 | We all know that the Japanese are bonkers, but surely they must put all that on hold when they take a pause in their busy days for a cup of something or other (I'm being deliberately vague here) and a biccy. Well probably not, which is really what we were hoping for. So when Tom our book editor said he had brought back some biscuits for us from Japan after visiting his sister in the New Year we were quietly optimistic. When he also added that his sister had suggested some really nice shops were you can get really wonderful morsels and Tom had said 'No I think we should just go the nearest 7 to 11', we knew we would be in for a treat.
Looking like an after shave box, all black with bronze details, or possibly something to do with golf, Leafy Pies seem as if they are aimed at the gold medallion wearing segment of the Japanese biscuit buying public. If you still hadn't made your mind up then manufacturer Morinaga have added the English strap line 'The New Standard Biscuit'. This is the sort of excellent nonsense we were after. Turfing around their website which is a very odd mixture of 90% Japanese and 10% English reveals that they use this as their company wide strap line, it's that good. They also have some biscuits called 'Well'. Perhaps they are working on some new ones called 'Errm', and 'Actually'.
Inside the box are six small yellow sachets with a design on them that looks like a small bronze and black tartan ribbon with a gold leafy pie seal on it. The small sachet is something we have come to expect of oriental biscuits, and is preposterously small by western tea break standards. The two petite leafy pies within compared to chocolate digestive look like a juggernaut parked next to a mini. The leafy pie is very light indeed, and this would appear to be due to it being entirely hollow. It would seem that those puff pastry pie lids that you get on steak pies in pubs might have been the inspiration for this biscuit. A thin sugary glaze and an upper coat of chocolate complete the package. Biting one of these fragile little biscuits causes it to collapse into a little apologetic ball of damp pie crust in your mouth. A mere few seconds later you find yourself wondering if you really did just eat it, or did you simply imagine the whole thing. If this is what the Japanese are used to then the effort in despatching a HobNob would probably leave them exhausted and gasping for breath.
Whilst he was at it Tom picked us up a pack of genuine Japanese Pocky as made by Glico. Having had lessons on the Japanese tea ceremony he plumped for a pack of Green Tea Pocky. Until now we had only experienced the French Mikado, a Pocky made under licence in France by LU. So the first thing we noticed was that the Japanese ones are much shorter and stockier than their Euro version. The Pocky is best described as a salt-less pretzel stick 80% dipped in a chocolate like coating. In this case the coating was a very particular sort of green. There was a strange and delicate perfume to them, that proved impossible to accurately pin down, sort of quince like was the nearest I could get. However biting in gave way to a sensation akin to eating spat out toothpaste foam with a twig. Although that sounds disgusting, it actually was quite an interesting experience.
So has my uninformed opinion of the Japanese changed since sampling their biscuits? No of course not, they are plainly bonkers.
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