Hakone Food

Late on the post but I have to give the rundown of Hankone's food. Gotta start with the onsen-tamago. Eggs are one of my favorite foods and I eat them close to every day in every way but never this way...cooked in the water of a volcanic spring. I had them two ways. One way, hanjuku, or half-boiled seems to be the more authentic, tastier way. These eggs are cooked at around 70 degrees C for 15 mintues. The result is a soft white, tofu-like, and a semi-hardened yolk. I gotta say they were a spectacular way to cook an egg. I would love to make a dish out of them, cold, with a little ponzu and chopped scallion. I think the soft boiled eggs can be replicated by using an electric skillet set to the appropriate temperature. After 15 minutes, you'll have an onsen-substitute tamago.The key to getting a cooked yolk and soft white, according to internet sources, is cooking at a low temperature. Only one little corner of the hot springs had these, a nice little secret. I was surpised because according to the internet, halfboiled is the true way for onsen tamago. The massive operation that was going on live were hard boiled eggs, cooked around 80 degrees. They came in packs of 5 and the shells were completely black. Still warm too. It was a delicious hard boiled egg but nothing special. The pics I have are of the hard boiled ones only.









One downside to Japanese food is they like sickeningly sweet things (except tea?) We stopped at an old rest stop and got a rice porredge and mochi...rice cakes made from pounded rice flour. They are sticky and sweetened, steamed or grilled. They have the stickyness and elasticity of bubble gum but are edible and dissolve after a few good chews. Japanese love these things. Everyone in the family is nuts about them. The three you see here are soy sauce, sweetened sesame seeds, and some kind of sweet bean flavored. They are edible, but the amount of sugar in them and on them gave me a sugar crash and nasty night. I just can't take that much sugar.