I’m not completely happy with the results, but this is my first attempt at Matcha Mousse since about 1996. The texture is light, but the white chocolate I used turned out to be a bit sweet.

I started with about 300g of white chocolate (2/3 lb), a couple of eggs, Grade A Cooking Matcha by Three Tree Tea, and a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of gin, and a hint of vanilla. I whisked the yolks, gin and a tablespoon of water together, melted the chocolate in a makeshift double boiler, and started whisking the cream with the matcha (1 level tablespooon), for what turns out to be roughly 12–15 fl oz. of mousse. I added a tablespoon of sugar to egg whites and beat them to stiff peaks. The rest was standard mousse fare; fold in the egg yolks to the chocolate, allow to cool to something close to room temp. Fold in the cream carefully. Fold in the egg white meringue carefully. I might have collapsed a little too much of the mousse or it might not have been cold enough; every cup that I put it into settled quickly into a flat top. I was hoping to get some elevation out of this mousse, but this might be hard to pull off without resorting to gelatin.

This is garnished with a bit of sweetened whipped cream near serving time, and dusted with some sweetened matcha. It could be done with more cooking matcha.

The white chocolate was a bit too sweet for my taste. The result is a completely edible dessert, but I think I need to be pickier about the level of sugar in the white chocolate source. I also think I could get away with less matcha, but with the level of sugar was too high. Needs to be served in roughly 3 fl. oz. portions or the sugar becomes overwhelming; the pictured serving is about 4 fl. oz. It would be best with some bitter accompaniment like some additional tea.

I don’t think it was the source of the problem, but the small amount sugar added to stabilize the egg white foam might have contributed to pushing the sugar level a little beyond the desirable amount. I will attempt to repeat this with a better quality white chocolate and maybe skip the sugar when beating the egg whites.

The weekday demos last week weren’t terribly productive, in spite of an imminently approaching holiday, but I managed to sell a modest amount. However, it did seem that some people started picking up products on Saturday and Sunday, both with and without demos.

I’ve been sampling almost constantly recently, just because there’s no other way to get rid of inventory… Sampling will at least increase awareness, even if it doesn’t produce immediate results.

After May 16 or so, I’ll need to revert to a sales rather than promotion focus. Since I have a new product, I’ll be emphasizing them more than the candy, but I’ll try my best to get placement for everything.

The Matcha Latte mix from Three Tree Tea has been well-received. I’m quite happy with the customer reception so far, and sales are about what I expected. Pulling off simultaneous demos is a bit tricky, but I’m starting to get a bit of a rhythm.

The most difficult thing so far is anticipating customer traffic. The dragon beard candy needs to be brought out of my cooler just as customers approach, and that’s tricky. If I let the dragon beard candy stand at room temperature too long, the “icy” aspect of the icy-crispy texture disappears, and the experience isn’t quite as impressive.

Similarly, the green tea latte has a short lifespan, especially in small paper demo cups. As the temperature cools, the matcha oxidizes, and after 5 minutes or so, the taste can become a bit vegetal. Reheating will actually make this more pronounced. I never noticed this when I was serving the matcha latte at home, even if it was consumed over about 10 minutes. But in larger cups—especially preheated ones—the cooling process doesn’t happen as fast, I think, and perhaps proportionally less surface area is exposed to air.

So I’ve found I have to make no more than 4 fl. oz. at a time, which produces 6–8 demo servings (about 1 fl. oz. each after the milk foams up). If traffic is more slow, I make as little as 2 fl. oz. at a time. If any samples are left after 5 minutes, I now offer it to store staff or discard it. The same would be true with a coffee sample; coffee loses its best characteristics when it’s been sitting around for 5 or 10 minutes. The problem, of course, is that if I run out of samples and a customer doesn’t see the green tea, they often walk on by, and an opportunity is missed. I don’t know whether it’s better to overproduce and waste perfectly good tea, and always serve everyone instantly, or lose the occasional impatient customer. Sometimes a customer can be pulled in with the candy and held for the tea, and vice versa, though.

I found this to be less problematic with the iced version. There must be some difference in the oxidation, or maybe less shock from temperature changes.

At the end of the weekend, with inadequate sleep and some long days driving, sampling, and beyond, I felt completely exhausted. And I still didn’t sleep when I should have.

I kept promising myself to photograph more ceramics for YuzuMura, but I’ve only been making small dents in the work… there’s just too much to keep up with. But I really need to do it, because there are still a hundred or so pieces in my inventory. So I’m slowly catching up...

Most of these are Senda’s work, but I got a few Akutsu and Minowa pieces also.

And I succeeded in taking photos of a dozen or so lamps, most of which will be on YuzuMura by tomorrow or so. These are all made in Thailand from sustainable or recycled woods.

