Japanese Cooking Class

On Thursday nights, a Japanese woman teaches cooking to a few people at the apartment. I usually have Japanese language class on Thursday nights, but this past Thursday was a holiday (the vernal equinox is a public holiday here). Mitch asked me to take his place at cooking class that night, so I was finally able to learn to make a Japanese meal (admittedly though, I won't be making any more Japanese meals).

Our teacher arrived bearing bags of groceries and dishes (as you see in the photo above, place setting is very important). She went over the recipes we were to make, and then she put us to work.

The first dish we made is often translated as "croquettes" - basically a meat, onion, and grated potato patty. There was a tasty sauce on it - made of mayonnaise (of course!), mustard and okinomiyaki sauce (a bit like BBQ sauce). Our teacher was topping these patties with dried bonito (shaved fish), but I managed to stop her before she put any on mine.

The next dish was a soup. The primary ingredient in this particular soup is the dregs from making sake (rice wine). We were each given a bag of these dregs after the sake factory tour a couple weeks ago, but had no idea what to do with them! Also in the soup were carrots, konnyaku (more about this strange food later), salmon, and taro (a starchy root, kind of like a potato).

Next was konnyaku. Konnyaku is a rubbery substance (notice I didn't say "food") made from the root of the devil's tongue plant. As the wikipedia article correctly points out, it doesn't have much taste; it's more about the texture. Unfortunately the texture is extremely chewy - I imagine that chewing on a bicycle inner tube would be similiar. I can only manage to choke down one of these cubes. Here's a photo of the konnyaku being cut, and another photo of the finished dish - we fried it with garlic and of course, dried bonito (fish shavings).

The last dish was a salad, made of daikon, tomatoes, and broccoli sprouts. And those tiny dried minnows that I live in fear of. What Japanese dish is complete without some fish flavor? First we fried those minnows in some oil. Then we mixed them into the salad. If you click on the photos you can zoom in and you can even see the eyes of these minnows.

Dessert was hot milk curdled with more of the sake dregs. And I was hoping for chocolate...

Keep those care packages coming!!!