Okoshi

When I was a kid I learned to make “Rice Krispies® squares” using a recipe written on the back of a cereal box. It's a sweet treat that was well appreciated in my family and my sister still makes them for the Holidays. Later, as a teenager, I was joking that it was a North American adaptation from asian cuisine (an idea that probably came from seeing the evil chinese spy Wen-Li eating his Rice Krispies® with chopsticks in the movie IXE-13 — see the trailer on Youtube).

I guess it was not such a far-fetched idea after all. When I heard that a restaurant in Montreal was offering Rice Krispies® sushi, I thought that someone else was in with the joke… Until I realized that Kellogg’s® had posted a Sushi Treats™ Recipe on their website! Okay, it's made of gummy-worm and fruit strips, but I still think it is rather funny and, in a way, it does make sense.

And it makes even more sense today. As usual, I was eating lunch while watching NHK World on my iPad. Today, it was the travel show / language course “Meet and Speak” lesson #27: Walking the streets of Asakusa (you can see it on Youtube). Near the end of the show (at 8:34), they visit the Nakamise shopping street where a vendor prepare Kaminari Okoshi, a square sweet made of toasted rice. Seeing this, I realized that, after all, “Rice Krispies® squares” were most probably an adaptation of this Japanese sweet. It is very similar (although my wife says that Okoshi is much harder to eat than Kellogg’s® version).

You can easily finds Okoshi recipes online (here's a simple one on Tousando and a demonstration on Youtube). Also on Youtube, there's the first episode of the series Sweets Tales which is dedicated to Okoshi (it's in Japanese, but you can set up english close-caption [CC]):


Bon appétit!

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