New Year’s resolutions are only a few weeks off so I thought I’d share one of my life resolutions that, unlike so many, has actually been quite successful!
When I moved to Asia I resolved to learn how to cook Asian food. And it’s been very fun and inspring. It would also be a fun resolution if you’re unable to travel in the year ahead… so much of visiting a new place is about tasting the food, but there’s no reason you can’t do that at home, right?!
About a year ago I posted about Tonki’s in Tokyo, which is an amazing tonkatsu (fried pork) place. Donna, a HKHousewife reader, suggested I try out Everyday Harumi and she was right on; it’s a really great book because the recipes are very simple and she makes it easy to get into this new cuisine. Harumi is a Japanese housewife, Martha Stewart equivalent.
I prefer to really get into one type of Asian cuisine at a time… my first year here it was Thai and lately its been Japanese because you do need some staples particular to that type of cuisine so it doesn’t really make sense to only cook in that style once.
There are a lot of toasted sesame seeds and sesame oil for example in Japanese food. You also need lots of dashi (Japanese fish stock), miso, sake!, and mirin (Japanese rice wine), ginger and garlic.
It’s also nice to have lots of little dishes as the Japanese are all about little tastes of this and that. These dishes were re-used from my travel party. For this meal, I made Harumi’s pickled cauliflower, green beans with a sesame dressing, Japanese coleslaw salad and Harumi’s famous barbeque sauce.
Anyways, I think gifting an entirely new genre of cooking to someone is a great idea and I am thinking of giving several copies of Harumi to loved ones this year!
