I went to take part in a cooking class at Cooking Sun

The kitchen

I arrived at cooking sun about 5 minutes before the class started. There were few students already there looking like they were ready to start! After everyone was settled in, we were given aprons to wear and headed over to the kitchen.

Making dashi

First step was to make the dashi soup stock. It is the base of many Japanese dishes. We were introduced to some of the ingredients used in making this dashi stock like dried bonito and sea kelp which gives off lots of umami.

Rectangular pan

Have you seen a rectangular shaped pan before?
This was used in making "rolled egg".

Finished product: rolled egg

Dashi stock was used in this and is one of the main ingredients that gives this a delicious flavor.

Next dish is "gomaae" made with spinach and sesame seeds.

Gomaae

It's an awesome way to eat some vegetables deliciously, and this sesame dressing can be used in other vegetables as well. Many students enjoyed this dish very much!

Finished product: Gomaae

Next is sushi roll making!

Sushi rice

Starting off by adding the vinegar and sugar into the rice and mixing it to cool it down in a wooden bowl.

I found out the wooden bowl will release the heat better. I also found out that sushi typically has sugar added to the rice.

Next we spread the rice on a sheet of nori seaweed and add on the ingredients! Then I carefully rolled the sushi.

Rolling the sushi

After that, I cut it into 8 pieces. I thing that I made some pretty good looking sushi rolls.

Finished product: sushi rolls

Then on to making teriyaki chicken and some tempura.

I made a little mistake when preparing the shrimp for the tempura.

Preparing for shrimp tempura

The vein on the shrimp had to be carefully taken out with a wooden stick. I didn't do that carefully and made a slit by accident. And when it came to preparing the tail to leave on for presentation, I accidentally cut it off.  Don't make the mistake I did by taking off the tail, it's needed for presentation. Luckily, I wasn't the only one that made the mistake and the tail was able to be some what put back on.

Finished product: shrimp tempura

Tempura turned out very nice!

Lunch Time

All of us had a nice lunch upstairs with the bento boxes we each created. The bento box is supposed to be placed so that the sushi rolls are on the bottom left corner. Here is the correct form:

Finished Product: bento box

I think I did a pretty good job!  Other students cooked wonderfully as well and everyone had so much fun. Everything was so delicious and well-balanced.

I hope that all the students attended the class will recreate these dishes in their home countries and use the skills that was taught during this class. I sure will use some of the techniques I learned in class and keep on having fun cooking!