07/01/2011
瀰月屋 Mitsukiya
天后清風街15號
15 Tsing Fung Street Street, Tin Hau
https://www.openrice.com/zh/hongkong/review/wagashi-wagashi-wagashi-wagashi-e2141493
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Satsumaimo Chakin shibori (sweet potato twisted in a cloth).
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| burdock in hokkaido milk and kuzumochi |
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| Almond Tofu |
Saw pictures of this place, and was very fascinated by it, especially a place just for Japanese desserts.
The usual dessert places offer Chinese dessert, Taiwanese snowflake ice and now Froyo, but solely Japanese Dessert is just the beginning.
The interior of the place is decorated with various Japanese pictures, ornaments and an old styled TV.
When you sit down, you are provided with some plum drink.
The menu is printed on thin sheets of paper, the ones used for those traditional daily tear off chinese calendars.
On the menu there are six sections, four with different Japanese dessert categories, and the lower two boxes for set meals.
For locals, even though the menu is in chinese, it is quite hard to read, because the fonts are rather weird and the terminology is authentic Japanese, so unless you know your Japanese desserts, you will need an introduction from the staff, and for non-Chinese like me, I have to reply on the reviews and Openrice pictures.
So I shall attempt in explaining as much as possible although some of the information about the Japanese desserts could be wrong because I got the information from the web.
On the menu there are basically 4 different categories:
sweet soup:a choice of hot or cold except for the burdock.
Purple sweet potato soup
Red beans sweet soup
Green beans sweet soup
Burdock in hokkaido milk
Pumpkin sweet soup paste
Black sesame sweet soup paste
Chestnut sweet soup paste
Lotus seeds sweet soup
Japanese sweets (Japanese sweets)
Daifuku
Dango
Wagashi
Tofu
Kuzumochi
Grilled chestnuts/sweet potato
Cloth twisted sweet potato
Drinks:
Fruit drinks
Kids beer
Green tea with milk
Green tea with milk and wheat
Plum drink
Grapefruit tea
Teas: various including floral and earl grey
Western Japanese desserts:
Mousse
Jelly cup
Milk pudding
Egg pudding
Apple pie
Popcorn
You can order the above items a la carte or order the sets for one, I prefer the sets because they cost around $4x dollars where as the single items cost around $3x and you can sample different items.
As well as the one-person sets, they also do sets for 2-4 people.
For the one-person set, there are three sets, I liked the sets 912 and 913 (the sets have a chinese name, but to make things simple, I have just mentioned the set number).
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Set 911
A choice of Kuzumochi or Daifuki
Sweet soup
Wagashi, cloth wrapped sweet potato or grilled purple potato
tea cloth twistd sweet potato and kuzumochi
Anyway the 911 is a bit Chinesey, because it contains a sweet soup, the reason I tried it was because of the Satsumaimo Chakin shibori (sweet potato twisted in a cloth).
The other two items that I ordered were the burdock in hokkaido milk and kuzumochi.
The burdock in hokkaido milk just tasted like warmed milk with burdock, and the kuzumochi tasted like sweet tough kanten jelly with soy bean powder, they gave a mix of brown sugar flavoured kuzumochi and original kuzumochi to let me compare the taste.
I felt that the brown sugar one tasted better and went well with the soy bean powder.
Kuzumochi are chewy cakes made of kuzuko. Kuzuko is the starch powder made from kuzu or kudzu plant root. It's used for thickening sauce or making cool desserts in Japanese cooking. Kuzumochi are semi transparent and often served with kuromitsu (brown sugar syrup/powder) and kinako (soy bean flour).
Satsumaimo Chakin shibori - Chakin shibori is a cooking method for forming mashed ingredients in chakin (tea cloth). As shibori means wringing in Japanese, a small amount of mashed satsumaimo (sweet potato) is wrapped in thin cloth or plastic wrap and is formed by twisting the cloth or plastic wrap, leaving a patterned surface.
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Set 912
Dango (a choice sesame, almond or pumpkin sauce)
Tofu (a choice sesame, almond or pumpkin sauce)
Daifuku ( choice of strawberry or chestnut)
This set was fuss free, because the first two items were fixed, all you had to do was choose a sauce, all these three items were my favourites.
For the dango and tofu, the choice of sauces were sesame, almond and pumpkin.
Since the tofu flavour is not that strong I chose almond, and for the dango, I chose pumpkin, and then for the daifuku I chose strawberry.
Dango is a Japanese dumpling made from mochiko (rice flour). It is sticky and filling either served on skewers glazed with a sweet coating and grilled or served in sweet soups.
The dango here was so nice, the sugar coating on it was caramelised and crunchy, best of all it wasnt too sweet. The caramelised sugar formed a shell around it. The dango was nice and chewy, the pumpkin sauce was good too, not sweet and it had the pumpkins natural savory taste.
The tofu here was smooth and firm, however its texture was slightly like pudding, I felt that it may have contained gelatin.
Anyway the almond sauce wasnt that strong, so both the tofu and almond could be tasted.
Daifuku is a Japanese confectionery consisting of a small round mochi (glutinous rice cake) stuffed with sweet filling, most commonly anko, sweetened red bean paste made from azuki beans. Daifuku comes in many varieties. The most common is white-, pale green-, or pale pink-colored mochi filled with anko. These come in two sizes, one approximately the diameter of a half-dollar coin, the other palm-sized. Some versions contain whole pieces of fruit, mixtures of fruit and anko, or crushed melon paste. Nearly all daifuku are covered in a fine layer of corn or taro starch to keep them from sticking to each other, or to the fingers. Some are covered with confectioner's sugar or cocoa powder.
However the filling in this one was green bean, and the centre was a fresh strawberry.
I was expecting myself to hate it, but I loved it, the reason purely because the sweetness was just right, and the strawberry was fresh.
I have had really disgusting ones at Ichiban and Sogo which were as sweet as syrup and the texture is not as fresh as the ones here.
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Set 913
Pudding (choice of egg or milk)
Fruit cup
Drinks (choice of drinks from the drinks selection)
I did not get to try this one, but I will definitely come back for it next time!!
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I also ordered the tokoroten noodles, because I wanted to have fun extruding them using a tokoroten-tsuki (extruder for tokoroten).
The extruder for tokoroten consists of a oblong box shape with openings at both ends. One end has a wire grid, a large block of tokoroten is placed in the other opening and a piston is used to push it through the grid. The tokoroten-tsuki is also known as the ten-tsuki.
The tokoroten texture was like the chinese agar, but slightly firmer. It was slightly sour in taste, but the sweetness of the green tea evened it out, and the coldness of the green tea made the noodles even more icier. The green tea was kept cold with ice-cubes in the bowl.
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I have been there twice, the first visit I got free popcorn, the second visit a magazine was doing a feature there.
I will be back for the apple pie, and steamed milk pudding, and the kid's beer which is apple juice in a cute beer bottle.
Mystery mag shoot, which u will c wen published
