It’s Japanese & Korean Cuisine for our 6th session of the CCA Culinary Arts Fundamental Course. Our resident teacher Kat is back. We started with the usual reminders and tips for the dishes we are about to cook for the day.
Here are the dishes we are asked to prepare:
- Cabbage Kimchi
- Sushi Rice
- California Maki
- Ebi Tempura
- Pork Tonkatsu
- Bulgogi
I already started prepping the Kimchi when I learned I did it wrong, lol! Chef Teacher Kat demonstrated how we should be cutting the cabbage and how we should be applying the salt to it.
She also demonstrated how we should be prepping the California maki. I love how all the students are engaged and taking photos to have some documentation of the class.
I’m tasked to do Kimchi and Ebi Tempura.
I prepared the Kimchi first. First, cleaning the cabbage and cutting it. Then, I applied a generous amount of salt making sure that there are more salt applied on the roots. Then I tried to push out as much water as possible then rested the cabbage-salt mixture on the bench with a very heavy object to ensure water pushed out. I did the same for the radish.
Then I prepared the spices to marinate the kimchi with, mixed them very well then applied them to the washed cabbage. I almost forgot to wash the cabbage before applying the spices. Good thing the teacher reminded me, else, the kimchi would have tasted so salty!
Then, I put the kimchi in jars. I’m not gonna touch the kimchi until next week. I need to bring it to school for the teacher to taste the fermented kimchi. I’ll update this post with the verdict! 🥬
Once I’m done with the kimchi, I started prepping for the Tempura. The dish was called Ebi Tempura but since there are also vegetables for us to cook with the shrimps, then I simply call it Tempura. First up, need to clean the shrimp and ensure it doesn’t curl up when we cook it. So giving the shrimps a few cuts will do it.
Then the eggplants and the sweet potatoes were cut as well. Then prepared the batter as well, need to ensure that the batter is good enough for it to stick to the shrimps & veggies as well as not thick enough to be too dough-ey. Teacher Kat also reminded us not to mix the batter to well or else, it will look like pancakes 😜
Next is to deep-fry the shrimps & veggies. This is best served newly cooked so I did it at the last minute.
Then I simmered the sauce then served it hot together with the cooked tempura.
And the dish is a success! I loved it a lot as I had this for dinner. It tasted quite yummy especially if newly-fried/re-fried. The tip that the teacher provided during the tasting is to drop a bit of a batter while it’s being deep-fried so the tempura will look bigger.
Below are the Japanese-Korean dishes our team prepared during the session. I’m a bit bummed that the groupings will be re-shuffled next week as we already have a working strategy on how our team will work together. But we’ll see, I hope the rest of the sessions will be okay.
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