Recipes nowadays seem far more accessible compared to the past, defined by the same line of those that have heard the sound of a dial-up modem in the same room from those that have had social media accounts before turning 10. If it wasn’t for this ease of accessibility I probably wouldn’t of developed my way of cooking as it stands today, plucking recipes from places I’ve not set foot in nor their cuisines in their locality (more like I’m a cheapskate, AMIRITE). As I sat in the school library, on a computer that has a fraction of computing power than today’s low-end phones I would of never of guessed that in a few years I would find a (fan translated) manga, get intrigued by food mentioned, then actually try it out.
I had made kombu no tsukudani from the batch I saved from past dashi making (I’d imagine my younger self going “wtf”, or equivalent at the time) so it was easy going to attempt the quirky (if not, suspicious) combination of kombu and cheese in a riceball. Luckily my taste in cheese has improved and the local shop gruyère’s sweetness does seem to work with the sweet-salty tsukudani.
Again, inspired by (those goddamn) comics I tried my hand at making my own fish ‘cake’ – which I admit was a bit of a failure as I didn’t scale the amount of flour correctly – oh well.
In retrospect, it’s very clear that there was pretty much the same foods every single day but at the time I didn’t feel like it was too monotonous since there were some changes to seasonings used and changes to the main protein (chicken) midway (a large batch of bolognese). This is likely the first entry that pretty much use the same colours every day.
March 30
I admit it’s probably an otaku tendency but sometimes some manga recipes sound interesting to try. Though I’ve still tweaked them.. Lunch is chicken karaage, home made seafood sausage, steamed kale, garlic butter white sprouting broccoli, tomato and onigiri (2 of the 3 kinds of onigiri from Shokugeki no Soma; kind of: Misonegidare chicken and kombu with Gruyère)
March 31
It seems that pan frying the fish cake improves it a bit, but I’ll try to avoid deep frying. Lunch is simply chicken karaage with peri peri sauce, tomato, steamed kale with misonegidare, fish cake and cucumber & cabbage namul
April 1
I can see why in some households it’s popular to make bolognese weekly, it’s so easy to make and it’s delicious! Something different for lynch today: beef bog, olives, tomato, steamed carrot ribbons, garlic kale and steamed red cabbage with linguine.
Premixed, I’ve learnt my lesson and used a bowl. Initially I was worried by reducing the amount of bolognese to fit in the extra veggies that it wasn’t enough; it seemed OK (plus extra garlic!)
April 2
Not a very exciting lead up to the long weekend but it was tasty despite 3 salads. Lunch is red cabbage coleslaw, cucumber & wakame salad, kale with misosu dressing, home made fish cake and piri piri karaage chicken with noriben (has kombu no tsukudani in the middle)
