いよかんもち

Every once in a while, I'll find some omiyage (souvenir) left on my desk by a teacher who has recently gone on a trip. The most popular is usually something sweet- individual cake or cookie. Once I got a book mark. Some things are really nasty. Weird texture and odd flavor combinations. But some things are amazing.

Today, I had iyokan mochi.

::cue light shining through the clouds and voices of angels::

Mochi is something that has definitely grown on me, and has become one of my favorite things to eat in Japan. Mochi itself is rice that is somehow made squishy, almost like really, really soft taffy. It doesn't really have a lot of flavor by itself (it is rice) but the texture is really nice and it can be used for many things. In Korea, I had mochi in a red, spicy sauce, and in Japan, I have had mochi in nabe (stew/soup kinda thing), mochiyaki (grilled mochi) with cheese, and mochi with anko (sweet red bean paste), sometimes served hot with sesame seeds. I've had another kind of sweet mochi that has some kind of nuts in it- I think walnuts- and it was one of the sweets provided at the Japanese tea ceremony that I went to. But though all these different kinds of mochi were delicious in their own way, nothing compares to iyokan mochi.

I'm not sure what iyokan is in English, but I do know it is in the orange citrus family. Wikipedia says, "The iyokan (伊予柑), also known as anadomikan (穴門みかん), is a Japanese citrus fruit. It is the second most widely produced citrus fruit in Japan after the unshū mikan [seedless mandarin]. It was discovered in the Meiji era in Yamaguchi Prefecture [in southwestern Honshu]. It is now produced mostly in Ehime Prefecture [in northwestern Shikoku].
The peel is thicker than a mikan, but it can be peeled by hand. The flesh is slightly sour, but sweeter than a grapefruit."

My iyokan mochi was orange and covered on the outside with what looks like a very fine dust, but is probably some kind of flour? On the inside, there were two kinds of filling, one was a cream, and the other, not sure what. But it tasted like an orange creamsicle. INCREDIBLE.

It is now my mission to find the teacher that provided me with this little piece of heaven, and find out where it came from, so that I can get a ginormous box of them. Since iyokan are grown in Ehime, that is probably where I'm going to go... luckily, I'll be there during Golden Week :)

::win::