DONQ - Big fresh baguette just out of oven

In the evening, after I had gelato in the basement of Entetsu Department Store, I went to the old building of the department store to buy something for dinner. In front of the shop of DONQ, a chain bakery, one of the staff members started shouting to announce what they would offer at 17:00. Two big fresh baguettes would be cut in slices in front of the customers who wanted them! It was 16:50, and I stood in a queue at once. 

The queue became longer and longer. Each customer could buy up to two slices and got one or two plastic cards according to the number of slices. All the cards seemed to be given out by 17:00, and the first baguette was carried in front of us. It was big indeed! But I was more surprised to see steam coming up from the baguette when it was cut. 

It went very rapidly. As I was the second in the queue, I could get my slice soon. After paying at the cash register, I hurried home. When I took out the baguette out of the paper bag, I noticed that the bag became wet because of the fresh bread. I measured the width of the slice with a measuring tape. It was about 24 cm.

Since I was so attracted to its freshness, I ate the baguette as it was without putting anything on it. The crust was as crisp as those of ordinary baguettes of DONQ. But the inside was very spongy and reminded me of Chinese steamed buns. 

It was an interesting kind of baguette, and I enjoyed eating it. The only disadvantage was that it was too big to eat at a time, so I left the half of it and put in the refrigerator. I have to warm it up when I eat it next time.

Every day, this big baguette is sold in the same way in DONQ in Entetsu Department Store. Generally, I don’t like to stand in a queue, but I think it was worth to do it this time.

Vegan gelato in SAN FELICE EXPRESS

If you try to be a vegan, it is extremely difficult to go out and have ice cream. I had thought like this for a long time and just passed by SAN FELICE EXPERSS until a few days ago. It is a confectionary shop located between the old building and the new building of Entetsu Department Store and sells waffles, Italian chocolate, candies, gelato, etc. I had never thought before that they had vegan gelato, but they did! Today I tried all the three kinds for the first time. They were kiwi, strawberry, and mango gelato.

I ordered gelato in a cup to take a picture easily. It looked beautiful with three colors. Each gelato has a simple taste of each fruit and was moderately sweet. I thought they were good especially when I was thirsty like today.

On the counter, I found tea bags on sale. As I have already several kinds of tea bags of other brands at home, I didn’t buy any of them today though I got interested in them.

Like other ice cream shops, you can choose between a cup and a cone when you order gelato. I think I’ll have a cone next time. SAN FELICE EXPRESS in the department store is a confectionary shop, SAN FELICE is originally an Italian restaurant near Act City. According to their website, the restaurant also seems to have some vegan-friendly dishes. I learned also that gelato in SAN FELICE EXPRESS is from an Italian company CremAmore. So, I had genuine Italian gelato today!

Vegan sweets in February

On February 3, I introduced natamochi in this blog. It is a vegan sweet, and I found it very good. Though it is eaten just for Setsubun or the day before the first day of spring, the shop Mataichian in Entetsu Department Store has some other winter sweets available for a longer period. One of them is a relatively new kind of sweet called ichigo daifuku. Daifuku is a rice cake stuffed with adzuki bean paste. It is a popular sweet, and ichigo daifuku is a kind of daifuku with a strawberry (ichigo) in it or put on the top. Since it is rather unusual to use fresh fruits for Japanese traditional sweets as they are, I think that this is a great invention. Mataichian has two kinds of ichigo daifuku, and I bought one of each. As I took them out from small plastic packs, I felt the sweet aroma of strawberries.

Under the strawberries, they looked like this.

The left one is stuffed with white bean paste. Generally, white bean paste has a light taste, so I ate this first. I found the bean paste very sweet. The strawberry was fresh but tasted a little bit bitter.

The right one is stuffed with semi-crushed adzuki bean paste. Though it was also sweet, it had the original flavor of adzuki beans similar to that in the rice ball I had the other day. Before I bought these ichigo daifuku, I talked with another customer who chose this kind of ichigo daifuku. She praised Mataichian’s good adzuki bean paste, saying that ichigo daifuku would surely taste good.
I’m not used to eating ichigo daifuku and the combination of bean paste and strawberries, but the two kinds of bean paste, especially adzuki bean paste, were really good.

