In only one week the goal was to try every Thai and Vietnamese shop in Tucson, Arizona that served Bubble Tea (Boba). There were seven shops to attempt. Javalinas Coffee sold out to Java Edge and no longer serves Bubble Tea. Here are the shops we tried, listed in order from greatest to least. At the end is our first attempt at making the Tea ourselves.
I need to start with two honorable mentions. The Best Thai Tea in Tucson is naturally at the best Thai restaurant – Bangkok on the corner of Tucson and Speedway. They don’t serve the tapioca in the tea, but it is the most vibrant and authentic tea to be sampled.
Runner up for the best Thai tea was Luckies (Da Yuan Express) at Houghton road. They no longer serve the Boba in the tea. They have cheap eats of the MSG-free Chinese fare, and very friendly service!
First Place | Drink Price | Tries | Thoughts |
|---|
Saigon Pho (University In the Back) | 3.50 | Thai, Coconut, Honeydew, Watermelon | Hand Blended, this place is amazing! Crisp fresh sandwiches, MSG-free, loved every dish we tried! |
Second Place | Drink Price | Tries | Thoughts |
|---|
Miss Saigon (Campbell near Speedway) | 2.75? | Coconut Snow, Watermelon, Honeydew, Chocolate, Milk Tea, Grape | More variety of drinks than any other. Enjoyed them all. Fun seals. MSG in the food, had to pass. |
Third Place | Drink Price | Tries | Thoughts |
|---|
Dao Tai Pan (Wilmot near Carondolet) | 3.25 | Coffee, Green Apple, Strawberry, Tropical | Fun sealed. Liked the Lychee Konjac bits in the tropical. Boba pearls were too soft from freezing and nuking. Uses MSG so we skipped the food. |
Fourth Place | Drink Price | Tries | Thoughts |
|---|
Ha Long Bay (Wilmot at Broadway) | 2.75 | Coconut, Honeydew, Strawberry, Thai Tea | Not Fun sealed. The real coconut milk was slightly off. Uses MSG so we skipped the food. |
Place | Drink Price | Tries | Thoughts |
|---|
Orient Express (University Look upstairs) | 2.99 | Cherry, Jasmine Tea, Coconut | Not Fun sealed. Watery flavors, lids not fitting well. Blah |
LAST Place | Drink Price | Tries | Thoughts |
|---|
Asian Diner (Speedway Near Campbell) | 4.10 | Mango, Banana, Honeydew, Coffee | Yuck! Over syrup, Something was wrong with the storage of the pearls or something. We could not drink them. We had to pay .60 cents more to put the tapioca in and we ended up with less amount than other shops! |
We just had to make some ourselves! We went to G and L Oriental market and snagged all the needed bits. We bought fat straws and two kinds of tapioca balls that are pre-packaged. Fun experiment and Much cheaper. Now to perfect the Thai Tea recipe!
If you live in Albuquerque, be sure to try the Bubble Tea shop near the TaLin Market. The best Bubble tea I have ever had was in Las Vegas at Lollicup. None of these mentioned above come close to that.
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Homemade ice cream should only come in one flavor. Eggs should be in a chicken, not your ice cream! Anyhow, here is the Perfect Vanilla Ice Cream recipe:
This is for a Six quart size maker:
- 1 Quart Shamrock Whole Milk
- 1 Quart Shamrock Half & Half
- 1 Quart Shamrock Heavy Cream
- 1.5 Cups Vanilla Sugar (made by storing a whole vanilla bean sealed in the sugar for a week. See pic below)
- 1 Teaspoon red mined salt (use a little less if table salt)
- The powdery insides of a real vanilla bean
- Enough Molina Mexican brown vanilla to change the color (about 3 tbsp, to taste)
Warm the milk, half and half, and cream in a sauce pan and stir the sugar in. This gets the sugar granules all dissolved, and makes everything play nicely together. You want to stir it constantly and avoid scorching. The ideal temp is just before bubbles form on the outside edges. This is nowhere near boiling, like 140 degrees. You would not want to put your finger in, but if you did you could not keep it in. Remove from heat.
Stir in the rest of the ingredients and cool the whole thing half an hour. If you are pressed for time, just warm the milk to melt the sugar in and mix the half and half and cream in cold.
Try these for variety: A tiny pinch of cinnamon, a very small pinch of clove powder.
