one evening, my husband brought a surprise guest from Holland, a very good friend of ours who used to live in tokyo. i was in the middle of cooking when they arrived home, and had absolutely no idea that he would bring someone along. he had tried to call, but my phone was in the other room. typical – a moment of panic, but hey, the more, the merrier!
that evening, i was simmering sword fish filet in soy base sauce (soy sauce 2: sake 0.5: mirin sauce 4 and a couple of slices of ginger), and making “hiyayakko”, fresh tofu with some herb garnish on top. ok, now that we had 1 more person at our dinner table, i quickly made vegetable stir fries with bean sprouts, carrots and cabbage, and cooked an egg roll with “shirasu”, whitebait fish inside. as is always the case, there were a bowl of rice and a cup of miso soup (with clams for the night) for each person.
luckily our friend loves japanese food (and luckily i didn’t use any meat that night, as she doesn’t eat any meat) – she seemed to have enjoyed every single dish i offered. thanks to her, our ordinary evening turned out to become a evening of japanese feast. i love a surprise like that…
SMALL TOKYO KITCHEN 