Riska Umai Wa Yasai Salad

I hope I have the name of this Japanese crispy snack correct. Luckily, because I only have 3 or 4 words of Japanese and cannot read it at all, I found a handy blog (Eating WDW) the writer of which seems to know more about it than I do.

On the front of the packet the flavour is called Yasai Salad. But a little sticky label on the back of the packet give the name of the importer, a list of ingredients and gives Umai Wa Salad as the flavour. So I'm going to follow the blog writer and amalgamate the two names.

This packet was bought from a local Japanese shop by tech expert taste tester in search of Japanese ingredients. And he kindly allowed me to try a few.

Despite the slightly scary packet design (I usually prefer a more minimalist style) these puffed corn hoops are really rather good. I don't know how you make a salad flavour for a crispy snack and indeed I couldn't pick any salad going on here. What I did get was a very tasty hit of garlic.

Well, according to the sticky label the ingredients include garlic, spice, salt, parsley, seaosning (sic), and "calcium comes from the egg shel". So there we are.

Not bad at all. Nice taste, nice texture too, good crunch. We were rather impressed.

I gather that the strange creature on the back of the packet is called Umaemon and he seems to feature on a number of different snacks. You can see here he is riding a unicycle on a tightrope. And is wearing a sort of clown outfit. Why? Oh well, I don't really need to know do I?

I wish I knew what was going UP! on the front of the packet.