Another variation: Scorch only the sugar until it caramels just a bit. Maybe add a little lemon zest or a squeeze of lemon in. (This WILL curdle milk, so be careful! I add it right before churning) As risky as lemon would be a dash of tea Masala (Chai). The fresh ginger is the danger here; it will overpower if stored for any amount of time. Finish it off!
A hint about the vanilla, If you do not like Mexican Vanilla, skip it. Put the husk of the scraped Vanilla bean in the milk when you warm it and let it get very hot. (Just avoid a rolling boil.) More flavor will leak out and more bits can be scraped out of the bean.
I use a full 20 lb bag of ice and about two cups of rock salt for the maker. (Get the blue big Morton’s bag of softener salt, after all you are not consuming this.) The more ice and salt you melt the faster it will harden. I use a dasher to poke down into the ice all the time it is running. If the mix churns too long it will make butter bits. You can gain a couple minutes by pouring a cup or two of water over the ice when you first load the maker. (The water connects the cold of the ice to the metal of the maker)
Adjust for four Quart maker:
- 3 Cups Milk
- 2 Cups Half and Half
- 3 Cups Whipping Cream
- 1 Cup Sugar
- .5 Tsp Salt
- 1 Tbsp Vanilla
I know the ingredients as listed are not cheap, but if you cared about money that much you would just grab some Dreyer’s Rocky Road or Dreyer’s Cherry Vanilla. (I have not found this recently, but try Dove’s Cherry Courtship. Wow!) At some point you must decide, “Are you making cream, or are you making art?”
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Nested a bit uphill from the main set of shops in Bisbee is a real gem. Gordon and Kim Terpening have brought with them the results of globe trotting in the name of the fine Cacao bean. The super obvious name for the shop “Chocolate” will be easy enough to google. Lots and lots of results!
Chocolate as an art is not cliché in this case. I consider myself a candy expert and it turns out I knew nothing about just how intense and vibrant chocolate can be. Like a well mastered coffee bean, the chocolate must be treated with masterful oversight. We were fortunate to arrive at an off time when we could see individual processes and sample Cacao beans from each region of the world. The rare offering from Madagascar has hints of lingering strawberry and Venezuela seems warm and very mature.
Kim adds the artistic flair to their recipe creations. You will find chocolates of unique shapes that have been masterfully sculpted. You will see ornate edible prints made with the pure cacao butter. You will see the glints of fine edible fairy dust sprinkled on.
You owe it to yourself to seek out this rare talent near Castle Rock in Bisbee and sample. Make it a point to investigate the process and be sure to eat a roasted Cacao bean. We found a need to cleanse our palettes between each regional bean. Bring something to sip and accomplish this. As an added benefit you may not be able to eat Hersheys, Nestle, or any of that plastic stuff made with alkali and soy lecithin again!
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Gotsta git me some er dat yummy diesel chik’n.
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More on smoking, moron smoking.
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Attempt number two: start with sweet white rice, not brown sweet rice. End result? Still lumpy and inconsistent. At least the plates all survived. I can’t figure out how to smash the rice bits that get suspended in the mass. I need a bigger mallet.
Ok, after a trip to Tucson to examine a mochi maker machine, I have decided that our current bread machine may be capable of pounding the mass into something mochi-similar.
Here are two of the better kinds of mochi candy out there: The first is Daifuku mochi balls. They have a sweet red bean paste in the middle, and a thick mochi shell. Pass them up if they are not FROZEN. Very important! When you are ready to consume one, let it thaw on the counter for about 15 minutes until you can easily reshape it.
These are very incredible in small amounts, but if you eat too much the mochi expands in your tummy and you feel really strange. This is not pleasant. My favorite flavor is the green one with Mugwart bits to get in the teeth. (no, not green tea, MUGWART!) Try some!
The second and most wonderful for American taste buds is: Mikawaya Ice Cream Mochi. This is the grail of all things mochi. Perfect combination of east-meets-west. The Strawberry, Green Tea, and Mango are among the finest experiences your mouth has ever had. (Yes, these had better be frozen also!) Thaw on the counter for about a minute, only until the Ice Cream softens slightly.
Not sure what the picture on the box represents. They are supposed to look like little stumpy balls of stickiness with a light dusting of rice starch and a pinch point.
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Success!
I was not satisfied with the recipes online that use mochiko sweet rice flour. It just didn’t seem handmade enough – not from-scratch worthy. The hammer attempts (think failures) are outlined in other posts. Here is the success path:
- Soak about 2-3 rice-cups of sweet white rice overnight.
- Rinse, drain, and prepare the expanded rice in your rice cooker.
