In Wellington, if you're looking for the weird and wonderful, you can probably find it on Cuba Street. One day, while wandering down it looking for presents for J for his birthday, I went into this wonderful Japanese store that appears to specialize in "everything that the Japanese owners think is cool." Their tastes seem to overlap significantly with J's and mine, so we love browsing through. For this particular birthday, I'd elected to get J several small gifts instead of one bigger one, and so I was looking for things that were amusing (and hopefully consumable, as we don't like accumulating possessions), and I was not disappointed.
I found this cardboard box, containing what appeared to be candy versions of hamburgers, fries, and a drink. Being that J loves burgers and candy, I thought this might be a fun, silly treat for him.
First surprise: After being suitably enthusiastic about the candy, J opened it up, only to discover this. It now seemed clear that this present was far more for me than for J, as it involved mixing and stirring and assembling, which is super fun for me.
Second surprise: Instructions and labels exclusively in Japanese. The plot thickens.
Trying to use the pictures, in combination with the colour and smell of the powders in the packets (and trying to avoid being concerned that the meat patty powder really smelled like beef), I assembled the component parts. This even included microwaving the fry dough before slicing it up, which I'm pretty sure means that this was real cooking. The soda powder also fizzed like real carbonation.
Once assembled, it looked like this. Turns out, I accidentally used the bun powder for the fries, and the fry powder for the buns. I was wondering why the fries rose so much in the microwave. Anyway, we laid aside our misgivings about what was actually in this stuff (the ingredients are also in Japanese, so we'll never know) and taste tested each bit. I would have sworn that the ketchup was real, and the "fries" tasted like bun, and the meat tasted like meat! The Japanese are pretty impressive!
Delighted with this experience, I went and bought two more, and first tried out this doughnut one.
Mine aren't as beautiful as the picture, but I believe that I correctly used all the packets, and they tasted pretty doughnut-y, so I'll call it a success. Plus, it was lots of fun!
I may have mentioned in the past that I'm a little bit obsessed with the deliciousness of sushi. That's not actually why I picked this one, however. The picture on the back shows making the red fish roe balls by dropping one liquid into another, and that sounded like the best fun yet. (Spoiler: it was.)
This is what the tray looked like with all the powders mixed, spread, kneaded, etc. I couldn't quite figure out the pictures for how much water to add to each one, but I got there eventually. You then sucked up the red liquid in the dropper (seen in the picture below full of soy sauce) and dropped it into the clear liquid, which hardened it into amazing little spheres. So cool!
Once assembled, my sushi liked like this. My best one yet, I think!
The sushi, unlike the previous two, was not designed to taste like the real thing, but was rather a candy version. Which I think is best, really, when it comes to pretend raw fish. The fish roe was particularly delicious, still juicy inside.
I haven't tried the other sets yet, so I will have to return to Cuba Street in the near future and select my next projects.
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