Tonight’s dinner was a simple, potentially very bland soup made of a puree of mirepoix, some cannelini beans, and some broccoli. At the last minute, I added a splash of sesame oil and I snuck a little bit of chili oil from an olive-oil marinated piquin chili batch I made about a month or two ago, and it worked wonders.

I was filling a number of orders today with moderate efficiency… and then, of course, it came time to take care of one other errand that required my digital camera and an extra light source… I was planning to shoot pictures of some other products I’ll be featuring on YuzuMura.com shortly, and wanted to do it while the vendor’s shop was still open.

It was probably a good idea to combine this errand with the errand of dropping off the packages for FedEx.

However, my brain was not entirely functional when planning to step out. I remembered the extra light and my camera. I didn’t remember to bring any extra batteries. By the time I noticed the low battery indicator, I also noticed a missing compact flash card, which was still in my laptop.

This was, of course, after I started cleaning some space and styling one of the objects to shoot. I apologized for the distraction and I think I’ll be back tomorrow…

My nifty MPX-220 cell phone took a unusually painful journey to be repaired after a problem with the power conversion. Friday it came back, though I was told it was supposed to ship out last Friday via FedEx 2–day.

I really, really appreciate ActivSync. My previous cell phone, a Sony Ericsson T616, could arguably be syncronized with my Outlook address book, but it was usually painfully slow and most often resulted in a huge number of duplicate records being created. ActivSync is much speedier and has only rarely produced an odd duplicate.

More importantly, in this case, it meant my replacement phone could be put into service almost instantly. Within a few seconds of plugging my phone into my PC, it had all my contacts except for the two or three I failed to syncronize before the AC power failed.

I can’t say I’m any more thrilled with Motorola’s customer service than I was when I sent the phone off for repairs, but at least the work is done. And my backup phone had a cracked screen, which meant that for about 2 or 3 weeks I couldn’t tell who was calling me, and I couldn’t dial anyone unless I remembered their phone number. I’m glad that’s over.

Sunday I mentioned that my espresso machine failed during a matcha latte demo. It turned out to be a trivial thing… my thermal cutoff died. My initial impression that it must have overheated was correct.

I went to Home Espresso Repair in Phinney Ridge, just in my neighborhood. They were brilliant and helped diagnose the problem without so much as a bench fee, and sold me the fuse for $5 + tax. I also got a replacement for a slightly broken portafilter handle—a small plastic endcap had mysteriously disappeard some time ago—and they replaced the handle for a mere $1.

I went home and installed the fuse myself, and it seemed to work, and then I closed up the machine, and it seemed not to work anymore. Yesterday I went back to the shop and they weren’t terribly busy, so one of the partners tested and replaced the fuse in front of me, and made sure it worked before I departed.

When I got home, it seemed not to work, but I tried another wall socket before running back, wanting to avoid seeming like a larger idiot. That was a good idea, because it turned out that somehow a circuit breaker associated with that socket had been tripped recently, maybe when I was testing the machine the day before. Everything is good.

Over the last few days I have been chatting with some more people who I think will be good partners for near-term business projects… I was approached by someone who wants me to coordinate and plan a short-term ceramics event in the late summer/early fall in Seattle.

I also started conversations with another nifty Ballard business that has a compatible concept for Asian lifestyle goods, and it seems I will be doing some wholesale brokerage for them after we can settle on terms. They have excellently designed home interior goods made using sustainable practices.

Over time I realized that the best way to build my business is through partnerships with compatible projects. I’m hoping I’m not too late on the execution… but I’m quite happy with selling other goods as long as their objectives aren’t too far from my own.

I’m more than a little worried with all of the money risks I have right now, but I think I’m taking the right path to solve the problems… nonexistent inventory risk, building relationships with people of similar mind, and staying true to my vision, even if not the original tactics. 

It was a quiet day at Bellevue’s Uwajimaya, but I did my first demonstration of Three Tree Tea’s matcha latte mix.

Customer reception seemed mostly positive, but there are some folks who don’t like matcha, some who don’t like sugar, and some who don’t like milk…We’re not talking about an outrageously sweet drink; it’s not like a typical bubble tea. But there’s a wide range of tolerance for sweetness. Occasionally someone would say it wasn’t sweet enough (which is a more solvable problem: add more sugar)… Tea is a very personal beverage, and everyone responds differently. I’m quite fond of this particular blend, because it’s not too sweet and not too bitter… most of my Japanese friends say “choudo ii” (just right.) But Uwajimaya’s customer base comes from all sorts of regions… Today a Thai customer said that the dragon beard candy wasn’t as sweet as she prefers. Indian, Thai, Indonesian and Vietnamese taste preferences tend to run a little sweeter than Japanese and Korean preferences, and Japanese and Koreans tend to like more sweetness than Chinese customers.

