Haru Cooking Class in Kyoto, Japan & other vacation food

This is the FOOD post that accompanies my Asian adventure travel post from the other day. It didn't turn out quite as exciting as I think I made it out to be, but I hope you enjoy the photos and bits of information about the food we ate in Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines. I'm going to mention the food on our trip in reverse order, starting with Japan and ending with the Philippines because I want to make sure the best part--the Japanese cooking class in Kyoto-- is at the top of this post.

JAPAN 
As many of you know, I love food! Who doesn't? I love trying new foods and my favorite food next to treats and desserts is Indian and Thai. I really didn't know much about Japanese food before our trip other than the sushi, yakatori and yaki udon we typically order at local NJ sushi restaurants. I honestly just haven't put much thought or exploration into the cuisine before. Needless to say when my husband suggested a Japanese cooking class as part of our itinerary while in Japan, I jumped at the chance (He found it through TripAdvisor). I'm so glad I did, too, because The Haru Cooking class that we attended was absolutely the highlight of my culinary experience on our recent trip to Japan. The Haru Cooking class is hosted by a Japanese husband and wife team who have put together a small group cooking class right in their Kyoto home. The class size is limited to six people, so our group consisted of our family of four plus a couple also from the US.

Our host, Taro-san emailed us detailed instructions on which bus to take from Kyoto station and which stop to get off the bus. Taro-san met us at the bus stop at a predetermined time and we walked with him to his home from there. It was very easy. His adorable little daughter accompanied him and she immediately stole our hearts. Not only is she very cute and gregarious but I have to admit little girls speaking Japanese is one of the sweetest sounds! Honestly.

Once at Taro-san's house, we met his lovely wife who welcomed us into their home and served us cool drinks and snacks. The cold tea we were served was fire roasted tea. It had a fairly strong smokey scent, so the girls didn't like it so much, but Gabe and I found it appealing.

We spoke for a little while to get to know each other and then we promptly began learning about every day Japanese foods and cooking techniques, including Kobe beef which is extremely exclusive to a specific region of Japan and only very, very recently exported to a very, very small number of restaurants. I think only two in the US and only in the last 8 months. So basically if you think you've been served Kobe beef in the US, you weren't.

Taro-san also answered any questions we had about Japan and Japanese culture in general. Taro and his family were so lovely.. warm, welcoming and patient. And of course, the food was wonderful! I can't wait to try some of the recipes at home!

Here are some photos from our cooking class:

Haruko playing

Taro-san showing us how to make dashi
(Japanese broth used in everyday cooking)

Haruko inspecting the cooking students' work

Haruko looking up to Maria 

Haruko playing ball with her friend.
Adorable!!!

Plating up the food!

Our beautiful table!  "itadakimasu.."
[translation: "I gratefully receive.."]

Before eating, we put our hands in prayer position and balanced our chopsticks in the space between your thumbs and first fingers. Gently bow your head and say "itadakimasu" before eating. This translates to "I gratefully receive". Then enjoy! Slurping soups is a sign of a good meal and encouraged. :)

Hosting a cooking class is hard work! 

I loved the cooking class experience. Not just learning some basic Japanese cooking, but also the experience of meeting and dining with a Japanese family in their home. Just lovely.

Our other food experiences in Japan mostly include ramen, sushi, pastries and ice cream.

When we were in our cooking class, I asked Taro-san what the average Japanese person eats for breakfast. I was curious about this because the only places we found serving food at breakfast time were coffee shops serving a few pastries and convenience stores. Taro-san explained that most Japanese eat a simple meal of seasoned rice for breakfast, a bit of fermented vegetables (similar to kimchi) and on a good day, breakfast will include a little bit of cooked fish. We ended up frequenting a small coffee shop near our hotel for iced coffee, bagels and pastries, grabbing a yogurt at the convenience store a few times. I must admit that I think I ate a sweet red bean bun with coffee for breakfast every morning in Japan.

My standard Japanese breakfast:
red bean bun and coffee

While walking from bus stops to the different shrines, sometimes you find a really great cafe food or snacks from street vendors such as these...

