Hashi Japanese cooking classes

A while ago, I attended an absolutely incredible Japanese cooking class. It was actually that cooking class that made me think about food blogging - I heard about it through other food blogs, and when I was attending it, I remember Reiko saying to me, while taking photos and loudly enjoying all the lovely dishes she showed us, that I should start a blog of my own. 

I attended two of her Gourmet courses. Reiko of Hashi Cooking welcomed the four of us in her beautiful kitchen, and started off by talking briefly about the Japanese ingredients we would be using, and where to find them. And then began the fun! 

The beef tataki with sesame sauce, which we cooked on the first evening, was a stunner. Beef fillet was seared to perfection, then removed from the pan and dipped in a mixture of soy sauce and mirin. We made fried garlic chips, a sesame sauce with tahini, the soy and mirin from the beef, sugar, water and some rice vinegar. I could easily drink this sauce every morning instead of my usual cup of tea.

Beef tataki

 We made a total of four dishes - Reiko's (very) special salmon chirashi (where she showed exactly how to make perfect sushi rice - invaluable), a cloudy soup which was divine, and a monk fish with porcini soy butter.

Reiko's amazing Chirashi salmon sushi

In the second class, we made an absolutely stunning pork fillet with sweet miso, followed by green tea soba noodles with calamari and yakumi sauce, scallops with creamy spicy sauce (I have no words for how delicious this was), and tofu steak with mushrooms. 

Cutting pork

Pork with sweet miso

Making green tea noodles

Green tea noodles with calamari and minced pork

Scallops

Tofu steak with mushrooms

All in all, this cooking course taught me so much about Japanese cooking (and cooking techniques in general, too) and I can't recommend it enough. Reiko is a lovely, passionate teacher who answered all my (probably sometimes quite annoying) questions with a smile. In addition to learning a whole lot about Japanese cooking and coming home with some fantastic new recipes, you get to EAT everything you cook in the end of the class, and it tasted so damn good I never wanted to leave. I finished the other people's plates too, which in retrospect is a bit embarrassing. I would gladly have licked the plates too, but that might have been taking it a bit too far.