We had a most enjoyable evening at Three Japanese restaurant with our INSPIRE aprons on.
Owners Yasuko & Ken were so generous with their time & knowledge. This is the 3rd class we have run with them, but the first one in their new location in Battery Point. We first met Yasuko when she bought her first Thermomix, she loved it so much that she kept taking it back & forward to the restaurant & then decided they had to buy one another one for the restaurant.
Arwen, Yasuko & Charlie
I just love how passionate Three Japanese are about sourcing quality ingredients – even the crockery is sourced from their hometown Saga in Japan.
The story behind Three Japanese Ken (Norikazu Hirai) and Yasuko (Yasuko Hayashi) first met at high school in Japan in 1997 whilst playing soccer. After graduating from high school, Ken started working in a kitchen in Japan, where he learned a variety of cooking styles, he arrived in Hobart in 2012 on a working (surfing) holiday. Yasuko moved to Osaka to go to university and her first visit to Hobart was through the exchange Uni program. She then took every opportunity to be in Hobart (8 visits!!) until she finally moved here in 2009. Ken and Yasuko remained good friends throughout this time because of their love of great food! In 2014, they realised their dream when they had an opportunity to start a restaurant together with Yasuko’s partner Yuya who had been a baker in Japan & then graduated from Drysdale, he was working as a chef at the Source Restaurant (MONA). This is why they called the restaurant – ‘Three Japanese’. They love fresh, real food, and use only real Japanese ingredients and freshest local veggies, fish and meat to make delicious authentic Japanese food.
We set the tables ready for our class, everyone was provided with a recipe booklet to take home & emailed a copy in an eBook format.
Our Menu for the Evening
Japanese Green Tea on arrival
Chawanmushi – Savoury Custard (including the recipe for dashi stock)
The Three Japanese Tasting Plate: Miso Soup: Karaage Chicken: Rice: Tsukudani (preserved seaweed & bonito fish)
(It was so much fun recipe testing: here are the photos of all the dishes I tested. After I showed Yasuko these pictures she told me I had the Japanese spice containers upside down!! I had studied Japanese in high school & didn’t notice the writing upside down!! I even used one the images in the recipe booklet!! When we told our guests & they thought it was very funny too !!)
Chawanmushi had been specially requested & put onto the menu for the night. It is not currently on the menu because they don’t have a commercial steamer at their new venue so we had to bring as many Thermomix as we could to the restaurant as we could to steam approx 20 savoury custards.
We had 6 Thermomix in the kitchen & one set up in the dinning room to demonstrate through the class. It was well worth it though our guests loved tasting the dish & learning how to cook it. I showed our guests how to make the dashi stock using shaved dried bontio fish flakes & kombu (seaweed). Dashi is the base for a lot of Japanese dishes so it is important as usual to use the best quality ingredients you can get. You can buy powdered dashi but you won’t have that quality & depth of flavour.
We also used the dashi to make the traditional miso soup demonstrated by Yasuko. The kombu & bonito are not thrown out after making the dashi stock you can then use them with mirin to make tsukuduni a delicious preserve served with rice. Ken our chef came out & demonstrated the tsukudani to the class & showed us his awesome knives. We also showed guests how to make the karaage chicken it is one of the most popular dishes on the menu and very easy to prepare at home. The chicken is marinated for approx 1 hr & lightly coated in potato flour & deep fried. We also came up with some other ways of using the same marinade, either steaming, baking or grilling the chicken.
Then Charlie showed guests how to make the sesame pudding & we learned how to make the Japanese brown sugar sauce. The brown sugar is sourced from Okinawa in Japan. Yasuko also showed us how to make matcha green tea – this is the tea that is traditionally used at Japanese ceremonies.
Our guests left full of delicious food & inspiration to cook some of the dishes at home, they could even purchase some ingredients to take home with them. We are so grateful to have the the opportunity to work with Three Japanese again, their passion for their food is infectious.
Love ’em or hate ’em, lunchboxes are an unavoidable necessity. Parents have an important role to play when packing a lunchbox. Learning is hungry work! To fuel children for a day at school, pack a nutritious main lunch plus snacks from the five food groups. Pack to suit your child’s appetite. Keep food safe by packing lunchboxes in an insulated bag with an ice brick. Include a water bottle.
Kids love to help! Get the kids involved in planning and packing their lunchbox. Try making the following recipes together.
