J-Food Day 2

Day 2 of the Japanese Food project was better!
Again, I'm usually making things I've made before but trying new recipes or tweaking them a little bit to experiment with new things and go out of my usual comfort zone. I'm also making everything from scratch instead of using mixes or taking the easy way out!

Dish 3. Okonomiyaki aka Japanese savory pancakes- The ones I made today had a base made of nagaimo, eggs, flour, chicken stock, and dashi. Then I mixed in cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, green onions and chives. It's always an interesting experiment to try to convert from metric units and to increase serving sizes so I may have put too much nagaimo. It was very moist, but it may have been a little too thin/runny and not as "flour-y" and thick. I usually put some sort of meat or seafood, but not this time! I'm finding out that Jeremy doesn't really like shiitake mushrooms so I may have to go easier on those too. Overall though, I was happy with the flavor and we ate it up!

I actually even made my own "tonkatsu" sauce. The recipe I used was good but the sugar it called for made it a little too sweet, in my opinion, so I might cut back on that next time. Besides, ketchup already has sugar in it!

Dish 4. Pickled cucumbers- This is my Mom's recipe that I've never made on my own, but hers is awesome so hopefully mine will turn out well. If it doesn't, it means I didn't take good enough notes of my Mom's "a little bit of this, a little bit of that". Learning from an awesome "feeling" cook is hard... It's still marinating and I can't try it until tomorrow, but I will definitely have to provide an update in the days to come!

This day was very encouraging since the food turned out better even though I'm still experimenting. Even though it's hard work making dishes and figuring out when to fit it in to my schedule, I love doing it! I heart food- especially Japanese food!