World Cuisine: Eastern Asia

Asia is big.

Really big.
And every country has a very distinct culture.

Trying to narrow down the foods we try has been hard and in the end there is still a lot to cover, so we're covering Asia by region and will focus on a few countries within that region.
I will apologize in advance if we appear to have 'missed' something. Inevitably we will overlook somebody's favourite something, but believe me, it's not for lack of trying.

We're starting on the east coast! 

And Japan is about as east as you can go.
I was excited about Japan because strangely enough our family has ties to that country.

Even though none of us are of Japanese decent, my great-grandmother was born and raised in Japan and spent most of her childhood with a Japanese nanny as her parents were both British missionaries and frequently were not at home.
We have an array of Japanese art, clothing, and dishes around the house now because of her influence. My mom has memories of family New Year's dinners where she would make sukiyaki, much to the amusement of the relatives.

Sukiyaki is like a stew or a stir-fry which is prepared right at the table on a hot plate or electric wok. The family sits together at the table - typically an end-of-year get together- and serves themselves small portions of what is being cooked and replaces what they take with raw ingredients so there is a constant wave of fresh food.
Most of the recipes and photos I found online show this dish simmering in a broth with all the ingredients grouped separately in the pot. The one my family made was more of a stir fry where everything was mixed and cooked in a sauce. I finally found a Japanese book at the library that had a version almost identical to what my mom would describe.

Sukiyaki usually starts with beef, and then various other vegetables are added. The beef is supposed to be cut in very thin sheets so it cooks quickly and stays tender. The beef I cut ended up more like ribbons than sheets, but I wanted them more bite-sized for Toby. We added what G'ma typically added - Water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and mung bean noodles - as well as green onions and mushrooms, which appeared in every other recipe I read. The sauce is a mix of sake (rice wine), soy sauce and sugar.

Because we don't have a hot plate I cooked the meal on the stove and then brought everything to the table in one go. We had bancha green tea with dinner - another insistence of G'ma.

Sukiyaki is served in small amounts over rice. You only take what you want for a few mouth fulls and then serve your self some more.

In Japan it's impolite to lean over your bowl, and everyone knows it's difficult to lift food very far with chopsticks, so holding your small eating bowls is customary.

And of course, because we love it, we prepared maki rolls as well.

We took a book out of the library that was the story of a boy in Japan meeting a kappa, which is a Japanese mythical creature. Kappas are water creatures but can come on land for short periods of time if they keep some sea water in a divot on their heads. They like eating cucumbers from people's gardens, and in this story the boy finds a young kappa stranded in his cucumber garden because he ran out of water. The boy helps him back to the sea and they become friends. When the boy grown up he has a sushi restaurant and creates a roll with only cucumber in it to honour his friend and calls it a kappa roll! I had no idea this book would turn out to be the legend of 

the kappa roll, but it was very cool to learn!

For desert we found some mochi (thank goodness for the eclectic variety of international snacks at Winners) which is a gummy dough that is flavoured and formed in to balls, or wrapped around balls of ice cream or other sweets to make a gooey treat.

Ours had a 'cream' inside and was green tea flavoured. I really really wanted to like it, and maybe

it was just the flavour, but neither Toby or I were huge fans. Maybe I'll try a different flavour if I can find some more.

Next we did the obvious: China.

Chinese food is hard because we're so used to the Americanized version of it so the recipes online are not always authentic. And then authentic things like bird's nest soup and weird cuts of meat I either can't get or didn't really want to go that route.

We did find a handful of things to make a meal, but most of them I had to alter to be gluten free.

I found that most Chinese food is cooked or preserved in some way. Very few recipes ended up being raw or 'fresh' by the time they reach the table. Perhaps because the population is so large it's hard to keep up with fresh fruits and veggies? Everything was turned into a soup, stew, stir fry, filling, or was battered, fried and then sauced.

There are dozens of types of dumplings eaten in China, more traditionally around New Year's.

I made a gluten free pasta dough as the wrapper and we filled them with a mix of spinach, ground chicken, green onions, ginger, sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce, and then steamed them.
They actually turned out really good! I've tried making ravioli with this dough before and it was too tough, but these were quite tender and delicious. Maybe steaming them instead of boiling them helped?

I really wanted to make fried spring rolls too because that one thing I quite miss about the gluten world. We used rice paper instead of phyllo wrappers, and filled them with a traditional mix of

ground chicken, green onion, ginger, carrots, cabbage, and garlic.

They tasted about as close to the real thing as you can get! The filling smelled amazing as I was frying it and I almost wanted to stop there and just eat it. It was amazing how well the rice paper crisped up when deep fried too. Really delicious!

The last Chinese item we made was sweet and sour pork. The recipe called for the pork to be breaded first (of course) and I was almost going to just do it plain, but I found some gluten free seasoned breading flour in my cupboard so I tossed it in that before pan frying and it came out great.

We made the sauce from scratch and tossed it all with peppers.  VERY close to pork we've had in a restaurant, but I might make some adjustments to the sauce if we do this again.

We included Korean kimchi with our meal because apparently no Korean meal is complete without it.
There are loads of different kinds, but they are all essentially fermented cabbage and veggies.
We weren't crazy about the taste, which I hear is common for first-timers. It was a strange mix of spicy and salty and sour that was a little over powering.

For eastern Asia we also took a look at Mongolia.

I feel (or maybe it's just me) that all the countries surrounding Mongolia are so popular, that we often forget it's there. But it is, and it's huge! Mongolia has a culture that is an interesting fusion of Russian and Chinese aesthetic and flavour. Rice and meat are a big part of their cuisine, as with most of eastern Asia, but there's also breads and dairy dishes that are influenced from Russia.
We made Budaatai Khuurga - a rice, veggie, and meat 'stew' very similar to meals that I make on nights that I feel like I'm being lazy, but now I can say I'm being cultured!

Beef strips and vegetables are sauteed in a pan, and then you add cooked rice and stock over it and let it cook a bit more. Simple and cheap but VERY filling and delicious. No heavy sauces or spices here, It's all very simple and natural vegetable flavours.

See you in the tropics!

Happy Eating!!