Domo Arigato: Meals at
Michi Café – Part 2
– Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
After
a little research in a Buddhist temple cookbook called The Legacy of the Japanese in Hawaii, I found a recipe for the salad
dressing made with rice vinegar, sugar, and a little soy sauce.
A
mound of lightly, fried shrimp, eggplant, green beans, and turnips came with
one of my friend’s grilled teriyaki chicken dish, making me think he ended up
with the best value for his money.
The
Japanese got the idea for deep frying foods during the 16th century
from the Portuguese, on of the first nation to have contact with Japan.
Tempura
shrimp stay nice and long when you cut along their underside. I like the way the Japanese fry chicken with
the skin on to keep them moist, but other people take the skin off.
My
daughter Florence liked the beef teriyaki she ordered and said it was “juicy
and tender.” I like the way Yamato
serves it teriyaki sauce on the side, if you ask them.
Teriyaki
can be too sweet for some people. It is
a syrupy sauce make from soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar.
One
of my friends complimented me on exposing my daughter to so many different
cuisines.
I
laughed and said she liked beef in various forms – Korean bulgogi, Mexican
carne asada, and Japanese beef teriyaki.
We
all tried the breaded pork cutlets that one of my friends ordered and loved
the. This dish is called tonkatsu and
was adopted from the Dutch. A spicy
sauce accompanied the dish, but she said the cutlets were so juicy that they
did not need any sauce.
The
eel I ordered came over rice with thick, soy sauce in an orange-lidded box with
flowers on it. I had never eaten
eel. The flesh was fatty, but tasted
good.
Green
tea-flavored ice cream came with our meal as dessert.
Article
end
The
real sweet ending to this article is that you can buy green tea ice cream in
Asian markets now.
The
following cookbooks can help readers become familiar with Japanese menu items
and cooking methods:
Japanese Soul
Cooking: Ramen, Tonkatsu, Tempura, and
more from the Streets and Kitchens of Tokyo and Beyond by Tadashi Ono and
Harris Salat
Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh
Japanese Cooking: A
Simple Art by
Shizuo Tsuji
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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