Japanese 101 Cooking Class

Last week I attended a small group cooking class for beginners.  There were about five students from three countries, all there to learn how to make some simple Japanese dishes on our own.  Our sensei (pronounced "sen-say") - or teacher - grew up in Japan learning how to cook from her mother. 

Here are some vegetables we used in our cooking.  The purple vegetable in front is a Japanese sweet potato, which we used in tempura.  Yum!

Here are some ingredients used to make dashi (soup stock) for homemade miso soup.  Yes, those are dried sardines!  You take off the heads and scoop out the insides before using the rest of the fish.  And that is dried kelp in the back.  The teabags are holding bonito (fish) flakes.   These three ingredients when soaked and simmered in water make the beginnings of a delicious soup!  

Korean style seaweed is becoming popular for making sushi, because it is especially spicy and salty. 

Junko-sensei shows us how to form onigiri (rice balls) with a little piece of cooked salmon inside.  The balls are shaped into chunky triangles and wrapped in dried seaweed.  After we each made our own little rice ball, we immediately ate them for a quick tasty snack!

At the end of our lesson, we sat down to enjoy our feast.  The two small bowls on the left are for dipping sauces.  The bowl to the right contains the miso soup, with tofu and seaweed (it's really tasty, actually!).  On the larger plate we have a tofu "steak", some eggplant cooked with ginger, and some tempura vegetables.  

The next day, Mr. Nanto went to the grocery store with me to help me find some of the ingredients I will be using to cook some of these dishes at home: