My second cooking class was on Friday and we learned to cook "Gomoku Yakisoba," which is basically Chinese fried noodles. Gomoku means 5 ingredients, but there were a little more than five... We also made chicken soup with shrimp wontons and a tofu-like sweet dessert. I really liked the noodles and the desesrt (the tofu-like dessert was better than the pudding last time), but the soup was a little on the bland side for me. If you're cooking the soup at home, you'd probably taste it and add more seasoning, but since we're doing it in class we don't do much tasting during cooking.

I am not writing anything down in class (they give a nice printed recipe at the end), so I plan to write the little tricks they teach you here in my blog so I don't forget... The one interesting thing they taught was how to tell the temperature of cooking oil (when you are frying something). If you stick a wooden chopstick (not a lacquer one, but a wooden one) into the oil, if it immediately starts to bubble then they say the temperature is at leat 180C or greater (good for frying). If there is a short delay (about one second) before the bubbles start, the temperature is about 170C (the oil is almost, but not quite ready). If the bubbles take a long time to appear, the oil is about 160C or less. I don't know how exact that is, but as I don't have a thermometer in my kitchen, I think I will go by this rule.

My next cooking class is in a few weeks, where we will learn to cook "Omu Rice, " basically an omelet with tomato-flavored rice in it, usually with some kind of sauce over the whole thing. Japanese people call this western food, but it is definitely very Japanese in my book!

If I'm diligent, you'll see a blog about the trip we are taking to Okinawa this week.

My newest hobby is making connected origami cranes. This is my first finished piece, which I actually glued to a background. It's not perfect, but I'm getting better. The cranes are made from a single piece of paper, roughly 30cm x 30cm.

In Hawaii, brides fold a thousand cranes (although not of the connected variety) before getting married. The cranes are then arranged in some kind of picture, maybe the family mon or some other kind of symbolic picture, such as the chinese zodiac signs of the bride and groom. I didn't do this before I got married, but a few months ago decided that maybe I do need more lessons in patience (not because of anything to do with my marriage, but just in general). Not to mention that my parents and I went to visit an origami/washi making museum and I was really impressed by their origami wall hangings. Patience is always a good thing, and something of which I do not have a lot of, relatively speaking. So anyway, I started this hobby in part to learn patience, and in part so that I can one day have a beautiful connected crane wall hanging...

Once one becomes good at making these connected cranes, one can start to get more creative and make big cranes connected to the small cranes in any kind of variation you can imagine. In addition to wall hangings you can also make very delicate, but beautiful hanging crane mobiles! I'm not a big mobile fan, but I might have to make an exception for these crane mobiles. They are so graceful and peaceful!

Yesterday I took my first cooking class at the ABC Cooking Studio at the new Midtown building in Roppongi (same building as where Fred works). The teachers all speak English and you can elect to take classes in English or in Japanese. Since yesterday was my first class, I decided to sign up for the English version. We learned to cook a full menu, consisting of potato and hamburger croquettes, cabbbage salad, kimpira, miso soup, and pudding! I had originally thought it would be better if there were less people in the class (max is 5), but after yesterday's experience I think 3 is the perfect number. The other two people in my class were Japanese women, rather than foreigners, which was what I was expecting (actually at the ABC cooking school, only women are allowed to take classes, but that discussion of discrimation shall be tabled for another blog). I asked the two women why they were taking the English cooking class and they both said that they thought it would be fun to practice English and learn cooking at the same time. Subarashii to omoimasu! (I think that's wonderful!)

The food turned out to be delicious! My favorite is the Kimpira, which is lotus root fried with some shoyu, sake, sugar, and a little bit of chili pepper. YUM! The pudding was probably my least favorite, but I had high expectations. I think we might have left it in the steamer a tad too long and it wasn't creamy enough for my taste. I'm going to try to improve on the recipe, because it really was very simple to make and it would be an easy dessert when company comes over.

Stay tuned for more cooking stories. My next lesson is tomorrow, so I may have more to say about the ABC cooking school.

By the way, I don't really think I am a ryouri no tetsujin (Iron Chef), I just thought it was a catchy title for the blog. ;-)