Cookbook Project, Book #2
Jan. 5th, 2009 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladysprite'Japanese Homestyle Cooking,' by Tokiko Suzuki
This book was a gift from my mother. My sister has been living in Japan for the past couple of years, and mom went to visit her last year. Whenever I travel, I try to get myself a cookbook of local recipes, as a kind of interactive souvenir, and mom decided to play along, and brought this back for me. Alas, most of my souvenir cookbooks wind up going unused, and this one was the same. If nothing else, most of the recipes call for at least one ingredient that I've never heard of. But a goal is a goal, and that means not skipping the tough ones. And, to be honest, there are at least a couple of simple, American-accessible recipes in there.
So tonight's dinner was Chicken Teriyaki, and Spinach with Sesame Dressing. And, while it meant that I had to go hunt down a few specific ingredients that I don't usually keep in the house (mirin and sake, to be specific), it also means that since neither of those come in single-serving sizes, I now have enough to make almost anything else from the book that I want to.
The chicken was almost mind-bogglingly easy - it's definitely going into the repertoire of things to make again. The spinach.... needs work. It was good, but the dressing includes enough sake, without cooking it down, that the raw alcohol taste drowns out almost everything else. It has potential, but I think cooking some of the alcohol out of the dressing would make it a lot better.
So far, so good....
This book was a gift from my mother. My sister has been living in Japan for the past couple of years, and mom went to visit her last year. Whenever I travel, I try to get myself a cookbook of local recipes, as a kind of interactive souvenir, and mom decided to play along, and brought this back for me. Alas, most of my souvenir cookbooks wind up going unused, and this one was the same. If nothing else, most of the recipes call for at least one ingredient that I've never heard of. But a goal is a goal, and that means not skipping the tough ones. And, to be honest, there are at least a couple of simple, American-accessible recipes in there.
So tonight's dinner was Chicken Teriyaki, and Spinach with Sesame Dressing. And, while it meant that I had to go hunt down a few specific ingredients that I don't usually keep in the house (mirin and sake, to be specific), it also means that since neither of those come in single-serving sizes, I now have enough to make almost anything else from the book that I want to.
The chicken was almost mind-bogglingly easy - it's definitely going into the repertoire of things to make again. The spinach.... needs work. It was good, but the dressing includes enough sake, without cooking it down, that the raw alcohol taste drowns out almost everything else. It has potential, but I think cooking some of the alcohol out of the dressing would make it a lot better.
So far, so good....