Japanese Udon

Green tea ice cream! yum

goma dango (yummy!)
sweet glutinous rice ball with sesame seed and honey paste

I later saw these similar fun Japanese snacks while helping my daughter shop for gifts for her friends back home. I should have bought them when I saw them, because I didn't see them later when we were shopping for gifts.

hanami dango

Recognize them from the iphone emojis?
[Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/]

I only learned exactly what they were a couple of months ago myself, but it was fun seeing the real thing. They are hanami dango or sweet glutinous rice dumplings.  The green are flavored with green tea powder, the white are either plain, almond or vanilla flavored and the pink is either flavored with rose water essence or sakura, which is cherry blossom flavor. I really regret not buying a box! [740 ¥ is about $7.40 US]

One evening, my husband and I went to a sushi restaurant recommended by the couple with whom we took the Haru-Cooking class. It was one of those conveyor belt sushi restaurants - have you heard of those? The sushi chefs are in the middle of the room making different kinds sushi and they set them on little plates that go around a conveyor belt. When a plate comes by your table that you'd like, you just take it! You can also ask the chef to make something specific for you. Each plate costs 137 ¥ or around $1.37 or so and the end of the meal, the waitress counts up your plates and you pay. So easy! Except it was also easy to eat something you thought was raw fish and was really something else like I did. Oy. Anyway, I thought the sushi was just okay. Very plain. Next time we're in Japan we'll do some research ahead of time and try a different sushi restaurant with good recommendations.

Previously in Tokyo, we ate many of the same foods as in Kyoto.. lots of ramen, pastries and ice cream. On our first day in Tokyo we sampled some yummy food near the popular Sensoji shrine. my first snack food was a ningyo yaki (a pancake filled with sweetened red bean paste), which is popular in the street of vendors leading up to the Sensoji Shrine in Tokyo.

ningyo yaki in shape of bird

The inside of a lantern shaped
ningyo yaki

We also got ice cream cones in this street area. We tried chocolate & vanilla swirl, green tea & vanilla swirl, red bean and blueberry ice cream (we think!). Omg sooooo good! I liked the red bean best, but the green tea swirl comes in a very close second.

We scream for ice cream!

Sorry I cropped off our faces..  Anna is inadvertently making a funny face squinting in the sun and would be so mad if I posted that. ;)

We grabbed a quick lunch at a small restaurant where we ordered dishes of dumplings and ramen. In this restaurant, there's a vending machine when you walk in the restaurant where you place your order. You put your money in the machine, then press the button to select what you want to order and a little receipt pops out of the machine. Then you sit at a table and give the receipt to the waitress who brings it to the kitchen. Within minutes we had our food! Oh and by the way, ramen in Japan is nothing like the instant ramen soup you can buy in cups at the grocery store. In Japan, ramen is a big bowl of flavorful broth with thick udon or ramen noodles and assorted Japanese additions such as seaweed, other greens such as spinach, pickled plums, hard boiled egg, maybe sliced pork or even tofu. Very delicious and filling.

Oishi (delicious) Japanese Ramen!
..with seaweed, egg, pork, spinach and fish ball with swirl

We had lunch in the Museum Cafe at the Studio Ghibli Museum and were delighted when our dessert was served on a Totoro plate! It was delicious, too! We shared a delicious strawberry shortcake and a sponge cake with sweet red bean filling.

Strawberry shortacke on a JiJi plate!
[From the film "Kiki's Delivery Service"]

Sponge cake with read bean filling
on a Totoro plate!
[from the film "My Neighborhood Totoro"]

On our way back to Tokyo from the Ghibli Museum, we passed this quaint bakery at the Mitaka train station. I have to say the Japanese are excellent pastry chefs! Absolutely delectable pastries that could really give Paris bakeries a run for their money!

Adorable Bakery at Mitaka Station,  Japan

From the platform in Mitaka station, I spotted a little Italian Pizzeria. I would have loved to have tried pizza in Japan to see how it compared to New York pizza! What do you think?

Spotted a pizzeria in Mitaka, Japan
from the train platform.. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a profusion of vending machines in Japan. They are everywhere! Very convenient and actually quite affordable, I think. You can find a good selection of cold teas, cold coffees, water, carbonated drinks, sometimes fruit juices and even beer!

Beverage vending machines are EVERYWHERE
in Japan. 

One evening we hunted down the world famous Sukiyabashi Jiro sushi restaurant in Ginza station, which is where you can supposedly find the world's best sushi. It is also the subject of the documentary "Jiro Loves Sushi."  We were tickled pink to find the restaurant and to have even caught a glimpse of Jiro himself!