One bit of disaster struck. I started out serving hot matcha lattes, steaming the drink with an espresso machine’s steamer attachment. At some point the power indicator light went out, and I thought maybe the machine overheated and shut itself off. But it never got back to normal… I couldn’t turn it on again.

I improvised. The weather was moderate today, so it was no problem to start serving “iced” lattes… I just used cold milk and shook it up in a plastic pitcher supplied by Masalisa.

The big surprise of the day was that the medium size outsold the smallest “impulse” size. It is a bit cheaper per serving, but that’s quite the opposite experience with the dragon beard candy; I usually sell way more 3–pc. samplers than any other size. I’m happy about that, because the 1/2 lb. size will likely have some more elegant packaging in the future, and if it remains the bestseller, that will be a good coincidence.

I somehow confused myself into thinking that today was still Wednesday. I’ve had a bit of trouble sleeping so maybe my mind isn’t working at full speed.

Anyway, I’ve been doing more weekday sampling at Uwajimaya so that I can get rid of more candy. I have a bit of an overstock problem still and I’m not very happy about it… but sampling helps sell products, so I’m just doing more of it… my target was more the dinner rush, but it seems Seattle’s Uwajimaya doesn’t get much of one. Fortunately, it means I can be a little more personable with the customers that come by, and talk less like a pitchman and more like an ordinary human being… the conversion rate is much higher. I sample less, but sell reasonably well and get people interested beyond the 2–5 minutes they stand in front of me.

Last week I didn’t sell much doing the two weeknight demos, but today I managed to clear about as much in two hours as I did in Portland all day last Sunday. I’ll be at Uwajimaya Seattle again tomorrow and Saturday, and somewhere else on Sunday, most likely Bellevue.

When I got home my roommate asked me to take ourselves to Red Mill for dinner, so we split a red onion veggie burger, nibbled some onion rings and overdosed on some fruity milkshakes.

She reminded me that it was Thursday. I think my brain was functioning enough at Uwajimaya that I remembered I needed some potatoes for a dinner party we planned for Friday… but I thought I had one more day, so I ignored other vegetable needs.

So after eating I stopped at a supermarket and picked up some more vegetables and some cannelini beans… I’ll make a little soup tomorrow, and some of my potato pizza, and a little salad. I made some fennel marinated in course salt and yuzu juice, something I’ve made before on several occasions and I’m quite fond of.

I did some prep work for tomorrow, since I’ll be entertaining straight after a demo. I simmered some rhubarb in sugar and water, and pureed it with some fresh strawberries and a bit of lemon juice. It’ll be turned into a sorbet in the morning. The base tastes nice, so I think the sorbet will be pretty good. The strawberries seem to be of the almost flavorless California supermarket freight friendly variety, but they’ll work for now… Local strawberries won’t be in season for a bit longer.

My favorite results with strawberry in sorbets are when small local berries make it to the market. I usually just puree the strawberries with sugar and a bit of basil, and add some lemon juice to balance the sweetness. I can’t remember the exact variety but they are usually sweet and aromatic. I guess I will hunt some down when the time comes.

Joi Ito wrote about a book called All Marketers Are Liars which talks about the relevance of the stories behind products to their perceived value. It sounds like a good read, since I also realized the story behind a product is at least as important as the product itself… but I still haven’t figured out how to build a huge audience based on the story.

The products that I am most fascinated with, and most likely to import, have really compelling origin stories… when I first saw the dragon beard candy—served to an emperor two thousand years ago, handmade, ephemeral, usually unable to survive more than an hour or so in humid conditions—at a Japanese trade show I got really excited about it because it was unlike anything else on the US market, and fascinating to watch.

Of course, there’s not much of a “lie” in our story, but there’s some mythmaking. We don’t know which emperor the candy was first served to, but we’re retelling the traditional legend that every dragon beard candy maker in the world knows because they were taught the story by their master. We do try to message that this is more delicate than the street version, which might be a minor deception, because it’s necessary that we have this less sticky, more “refined” texture to avoid melting. It’s maybe less “fun” than the street version because it’s not as chewy and messy and there’s no 60 year old guy making it right in front of you, but the maker tries to compensate for it with beautiful presentation, an obsession for detail, and substantially better hygienic practices.

I guess one problem is getting the candy’s story retold effectively. I’ve so far been most successful with a high-touch method of doing the storytelling: live demos, in-store sampling, and so on. At wholesale margins, it’s really hard to build enough of a market to make a living doing that. Even with the word of mouth effect, I think my product is so obscure that the word of mouth doesn’t translate into rapid growth of customers; it’s special occasion; in the U.S. it doesn’t have the inherent advantage of being sold to tourists who want something interesting to bring back to their home countries, and it’s more extravagant than the US is used to for Asian foods.

But maybe my problem is more one of scale… I may not be “big” enough to do what has to be done on my own.