Vegan emergency food in Yamada Denki

Last week, my PC didn’t work well, and I had difficulty entering characters. I wondered whether it was the PC or keyboard that had a trouble. I went to Yamada Denki, a chain of consumer electronics stores, where I bought the PC four years ago.

Like Bic Camera, another chain of consumer electronics stores, Yamada Denki sells some other things such as food, drink, and convenience goods, in addition to consumer electronics. On that day, they even had emergency food that were sold at a discount. I bought two items that seemed to be vegan. One of them is Gomoku Gohan that literally means rice with five ingredients.

Usually, such a rice dish contains chicken. But this one doesn’t contain any animal ingredients according to the description on the backside. The five ingredients added to the rice are dried carrot, deep-fried tofu, dried burdock, dried shiitake mushroom, and konjac. They are flavored with plant oil, soy sauce, and sugar. The package also has a table of 27 allergens specified in the Food Labeling Act in Japan.

*えび (shrimp), かに (crab), 小麦 (wheat), そば (buckwheat)
 卵 (egg), 乳成分 (milk), 落花生 (peanut), あわび (abalone)
いか (squid), いくら (salmon roe), オレンジ (orange), カシューナッツ (cashew nut)
キウイ (kiwifruit), 牛肉 (beef), くるみ (walnut), ごま (sesame)
さけ (salmon), さば (mackerel), 大豆 (soybean), 鶏肉 (chicken)
バナナ (banana), 豚肉 (pork), まつたけ (matsutake mushroom), もも (peach)
やまいも (yam), りんご (apple), ゼラチン (gelatin)

The words 小麦 (wheat) and 大豆 (soybean) are highlighted, which means that this product contains these ingredients.

It is very easy to prepare this Gomoku Gohan. First, I took the spoon and the oxygen absorber out of the package.

Then I poured 160 ml hot water into it, closed it, and waited for 15 minutes. As it is a kind of emergency food, you can eat it directly from the package. But I wanted to see how it look like on a dish.

It tasted light and seemed to be suitable for everyone expect those allergic to wheat and soybeans. I think I’ll buy some more while they are sold at a discount.
The other vegan item from Yamada Denki is Rice Cookies. They are made from rice powder, rice oil, sugar, sweetened coconut puree, almond flour, fermented seasoning (rice, salt), shredded coconut. Any of the 27 allergens isn’t contained in them.

The rice powder is from Niigata Prefecture that is famous as a major cultivation area of rice.

The cookies looked delicious.

One of them was broken. They seemed to be fragile but were crispy and tasty. I thought the texture was very much like that of langue de chat, French thin cookies.

Both Gomoku Gohan and Rice Cookies are the products of Onisi (尾西). I heard this company’s name for the first time, but I appreciate their efforts to provide such food. Though it is not clearly described that they are vegan, they are vegan-friendly products. In addition, both of them bear the Halal mark.

As I wrote before, it has been very difficult to find vegan food in Japan. But it seems that more and more companies have come to release vegan-friendly products recently. I think I’ll stop writing this blog now. Thank you for reading.

My blog is mainly intended for visitors or inhabitants from abroad, but in fact I myself like traveling and wish to visit some countries after corona. So, I intend to study hard in my free time to improve my language skills from now on. I wish you’ll enjoy your stay in Japan. Thank you again!

Spicy vegan Thai curry

Like Chinese dishes, curry is one of the most popular dishes in Japan. There are a variety of retort pouch curry available in supermarkets. In larger supermarkets and import food stores, you can even find some Indian and Thai curry in addition to Japanese-style curry. Though I have introduced Indian curry such as Chana Masala in this blog, I had never eaten Thai curry until recently. I once thought that Thai green curry was a kind of vegetarian curry. So, I was very disappointed to find “chicken” among its ingredients. There are some Thai restaurants in Hamamatsu, but I have never visited them because it seems to difficult to find substantial vegetarian/vegan dishes.