- The amount of water changes from soaking. I have found that even but not over the rice is perfect for our Zojirushi.
- Melt 1/4 cup of sugar in the rice’s water before cooking.
- As soon as the rice is cooked, throw it in a bread machine for punching.
- Our full bread machine kneading is 30 minutes. (Next time I want to add a couple tbsp of strawberry jam.)
- The mochi should string way out. No lumps.
Do not use cooking spray during the kneading. It somehow causes the rice to not klingon. First attempt ended up as consistent as a bowl of grits. Now pinching off into balls has to be done while the mochi is warm and pliable. This is WAY more challenging than expected. Two methods seem to be effective:
1. Cover your hands, plates, everything with lots of rice starch. I like the dry approach for all of it. I even use spoonfuls of rice/flour and rub sticky things dry for cleanup.
2. Dip your hands in sugar water. A layer of constant water keeps sticking from occurring, and the sugar improves this. Rinsing mochi off of things is nary impossible.
3. Roll into a thick log and cut, or string, fat discs off maybe?
If you are going to fill your mochi, then you want to flatten the balls into discs and put your filling right in the middle. (next time we are doing strawberry halves.) Then fold the disc up around the filling and pinch it closed.
All of this avoids the purchase of a mochi maker machine, but still requires a bread machine and a rice cooker. Also do yourself a favor and clean everything up before it dries into glue-cement.
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Bakers Dozen is booming in spite of only offering up mediocre fat pills. Sunday was quite the adventure in donut land. We were witnesses of donut discrimination.
Evidently filled donuts are not valid donuts unless they are a part of the full dozen. Sorry Mr. Boston Creme, you are not on the valid donut list. As a customer apparently I am not allowed to purchase half a dozen unless the donuts I choose are of the true and valid variety. Sorry Mrs. Jelly Filled. The penalties for not complying with our donut discrimination clause will be:
- We will remove your right to purchase half a dozen for the half a dozen price.
- We will add a minimum 10 cent penalty fee per filled donut solely at our discretion.
- Your donuts will be processed individually or not at all.
We only trust the safe and normal donuts. We reserve the right to not inform you of these policies. Whatever happened to transparent pricing?
Update: The menu problems are fixed by removing most of the menu. What remains informs us that we will be fined if we want to purchase more bagels. One bagel .89 cents. Six bagels = 4.99. OUCH! Same price as 14 Safeway bagels. (Safeways are tastier.) Here is where the math gets interesting: Dozen bagels = 10.99. And no, you are not allowed to buy two sets of six. “How dare you buy more from us. That will be one dollar of penalty.”
p.s. no refills on the coffee. What does this look like? A donut shop?”
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If you missed this, TV in Japan has an incredible smoking ad about Japan.
Meanwhile, Prop 201 is the real thing. 206 is a lie. Tobacco companies have spent more already on the campaign for 206 than they would have to spend funding prop 201 enforcement.
Update: 201 passed! ^__^ some places in the valley intend to start complying as soon as January ‘07. What a happy day for my lungs. No smoking in ANY place of business, bars included!
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The fine Japanese tradition of making mochi is not in my less than capable repertoire. I began by soaking brown sweet rice overnight. Then I guessed on the amount of water to steam it properly. After about 30 minutes of steam time, the pounding stage had arrived. I poured my mass of ouch-hot soft mochi-rice onto a new melamine plate from Target. As soon as the first few mallet blows had flown, the melamine emphasized its desire to deal with the impact by shattering. Better hide that in the trash quick and hope no one can count past seven.
Fine. No worries. I will attempt to string and slime the sticky ball onto a thicker, softer plastic plate. The blue plastic plate held up to the abuse for about ten minutes, then gave in and cracked. By this point my dough was impossible to move or pound. I would call it the consistency of silly putty. It must be about done?
The pinching into a ball procedure went pretty well. Plenty of rice starch everywhere and on every counter surface and appliance. No Worries, it was about spring cleaning time anyways.
My final product is less than tasty, less than desirable looking, and has too much air and water kneaded in.
Just because of this, we will have to get a job, then budget to go back to Mikawaya in Little Tokyo for Ice Cream Mochi. Mochi-maker I am not.
p.s. Trader Joes carry Ice Cream Mochi!
This mochi guy knows what I am going through.
More information on the Mochi meal. If you are looking for a mochi machine, Zojirushi does make one: BS-DAC55. It has a mochi impeller. Also Tiger and Panasonic/National (SD-MA18N) have one.
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