A Taste of Tokyo
Christmas in May
My older sister Rachael gifted me and Kathryn a cooking class for Christmas. We began looking at our local Sur La Table for potential dates in February, only to find they were booked until May. We reserved ourselves for May 15 to make a Japanese dinner together, and it was even more fun than we had thought it would be.
The cooking class took place in the store itself and had sixteen attendees split into four groups of four. We were a little nervous about meeting strangers heading into this, but we got paired with a lovely couple named Joe and Allyson. They were maybe 5-10 years older and were down-to-earth, friendly people of similar personality to us.
Our instructor began to loudly direct everybody on how to handle the ingredients and the kitchen tools. It was obvious this was only to carry her voice over the many other voices in the room, but it turned the initial vibes into an episode of Hell's Kitchen.
Yes Chef!
We began with preparing our salad. A bowl of shredded iceberg lettuce was already provided for us. I thinly sliced a cucumber into half moons as Kathryn did the same for an onion. The others roughly chopped a red cabbage and peeled thin carrot slices. We also prepared a dressing with freshly zested ginger and various other oils.
Next came our side of fried rice with green onions. This was fried in a garlic butter and was truthfully the tastiest part of our meal. We thinly sliced some onions, zucchini, sweet potato, and green beans to fry as a tempura. Finally, we seasoned and seared salmon on both sides before transferring it to the oven to bake. As it cooked, we prepared its honey butter garlic sauce, which was the other highlight of the meal.
We left with a full bellies and a recipe card for everything. It's always exciting to get a recipe from a culture you don't eat very often, and it was even better knowing how attainable it would be at home as well!