Chocolate

Lemon pepper and creamy matcha.

Green tea mochi

An impulse purchase from Ichiban Kan in San Francisco, eaten on a sunny but chilly day sitting on the grass overlooking the San Francisco bay. Very soft and smooth texture. Good matcha flavour.

Sweet Snacks

A couple of sweet snacks for a cold week. No baking as I need to lose weight and am preparing for a big Chinese New Year blowout next week. First, a giant milk chocolate "H" from the Netherlands. Sweet and milky.

The other was plain yoghurt topped with matcha jelly and brown sugar.

Green tea KitKats and Coppeneur truffles

The chocolate on the KitKats is replaced by a green tea flavoured chocolate making these bars not just visually attractive but also strongly redolent of matcha.

The truffles (milk chocolate and gianduia and white chocolate with peach filling) are a gift of Lufthansa via my parents. The gianduia truffle is smooth but rather bland; the slightly tart peach filling complements well the sweetness of the white chocolate.

Stainer Cioccolato Te Verde e Gelsomino

Stainer makes a whole range of tea chocolates according to the back of this green tea and jasmine bar, though I can't seem to find them ontheir site. This bar has a strong matcha flavour and is much less sweet than the milk Earl Grey bars from Chuao or Dolfin. Can't say I can taste or smell the jasmine though.

Weekend Cooking: Yellow curry and green tea agar

Maesri yellow curry with cauliflower, edamame, spinach and beef make an aromatic and tasty meal.

Not the most attractive of photos but this is surprisingly tasty, with a softer texture than my usual agar jellies. Strong grassy, slightly bitter flavour makes this a nice digestif.

Mini green tea mooncake

Hand-carried by my parents all the way from Singapore. Mini-mooncake with green tea flavoured lotus paste makes a lovely afternoon tea snack.

Variations on a teame

Left: Green tea noodles + sesame oil + creamy discs of egg tofu + crunchy fried shallots. Sesame oil overpowers the tea flavour of the noodles.

Right: Green tea noodles + ponzu sauce + fish tofu. Citrusy, light ponzu cuts the richness of the fried tofu and allows the tea flavour to shine through.

Maison de Kukkia Green Tea Cookies

Sandwiching a thin green-tea flavoured cream layer between two light, sugary wafer discs, these are a perfect light accompaniment to a cup of tea. Individually wrapped in glossy, pinstriped plastic, it is elegant and lady-like. Unlike me.

Newtree Freezing

This new Newtree bar is gorgeously packaged in a glossy rainbow-colored plastic wrapper. It contains both mint and green tea, and like other Newtree bars makes all kinds of new-agey health claims. This 73% cacao bar has a mild mint flavour, but no hint of green tea extract. The chocolate itself is mild with little flavour either. All in all rather disappointing.

Green tea mochi

Knowing my love of green-tea flavoured foods, though not necessarily matcha itself, my parents gave me these green tea mochi from Taiwan. Not only does the outer mochi shell have green tea, so does the filling inside, making for a delicious strongly flavoured afternoon tea snack.

Milka Lime and Green Tea

Milka Limette und Gruner Tee

A new limited edition flavour from this mass market manufacturer, this white chocolate bar was very sweet. The lime cut the sweetness somewhat but still the overall impression was of sweetness. As you can see the white chocolate surrounded a lime-yoghurt and tea filling. Unfortunately no green tea flavour was discernable to me at all. Interesting and worth trying once. I wish lime was used more with chocolate.

St Patrick's Day green tea noodles

In honour of St Patrick's Day I had green tea tom yum instant noodles today, with coriander, green onion and silken tofu. Not your traditional corned beef and cabbage but definitely in the spirit of the violently green iced cookies and cupcakes available at the grocery store and the green beer at the bars tonight.

Green tea cookies

Weekends are the time I can indulge in this leisurely ritual with tea in a teapot and a sweet treat. Today's consisted of Twining's Earl Grey and a green tea cookie (another gift from the parents from Taiwan).

Each cookie came beautifully wrapped in an individual foldout paper box. The outer layer is soft, buttery rich and tea flavoured and the filling is a slightly sweet fruit paste. According to the box the filling is one of a variety of fruits - pineapple, melon and strawberry among others. However they are all colored green, though each is slightly different in flavour and sweetness. The tea cuts some of the richness, but I still usually only eat half a 2-inch square cookie. As you can see they all came in a lovely presentation box.