Getting Fat in Class

As y’all know, I LOVE my Japanese cooking class on Monday nights! You should check out my past creations in the cooking/nutrition category over on the right. We made two dishes again last night in class, one that I loved and one that wasn’t so much my thing but was still good.  I’ll start with the only okay dish 🙂 We made curry rice with beef in an apple/honey curry mix. It was kind of a stew, which is why I didn’t love it.  But the veggies were good! We used carrots, potatoes and onion.  The big dish is below, without the rice base that we served it with.

The second dish we made was way more my speed! I have an undying love for breakfast foods, of all kinds, at all times of the day.  So I was very excited when I heard we were learning how to make Okonomi-yaki, which are Japanese pancakes.  I won’t be able to describe all of the ingredients because some are quite Japanese, but I’ll try!  The batter started with a powder mix similar to American pancakes, but then we added in cabbage, green onions and eggs. This made a thick batter, super thick. I should’ve taken a picture of it.  Next step, we cooked cut up strips of pork on the griddle and then poured the batter on top in a circular (ish) shape.

After cooking on both sides, we spread a secret sauce on top and then sprinkled with seaweed flakes.  There was an option to add mayonnaise as well but thankfully we didn’t do that (gross!).  Here are two shots of us cooking the pancake and then the final product being cut on the plate!

Following in the breakfast theme, I finally got around to making donuts this morning! I got a mix for apple cinnamon donuts for Christmas and I have donut baking pans, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.  So this morning I mixed it up, tossed them in the oven and let them bake! Honestly, the hardest part was spooning the batter evenly into the pans without covering the area for the hole.  Sorry for the wonky camera angle on that shot, by the way.

I was a little hesitant about the baking because I wasn’t sure if they would be too heavy versus the light donuts I love so much. After they came out of the oven I tossed them in cinnamon to really make them delicious. And after eating a few, I was happy with the result! They were light enough, not fried in oil, and were “only” 90 calories each which is way better than the average donut that clocks in at 220. I can’t wait to see what other donut recipes I can find to try in my sweet pans!