Japanese Cooking 101!

I had the privilege of going to my neighbors friends house who is Japanese for lunch and learning how to cook Japanese food. We ate a cucumber pickle salad, ginger pork, a radish miso soup, rice, green tea and ice cream filled mochi!

Here are the recipes:

Cucumber and Sesame salad:

Ingredients:

• 5 small cucumbers cut in small pieces
• a little sesame oil
• sea salt and sesame seeds

Method:

1. smash up the cucumbers with a rolling pin and mix in the sesame seeds, sesame oil and salt.

this is a Japanese Basil seasoning you sprinkle on the top of rice, I am going to look for them next time I am in the Asian store.

Radish Miso Soup

Ingredients:

• 1/2 a Japanese radish cut into Julienne
• one pack of Dashi seasoning with 3 cups of water
• one tablespoon of red miso paste

Method:

1. boil the water with a packet of dashi to make a stock with the radish in it
2. then stir in the miso paste, simmer for about 10 minutes

Ginger Pork

Ingredients:

• 2 lb of Pork, its best to be partly frozen as it needs to be cut paper thin
• one large onion
• 2 tablespoon sake
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon of mirin
• a little all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup fresh grated ginger

Method:

1. blend the sauce together with ginger
2. heat wok, no oil was needed!
3. slowly add the pork dipped in flour, turning all the time
4. add the sauce and stir fry for 10 minutes until cooked

the sauce

cooking the pork

dessert ice cream filled mochi and Japanese tea

this is a little toy sushi table that she framed, She's a true foodie!

During lunch we talked about food customs, never stick you chopsticks in the rice use the rest. It is OK to lift the soup bowl to your lips and drink from it.

It was a lovely day, they are coming to my house next, oh what should I cook!

and the lovely Lisa of The Kitchen Queen of La La

Gave me this award thanks so much, always enjoy her blog and great sense of humor