Saidera

This was such a cute experience. Keiko picked us up from the train station near her house and took us back to her home for our cooking class.

Our first course was gyoza (Japanese dumplings). She had pre-made the dough, so we just had to assemble the pork mince filling and craft the gyoza into shape. It's a lot harder than it looks! First you have to roll the dough out into small circles, though ours looked like rounded squares and four-leaf clovers 😂 then pinching the dough around the filling to secure the gyoza in a nice little parcel. Fried with a little bit of oil and water so that they steam through but also get nice and crispy on the bottom. Served with soy sauce and rice vinegar.

Main course was the ramen! 😍🍜 Frankie's flavour was miso ramen with pork mince, butter, and corn. The broth was made from bonito fish flakes and kelp, then mixed with oils and sauces. Keiko made the miso paste herself 10 months ago. My flavour was soy ramen with chashu (slow cooked pork) and bean sprouts. The broth was made from sardines and kelp, then mixed with oils and sauces. She also added a half teaspoon of her homemade Yuzu pepper which was delicious and strong. She encouraged us to slurp as much as we liked, and we both ate the whole bowl!

She also served us a homemade lime cocktail which she had made fresh using lines, sugar, and honey, diluted with ice and soda water.

Dessert was ohagi which is a seasonal dessert, only served in September and March. It had a mochi rice centre wrapped in white bean paste. Frankie made a matcha flavoured ohagi with gold flakes on top, and I made a black sesame ohagi rolled in sesame seeds. Making these was also a lot harder than she made it look!

Then we finished the evening with a traditional tea ceremony. We added matcha powder and boiling water into a bowl, then mixed and passed it to the person on our left. Once they had drunk their bowl, they made a bowl of tea for the person on their left, and so on. We had to hold the bowl in a particular way and mix the matcha in a particular way. I'm not really sure what we were doing and why we were doing it, but it felt very traditional and respectful.

What an awesome night! So glad we got to experience this!Read more