KIDS COOKING LUNCHBOX IDEAS* Puff pastry scrolls Filo pastry triangles Cornish pasties Zucchini slice Lasagne cups Potato & veg bake into cupcake liners Fritters or corn cakes Pikelets Left over cold pasta bake or macaroni cheese or bake in muffin tins Dip & veg sticks or crackers Quesadillas Rice paper rolls Sushi rolls Wraps Scrolls – savoury or sweet Pasta or noodle salad Mini pies or potato pies Mini quiche Frittata in muffin cups or a rectangle cut into squares Mini pizzas Calzone Meatballs Tuna or salmon fish cakes or balls Falafel balls Mini hamburger Sausage rolls or vegetarian sausage rolls Savoury muffins Hard-boiled eggs Stuffed potatoes or sweet potatoes Mini sausages baked in puff pastry Corn chips and avocado dip serve with cheese sticks and vegetable sticks Savoury or sweet flavoured popcorn Potato or sweet potato salad with bacon Home-made baked beans with toast soldiers Leftover fried rice Fresh, frozen or dried fruit Cold dogs Pizza subs Egg & bacon pies Mini meat loves wrapped in bacon Homemade crumpets with butter & honey or Vegemite Noodle salad Cornbread served with butter cheese & relish Cherry tomatoes to snack on Dry cereal or toasted muesli (as long as there is no nuts) or dried fruit and seed mix Cold roasted vegetable wedges with sour cream dip Lettuce cup filled with favourite mince & or salad mix Pumpkin, carrot, spinach and ricotta cheese triangles Savoury scones Fruit sticks with cream cheese dip Silverbeet and cream cheese quiche Ploughman’s lunch – cheese pickles vegetable sticks cold ham/salami Home-made potato cake Pasta salad Home made yoghurt and stewed fruit or vanilla bean paste
Fillings for sandwiches, rolls & wraps Avocado and egg Chicken avocado and spring onion Roast beef with beetroot dip Cheese with relish, hummus or pesto & salad Tuna mayonnaise and lettuce Curried egg & Mayo Cucumber dill & Mayo & cheese Ham cheese and mayo Vegemite cheese and lettuce Butter banana and cinnamon Crispy bacon and egg BLT Bacon lettuce tomato Strawberry honey and cream cheese Cheese and tomato bread and butter puddings Fresh pineapple and cheese with lettuce Apple cheese and ham Lemon butter
Keep sandwiches interesting – try varying the fillings or cut sandwiches into different shapes. 3 layer sandwich – club sandwich Pinwheel or spiral sandwich Different shapes using a cookie cutter; little mini sandwiches can also put put onto a skewer Rectangles Squares Triangles Fingers Open sandwich Different types of bread, multigrain, brown, white Try making your own wraps
Add to the dough – seeds, or a bit or veg to colour the wrap, beetroot for pink spinach for green, carrot coloured etc.
Or use lettuce leaves like Dani Valent’s Chicken Lettuce Cup Lunchbox Recipe Try different types of rolls, different shapes & flavours, Turkish bread, baguette, hamburger bun, multigrain, wholemeal, sourdough etc.
* If your school is nut-free, either omit the nuts or substitute a mix of seeds in recipes that contain nuts. Try pine nuts (a seed, not a nut), linseeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds or chia seeds.
We made this delicious trifle at our recent INSPIRE Christmas cooking class
INSPIRED TRIFLE IDEAS: This is a favourite recipe my friend’s Mum used to make for us. The original recipe used 2 packets of port wine jelly instead of using the cherry “juice” to make the jelly. You may also like to add cherry liqueur to the jelly 🙂 There are so many different combos for a trifle, use any kind of fruit – fresh figs, pomegranate seeds, passionfruit, mango, berries, kiwi fruit, then make a jelly to go, with that fruit even a wine or sparkling wine jelly. Match it with your style cake a plain sponge, or try chocolate, orange or pistachio. Then flavour your custard to match or use a lemon or lime curd for something different. Top with fresh whipped cream & something for a bit of crunch your favourite nuts, biscuits, toasted coconut, chocolate.
Arwen’s Black Forest Trifle- This a picture of a smaller batch
The orginal recipe was one that my friends Mum made for us when were young - then we started having it for our family Christmas!
Ingredients
Black Forest Trifle
1 chocolate cake or chocolate sponge
1 x 600g jar morello cherries, keep the liquid
2 teaspoons gelatine power
1000g cream
100g flaked almonds, lightly toasted or coconut flakes
50g dark chocolate, or to taste
Chocolate Custard
1000g milk
100g Corn Flour
150g dark chocolate, good quality (add more to taste)
150g sugar, or to taste
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
40g unsalted butter
Instructions
Black Forest Trifle
Heat 100g of the liquid from the cherry jar for 3 mins/100 degrees/speed 1, add the gelatin & mix for 5 secs/speed 5.
Add the rest of the liquid & mix for another secs speed 5.
Using a strainer pour into your chosen glass trifle container or individual glasses (8).
You can either add the cherries now & place into the fridge to set or place the cake in to soak up the cherry jelly & place the cherries on top & into the fridge to set. In a clean TM bowl whip your cream with the butterfly around 20 - 30 secs /speed 3.5-Time will vary depending on how fresh your cream is. Place the cream to one side & without needing to clean the bowl, place all the custard ingredients to the bowl. Cook for 15 mins 90 degrees speed 4 or until thick.
Pour the chocolate custard on top of the cherry jelly & cake. Place into the fridge. Once it has cooled completely spread the top of the custard with cream & sprinkle with almonds & grated dark chocolate & or toasted coconut flakes & fresh cherries. Can be made the day before, although the cream is best done on the day of serving.
I like to use the sponge cake from the Devil of a Cookbook replacing use 40g of cornflour with cocoa powder.
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