The day before yesterday, I wrote about the vegan retort sauce of Mapo Doufu released by KaRuNa in April. At the same time, they also released “Vege Spicy Thai Curry.” Luckily, I found it in the same store BIO Atsumi and could finally taste Thai curry. The package resembled that of the Mapo sauce.

It was easier to prepare than Mapo Doufu as you only need to warm up the pouch in boiling water for 5 minutes and pour into a dish. At first, I was a little disappointed as I could see only a chunk of soy protein.

But it also contained some big pieces of bamboo shoot.

This was my first time in my life to eat Thai curry, and I thought it was very interesting that curry could contain bamboo shoot. I had never eaten such curry before. In addition to bamboo shoot, it contained soy protein chunks, mushroom, celery and was flavored with coconut milk, canola oil, soy sauce, spices, salt, curry powder, etc. Even though it contained coconut milk that might have added a mild flavor, the curry was quite spicy, but not as spicy as Mapo Doufu I ate previously. While eating, I somehow remembered curry soup with cabbage served in elementary school lunch. Though I liked the school lunch, this Thai curry was much tastier with coconut milk, bamboo shoot, and soy protein chunks. Celery was also good to have in soup.

KaRuNa’s “Instant Vegan” series have just two products “Vege Mapo Sauce” and “Vege Spicy Thai Curry”. I hope they will expand the lineup so that we can increasingly enjoy vegan versions of popular Asian dishes at home.

Mapo Doufu with vegan sauce

As in other countries, Chinese cuisine is very popular in Japan. According to a popularity vote, the most popular Chinese dish in Japan is Mapo Doufu (麻婆豆腐) originated from Sichuan province. It consists of tofu and minced meat cooked with spicy sauce. In supermarkets, you can see some retort sauce for Mapo Doufu and other Chinese dishes, but basically, they are not for vegetarians/vegans.

The other day, I went to BIO Atsumi to see if there were any new products of vegan curry. BIO Atsumi is a supermarket chain in eastern Aichi Prefecture (with one store in Hamamatsu) and has many rare and interesting foods from both Japan and abroad. There I found “Vege Mapo Sauce”, which was a pleasant surprise.

Though Mapo Doufu is a popular dish, I had hardly had a chance to eat it before because of the ingredients. Instead of minced meat, this product uses granular soy protein. The sauce is flavored with sesame oil, grated ginger, douchi or fermented black beans, doubanjiang or broad bean chili paste, soy sauce, chili oil, sugar, kelp powder, spice, etc.

Mapo Doufu is very easy to prepare with this retort sauce. You only have to pour and warm up the sauce in a pan, mix tofu cut into cubes, and cook together for a few minutes by stirring sometimes. One retort pouch is intended to be used for 300 g of tofu. As this pack of tofu was 400 g, I used one half or 200g of it.

Ten minutes later, Mapo Doufu was ready.

I think this was my second or third time to eat Mapo Doufu in my life. As soon as I started eating it, I noticed that it was more spicy than other spicy foods I had eaten before, such as Indian chickpea curry Chana Masala and Korean Shin Ramen. I suddenly remembered cold water kimchi in the refrigerator and took it out. It is seasonal animal-free kimchi sold in Seijo Ishii, which I wrote about in this blog last year. It consists of ten ingredients and is delicious and refreshing. As I expected, it mitigated the spiciness of Mapo Doufu.

One of the major reasons why Mapo Doufu is loved in Japan is that it goes well with rice and stimulate the appetite. I found it true as I could eat two bowls of rice with it. Though the sauce was unexpectedly spicy, the granular soy protein was well-made and didn’t have a distinctive flavor of soybeans at all. It may be easy to eat even for non-vegetarians.

The manufacture of this sauce is a Nagoya-based vegetarian food company KaRuNa. It has two shops (Nagoya and Komatsu in Ishikawa Prefecture), but I think it is mostly known for its online shop that provides a wide variety of vegetarian/vegan food (unfortunately the website is available only in Japanese). The name KaRuNa comes from an old Indian word that means compassion.

