Gluten'n'Cream
Written: Jul 20 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Novelty, strangeness of sensation, flavor of interior.
Cons: Novelty, strangeness of sensation, flavor of exterior.
The Bottom Line: Inventive, pleasantly strange, worthwhile excursion into a novel food realm. Won't melt in your hands. Great for tossing to kids and dogs.
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| amycamus's Full Review: Groceries |
I have a friend who appreciates ‘50s-era American cookbooks – Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens and the like – not only for the faded Technicolor illustrations and literary quality of their credulity-defying recipes, but also because, incredibly, he actually cooks and enjoys the stuff. As a close friend and dining companion, I’ve been a frequent clinical subject for some of his time-traveling experiments with post-war American cuisine, and thus have consumed, with no small amount of courage, dishes with names like “Company Chicken Noodle Bake,” “Waikiki Meatballs,” “Shrimp Pinwheel Casserole,” and the self-explanatorially daunting “Vegetable Medley Jello Loaf.” While many of these culinary anomalies have defied expectations and proven quite tasty, I’ve fortunately been spared so far from such egregious transgressions as “Braunschweiger Pineapple,” a truly mind-boggling creation consisting – dare to envision this - of meat paste shaped into a “pineapple” and covered with a lemon/mayonnaise/aspic glaze, cross-hatched with diamonds in the center of which are placed pimento-stuffed olive slices, and finished off with a genuine pineapple crown. For this terrifying possibility, and dozens of similar ones, I always react with some trepidation to my friend’s generous dinner invitations.
Recently, answering one such invitation, I enjoyed a fairly traditional dinner of mixed green salad, “Chantilly Potatoes,” and a pork roast, all straight out of an antique edition of "The Joy of Cooking." Was everything delicious? It was. I whistled out a quiet sigh of relief; I’d made it through another dinner without having to do psychological and gastronomical battle with such questionable comestibles as aspic, pimentos, and creamed ham. I eased back my chair, finished off my glass of wine, and was about to compliment my friend on his lovely meal when he announced, with a mischievous smirk, “Dessert!”
I groaned. What chef’s surprise awaited me now? Smiling like a minion of the dark side, my friend placed before me a small glass bowl, in the center of which sat a frosted muffin-like object, a shrunken pin cushion, a palid hacky-sack of a minty, pastel green that looked as though it had crawled right out of a picture in one of his archaic cookbooks. He stood back, crossed his arms, and smiled. “There ya go,” he said, in a cheerfully sarcastic impersonation of June Cleaver.
I looked up, beseechingly. “What – what IS it?”
“Dessert. Try it.”
“Aren’t you going to have one?”
“No. I’ve had several this week. I’m done. Try it.”
I looked again, then rudely poked at it with my finger. It felt spongy enough to poke back.
“Don’t I get a spoon or fork?”
“You don’t need one. Use your hands.”
I carefully picked up the – object; I could not quite justify, at least not yet, thinking of it as food. It was cool to the touch and light. The surface was slightly sticky, like the glue on an overused Post-It note, and a smidgen of flour rubbed off on my fingers.
“Go ahead,” he said.
Hesitantly, I steeled myself and took a bite. An extremely surprising and odd sensation ensued, for as my teeth sank past the thick, resilient, bland-tasting exterior, they met creamy cold and a vaguely familiar, pleasant flavor. My fears were allayed, but my curiosity piqued. I held the cold on my tongue until my neurons recovered and connected.
“Gween tea ithe cweam,” I mumbled, my mouth full.
My friend nodded.
Sure enough, inside the glutenous outer coating, there nested a small dollop of green tea ice cream: rich, lush, and, well, creamy. Here Japanese design, famous the world over, had produced yet another ingenious invention: ice cream you could eat with your hands. The box my friend handed me – this was no homemade ‘50s concoction – identified this peculiar product as “Mochi,” manufactured by the Mizawaya Corporation of Los Angeles. The adequately elegant package design was no competition for the genius of the product itself, five of which remained cushioned in an interior plastic crate. I checked the back of the box, curious as to how such an item might be engineered. To my disappointment there was no description of the process, but the ingredients list included, in addition to the expected rice flour, three different kinds of gum and an alarmingly lengthy list of FDA food colors. A green like that must not come easy.
