Hey guys! I'm doing something really fun today
I'm taking part in a hang out with the locals, Japanese cultural experience kinda thing
Basically you can sign up to hang out with the locals
and they will teach you something about Japanese culture
Today we are going to be learning Japanese cooking
One other awesome thing was that you could choose for it to be vegetarian or vegan
As you know Japanese food always includes fish and meat
Always fish because of the dashi stock
But they adjusted the menu today so that it will be all vegetarian friendly
I'm gonna show you the cooking process and everything that I'm doing today
At the end of the video I'll explain a little about the website in case you guys wanna sign up too
The basic Japanese meal consists of steamed rice, miso soup and 3 side dishes
This is called ichijyu sansai in Japanese
Ichijyu meaning "one soup" and sansai meaning "3 dishes"
An interesting fact about Japanese cuisine is that you're supposed to finish all of the dishes at the same time
So you eat a little of each dish so that you finish them evenly
instead of finishing the dishes one by one
This is what we'll be cooking today
We've got teriyaki tofu, fried eggplant with miso sauce
spinach tofu salad, and miso soup
Here are the ingredients we're gonna be using today
I will link a blog post down below with the full ingredient list and the full recipe
So make sure to check that out
Many Japanese dishes contain dashi or fish stock
But today we'll be using this konbu instead so our dishes will be vegetarian
First you want to soak the konbu in cold water for a few hours and then bring it to a boil
Let's start preparing our second dish
Take your freeze dried tofu out of the package and lay it on a tray
Cover this is water so that the tofu absorbs the water
Miranda is mixing the sauce for the spinach salad
and I'm peeling the edamame which we will also add to it
Once the sauce is mixed you can add 150g of firm tofu and mix thoroughly
Combine your boiled carrots, spinach and edamame into the mixture
and carefully mix, you don't want to mush them up
This completes the spinach salad
Next we will move on to the eggplant dish
You want to peel the eggplants in alternating strips
and then cut them into 1.5cm thick slices
For the sauce we will be mixing miso, sugar and sweet sake
Heat this in the microwave for 1 minute
We are going to fry the eggplants in sesame oil
So put a generous amount of sesame oil into a pan
Once that has been heated you want to add your eggplant slices
Flip them over as they cook until both sides are nicely browned
Our freeze dried tofu is ready so you want to squeeze all the water out of it
It's very strong and sturdy so don't worry, it won't break
We use freeze dried tofu instead of regular tofu because it will absorb the sauce more
and also it keeps it shape better while cooking
Next you want to cut the tofu into large cubes like this
Place your tofu cubes in a bag and cover with potato starch
Sprinkle that in there and shake it up carefully
Keep shaking until all sides of the tofu are covered. I will look something like this!
Next we are going to dice the tomato to use in our teriyaki tofu
Adding the tomato will make the flavour a little less strong
But it's completely up to you, you don't need to add it
Using the sesame oil that was leftover from when we fried the eggplant
you can use that to fry your tofu cubes
Arrange them nicely in the pan so that they're all laying flat in the oil
We're going to cook the tofu for 3 minutes, and then flip it over and cook for another 3 minutes
Get rid of any extra oil that is still leftover once you're done cooking them
Now we want to reduce the heat to low and add our teriyaki sauce mixture
which is made out of soy sauce, sake, water and sugar
Also add in your tomato
Shiso leaves make a nice garnish for this dish
So if you have any, you want to slice those up into thin strips
Now we want to cook this on low until the tomatoes are nice and cooked
and it looks like the tofu has absorbed some of the sauce
Next lets slice up the ingredients for our miso soup
We're going to be using some abura-age and also some green onion
You're welcome to put whatever you like in miso soup, it's totally up to you
Make sure to remove the konbu before adding in your other soup ingredients
You want to boil your soup until the ingredients are fully cooked
Then you want to turn it down to low and add your miso
Once you've added the miso make sure not to boil the soup again
or that will kill any of the good bacteria in the soup
Now it's time to arrange our dishes on the plates
We will start off with the fried eggplant and miso sauce
Next is the spinach salad
Finally our teriyaki tofu garnished with shiso leaves
So you've got your main dish in the middle
Your two side dishes at the top
Soup on the right and rice on the left
And chopsticks down at the bottom
We are all done cooking so it's time to eat!
Everything smells so good and I'm so excited to eat it
Doesn't it smell amazing?
Okay let's eat!
Itadakimasu!
Everything that we cooked today was so delicious
And it was really easy to make! I'm definitely not a cooking pro
But it was a lot of fun and really simple
So I know that any of you guys can do it too
I will have the full recipe down below, so check that out if you wanna try this yourself
If you would also like to participate in this Japanese home cooking experience
I will list the website down in the description box that I used to sign up
Let me know if you guys do it as well, and what you thought
I had so much fun and the family that was teaching us was so sweet
and it was just such an awesome day
So I really recommend that you guys participate in this as well
Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon! Bye guys!
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