You’re familiar with Pocky Sticks, right? Iris is. Today we went to H Mart, a huge Asian supermarket that recently opened in Federal Way, and when I mentioned to Iris that we might get some Pocky, she started chanting “POCKY POCKY POCKY” with a crazed look in her eye. It was like that episode of Alias where the guy turned into an assassin whenever someone said the code word, only in this case Iris only assassinated a pack of chocolate cookie sticks.
Pocky has a sister product of sorts, a savory stick called Pretz. It’s available throughout Asia and elsewhere in a wide variety of flavors including tom yam, larb, and corn. One of the cool things about Japan, at least as far as I can tell having never been there, is that many things are corn-flavored. Another true thing is that there’s a flavor of Pringles in Asia called Wild Consomme.
I figured the sticks would be made of corn, but it turned out they’re baked wheat sticks dusted with corn powder, made from dried ground sweet corn. There’s a weird fake butter flavor to them, but the corn flavor is quite honest. The possibilities of corn powder are endless. Would it be wrong to put it on popcorn?
The box of Pretz was pretty small, but they crammed an impressive number of sticks inside. Kind of like Japan. When I had finished all the Pretz (singular: Pret), I felt just like this kid:
I too am obsessed with Pocky and could imagine jumping up and down chanting “POCKY POCKY POCKY.” I’ve recently discovered combining flavors: Try black sesame and pineapple.
I like Salad Pretz.
Milk Tea was my favorite flavor. I wish they’d stop discontinuing the good flavors.
I brought some ‘just corn’:
http://www.justtomatoes.com/html/product/corn_ORG1.html
on a hiking trip recently. They seem like they would make a pretty good corn powder if you threw them in the blender.
I bet making pea powder out of just peas would work too…
Count me in with the Pocky lovers. My favorite combo is strawberry + banana. Definitely have to try Pretz now, too.
My favorite Pocky is almond crunch.
Apparently, Pocky is for girls, and Pretz for boys. (There is a Men’s Pocky, but let’s just not go there.) So I guess that means Pretz is actually Pocky’s brother, not its (her?) sister.
Kris did a Pocky foodblog on eG a few years ago: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=65014