“Vege Mapo Sauce” is one of their “Instant Vegan” products released in April 2020. I think I’ll introduce the other one next time.

Retort pouch vegan curry made by Kagome

When I bought Samurai Ramen through Amazon Japan the other day, they offered free shipping on orders of 2,000 yen and over. So, I ordered a box of retort pouch curry in addition to the ramen. It contained five pouches and was intended for wholesale. Maybe it isn’t available in ordinary supermarkets as I have never seen it before. It was manufactured by Kagome, a major Japanese food company known for its ketchup, sauce, juice, etc., with history of over 120 years. One pouch was smaller than I thought and looked like this.  

At the upper left corner, there is a vegan mark. This is certified by VegeProject Japan. In fact, I had never heard of it before until I saw this mark this time (it’s embarrassing!). According to their website (http://www.vegeproject.org/), they are an NPO working to increase vegan/vegetarian options. They provide some useful information also in English.

The name of curry is “Mix Beans Vegetable Curry.” The ingredients are onion, red kidney beans, white kidney beans, chickpeas, carrot puree, onion saute, soybean oil, tomtate paste, soymilk fermented food, fried onion, apple puree, Wooster sauce, mixed vegetable saute, white kidney bean puree, garlic puree, spice, granulated sugar, salt, starch, and vegetable broth.

This curry is supposed to be medium-spicy. But when I started eating, I thought it was rather mild. Maybe I have been too accustomed to spicy foods such as Samurai Ramen and couldn’t appreciate its spiciness or taste. The curry was well-made and was not bad at all, but I still felt something was lacking. I longed for Chana Masala and Dal Curry made at Indian restaurants. Maybe it is a matter of personal preference.

At the beginning of this year, Kagome released this “Mix Beans Vegetable Curry” and “Soy Meat Keema Curry.” In addition, they produce three kinds of vegan pasta sauce that were released earlier. I appreciate their efforts very much. When you search with words “Kagome Vegan” on Amazon Japan (the language can be switched to English or Simplified Chinese), you can see these two kinds of vegan curry and Mushroom Soy Milk Cream (pasta sauce) on sale. If you live in Japan and have difficulty finding vegan instant foods at local supermarkets, Amazon Japan may be convenient and helpful.

Samurai Ramen UMAMI without garlic and onion

Last Sunday, I ate spicy Samurai Ramen UMAMI. It was so good that I bought another type of this vegan ramen on Amazon Japan. On its red pack, you can see big letters “NO GARLIC, NO ONION”, and Chinese characters “全素不含五辛“ under the word “Vegan.” It is intended for vegans who don’t eat five spicy foods.

Like spicy Samurai Ramen UMAMI, this is suitable for Muslim as well, and the ingredients are written also in English on the backside of the pack. The main ingredients of the soup are almost the same as those of spicy ramen soup. The difference is that it contains shiitake mushroom extract powder instead of chopped garlic. The ingredients of the noodles are wheat flour (domestically manufactured) and salt, which are the same as those of the spicy ramen.

The contents looked the same as those of spicy Samurai Ramen UMAMI.

This time I added mulukhiya leaves, Japanese ginger (myoga), and wakame seaweed. Though mulukhiya was originated from Egypt, it has become a popular summer vegetable in Japan because it is said to prevent exhaustion from the heat. Japanese ginger is also popular in summer with its refreshing flavor and crispy texture.

The ramen was ready in five minutes.

I expected it would taste much milder than the spicy version of Samurai Ramen. So, I was slightly surprised to find that it was still a bit spicy. It may be because it contained chili oil. When I finished eating, I was sweating. But the ramen was tasty and other ingredients added together were also good. The taste of the soup may vary depending on the additional ingredients, so it will be interesting to have other combination of vegetables as well. I think I’ll add some corn next time to make it a little sweeter.

