I'm taking part in a hang out with the locals, Japanese cultural experience kinda thing

Basically you can sign up to hang out with the locals

and they will teach you something about Japanese culture

Today we are going to be learning Japanese cooking

One other awesome thing was that you could choose for it to be vegetarian or vegan

As you know Japanese food always includes fish and meat

Always fish because of the dashi stock

But they adjusted the menu today so that it will be all vegetarian friendly

I'm gonna show you the cooking process and everything that I'm doing today

At the end of the video I'll explain a little about the website in case you guys wanna sign up too

The basic Japanese meal consists of steamed rice, miso soup and 3 side dishes

This is called ichijyu sansai in Japanese

Ichijyu meaning "one soup" and sansai meaning "3 dishes"

An interesting fact about Japanese cuisine is that you're supposed to finish all of the dishes at the same time

So you eat a little of each dish so that you finish them evenly

instead of finishing the dishes one by one

This is what we'll be cooking today

We've got teriyaki tofu, fried eggplant with miso sauce

spinach tofu salad, and miso soup

Here are the ingredients we're gonna be using today

I will link a blog post down below with the full ingredient list and the full recipe

So make sure to check that out

Many Japanese dishes contain dashi or fish stock

But today we'll be using this konbu instead so our dishes will be vegetarian

First you want to soak the konbu in cold water for a few hours and then bring it to a boil

Let's start preparing our second dish

Take your freeze dried tofu out of the package and lay it on a tray

Cover this is water so that the tofu absorbs the water

Miranda is mixing the sauce for the spinach salad

and I'm peeling the edamame which we will also add to it

Once the sauce is mixed you can add 150g of firm tofu and mix thoroughly

Combine your boiled carrots, spinach and edamame into the mixture

and carefully mix, you don't want to mush them up

This completes the spinach salad

Next we will move on to the eggplant dish

You want to peel the eggplants in alternating strips

and then cut them into 1.5cm thick slices

For the sauce we will be mixing miso, sugar and sweet sake

Heat this in the microwave for 1 minute

We are going to fry the eggplants in sesame oil

So put a generous amount of sesame oil into a pan

Once that has been heated you want to add your eggplant slices

Flip them over as they cook until both sides are nicely browned

Our freeze dried tofu is ready so you want to squeeze all the water out of it

It's very strong and sturdy so don't worry, it won't break

We use freeze dried tofu instead of regular tofu because it will absorb the sauce more

and also it keeps it shape better while cooking

Next you want to cut the tofu into large cubes like this

Place your tofu cubes in a bag and cover with potato starch

Sprinkle that in there and shake it up carefully

Keep shaking until all sides of the tofu are covered. I will look something like this!

Next we are going to dice the tomato to use in our teriyaki tofu

Adding the tomato will make the flavour a little less strong

But it's completely up to you, you don't need to add it

Using the sesame oil that was leftover from when we fried the eggplant

you can use that to fry your tofu cubes

Arrange them nicely in the pan so that they're all laying flat in the oil

We're going to cook the tofu for 3 minutes, and then flip it over and cook for another 3 minutes

Get rid of any extra oil that is still leftover once you're done cooking them

Now we want to reduce the heat to low and add our teriyaki sauce mixture

which is made out of soy sauce, sake, water and sugar

Also add in your tomato

Shiso leaves make a nice garnish for this dish

So if you have any, you want to slice those up into thin strips

Now we want to cook this on low until the tomatoes are nice and cooked

and it looks like the tofu has absorbed some of the sauce

Next lets slice up the ingredients for our miso soup

We're going to be using some abura-age and also some green onion

You're welcome to put whatever you like in miso soup, it's totally up to you

Make sure to remove the konbu before adding in your other soup ingredients

You want to boil your soup until the ingredients are fully cooked

Then you want to turn it down to low and add your miso

Once you've added the miso make sure not to boil the soup again

or that will kill any of the good bacteria in the soup

Now it's time to arrange our dishes on the plates

We will start off with the fried eggplant and miso sauce

Next is the spinach salad

Finally our teriyaki tofu garnished with shiso leaves

So you've got your main dish in the middle

Your two side dishes at the top

Soup on the right and rice on the left

And chopsticks down at the bottom

We are all done cooking so it's time to eat!

Everything smells so good and I'm so excited to eat it

Doesn't it smell amazing?

Okay let's eat!

Itadakimasu!

Everything that we cooked today was so delicious

And it was really easy to make! I'm definitely not a cooking pro

But it was a lot of fun and really simple

So I know that any of you guys can do it too

I will have the full recipe down below, so check that out if you wanna try this yourself

If you would also like to participate in this Japanese home cooking experience

I will list the website down in the description box that I used to sign up

Let me know if you guys do it as well, and what you thought

I had so much fun and the family that was teaching us was so sweet

and it was just such an awesome day

So I really recommend that you guys participate in this as well

Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon! Bye guys!

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