As clever as ”Mochi” seemed, I couldn’t entirely be sure it wasn’t a sort of joke. After all, in addition to my familiarity with such beautiful, practical Japanese designs as the bento box, rice paper lamps and tongue-in-groove carpentry, I also knew of the Japanese concept of Chindogu, products for everyday use that take the mania for practicality and convenience to absurd shallows, such as eyeglasses with windshield wipers and chin props to allow one to sleep while standing up on the subway.1
A little lazy research convinced me, though, that Mochi was no absurdist bit of Chindogu, but had roots that reached more deeply into traditional Japanese culture. The name of the product was not new to me; I was slightly familiar with “mochi” (lower case ‘m’), a well-known Japanese foodstuff consisting of rice gluten pounded into small cakes and chewed, especially popular during celebrations such as New Year’s. Essentially, the Mochi ice cream muffins were nothing more that a bolus of ice cream enveloped in one such cake. A quick search on the web turned up a number of recipes and sites describing mochi cakes, one of which asserted that mochi “gives vigor to the mind and body for activity and endurance, makes you feel very good and full, is easily digested and soothing to the spirit when chewed well.”2 That last comment I could well understand, given the mild workout and cud-chewing euphoria that the upper case Mochi was giving my jaw. Another site advised:
“To ensure long life, stretch the mochi with your chopsticks as you bite into it. The longer it stretches, the longer you’ll live. Ironically, every year the news reports on old folks who choke on their long-life mochi, so be careful!”3
This too seemed an appropriate warning applicable to the upper case Mochi, though I’d forgo the chopsticks; they could turn eating this product into a very messy experience.
I polished off my Mochi quickly, then had a second. I can’t say with conviction that I loved them, but they certainly kept my interest. The texture of the mochi part of the Mochi was fascinating, but it didn’t seem quite right as a food. It felt and tasted a bit too much like part of the packaging, as though – thinking of an American equivalent – I were eating a slice of American cheese with the wrapper still on it. I think I would have preferred my green tea ice cream au natural. Still, the novelty caused a significant, surreal synaesthesia - the peculiar texture of the covering crossing wires with the rich taste of the ice cream, helping neutralize the other collision of sensations between the bland taste of the exterior and the silky consistency of the ice cream - providing fun compensation for the shortcomings of the product, and making eating the Mochi a kind of non-experience and a stimulating surprise all at the same time.
“These are delicious, I think, but…”
“I know,” said my friend. “I ate a whole carton earlier this week. I enjoyed them immensely, but it was enough. In fact, my guess is that six is probably about the lifetime limit for anyone.”
“You’re probably right,” I said, finishing off my third one and reaching for the box. “Can I have my other three now?”
“You might want to hold off on those, “ he replied, again smiling mischievously. “There are six other flavors.” Indeed, it turns out that Mochi is also available in Strawberry, Vanilla, Chocolate Chocolate [sic], Mango, Red Bean, and Kona Coffee.
My friend had a point. I figured those chopsticks might come in handy after all; given the longevity promised by traditional mochi – not to mention the sort of meals I might face in the future - I’d need to pace myself carefully.
http://www.mochiicecream.com/
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1 I strongly recommend Chindogu expert Kenji Kawakami’s excellent books “101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu” and “99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindogu” for amply illustrated examples of Chindogu. Or, for quick enlightenment, you can check out any number of Chindogu sites on the web, including:
http://www.ohio.net/~pilgrim/chindogu.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~ctnst3/chindogu/chin1temp.html
2 http://www.healthyreferral.com/grainaissance/mochi.html
3 http://www.tokyoclassified.com/tokyominfeaturestories/300/tokyomini3featurestoriesinc.htm
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
amycamus
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Location: San Francisco, CA
Reviews written: 13
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