easy peasy japanesey

A good friend of mine has just come back from a trip to Japan, and her photos were seriously amazing. So beautiful - what a country! She hit a snag though in ordering food. With a scant ten words of Japanese under her belt, garnered in grade ten LOTE classes, meal times were quite an adventure. Some slippery eel and other unrecognisable foods were consumed.

When I was vegan, Japanese was one of my favourite food types, as it's pretty easy to keep it meat and dairy free. Tonight's menu was a tribute to some of my favourite meals from that cuisine.

The challenge - a yasai katsu curry - is arguably most popular in the UK because of wagamamas. This restaurant chain specialises in Asian food - a menu that is a hybrid of thai, chinese, japanese, malaysian and indonesian, all served in an homogenised and westernised environment - fast, quick, clean and cheap, and very tasty. Their katsu curry is one of the most popular meals.

I love that Japanese meals often involve a lot of different dishes, served in dainty portions, so you get maximum flavour without feeling like you're going to burst at the end of the evening.

In this vein, we started with a selection of sushi - some cucumber maki as well as tempura prawn maki with wasabi and soya sauce.

Following this, we had some Japanese crumbed prawns.

After this, it was Nasu Misoyaki, one of my favourite meals ever. Imagine a soft roasted aubergine, sliced once cooked and topped with mild miso paste, soya sauce, sugar and vinegar, served with Japanese pickled vegetables. Absolutely delicious. Served soft, with cripsy skin, and steaming.
The katsu curry was absolutely delicious. It's quite a modern Japanese dish - a Japanese imitation of an Indian American curry that hits the mark beautifully. The curry is served with rice and crumbed chicken or vegetables. Seriously yumtastic.
Japanese cuisine isn't huge on dessert (shocking, I know), so I sort of improvised. I made a green tea, champagne and apple jelly, served with chocolate sauce. This is the first time I have ever made jelly from scratch. I used more gelatine than I probably needed, so it sure was firm. And really a nice combination of flavours. Anything with a chocolate is a winner for me though!