Asian snacks, for us, fall into one of a few categories. First up is ones that intrigue but slightly scare us--freeze-dried octopi (with the heads and dessicated beady eyeballs intact) are a good example. Second are the snacks we like but can't understand why aren't crowding American shelves--shrimp chips are one of these (good, but fish-flavored Cheetos might be too out-there for most people). Then, there's the ones we love and can't figure out why they're not in every home, grocery, and convenience store in the U.S. That's Tomato Pretz, a crackery stick the size and shape of your household thermometer flavored with veggilicious seasoning. They're awesome dipped in ranch, just dandy in their nude state, but we wondered if they would be improved with bacon spiraled around their delicate frame.The result
As we said, they're delicate, so when we wrapped a thick slice of bacon around a Pretz, it broke in two places. We contemplated grouping two or three together, but it turns out lab staff had already eaten the rest of the package (oops). One was enough--the savory bacon married well with the savory biscuit stick. Plus, miracle of miracles, the frail biscuit stick braved the grease treatment well and ended up just as crispy-crunchy as ever. These would be decent appetizers at a bacon party, although we'd probably recommend leaving the bacon off and wrapping pretzel rods instead. Maybe the nice people at Glico (makers of Pretz, and the fantastic chocolate-covered counterpart Pocky) could come out with a tomato-bacon flavor.
The conclusion: Bacon + Tomato Pretz = mmmm-y
Next up: Bacon + seafood shu mai
omg no tomato pretz within 200 miles of here...I wonder if Amazon has them? If only there was a way to keep the chocolate from melting off a pocky stick while baking... OR maybe you could just wrap bacon around chopsticks to get a good tube going and then fill them with pocky sticks after baking; that'd be good.
ReplyDeleteI'm way too afraid to buy any of the dried fish and shrimp and squid things... they scare me in the package. Taking them out would be terrifying. Not to mention accidentally getting one wet and having it come back to life to kill me nad take over the world.
Actually, I'm fairly certain Amazon popped in my results when I Googled Pretz earlier, so you should be good. You don't have any Asian marts around you at all?! Sad.
ReplyDeleteYeah, moved from Austin (asian market on every corner) to Brownwood to get away from the big city (job was taken over by someone in India, house got robbed/destroyed, gas was $4 a gallon). All that's in this town is lots of BBQ and a kroger. No Indian, Vietnamese, Persian, Ethiopian, or any other good food here. There's ONE Chinese place in this town, but it's that Chinese buffet you don't ever see anyone at. There's two Korean people in this town, and they own the best donut place around. This town's population is about 98% 65+ in age, so they don't like any kind of food they can't spell.
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