Tag Archive for:  japanese

Vegetarian & Chicken Ramen for a family reunion

It was a request from a daughter who is now working in Germany to cook vegetarian Ramen & Gyoza, with her loving parents visiting from Australia. My pleasure to host a family reunion in Tokyo!
For Mum and Dad, we cooked some simmered chicken for Ramen and included pork in the Gyoza filling.
For vegetarian Ramen, the topping was fried Tofu, cilantro, diced tomato, stir-fried eggplant & mushrooms, etc. Of course, soy sauce and Mirin flavored egg, too.

There were a lot of preparations to do but my guest family made it and our lunch tasted wonderful!
Before coming to my place, they were traveling the route of a Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho’s tour up north to Matsushima and it was very interesting to hear about their experiences, including a beautiful Haiku poem father created during his stay in Matsushima!
Many thanks for coming!
Akiko

Lots of seafood for a US athlete couple

This was a 2 main dish course request from an American couple. We cooked Salmon Nanbanzuke marinade and Okonomiyaki pancake as our main dishes, plus a few side dishes with vegetables and seasonal fruits.
My guest couple was both very fit as regular climbers and bouldering experts, so salmon was a good choice for their muscles. We also chopped some squid and put it in our Okonomiyaki, as well as pork, cabbage, leek, and Naga Imo potato, which is exactly how I make it for my family.

When I asked him if there is any favorite Japanese ingredients, he replied
” Unagi and Uni (eel and sea urchin)!! ”,
so I knew he is quite familiar with our diet, then it turned out his Mum is Japanese!

Obviously he has been eating yummy Japanese homemade dishes all his life, and I  do hope that he & his girlfriend liked what we prepared together in my kitchen.
Many thanks for coming!

2 main dishes class

Okonomiyaki! “Japanese pan cake” is for the lunch or the dinner not for the dessert. We put pork, Shrimp and Cabbage and yam and one more ingredient which is secret:-).

Salmon-NanbanZuke. Salmon marinated in sour sauce which you can arrange with other white fish or Chicken too.

Itadakimasu! thank you for coming!

Tempura and Pork Ginger class!

Today was the Private class.
The 2 main dishes are Tempura and Pork Ginger.

The point of Tempura preparation is remove water from and keeping ingredients cool.
Deep frying time! We put the ingredients a little by each in to the oil then we can keep oil temperatures.
We also made Pork Ginger, Japanese sesame spinach salad and Green pepper stir fry with young fish.

It was really fun class! Thank you for coming.

Honeymooners from Tel Aviv cooking Japanese comfort food

Today’s guests are happy sweet honeymooners from the IT capital, Tel Aviv, Israel. We cooked Ramen with pork soup stock.

I also adventured to use simmered Konbu kelp in cabbage salad, which is our family’s favorite quick dish. Here we use Konbu as herbs and it goes nicely with sesame oil. Please try if you have some leftover Konbu after making Dashi broth.

The couple told me some very interesting stories about their culture & life, my favorite part of doing cooking classes for travelers!
Many thanks for coming!
Akiko