04 June 2011

JUNE 2011-JAPANESE

Its vibrant, fresh, colourful and can look like art-on-a-plate, if its done right. Its easy to presume that Japanese food is all about sushi and sashimi, but its more about delicate textures, colour and freshness.
Here we present our version of it, it all looked stunning and eating it felt as if it was actually doing you good. No heavy sauces or long hours spent over the stove. A dieter's delight?
* the photos were downloaded in the wrong order, to reverse them all would have taken too much time! :-) Sorry.


Dessert Platter - clockwise from top: Sweet potato and fresh apple wrapped in a thin pancake; 'sandwich' of sweetened red/adzuki bean ; milk jelly; fresh persimmon and marble of red/adzuki bean paste; Black sesame jelly (star shaped),


Main - Sashimi of tuna, kingfish and salmon; nori-cured squid; seared salmon rolled in toasted black & white sesame, edamame and curl of crispy fried fish skin.
Condiments - Ponzu; pickled ginger; soy sauce.


Sides - Buckwheat soba noodles, served cold with soy and dashi simmered shiitake mushrooms.



Sides - Dashi simmered Eggplant and fresh ginger


Sides - Carrot and Daikon Salad


Starter - Teriyaki Chicken, Cashew and Rice stack.



Aperitif - Umeshu and Tonic
(Umeshu is the sweet, aromatic result of steeping green ume fruit- similar to apricots - in pure alcohol)


Cooking Club 2011

Finally, we have returned.
The hiatus from our blog was a result of a combination of several things, the biggest being general 'life' itself. Since our last post, our beloved CookN upped-sticks and moved, to a lovely place about 2.5 hours out of the city. We are missing her dearly, and have been hobbling along as a group of 5 ever since. That said, we have been working as hard as ever to maintain the (now) high standards of cooking, all the while still learning lots of new things and having fun doing it!

OK. Sit back and enjoy the visual feast to follow - recipes will no longer be posted here, although you can leave us a post to request one.

Thanks for coming back and we hope you enjoy the ride for 2011!