Samurai Ramen UMAMI popular among visitors from abroad

It has been quite hot recently (27 degrees now). I feel like eating delicious curry with newly baked fresh naan bread at an Indian restaurant, but I still don’t dare to eat among people in a restaurant.
During this corona period, I have become more interested in vegan foods available in supermarkets than before.

Yesterday, I found a vegan instant ramen called Samurai Ramen UMAMI at BIO Atsumi. As you may know, Samurai is a warrior that can be seen in Japanese historical dramas. Personally, I can hardly identify with samurai because I’m a descendant of farmers as most ordinary Japanese people, and I don’t like that the image of samurai is often emphasized when talking about present Japanese people. But I still got interested in the ramen itself, which was in a pack like this.

It bears a mark of samurai,

 the Indian green vegetarian mark, and a “Vegan” mark.

On the backside, you can see how to prepare it and ingredients written in English. It contains no alcohol and is also suitable for Muslim. According to their website, this ramen has been popular among people who visit Japan from abroad. But I saw it for the first time yesterday. Maybe it is still unknown in most provincial towns.

This pack contained ramen and soup for two servings.

It took about five minutes to get it ready. This time I added sprouts of celery and soymilk skin.

I found the soup very spicy. It may be less spicy than the cup noodle Shin (辛) Ramen I introduced before, but I was a bit surprised. The soup contained ingredients such as ginger paste, chili oil, and chopped garlic. The soup was also tasty with the flavors of miso, soy sauce, sesame paste, ground sesame, etc. I liked it very much. The sprouts of celery added a flavor, and I think ordinary celery may also go well with the soup.

In addition to this spicy vegan version, there is another vegan Samurai Ramen UMAMI that does not contain five spicy foods (全素不含五辛). It is in a red pack and is available through Amazon Japan. Hopefully, it will be sold in ordinary supermarkets because it may become popular among a wider range of people, including those who can’t eat spicy foods and small children.

*On June 13, I went to BIO Atsumi again and found that Samurai Ramen UMAMI in a red pack is also sold there. Hopefully, both types of Samurai Ramen will be available permanently.

Vegan Ochazuke Nori since 1952

After posting the article about Shin Ramen, I remembered another product confirmed to be vegan by a consumer on the Internet. It is Ochazuke Nori by Nagatanien (永谷園) that may be known to most Japanese people. Ochazuke is a traditional quick meal made by pouring green tea on boiled rice. As toppings, you can put pickles, dried seaweed (nori), or some other things you like. Nagatanien’s Ochazuke Nori contains flavored powder, dried seaweed, and rice crackers, making it much easier to prepare ochazuke. This product contains 8 small bags, one for each portion. The design of colorful stripes was inspired by a Kabuki curtain and presents the atmosphere of the Edo period (1603-1868).

I made ochazuke as instructed. All you need to do is to put the contents in the bag on boiled rice (100g),

and pour hot water (150 cc). I used my miso soup bowl instead of rice bowl. Fortunately, it was big enough.

The soup powder contained salt, sugar, powdered green tea, and powdered kelp. The soup was a bit salty but tasty. I thought it may be ok to drink as it is without rice since it reminded me of kelp tea. The small rice crackers that got wet in the soup were also tasty. I have heard about someone who used Ochazuke Nori to make vegan spaghetti. Sounds interesting.

Ochazuke Nori is a long-selling product first released in 1952. From 1965 to 1997, a mini picture card of the “53 Stations (post towns) of the Tokaido Highway” series of Hiroshige Utagawa (1797 – 1858) was included in each package of Ochazuke series. When I was little, I used to collect such cards as many other people did. They were so popular that they came back in 2016. As I mentioned before in this blog, Hamamatsu was one of the post towns on the Tokaido Highway during the Edo period and included in this series of pictures. But I could hardly expect to get a picture of our town out of as many as 55 pictures (start point (Edo) + 53 stations + end point (Kyoto) of Tokaido). This picture on the pack is the start point, Nihonbashi in Edo (present Tokyo).

