Sesame balls are some of our favourite Chinese desserts and in Nagasaki Shinchi Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in Japan, they’re available en masse as goma dango. They’re essentially a fried pastry made from sugar and rice flour with a filling of red beans cooked with sesame oil and covered with sesame seeds on the outside. We hunt for them fresh in bakeries in Australia, but Nagasaki, they’re available also with an extended shelf life as in this Nagasaki Kabō Nagasaki Sesame Dango.
Each box contained 8 pieces each of white sesame dango, black sesame dango and golden sesame dango. Each piece was around 3 cm in diameter.
This is the white sesame dango, which contained a red bean filling and is coated with white sesame seeds.
The dango has a pillowy softness with the smooth red bean filling being just a tad firmer, while the white sesame adds a contrasting that crunch and a mild sesame flavour. Both the dango and red bean are sweetened, making the overall sweetness quite high. Less sweetness in the dango would’ve achieved a better balance.
This is the black sesame dango, which contained a white bean filling and is coated with black sesame seeds.
This dango has more filling compared to previous dango. While also sweetened, the thicker consistency of the white bean filling (compared to the red bean) gave a better contrast to the softness of the dango, while holding its own against the crunch of the black sesame which shines above the more mellow flavour of the white bean.
This is the golden sesame dango, which contained a red bean filling and is coated with golden sesame seeds.
This dango achieves a better balance than the white sesame, with the the richer flavour of the golden sesame balancing the sweetness of the dango and red bean more successfully.
Overall, we enjoyed these sesame dango — with the black sesame being the obvious favourite — although we still prefer the fresh ones from Chinese bakeries.
This Nagasaki Kabō Nagasaki Sesame Dango contained 24 pieces. It was produced in Japan and purchased in Nagasaki, Japan in 2019.