Pretzel Time

Max has taken a strong liking to cooking shows. AFN shows them every morning so most mornings I'll come downstairs to see him wrapped in a blanket watching the Take Home Chef, or Good Eats. It was one of these mornings where he was watching Good Eats with Alton Brown. (This is my favorite cooking show. I used to think he was a nut, but now I really like him. And I still think he is a nut, but entertaining in a corny way.) Sam was watching too. He was expounding on the secrets of how to make Homemade Soft Pretzels. Sam thought they were awesome and asked: "Can we make those daddy? Can we? Can we?" I told him probably, (my standard noncommittal answer), and that we could look for the recipe sometime. I had to leave for work before I got to see his trick for getting the nice golden brown crisp coating on them and have felt a little unfulfilled since then. (Though I suspected it was an egg wash and I was right). So tonight I found the recipe and got Sam to help me with the dough and then after dinner M and S both helped me roll them out. It turns out it was a pretty easy recipe. We/they didn't make the perfect shape, but they sure tasted great. Just as good as at a ball game with my Dad in Oakland! I ate two despite having a stomach ache.

Cooking With Mamasans

Tonight I took my first Japanese cooking class. It was really fun. It started with a Japanese lady who works for the AF giving us an introduction to the ingredients and recipe that we will be trying. Tonight was cooking Hiyashi chuuka or Japanese cold noodles. Then the cooking began. all of a sudden there we three more older Japanese ladies whirling around the mini "Kitchen Stadium" chopping, pointing, shredding, etc. It lacked a traditional instruction, but once I got into the flow I was able to pick up on what ingredients were going where. What made it more confusing was that instead of cooking the scheduled recipe they made three additional dishes. It was wild.

Here is the cold noodle dish. It was really good, despite having forgotten to put the vinegar sauce on top.This one was my favorite, the hot noodle dish. It's basically a raman dish, but the best I've tasted, including the handful I've tried around Japan already.
The Japanese people are sooo nice. Everything is done with a smile and a bow. They like it when I try to say a phrase in Japanese. I want to be able to speak and read Japanese so bad.

The major victory tonight was getting introduced to a few of the Japanese cooking staples and how to go buy them. One favorite was the Shiso leaf. It had a wonderful aroma. Strong aroma like cilantro, but citrusy. It was placed in a rice dish, a potato/bean salad, and garnished the cold noodle dish. Now I need to brave Univers, the Japanese supermarket for some ingredients!

One of the other guys there summed it up perfectly: "all I've learned is I need three little Japanese ladies to come into my kitchen and cook for me."

Secret Aspirations

...well not that secret...
I recently read one of my high school friend's, we'll call her Sara, Christmas Letter. I was totally jealous. Sara is attending culinary school. I love cooking and already have culinary plans for my retirement, in fact I might do it now if it wasn't for this dentist thing they have me doing right now!

So here is the plan: Upon retirement I want to buy a house on Clarendon Ave in San Francisco and attend the California Culinary Academy. Or maybe we'll buy a house (again) near the water in Rhode Island and I'll train at Johnson and Wales.

The point is I love to cook and have an underlying desire to become a chef!

*way to go Sara!