Japanese Dinner

Mar 28, 2012 by Colleen

This past Saturday was the second Kamikaze Chef dinner at the Nashville Farmers’ Market Grow Local Kitchen! We had a great time and I already have some great photos to share with you.

I picked a Japanese theme for this dinner and brought along all the necessary sauces and components I might need to create a few traditional dishes:

For appetizers, I made three new dishes. The first was something I”ve been wanting to try, a change-up on the dumplings I”ve done in the past. These ones were pork and shrimp wasabi shumai, modeled after one of my favorite Japanese appetizers. I found the shumai skins at my local international market and placed a small dollop of prepared wasabi in the center of the wrapper. These were served with Ponzu sauce and hot mustard.

 

The second appetizer was chicken yakitori, made from chicken thighs that had been marinating all day in a mixture of soy, mirin, ginger, garlic, and peanut oil. Then they were grilled and basted with more of the marinade. Yum!

 

Lastly, I made a cucumber and green onion cold salad, tossed in shuyo (a lighter version of soy sauce), rice vinegar, topped with bonito flakes. It was tasty!

A pretty arrangement of all three:

The mystery ingredients were colorful and unique! I had a lot of great items to work with. In their categories:

Vegetables: White cauliflower, Eddoes (Caribbean root vegetables, found in a local Indian market), sweet potatoes, corn, sugar snap peas, spinach

Fruit: Bosc and Anjou Pears, Avocados

Dairy: Paneer Cheese, Coconut Milk, Herbs de Provence Goat Cheese

The proteins I brought were shrimp, thinly sliced beef, and lean pork cutlets. I came in with at least somewhat of plan of dishes I could make, so these proteins worked out well.

Then it was time to get cookin’! Christina started peeling the edooes, while Brandon removed the corn kernels from the cob, and I fried the paneer before combining all three with some ginger, garlic, onion, water and the sugar snap peas to form a curry base.

I served this with some Tonkatsu, or fried Pork cutlets, breaded in Panko:

The two went very well together:

All of us working away:

Next, I got started on some interesting sushi rolls. I combined the Herbs de Provence goat cheese, spinach, panko, and some of the beef, and topped it with thin slices of avocado to make a one-of-a-kind sushi roll:

We got a heck of a lot of good photos of the finished product, but here are some of the best. I made a spicy mayo to drizzle over the top. Click to see larger images (which you can always do with any photo. None of these are full size!).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To go with the sushi, we fried up some slices of cauliflower, sweet potato, and shrimp in a tempura batter:

For the final course, I actually made a dessert for this dinner: Ginger-Infused Rice Pudding with Pears! Having never attempted rice pudding before, I believe it came out great. I used the coconut milk and large chunks of ginger to infuse flavor for about 20 minutes before adding the cooked rice. Of course, I had to find them before I served the pudding, or else someone would’ve gotten a very spicy bite!

There were so many more fabulous photos that I will post to my Facebook page, so be sure to check that out soon.\n\nThanks again to the great crowd who made this night an absolute blast! I hope everyone had fun! The next dinner at the Farmers” Market is April 28th. You can find details and RSVP information here.