To my surprise, the card I got this time was that of Maisaka, the post town next to Hamamatsu. It is located by Lake Hamana and in West Ward of Hamamatsu now.

Until January 31, 2022, Nagatanien has a campaign where 1,000 people can win a full set of “53 Stations (post towns) of the Tokaido Highway” cards every month by collecting three application marks on packages and sending them to the company. The Ochazuke series has five flavors: dried seaweed (Ochazuke Nori), salmon, picked plum, salted cod roe, and wasabi. Ochazuke Nori is the oldest one and the only vegan one. Its name “お茶づけ海苔“ is written in the center of the pack on a yellow background while the names of other products are written on backgrounds of other colors such as pink and orange.

Vegan cup noodle from Korea

Several months ago, I read about vegan noodle “Shin Ramen (Shin Ramyeon/Shin Ramyun)” made by a food company Nongshim in Korea on the Internet but couldn’t find it until recently. At last, I found it the big supermarket MaxValu where I bought vegan custard pudding the other day. Shin Ramen is written as “辛ラーメン“ in Japanese, whose Chinese character “辛” means hot (taste). Its red cup seemed to imply how hot it was.

On the noodles, there were pieces of dried carrot, leek, shiitake mushroom, red pepper.

The soup powder also contained red pepper. I have never seen a color like this before with any other cup noodle soup powder. In addition to red pepper, the it contained vegetable extract, powdered miso, shiitake power, salt, etc.

I poured hot water up to the line in the cup and waited for three minutes. Then, it was ready.

The ramen was hotter than I expected! It was so hot that my tongue and the inside of my mouth were tingling as I ate it. The soup looked like this.

I even sweated and thought it was not recommendable for those who don’t like hot or spicy foods. But it can be loved by non-vegans as well if they are fond of pungently flavored food. Personally, I liked it very much and hope to find the instant ramen version of Shin Ramen that is available somewhere.

*I learned later that also non-vegan versions are sold in abroad. Here in Japan, only the vegan version is available.

Indian retort pouch vegan curry

Curry is one of the most popular food in Japan. In 1968, a Japanese company released the first commercial retort pouch curry in the world. Since then, it has been greatly diversified. In addition to common beef, pork, and chicken curry, there are also some hundreds of kinds of local curry made from specialties of each region, but most of them are not for vegetarians or vegans.

Several years ago, I used to shop online and buy products made by MTR in India when I wanted to eat curry. They were very good and available at a reasonable price. Later, I happened to find a cookbook of Indian vegetable curry and started to make by myself. But I still wished every ordinary supermarket would have vegetarian or vegan curry products someday.

Recently, you can find some retort pouches of Japanese vegan curry in some supermarkets such as Bio Atsumi. They are much more expensive than popular meat curry products, so I don’t feel like trying one. The other day, however, I found four kinds of curry made by Vinee's Kitchen in India. Three of them were vegetarian, but this Chana Masala was vegan. The ingredients were water, white chickpea, tomato, onion, sunflower oil, salt, ginger, garlic, coriander leaves, green chilli and spices. I was glad to see that it contained no food additives.

As I have eaten Chana Masala in Indian restaurants several times, I could imagine how it would taste. But I was surprised to see the curry when I poured it onto rice after heating the pouch in boiling water.

I wondered how many chickpeas there were. At first, I was so surprised at the amount of chickpeas that I couldn’t taste the curry very well. Then, I found it was quite hot and spicy, though it was “MEDIUM” according to the package. I sweated while eating. It stimulated my appetite and tasted very good when I felt tired after work.

When I finished, I felt like eating a piece of watermelon. I went to the nearest supermarket, but watermelons had been already sold out. Maybe I have to prepare some juicy fruits in advance when I eat curry next time.

Soup with cherry blossoms

Now is the end of March, and cherry blossoms in Hamamatsu and many other regions in Japan have started blooming. Personally, I prefer the apple blossom, but the cherry blossom is the flower most loved by Japanese people. You can see them not only in parks but also in some food.

