Black Sesame Ice Cream and Okonomiyaki

I searched for this black sesame ice cream all over Japan and for this trip I only managed to find it here in Kyoto. Strange, last year it was everywhere we went in Japan. When I saw it being offered as a dessert for a set meal, I had to order the meal, whatever it was. My favorite ice cream to date. Roasted nutty flavour, rich, sweet but with a just a hint of bitterness like a good dark chocolate. 

Luckily the set meal was nothing exotic, just some Japanese pancake, okonomiyaki but we had to do the cooking ourselves.  We also had some tofu teppanyaki on the same hot plate. 

Perfectly done.

Splurge on the sweet and sour sticky yummy sauce as much as you can so as to ensure the rest of the garnishings like bonito flakes, chopped spring onion stay on. Here you go, the Japanese pizza. 

These goodies were also part of the set and I must admit, even though I had eyes only for the ice cream, the dango with the mitarashi sauce on the left was delicious. I am sure it is the superior Japanese glutinous rice flour, as to make this dessert is no difference to making our traditional tang yuan but yet this was ultra silky smooth without any of the graininess of the tang yuan I made (no matter how much I knead and how long I leave it to rest). I can easily get hooked on this stuff. 

I am knocking my head now for not bringing home some of these glutinous flour from Japan for our yearly tang yuan!