Spices & Seasonings Part II

This Spices & Seasonings post is 2+ years in the making. I kept pushing it off because I wanted to catch up on the skincare and makeup (what makeup?) posts. But alas, I won't ever catch up so here's this post, finally ^.^"

For the past couple of years, I've been obsessed with this Yuzu Marmalade from Yakami Orchard. So, so, sooo good and not too sweet. That crisp yuzu fragrance and taste is just addicting. It pretty much replaced all other jams and preserves for me even if I'm the only one in the family who eats it (hubby and the boys still prefer raspberry and strawberry jams). It's just delicious on buttered toasts, to sweeten teas, and even on pizza crusts ^.^ There are 2 sizes available, a smaller 300g jar which lasts me about 1-2 weeks, so now I only buy the big 580g jar which lasts a good deal longer. Oh, did I mention it's available through Amazon? Yeah. That makes it super easy. I usually buy 2-3 big jars at a time. 

This is the smaller 300g jar next to Momoya Chili Oil with Fried Garlic.

Here's the giant 580g jar next to the green bottle of yuzu juice.

Another staple in my family, and has been for years now, is this Momoya Chili Oil with Fried Garlic. I already reviewed this stuff at length in my previous post, but it's worth mentioning that for the past few years, there's been a rage of copycats of this stuff, from Momofuku's Chili Crunch (meh--will review later) to Fly By Jing's Sichuan Chili Crisp (will try that next!). Regardless of which copycat I've tried, Momoya is hard to quit and I still find myself reaching for it time and again.

This yuzu juice bottle I stumbled upon while browsing at my local H-mart. It's great for dipping sauces and salad dressings.

Continuing on with my obsession with ochazuke seasonings. The two gift sets below are from Omoriya, with both ochazuke and furikake seasonings. They're pretty average, nowhere as good as Shinshu Mebukido (信州芽吹堂) from my last post.

Let's be honest here, I picked this gift set for the tins ^.^

So, how do I eat my ochazuke? Well, brown rice, smoked salmon, green tea (preferably straight up and unflavored, but genmai works pretty well too), a packet of seasoning, and if I had any Japanese/Korean pickles on hand, I add those too. Yummy!

 

Picked up a couple of Nagatanien limited edition regional flavors and discovered a new brand Tono with very similar packaging as Shinshu Mebukido. 

This is a LE Kyoto regional flavors of mibuna and shibazuke. Both were yummy.

This one is a LE summer flavor of Shio Sudachi (salted sudachi). It's also a "cold brew," as in I can make it with cold green tea instead of hot, although I stuck with hot tea and never tried it cold because I prefer hot ochazuke. This one was delicious as well. The sudachi citrus flavor was really refreshing!

Found this matcha salt on Rakuten JP and bought a few jars to sprinkle on my avocado toast. Yummy!

The matcha salt above isn't my first flavored salt. In fact, I have a thing for flavored salt as I've sampled quite a few from Saltworks. The two Limited Edition Salt Sampler Sets I got from them a few years ago were the Snowflake Collection and Heat Collection. I should have tried one each of the different sets they had because they no longer sells directly to consumers now and will only sell wholesale or bulk. Dammit! I've tried these salts on pretty much anything and everything, including sandwiches, soups, salads, popcorns, and even ice creams. I love that each set came with 3 double-pan glass serving plates and 3 tiny serving spoons (not pictured).

Here's the Snowflake Collection.

 

Heat Collection.

See my previous Spices & Seasonings post.