On November 17, I wrote about beautiful instant soup from Fumuroya (不室屋) in this blog. Though they don’t have a permanent shop in Hamamatsu, some of their instant soup are available in the basement of Entetsu Department Store. Now, they have a new product that looks like a petal of a cherry blossom.

This is what I ate for dinner today. I had mixed rice with shiitake mushroom, burdock root, carrot, deep-fried tofu, and soy milk skin, black sesame tofu with sauce, and soup. The picture below is the soup when it was ready after I poured hot water. It had cherry-blossom-shaped hu and a real cherry blossom in it.

It was flavored with kelp broth and had a mild flavor. The flavor of the cherry blossom was weak compared with those used in sweets.

The sesame tofu was made from sesame, sweet potato starch, and arrowroot starch. As I explained before in the article of Kyoto Fair, sesame tofu is not a real tofu because it doesn’t contain soy beans. Fortunately, this product had vegan sauce made from miso, sugar, sweet sake, and sesame, so I could add it on top. I thought this sauce suited to black sesame tofu very well. According to the website of the manufacturer Hijiri Food (聖食品), their sesame tofu is made with the traditional method in Koyasan or Mount Koya, which is the center of Shingon Buddhism. Their products are made by using squeezed juice of sesame instead of sesame paste that is more commonly used for sesame tofu. In this way, they can have a smoother texture and mouthfeel. Hijiri Food produces also white sesame and golden sesame tofu, and I feel like trying them soon.

Delightful vegan instant soup

When you go to department stores in Japan, you may sometimes encounter gourmet fairs held in their event floor. They may be national ones or region-specific ones in which specialties from a certain district or city are sold. The other day, Entetsu Department Store had a national gourmet fair.

There were many long-established shops from all over Japan. Like other countries, each region has its unique food culture. Products in the fair were rare and difficult to get in Hamamatsu if online shops were not available. The floor was full of people who were curious about such foods.

At first, I expected to find some tofu products from Kyoto. But there were other things that attracted my attention. Can you guess what they are?

They are not candies but “hu” or dried wheat gluten. They are made by Fumuroya from Kanazawa in Hokuriku District. Kanazawa is a castle town famous for its rich cultural legacy such as traditional crafts and a beautiful garden Kenrokuen. Fumuroya is an old hu shop with more than 150 years of history. In addition to these, they make also more ordinary types like this. You can see similar ones in supermarkets.

Hu is often cooked with vegetables or put in soup. By using their colorful products, Fumuroya provides many kinds of instant soup. I found that three of them were vegan, flavored with kelp broth instead of bonito flake broth.

I bought all the three kinds. One of them was soup for autumn, and I prepared it according to the instruction by the shop. First, I put an autumn leaf-shaped box and kelp broth powder in the bowl and made a hole on the box.

Then I poured hot water of 150 cc into the bowl. The contents in the box were supposed to be come out of the hole, but they didn’t. So, I cut the box with chopsticks. The soup finally looked like this.

The ingredients in the palm-sized box got this big! They were garland chrysanthemum leaves, chrysanthemum flowers, maitake mushroom, soy milk skin, and autumn leaf-shaped and matsutake mushroom-shaped hu. The soup had a mild taste, but I felt something unknown in it. Maybe it was the taste of chrysanthemum flowers. They are edible and sold in also the vegetable section of supermarkets, but I’m not sure if they are commonly used in home cuisine in Hamamatsu. The little box itself was also made of hu. It was very good after it became soft and elastic in the soup.

The series of this delightful soup may be suitable for a present or special occasions such as birthday and New Year’s Day. Fumuroya has shops not only in Kanazawa but also in Toyama, Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya. I’ll go to Nagoya next month, so I’m thinking of visiting their shop in Takashimaya Department Store. It may be easy to find it, because they surely have this shop curtain with a big letter ふ (hu).