The strawberries were local products. From January to May, you can enjoy strawberry picking in many farms in Shizuoka Prefecture, including those located near Lake Hamana in Hamamatsu. Ichigo daifuku are also sold in this period.

Mataichian has also a traditional sweet called uguisumochi. It is a famous sweet sold in many Japanese style confectionary stores in February. “Uguisu” means a Japanese bush warbler, which is also called “spring-announcing bird”, and uguisumochi takes after it. The sweet was named by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a feudal lord and chief imperial minister in the 16th century. Uguisumochi is coated with uguisuko or flour made of roasted green soybeans.

In many cases, the surface of uguisumochi looks green. Though the coating of Mataichian’s uguisumochi wasn’t green, but the skin under it was green and stuffed with adzuki bean paste. It was softer than ichigo daifuku I ate before, and the paste was smooth. Personally, I like ichigo daifuku better, but uguisumochi also seemed to be selling well.

Mataichian (又一庵) has many delicious sweets, but its specialty is kintsuba. Maybe I’ll introduce it next month.

Setsubun - Bean-throwing festival

Today is Setsubun, the day before Risshun or the first day of spring. Japanese people have a bean-throwing festival at home, shrines, and temples. We throw roasted soybeans, shouting “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” to drive away evil spirits and bring in good luck. Beans for Setsubun are often sold in packages with oni or evil spirit printed. There are even packages with a mask of oni. The bean-throwing festival is a lot of fun for children. When I was little, we threw also in-shell peanuts in my family. Though soy beans became dirty and uneatable after they were thrown (so we ate other beans), but in-shell peanuts were still eatable. In some regions in Japan, they throw peanuts at home instead of soy beans for this practical reason.

I bought a pack of beans from Kyoto. According to the bag, a prayer was made in Nison-in Temple for these beans. But it is not so important for me because I just like the taste of good soybeans. I buy the same product every year.

According to the tradition, we eat as many beans as our age after throwing beans. I didn’t throw beans and ate them without counting. They were not only good but also nutritious. Unfortunately, roasted soybeans are only available at stores only at this time of the year. I hope I can get some more at a discount price tomorrow.

In addition to bean throwing, we have another tradition for Setsubun in Enshu or western part of Shizuoka Prefecture. In Japan, some ages are considered unlucky and called yakudoshi. They are 25, 42, and 61 for men, and 19, 33, and 37 for women. In Enshu, people in these ages used to put sweets called natamochi on crossroads and let children pick them up and eat them. In this way, they drove away bad luck. Though I grew up here, I had never heard of it before. When I walked around in the basement of Entetsu Department Store, I saw natamochi in Mataichian. It is a popular Japanese confectionary store in Iwata, a town to the east of Hamamatsu. There I heard about natamochi. As they looked delicious, I bought one of them.

The main ingredients are glutinous rice and adzuki beans, and the surface was coated with roasted soybean flour. According to the shop, the original natamochi doesn’t have any filling. The outside of it was so elastic that it was difficult to cut with a little Japanese-style fork. As it looked, it was delicious indeed!

Vegan sushi and rice balls (2)

Today I went to the basement of Entetsu Department Store to buy some food for lunch. Near the entrance, there is a shop Kosei Iro Iro (個性色色) where you can find a variety of box lunch, ready-to-eat foods, bread, beverages, sweets, and so on.

Rice balls are one of the most popular foods for lunch in Japan. The shop has a wide selection of them including some vegan-friendly ones. There are also sushi rolls that are also suitable for light lunch. I chose two kinds of sushi rolls and two kinds of rice balls.

These are sushi rolls with natto (納豆) or fermented soy beans in them. They were accompanied with soy sauce and pickled ginger. In fact, I don’t like stringy natto very much because people in Hamamatsu, at least my family and relatives, didn’t have the custom of eating it when I was little. It is still unfamiliar for me. Natto in the sushi rolls was as stringy as ordinary natto that is eaten as it is. However, it seemed to be nutritious anyway.

