Burnt burdock, itchy hands and other teething problems

My first cook-off challenge, although it all turned out fairly well in the end, was for a while threatening to turn into a catalogue of disasters. There was:

1) Going to the far-ish away, big scary supermarket (I am supermarket-phobic) to source Yamato imo (‘Japanese potato’) for my tofu burgers, only to find a couple of days later that they sold them in the friendly, small supermarket that is on the first floor of the building I live in.

2) Thinking going to the big scary supermarket was worth it when I found a sticky long Yamato imo that cost a reasonable 270 yen, only to find when I got home that I’d misread the exorbitant 720 yen price tag. (They cost about 270 yen in my 1^st floor su-pa-).

3) Sticking my hands into the tofu/sticky potato mixture, and quickly pulling them out again when a painful prickly sensation spread over my skin (turns out these imo are irritants when raw). Spend the rest of the meal with tingly itchy hands.

4) Concentrating so much on the bloody tofu burgers that I completely burnt and overcooked the whole point of the exercise, the kimpira.

Having said that I the tofu burgers did turn out rather nicely, as did the miso soup and the egg mayonnaise stuffed peppers. I found the kimpira edible, but then as my husband always notes, I do like strong flavours. My guest G, looking somewhat pensive in the above photo, was less impressed (I blame it on her being pregnant and having some strange taste aversion that afternoon). Oddly enough, my husband liked G’s kimpira leftovers, which he tasted cold the next day (domestic diplomacy?). Turns out most of the burnt bit remained stuck to the side of the pan anyway, although the supposedly crispy gobo (burdock root) and carrot were rather flaccid. I sautéed them for far too long at first, then simmered for too long as I fussed with the burgers.

Living in central Tokyo it’s so easy to pop out for meals, which is what we normally do. The first floor of our building has a supermarket and convenience store, and the second floor is the ‘family restaurant’ chain Denny’s, open 24 hours. It’s far too tempting just to pop downstairs and eat, what is admittedly, some pretty unhealthy reheated rubbish, especially when subsidised by coupons and promises of free glasses (we now have 6). But a whole host of things have conspired to make me determined to cook more, especially Japanese food: moving to a lovely new, big flat a couple of months ago; trying to be more health conscious (reading ‘In Defense of Food’ at the moment); getting into the domestic groove; saving money and learning Japanese things in Japan.

I chose the recipes to complement the kimpira from different sources: the tofu hamburger came from a magazine-like Japanese book and the egg mayo stuffed peppers came from my Japanese Nintendo DS cooking software. I chose the latter by inputting my fridge contents into my DS and asking it what I could make. Pretty nifty.

I’m not sure that having two books and one DS open helped affairs, but I started cooking at 1pm and by the time G came at 2pm the peppers were well on their way, but the smell of burning was strong and the tofu burgers needed making. The miso soup was a little weak – I was being extra-domestic and made it with miso paste without any dashi (broth) in it, so I made the dashi by bunging some seaweed in water.

In terms of this week’s challenge, the kimpira, there is definitely room for improvement. But overall I was very pleased with my healthy and colourful four dish meal, something of a first for me. Bring on the next dish – things can only get better!