, maybe more, and they're covered in glittery sugar - you know, the kind that's big enough to go crunch but isn't sweet enough to make your pancreas cry.They're about the colour of those weird 'Boston baked beans' peanut-type candy you see sometimes - like faded brick, only pinker. Bite 'em open and they're revealed: the pink is a candy layer, and a darker red-brown substance is inside. It tastes like strawberry, although a little different. Sticks to the teeth some, though. They were labeled 'preserved hawthorn balls' at the store so at some point I'll try to find out what the original fruit looks like and whether or not it'll cause any offspring I may have to develop psychic powers or something.
The preserved licorice... okay, this was nasty. There are basically three camps with regards to licorice candies. One is the camp of people who don't much like 'em, and that includes me. The next is the camp of people who like 'em sweet and anise-like, and the last is the camp of the people who keep Dutch licorice makers in business, 'cos Dutch licorice - drop, rhymes with rope or so I am told - tastes very strongly of salt and tends to make newbies run crying for Mommy. In this case, the candy I sampled but did not buy is likely to appeal most to camp #2. I only tried it because I first spotted an unlabeled bag of it, and my first thought - I swear - was: "This looks like cubes of dried liver to be fed to a cat." It wasn't. The bulk container proclaimed it to be licorice. As far as the ingredients list went, this preservation process apparently includes licorice, mandarin peel, sugar, and, er, menthol. The overall effect is a disconcertingly fruity chunk of anise flavour, which is sweet but nevertheless gives the impression of plotting against your sinuses. (It isn't powerful enough to do more than plot yet.) Plus the whole time you're chewing on it, you're remembering the kitty snack comparison... If you're a non-drop licorice fan, you might like this stuff. Just make sure you get the natural variety ($7.99 for 1/4 pound) instead of the ordinary variety ($3.99 or $4.99 for 1/4 pound), as the ordinary variety uses saccharin as its sweetener and that's a really scary taste all on its own.
And now the rice cakes. Calling these things rice cakes is probably misleading to most Western readers; when we hear 'rice cake' we think 'nasty styrofoam-like thing eaten by dieters'. In this case the term means 'made from rice flour'. These things are squishy. I mean really squishy. If you closed your eye and lightly pressed your finger against your eyelid, it still wouldn't be this squishy. These things border on being gummis, only they're made from rice and aren't translucent. They came in a lot of flavours; I arbitrarily picked three. Blueberry sounded interesting, green tea I would at least recognize, and the bean one... well, I've had mung bean and adzuki bean ice cream before, so what the hell, why not.
Right, let's see how they taste.
Blueberry: Aaah! The outside is the rice coating of my beloved chocolate chocolate chip mochi ice cream balls! So this is what they'd feel like if they melted too far!... ahem... okay, mochi-like outer coating surrounding an inner jelly-like substance...hm. There's a fruity taste there, all right, and it might even be blueberry, but it's a bit hard to recognize. It doesn't spew out, though. More like a paste than a jelly. I appreciate that. Jelly donuts are messy.
Green tea: The core in this one is white and vaguely marshmallowy, and surrounds an inner core of green jellyfoo. It's a tiny core but it does taste strongly of green tea. It's not too bad.
Some Bean or Other: Okay, my mistake. It's red bean. The green outside surrounds a white core, but the white core surrounds something red and jelly/paste-like that's definitely red bean paste-flavoured. I kind of like this one. Works for me, a lot more than the blueberry does.
It's kind of hard to rank the winners this week, but I'm inclined to say that the hawthorn balls take first place. Second place goes to the licorice; I might not like it, but there's nothing wrong with it, and it's not something you'd ever see in a Western market. The squishy rice balls come in third as a group, and within the group they're ordered as bean, green tea, blueberry; I can't help it, the blueberry one's just kind of lame to someone who enjoys real blueberries. And, finally, the choco rocks come in dead last. Not interesting enough, really. I should've just gotten a sample of mint gummy bears instead.
Total amount spent on this shopping spree: $4.00.
That's it for now. The next time I go into Chinatown I'll work up the guts to try the other side of the coin: the savoury snacks, which essentially means the fish products. I'll let you know how that goes, but for now - I think this week's experiment went pretty well!
No national teams today. I tried to get candy that was all made in China rather than France or similar (some of the wrapped stuff was from Europe), but since it's sold in bulk and comes from a company named Aji Ichiban of Hong Kong for the most part, I have no real idea. Our entrants this week, therefore, are:
The Chocolate Rocks - Melon Flavour
The Preserved Hawthorn Balls
The Preserved Licorice
and
The Squishy Rice Cakes - one blueberry, one some sort of bean flavour, and one green tea.
The chocolate rocks do not score very highly with me. They strongly resemble the strawberry flavoured chocolate gravel from a few entries ago - the store also had multicoloured chocolate gravel in stock - and their supposed melon flavour is difficult to discern. I would probably have had a more interesting experience had I gone to the adjacent bin, which contained the chocolate sunflower seeds. (Think peanut M&Ms, only a lot smaller and less likely to set off weird modern allergies.) Still, they're chocolate, they don't taste too bad, and they have a nice crunch.