The other sushi rolls contained kanpyo (干ぴょう, 干瓢, or かんぴょう) or dried gourd shavings cooked with sugar, soy sauce, and sweet sake. The combination of sweetened dried guard shavings and vinegared rice was very good.

 

One of the rice balls contained umeboshi (梅干し (うめぼし)) or a salted plum. This kind of rice balls may be easily recognizable because they often have a red color on the package.

After eating the top of the triangle, I remembered that I had to take a picture of the plum inside. It was a big plum and was salty and sour - exactly how it should be. Salted plums are said to have an antibacterial and antiseptic effects and have been traditionally combined with rice in rice balls or box lunch.

The other rice ball was made of red rice. This rice is glutinous rice steamed with adzuki beans and is originally eaten on celebratory occasions. Though this product contained also nonglutinous rice, it was elastic and remained me of a rice cake.

Today’s lunch was substantial. All these sushi and rice balls are made by Chikuya (知久屋). It is a food company that uses chemical- free vegetables or vegetables cultivated with a reduced amount of chemicals and avoids food additives for their products. Kosei Iro Iro in Entetsu Department Store has a corner for their ready-to-eat food other than sushi and rice balls.

In addition to products from Chikuya, Kosei Iro Iro handles products from several popular local shops. There may be some other vegan-friendly or vegetarian-friendly foods.

Vegan sushi and rice balls (1)

Since I became a vegetarian 27 years ago, I have usually cooked brown rice at home. It is more nutritious than white rice, but white rice is also good when I feel like eating something light. When I went to BIO Atsumi, a supermarket 7-miniute walk from JR Hamamatsu Station, last night, some sushi and rice balls were already sold at a discount price. So, I bought one pack of kappamaki or cucumber sushi rolls and two rice balls.

Kappamaki is one of the most recognizable vegan foods available in supermarkets. It may be the simplest kind of sushi, just consisting of rice, cucumber, and laver. Beside the sushi corner in BIO Atsumi, there were soy sauce and wasabi you could take as necessary. But I ate them only with soy sauce I had at home. Since I like sushi rolls with laver because of their flavor of sea (it is difficult to explain the flavor of laver), I thought these cucumber rolls were also good.

The rice balls contained kombu (昆布) or kelp and goma (胡麻) or sesame. Though kelp is a popular filling for rice balls, it is often flavored with dried bonito broth. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case with the kelp in these rice balls. The ingredients were just rice, kelp, laver, salt, and sesame. I couldn’t feel the taste of sesame very much, but I enjoyed the flavor of seaweed both inside and outside of the rice balls.

BIO Atsumi is an interesting supermarket with many high-quality foods from Japan and abroad. I have once introduced ganmodoki and oyaki sold there in this blog, and there are still other products to write about.

BIO Atsumi
Address: 1168 Sunayama-sho, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka
Tel: 053-456-5550
Open hours: 9:30 - 21:00

Agarasa - Steamed vegan buns from Okinawa Prefecture

As yesterday was my birthday, I had a dinner at an Indian restaurant. But it was very difficult to find a vegan birthday cake. I wondered if I really had to have a cake to celebrate my birthday. I thought some other sweets would do. I went to Entetsu Department Store to look for something delicious.

In the basement, they had a food fair of Kyushu and Okinawa. I found a shop selling agarasa or steamed buns containing black sugar. They were heated and looked tasty.

I intended to buy only one as they were big. But there were also some chocolate steamed buns, which I had never seen before. So, I bought one of them, too.

When I got home, they were still warm. I ate plain agarasa first. Black sugar contained in it was sweet but a little bitter, giving a rich taste to the bun. The chocolate agarasa looked like this and was also good, but I thought the plain one was better to enjoy the taste of black sugar, which is one of the specialties in Okinawa.

Okinawa is the only prefecture in Japan that located in the subtropical zone. It has a unique food culture. The name of the shop in the food fair is Gushiken Shoten, and they have some other black sugar products in addition to agarasa. The food fair will be held until January 29. I think I’ll visit their shop again if I have time.