One of my students brought me some cookies from her college town. These are very famous cookies/biscuits that are absolutely delicious and a bit pricey. In Japanese they are called Unagi Pie. They are very, very light, buttery, sweet, crispy cookies and they are made of eel. Yes! Eel! The long slimy things that swim in the sea!It seems the town is famous for eel (which I swear is also delicious) and they had all these eel bones left over so someone got the great idea of pulverizing them, making them into powder and adding them to cookies. One of the strangest ideas in Japan I think, but actually there must only be a trace of eel powder in there because there is not a hint that these pastries are anything but elegant tea time snacks. My friends and I enjoyed them yesterday and we commented as always about the lack of eel taste. Reading the back of the package one of us noticed that among the ingredients there was also listed garlic. What? There is not a trace of garlic in this cookie! (We had to have another bite to check.) Nope absolutely delicious.
I think of these as tea time cookies but please notice the English on the packaging. Do I even want to go any further with this? Eel is supposed to give a person stamina in the long hot exhausting days of summer... Nights? Maybe another reason these are so popular.
5 comments:
Clearly it is a translation error. They meant to say "A snack for knights"!
Oh! I had to laugh, as we went shopping in an Asian Supermarket today, & there were many delicacies which we had no understanding of. The lovely lady who owns the shop tries to translate for us, & explain how to cook the dishes. I was taken with "Men's Dark Chocolate". However we didnt purchase any.
When I was in Japan in January, we actually went on a tour of the unagi pie factory!! Our Japanese friends know we LOVE unagi pies so when we found ourselves in the area (Hamamatsu) on an onsen trip, we stopped by. There are specialty flavors at the factory..brandy (the *gold version*) and nutty ones. We got lots of free samples and even unagi pie keychains! You can imagine how funny I thought it was when I clicked on your blog today and saw your unagi pie photo!! They are delicious, aren't they?!!!
LOL!!!! this was so funny!!! and I thought I was weird for liking a sweet mole made with chili and chocolate! THOSE pies take the cake...
Eel? Uh, no........ just, no. Not any time of the day.
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