The hawthorn balls, on the other hand, are really nice. This is what the haw flakes were made from, I'm sure of it. They're about a centimeter and a quarter across, maybe more, and they're covered in glittery sugar - you know, the kind that's big enough to go crunch but isn't sweet enough to make your pancreas cry.They're about the colour of those weird 'Boston baked beans' peanut-type candy you see sometimes - like faded brick, only pinker. Bite 'em open and they're revealed: the pink is a candy layer, and a darker red-brown substance is inside. It tastes like strawberry, although a little different. Sticks to the teeth some, though. They were labeled 'preserved hawthorn balls' at the store so at some point I'll try to find out what the original fruit looks like and whether or not it'll cause any offspring I may have to develop psychic powers or something.
The preserved licorice... okay, this was nasty. There are basically three camps with regards to licorice candies. One is the camp of people who don't much like 'em, and that includes me. The next is the camp of people who like 'em sweet and anise-like, and the last is the camp of the people who keep Dutch licorice makers in business, 'cos Dutch licorice - drop, rhymes with rope or so I am told - tastes very strongly of salt and tends to make newbies run crying for Mommy. In this case, the candy I sampled but did not buy is likely to appeal most to camp #2. I only tried it because I first spotted an unlabeled bag of it, and my first thought - I swear - was: "This looks like cubes of dried liver to be fed to a cat." It wasn't. The bulk container proclaimed it to be licorice. As far as the ingredients list went, this preservation process apparently includes licorice, mandarin peel, sugar, and, er, menthol. The overall effect is a disconcertingly fruity chunk of anise flavour, which is sweet but nevertheless gives the impression of plotting against your sinuses. (It isn't powerful enough to do more than plot yet.) Plus the whole time you're chewing on it, you're remembering the kitty snack comparison... If you're a non-drop licorice fan, you might like this stuff. Just make sure you get the natural variety ($7.99 for 1/4 pound) instead of the ordinary variety ($3.99 or $4.99 for 1/4 pound), as the ordinary variety uses saccharin as its sweetener and that's a really scary taste all on its own.
And now the rice cakes. Calling these things rice cakes is probably misleading to most Western readers; when we hear 'rice cake' we think 'nasty styrofoam-like thing eaten by dieters'. In this case the term means 'made from rice flour'. These things are squishy. I mean really squishy. If you closed your eye and lightly pressed your finger against your eyelid, it still wouldn't be this squishy. These things border on being gummis, only they're made from rice and aren't translucent. They came in a lot of flavours; I arbitrarily picked three. Blueberry sounded interesting, green tea I would at least recognize, and the bean one... well, I've had mung bean and adzuki bean ice cream before, so what the hell, why not.
Right, let's see how they taste.
Blueberry: Aaah! The outside is the rice coating of my beloved chocolate chocolate chip mochi ice cream balls! So this is what they'd feel like if they melted too far!... ahem... okay, mochi-like outer coating surrounding an inner jelly-like substance...hm. There's a fruity taste there, all right, and it might even be blueberry, but it's a bit hard to recognize. It doesn't spew out, though. More like a paste than a jelly. I appreciate that. Jelly donuts are messy.
Green tea: The core in this one is white and vaguely marshmallowy, and surrounds an inner core of green jellyfoo. It's a tiny core but it does taste strongly of green tea. It's not too bad.
Some Bean or Other: Okay, my mistake. It's red bean. The green outside surrounds a white core, but the white core surrounds something red and jelly/paste-like that's definitely red bean paste-flavoured. I kind of like this one. Works for me, a lot more than the blueberry does.
It's kind of hard to rank the winners this week, but I'm inclined to say that the hawthorn balls take first place. Second place goes to the licorice; I might not like it, but there's nothing wrong with it, and it's not something you'd ever see in a Western market. The squishy rice balls come in third as a group, and within the group they're ordered as bean, green tea, blueberry; I can't help it, the blueberry one's just kind of lame to someone who enjoys real blueberries. And, finally, the choco rocks come in dead last. Not interesting enough, really. I should've just gotten a sample of mint gummy bears instead.
Total amount spent on this shopping spree: $4.00.
That's it for now. The next time I go into Chinatown I'll work up the guts to try the other side of the coin: the savoury snacks, which essentially means the fish products. I'll let you know how that goes, but for now - I think this week's experiment went pretty well!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-02-03 05:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, but if they get cool silver eyes (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0590442481/) in the bargain, does that make it okay?
-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-02-04 07:39 am (UTC)Re: Or Something
Date: 2003-02-04 10:39 am (UTC)-- Lorrie
no subject
Date: 2003-02-05 06:13 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-02-05 06:40 am (UTC)