This session was set up through work connections -- one of my co-workers happened to ask about a certain Japanese vegetable, and what you can do with it, and it turned into our boss asking her mom to hold a cooking instruction session for some foreigners. Apparently, her mom is one of the leaders of the women's group at JA, an agricultural place (sorry, I don't really know how to describe it well...). Anyway, a total of three of us from my workplace came as well as four other foreigners who knew the girl who originally asked about it. A nice size, I think.
Anyway, while we were there we learned how to make kinpira gobo -- a kind of salad with carrot and gobo (a long root vegetable), some special rice with mushrooms, carrots and konyaku, tempura (actually SOOOO much tempura...that probably took about half of our time...we made so much!!) and such things.
So while they told us many things (and not going to lie...I probably can't remember them all...and the recipes we made were for more people than I'll ever be cooking for), I'll let you in on one interesting secret....there is sugar in almost everything!! Surprise! Also, when making the tempura batter, after mixing it up, we added ice so that it would get really cold. Apparently, doing this makes the tempura taste even better.
It was timed so that we finished everything around lunch time, so that we could eat when we were finished (and we also got to take home some of the rice we made as omiyage...they made about 20 servings worth)!
The finished product...plated nicely and ready to eat!
So in the above picture, we have... (from far left bottom corner, around the outside into the middle...) the rice I was talking about (I seriously love this kind of rice!), kinpira gobo, pumpkin (really simple -- just mixed with some soy sauce and sugar and a touch of salt, then boiled), Japanese potato salad (sweet potatoes, cucumber and ham), cucumber dish, miso soup, and in the center: shredded cabbage and pumpkin, gobo, chikuwa and sweet potato tempura. Everything was delicious!
It was really nice to learn about it (and they offered to teach us sushi next time if we want). However, they refused to take any money even though we had agreed to split the cost of the ingredients amongst us prior to the event.
Also after this session...I want Japanese knives for cooking!! The way they cut is amazing!!
**UPDATE** We ended up having an article written about us and a photo published in their (JA) newspaper. Here it is:
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