Natto 纳豆 ~ Japanese Food!!!

Hello... First plan after the Chinese New Year is to update my blog as frequent as possible. Well, this is actually my plan at the first place when I start my blog last year, a self motivating thing for myself so that I'm able to pursue a longer journey in writing blogs. 

Today, I would like to share with you, my favourite food ~ Natto.... May be some of you do not know what is this all about, but if you like Japanese food like I do, you will see this in Japanese restaurant. You can normally found it in the menu, the part that you tends to miss it. hehe.... 

Natto is a kind of fermented beans which is widely taken by the Japanese. These are actually soybeans which are fermented using a type of bacteria called Bacillus subtilis.. I try to get some scientific journals to check on its health benefits, but it seems like time is needed to search on that, as most of the researches done is on the soy itself, not on natto. Natto is proved to improve gastrointestinal function due to the good bacteria which has been used for fermentation.

I bought my natto in AEON, One Utama shopping mall, have been searching for it for quite some time. They are located at the frozen food area, somewhere near to the ice cream and frozen curry puff. hehe... There are different brands and different types of natto sold there. I had spent quite some time standing there looking for the one that I needed. Well, it's a pain when you don't understand Japanese words. I can only read the kanji on the packaging, therefore the understanding of the packaging is limited. 

These are the two that I bought in the end. It has been quite risky to pick them. For me, it's more like experimenting as I cannot understand the packaging and what I did is just simply pick and buy. I asked my friend in Japan, he told me this is the brand that he always takes in Japan, well, guess I made a good choice. The two above having different sizes of the natto. The one on the left is smaller in size compare to the right hand side one. The flavours are also different. 

The white and red packaging is actually the standard natto, in which you can find soy sauce and wasabi sauce inside, while the red packing on the right hand side is actually consists of kombu sauce and wasabi sauce. Kombu is a kind of seaweed. It is more aromatic to take the kombu one. 

This is the content after you open it. You will see the soy sauce and wasabi sauce on the top, underneath is the natto. Well, bear with the pungent smell when you open it, the smell will reach to a peak after you mix everything. 

What you need to do after open it is to mix everything together according to your own preferences. Mix it well and they are ready to be served, easy, huh? When you are mixing them, sticky string will be produced and making the natto become sticky. 

Here's my sharing on my recent flavourite food ~ Natto.... 

P/S : Not everyone likes it, please be cautious when doing your decision. hehe... ( I had been scolded by all of my friends as I introduced natto to them. Most of them find it difficult to take it because of its unpleasant smell and sticky texture.)