This week it's back to Southeast Asia, to the country of Thailand (nee Siam). These snacks were yet another find at Wegman's. I tried two kinds of mochi rice bites from Sun Tropics, and a type of seaweed from Tao Kae Noi.
In some ways these treats are a bit repetitious. I discussed mochi fairly recently, in my November 24, 2018 post about Taiwanese desserts. As a brief overview, though, mochi is an ancient Japanese food made from a particular type of short grain, glutinous rice. This rice is mashed and pounded, and finally molded into various shapes. Many kinds then have fillings put into them, which are often sweet, like fruit, and made into pastry-like desserts. However, some kinds of mochi are more savory, and are prepared a little differently. My Sun Tropics' offerings appear to be agemochi, which is a mochi subtype wherein mochi pieces are dried and broken up, and then fried, along with salt or other seasoning. As for the seaweed, I posted about other types of seaweed that I've tried back in my December 12, 2013 post, which largely covered Japanese sushi roll coverings, seaweed salad, and a North American dried seaweed called dulse.
Sun Tropics is an American company, headquartered in California, which was started in 2002 by a married couple, Sharon and Ashley Lao. As the official website provided, Sharon was born into a family who made their living as distributers to big retailers. Ashley, meanwhile, grew up in a family of fruit mongers. Together they started a company which specializes in fruit, or fruit-flavored products. These include juices, coconut juice, dried fruit, fruit purees, frozen fruit bars, coco rolls, and rice puddings. Evidently their mochi rice bites are new, as they weren't featured on the company website. Although another website did mention them, and alternate flavors are Tokyo curry and Tamari (soy sauce). These mochi rice bites are billed as a, "modern spin on the traditional Japanese soft rice dough transformed to a satisfying crunch in savory Asian flavors." And, while Sun Tropic is American, the mochi bites are a product of Thailand.
Tao Kae Noi is even more recent, having been started in 2004. Itthiput Peeradechapan (formerly Itthiput Kulapongvanich, and nicknamed "Tob"), was born into a wealthy Thai Chinese family, which was in the construction business. At the age of 16 Tob began obsessively playing online games, and won some tournament prizes. He took this money and started a business selling fried chestnuts. When this business flourished, he then took the profits as seed money to begin another, larger business which specialized in selling flavored seaweed. This firm has done extremely well, and it's estimated to have been worth 600 million dollars in 2018. The company name is a reflection of Tob's situation, as it means "little tycoon" in Thai. Tob also holds the rare distinction of being the subject of a movie, called "The Billionaire" (Tob's a billionaire using the Thai baht currency) and also, "Top Secret: Wai Roon Pan Lan" which was released in 2011. (The only other movies based on famous food marketers that I can think of are 1994's "The Road to Wellville" about the, shall we say, extremely eccentric John Harvey Kellogg, and 2016's "The Founder," about McDonald's founder Ray Kroc.) The director of "The Billionaire" was Songyos Sugmakanan, and it starred Pachara Chirathivat, Somboonsuk Niyomsiri, and Walanlak Kumsuwan. On IMDB the other day it had a rating of 7.9 (out of 10) from viewers, so most thought it was well done. Alternate flavors of the seaweed include shrimp, cheese, and my favorite, "angry spicy bbq." Tao Kae Noi also markets corn snacks, fruit, potato sticks, and "mini bread" (small pastries, I think). Also, while the flavored seaweed I ate was made in Thailand, the seaweed itself came from natural farms in South Korea.
1) Sun Tropics mochi rice bites, sea salt flavor: Came in a 100 gram (3.5 ounce) bag. Bites were gluten-free, vegan, and had no MSG. They're billed as snacks, salad toppings, or soup toppings. These were yellowish-white, irregular shaped pieces, about 1 inch (about 2.5 cm.) square. The texture was crunchy. They were pretty good. Salty but not overpoweringly so. Solid snack.
2) Sun Tropics, mochi rice bites, sriracha flavor: Came in a the same size bag, and were identical in size and (irregular) shape as the sea salt kind. Although these were orange in color. Also good. Nice spice bite to them. Enjoyed as well. They did give me "Cheetos fingers," though, as the orange dust that covered them was a little messy.
3) Tao Kae Noi crispy seaweed snacks, wasabi flavor: Bag was 1.12 ounces (32 grams). Strips of seaweed were about 14 cm. by 3.5 cm. (or about 5.5 by 1.5 inches), and a dark green color. Very good flavor--enough spice to be interesting, but not too much to make it painful or unpleasant. Liked these--reminded me of Annie Chun's seaweed, too.
Therefore, this week's snacks were quite tasty, and I'd recommend all of them. I find it's hard to disappoint me with a seaweed-based dish, and the savory variants of mochi were good, too.
Apropos of nothing, the star of "The Billionaire," Pachara Chirathivat, was also in a movie called SuckSeed (2011), which, despite its name, is a musical comedy/romance, and not an adult film. (I know, I'm immature. But come on!)
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