Before you read on, I should give you fair warning – this is a slighhtttly self-absorbed post, as I talk about this unnecessarily fancy dinner I cooked for my family a few weeks ago. Now before you think I’m this filial Asian son who often cooks for his parents though, this dinner was really more of a one-off thing to prove to them that I can actually cook. Just kidding, I actually did it to vie for the position of favourite child. (Your move, little siblings.)

But really, the main reason I’m sharing about this dinner is because I made something that was unexpectedly good! But since I have a knack for going off on a tangent, lemme tell you ALL about the dinner first. (Skip to the recipe if you can’t stand slightly-narcissistic me. Heh.)

Now I’ve always shied away from calling myself a chef, or even a cook for that matter. (I’m really not, especially when compared to other, actual chefs out there who are actually mad-skilled and who crush the line every day.) But after seeing how well this dinner went down, I can’t help but feel a slight bit cheffy, and majorly chuffed too.

Of course, being a fancy-shmancy dinner, I had to go all out and have a running theme to tie all the dishes together. So I came up with the terribly-titled theme of “Japanese-y”, or “Japanese, but not really”. Horrible title, I know. But I chose it because i) I don’t actually know how to cook proper, traditional Japanese food, and ii) even if I did, my haphazard style of cooking will have me end up with dishes that aren’t truly Japanese anyway.

It was a 5-course dinner, with each dish having some tentative link to Japanese food, but not enough to call it truly Japanese. I swear if real chefs were to read through this, they’d be shaking their heads in disapproval. But if anything, I think this is pretty true to my weird af thought-process when it comes to cooking and creating dishes, and I had plenty of fun with it, and that’s what matter the most, no? (Gosh I’ve gone soft.)

So here are the 5 dishes I made:

Tsukemono (a.k.a. Japanese pickles)
This was really just six random pickles I made, none of them exactly in the style of a traditional Japanese pickle. (Don’t shoot me.) I wrote about them in this pickle post from a few weeks back.

Mushroom Tempura
This was not really just a mushroom tempura, because there were 4 different types of mushrooms each cooked differently (mostly enoki tempura, but also pickled maitake, raw eryngii, and a seared shroom that I don’t know the name of). I also made a black garlic aioli dip for the dish, which was pure umami goodness (less to do with me, more to do with how good of an ingredient black garlic is; Ooh check out this black garlic chocolate cookies by Posie Harwood btw!)

“Okonomiyaki”
Again, this wasn’t an okonomiyaki per se. (Do you see the pattern now..? ) For this dish, I just took the flavours of a traditional Japanese pancake and worked it into a charred cabbage dish. I split a cabbage into eighths, and seared and basted them in kombu butter. There was also the typical okonomiyaki ingredients involved – Japanese mayo, smoky okonomiyaki sauce, scallions, and seaweed.

Kakigori
You know the drill now. This was not exactly kakigori, but a watermelon granita with some gin and cucumber agar jelly. Tbh, it might be slightly contentious to actually call this kakigori (tbh this whole menu is pretty contentious/heretical).

“Chawanmushi”
And finally, my favourite of the lot! The chawanmushi that isn’t actually a chawanmushi. I started off with the idea of making a dessert that looked like a chawanmushi (savoury Japanese egg custard), but was in fact a pannacotta. (They have very similar textures, so the bluff is pretty convincing.) But then I thought, just to make it that bit more legit, I’ll add some ikura / fish roe, which is sometimes used as a garnish on chawanmushi. Or should I say “ikura”, because these were actually tapioca pearls dyed in a bit of orange & beetroot syrup! Ooh, and for the piece de resistance, I hid some red bean paste at the base of the cup, so that just so when you thought all the dish had was a bluff in name, out pops another surprise!

I admit I got quite amused coming up with this recipe, and I clearly got a bit carried away there with the concept, haha. Though from the photos, I agree that it doesn’t look entirely convincing. The faux-ikura especially could be made more realistic. Also, serving it in a glass kinda gave away the surprise, so ideally it should be served in chawanmushi cups/mugs. (I did eventually serve these in green teacups you see in the photos below though, so it’s all good.)

But for what its worth, I had plenty of fun creating and making this dish. Plus, the taste alone is more than reason enough to make it! It’s no secret that I’ve always had a thing for red bean; It’s gloriously comforting, like reading a good book by the fireplace on a cold winter’s night. But little did I expect, when paired with creamy, rich panna cotta, not only was it just as hygge-inducing, it gave the red bean a deep sense of sophistication and sexiness. It’s essentially like reading a good book by the fireplace, only now you’re lying on the coziest futon taking sips of steamy hot cocoa, with your favourite woolly jumper on and a bit of slow jazz playing on the antique record player.

Sure, it’s one of the longer recipes on the blog, but I think it’s well worth the effort, if purely for the looks of confusion -> surprise -> bliss as your family and friends gorge on them. Priceless. This is why I cook.