whitebait icecream

I finally realized why I have so much difficulty getting round to blogging. I'm a strong introvert - even calling close friends on the phone requires a whole lot of screwing up my energy level, while personal emails tend to get put on one side to be answered at length, only to be rediscovered with embarrassment weeks or months later. And blogging is even more revealing - I have no idea who will be reading this, or what your reaction to it will be - and so gets put off "until I have time to do it properly." Which might be this year, next year, sometime, never ...

But I know there are family members and friends who would appreciate a photo or so now and then. So I'm going to try and blog more regularly on more impersonal things to get some momentum going again, and slip in photos of the family whenever there's a particularly nice one to share.

Icecream is a bit of a personal subject, perhaps. We all have our favorites, mine being anything remotely raspberry-related. Japanese icecream includes all the regular standards - you can always find chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla - but quite a few flavors that would raise eyebrows if you saw them in Baskin Robbins in Piccadilly. Some are standard flavorings for Japanese sweets - green tea, azuki bean, sesame, sweet potato - that scarcely rate a second glance when used for icecream too. Others are a bit more unusual. Because green tea is a regular flavoring in Japan black tea gets used in the same way, and I still find it hard to adjust to Darjeeling or Earl Grey icecream. And tastes such as pickled cherry leaves or mugwort, while normal for mochi rice dumplings, somehow feel a bit strange in a cone. But occasionally you come across flavors in icecream shops that just make you go HUHHHHH?



Take this selection. The back row is relatively normal - crumbed cookie, cream cheese, milk tea, and chocolate (phew). But the front row starts getting interesting. From the left, we have shiso (perilla, an aromatic green herb), Calpis (a milk-based drink that's more appetizing than it sounds), lemonade, and finally sea salt. In the same shop I tried root ginger icecream, expecting it to be similar to the crystallized ginger version I've had so many times in London. Sadly, no - the taste was raw and pungent, and I was glad I'd tried a spoonful before buying. (I eventually settled for the lychee.)



Or this shop, in Shizuoka. The bottom three tubs are nothing unusual - grape, mango, and shincha green tea. But take a look at the top row. On the right, you might be forgiven for thinking you have pistachio, but no, it's salt ("emerald salt" this time). With wasabi (hot green horesradish), usually used for seasoning sushi, in the center. And no, your eyes don't deceive you. That is actually a shrimp on the left. Shizuoka is famous for sakura-ebi, tiny crunchy pink shrimps, and someone had the bright idea of adding them to icecream to make a local delicacy. I guess it would be perfect with a scoop of wasabi on the side.

But the one below beats all, at least for me.



In the front row, second from the left, is ... shirasu icecream. Shirasu are tiny baby fish, a type of whitebait, that are a local delicacy in the Shizuoka region where Kentaro now works. They're delicious on rice, with a sprinkling of salmon roe. But in icecream?

I bottled out and got the pumpkin, then thought I just had to try and asked for a spoonful. And what do you know, it was very very good. Not at all fishy, but with a very pure, creamy taste, punctuated by crunchy bits when you bite into a morsel of whitebait. Next time we go, I'm going to have a whole cone.