Japanese Cooking

There are two things that have interested me for years, now. One is cooking. My own lazy disposition has prevented me from pursuing anything along this line, at least until this IRP. The second interest is Japanese culture. I am currently in a second-year Japanese class, which is one of my favorite classes. The book I chose, The Essentials of Japanese Cooking, is the perfect bridge between those two subjects. With this project, I plan to improve my skills in cooking Japanese cuisine

I have decided to start out with a simple dish, a dessert called “sweet potato candy”. You start out with the sweet potato, around 11 oz.

One regular sweet potato

 Then you peel it, and cut it into pieces about 3/4 of an inch thick, and put them into water just deep enough to cover the sweet potatoes.

Cut sweet potatoes

Then you boil it.
When the sweet potatoes are soft from boiling, drain them in a colander, making sure to get excess water out. Then, you essentially mash the potatoes.

The mash

This mashing should be done on the stove over a low heat, which will make the mashed sweet potato thicker, and the perfect consistency to arrange how we want them to.

There are only two things that are added to this mash for flavor: five teaspoons of sugar, and one dash of salt. This small addition echoes one of the principals of Japanese cooking: to maximize natural flavors. "Most Japanese cuisine is only seasoned lightly; strong spices are rarely used... the Japanese believe this allows the true flavors of foods to come through" (Suzuki 8).

The next step is to take around two tablespoons of the sweet potato mash and mix it with まっちゃ (matcha, a green tea powder) in a small amount water. This gives those two tablespoons a green color, used for style and a green tea taste (green food coloring can also be used for those who don't enjoy the taste of green tea).

Next, is the presentation. This dessert is served in the form of small balls. You take a sixth of sweet potato mash, and put it on a damp, clean, washcloth. You then take a sixth of the green sweet potato, and put it on top of the original sweet potato mash. You then take the washcloth, close it up, and make the sweet potato into little balls.

Final product displayed elegantly on two plates

Then, you do that with the rest of the mash! This concludes your sweet potato candy making session.

As an added bonus, I will give a short description of the taste: a sweet potato. Very similar to yams, if you've eaten those. This tastes like sweet potato, but sweeter. It's very good, but not at all similar to Western desserts. It went well with my Costco^© tamale bake. There is one good thing: this dessert is nearly fat-free! (Suzuki 146). This is because the Japanese rarely add anything like oil to things to preserve the natural flavor, as stated above.

My dinner from 11-30-17