Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

   I took my first Japanese cooking class this past Saturday. Unfortunately, it was only a one-time event offered by Japanese volunteers from a multicultural exchange group. I'm hoping that they'll plan another one some time soon though, since it seemed to be a pretty big success. I already knew how to make the recipes that we prepared, but it was still fun to work with a group (plus it was good Japanese practice, although my head was admittedly pounding after 4 hours straight of listening to high-speed talk, usually from more than one person at once).
  The recipes that we prepared were: futomaki (those huge sushi rolls I talked about in the Setsubun post), chikuzenni (braised chicken with vegetables), and egg soup. The chikuzenni was much saltier than we usually make at home--recipes tend to vary by household, but the rest of the food came out great. The volunteer women were surprised that I could roll the futomaki so quickly, and they were even more shocked to learn that I used to make sushi rolls in the US. For some reason, the idea of Westerners making sushi at home still seems odd to a lot of Japanese, I guess. Or maybe I'm just a rather unusual foreigner!

                           Ingredients for Chikuzenni

                             Egg soup ingredients

                                        Chikuzenni