Sukiyabashi Jiro

HONG KONG

The highlight of our very limited and very brief culinary experience in Hong Kong was probably our hotel's continental and asian style breakfast buffet. The buffet was a cross of American and English breakfast foods and some Hong Kong dim sum foods. It was a great start to a busy day walking around the city and up Victoria Peak.

omelet and dim sum
at the YMCA Hong Kong

Of course, more ice cream!

Cooling off with ube ice cream

Ube is a purple yam or sweet potato and makes a delicious sweetened potato paste commonly used for desserts and snacks. It's also very common in the Philippines.

I also had my first taste of dragon fruit! Believe it or not, this was on the flight from Cebu City in the Philippines to Hong Kong. I loved it!

Have you ever had dragon fruit? I think it tasted like a softer, more mild kiwi fruit.
Would you agree?

My first dragon fruit!

The PHILIPPINES 
Our first meal in Manila. Maria eating meat and rice for breakfast like a true Filipina! Would have been an even more authentic if she was using a fork and spoon. ;)

meat and rice for breakfast

 A sampling of Filipino foods for lunch. We were out to eat with Gabe's first cousin (who is the oldest in that cousin generation) and her lovely, lovely family. Her husband and their three grown children, daughter-in-law and their youngest child. It was wonderful meeting them for the first time and spending the day together.

Filipino lunch!

For dessert almost every day, we ordered a popular Philippine frozen dessert called halo-halo made with shaved ice, sweetened beans, ube and other jelly or jellos, sweetened cream and topped with ube ice cream and corn flakes. Sometimes sweet corn and chunks of flan are added. It was different from the way my mother-in-law used to make for us and not as good as hers either. But still delicious! I'm going to try to recreate my mother-in-laws version sometime this month.

halo-halo by the pool

One evening while out to dinner with some cousins (second cousins, actually), I tried a new-to-me main called sisig. It was really delicious. I don't know if I'd call myself an adventurous eater, but I do tend to agree to try foods before someone tells me what's in them. Too trusting, I know. Sisig is a dish that originated from a province called Pampanga because the US residents of Clark Airfield would discard parts of the pig they wouldn't eat such as the ears, cheeks and some inards. So the Filipino people came up with this recipe using those parts, finely chopped and served on a sizzling plate. Hmm. Well it tasted really good.. salty, fatty and delicious. I don't know it I'd intentionally eat it again, though.

Would you try sisig? 


Again for dessert we had more halo-halo and some leche flan. Why not? We're on vacation, after all. Again, neither was as good as my late mother-in-law's!

leche flan and more halo-halo

I mentioned in my vacation post the other day that the crew of our dolphin watching boat cooked for us right on the back of the boat during our time at sea. They grilled chicken and shrimp for us and we also brought along local bananas and steamed rice in these little pouches or baskets woven out of palm or banana leaves that they called 'hanging rice.' I wish I had a good picture of it, but you can see it in the lower left hand corner of this photo of my husband eating his lunch. We used forks at first then decided what the heck, it's easier to just eat with our hands. ;)

Lunch on the boat: grilled shrimp and chicken
"hanging rice"
and local bananas

On our last night in Dumaguete, we had dinner with my husband's cousin and her family. They had so much food prepared for us, but unfortunately I didn't take a single photo! This was the evening after we were at sea all day, so I think I was just so tired. Wait! I just asked my husband and he took ONE photo of dinner that night and of course I am in it with my eyes closed! However.. I am in the photo with Gabe's first cousin whom I met for the very first time and we totally hit it off, so I'm posting it even though I look silly. ;)

A feast prepared for us!

We ate rice, pancit, fresh lumpia, delicious pork adobo and a marinated salad. For dessert we had 'suman' and 'bud bud kabog.'

This is casava suman.
Bud bud kabog looks nearly identical.
Source:Wikipedia | Author: Obsidian_Soul 

Suman is sticky glutinous rice steamed with coconut milk wrapped in a banana leaf, which I've had before and is really tasty. Theirs was made with a bit of chocolate in it, too. This was my first time having 'bud bud kabog' and I loved it! It is sweetened millet steamed with coconut milk wrapped in a banana leaf. You unwrap the banana leaf and just eat the sweetened rice or millet on the inside. So yummy!

And so it appears I've wrapped up my post on our vacation food with a banana leaf! 

Haha I'm so punny. ; )
Hope you enjoyed it! If you have any questions about the food or our trip, please ask.

xo