Culinary education...

M: I've set an arrangement with one of my students for her to teach me some traditional Japanese cooking. She's a lovely lady, in her 50s (I think), a piano teacher, and her brother's wife is a celebrity chef in Japan! She's into all things traditional and has been practicing tea ceremony for over 20 years. So once a month, she will write out a recipe, which we go through and I correct, and then we make it.
This Thursday was the first of our cooking sessions. Here are the results...

The meal in it's full glory

Home-made miso soup from scratch; fish stock made from cooking up mini dried sardines, organic tofu, seasonal fresh mushrooms and fresh miso paste (soy beans)

Chestnut rice with black sesame seeds - Tomoko showed me how to properly prepare rice and what water ratio to use with it. Most people have rice-cookers in Japan which makes things a lot simpler. The process of cleaning and rinsing the rice before cooking is called 'sharpening', it makes a lot of difference!

This fish is called sanma (or mackerel pike to you and me). It's in season at the moment in Japan so is super-cheap, it can cost as little as roughly 50p for 2, and one is plenty to feed a person on. Tomoko showed me how to gut and bone the fish. I made a bit of a hash of mine, but it still tasted good

This is a seaweed, cabbage and chicken salad with a mean vinegar and Japanese mustard dressing. Presentation is very important in Japanese food so this dish had to be piled high and then garnished