Found: Happy Chef

It has been almost a month since my first post here. And soon I’ll be celebrating my 4th month-sary here in Japan. 😀 I have been planning to write about a foreign student’s day-to-day life in Tokyo but I haven’t found the time to do so. Not yet. I still have 3 papers to write, 1 report to finish and 3 exams to review for. Then after that I’ll have to make my research proposal. And then after that – okay, enough with blabbering and enumerating what I have to do in the future. 😀 Haha! I think I’ll never run out of things to do anyway.

Let’s do things one at a time. 🙂

A Foreign Student’s Day-to-day Life Chapter 1: FOOD! 😀

Tokyo is a very expensive city. I remember my dad worrying about me when I was still in the Philippines. We don’t talk a lot about my 2-year stay in Japan so I was quite surprised when out of nowhere, he blurted: “Anak, mahal daw ang mga bilihin sa Japan… Ang itlog daw, nasa 150yen ang sampung piraso. Ang gatas daw…” (I heard that commodities are quite pricey in Japan. Ten pieces of eggs cost about 150yen. And milk costs…) Haha! I bet mom and dad were worried about their most kuripot (thrift-monger/ stingy) daughter. Mom confirmed my thoughts by saying “Anak, huwag mong titipirin ang sarili mo sa pagkain ha?” (Don’t skimp on food). Haha!

Before I even went to Japan, my professors told me about the sky-high price of food here in Japan. A 50-peso (about 100yen) meal in the Philippines would cost about 200 to 300 yen in Tokyo. Bentos (lunch box set sold in convenience stores) normally cost 500 yen. Gee! That’s around 250 pesos – enough to buy me a big plate of Italian pasta in a good restaurant in the Philippines! A 250ml bottle of water costs 150 yen! 75 pesos. Enough to buy me a meal at Jollibee or McDonalds in Philippines. How can I save money when food, a necessity, is very pricey? My solution: stock up on instant noodles – those in cups and the popular Lucky Me! (instant noodle, Filipino style). Haha! Kidding! 😀

For my first week in Japan, I depended on bento lunch sets or the cafeteria in school. I spend 500 – 600 yen a meal. It’s not so bad. Bento gives you a complete lunch set – soup, veggies, meat, rice and sometimes fruits. However, I can’t finish the entire meal. The serving is too big for me (yeah, even the SS size).

Okay. I know. I have to cook. The problem is that I haven’t cooked for several months. In our house, my brothers and my dad do the cooking on weekdays. My mom cooks for us during weekends. As for me, well, I eat. Haha! It’s not that I can’t cook.  It’s just that I always go home late. 🙂 I do cook when nobody else could cook. Without practice at home, I call my first attempts at cooking here in Tokyo “experiments”. Haha!

Experiment #1: Pork Adobo – a typical Filipino meal – pork with soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and some pepper. It’s simple! Almost anyone who can cook in the Philippines could make Adobo. It should be easy. The problem is that I really don’t know what I’m buying because I can’t read kanji at that time. So I just bought something that looks like soy sauce (for practice, I asked the guy in the counter: “Kore wa soy sauce desu ka?” He answered: “Yes”). I didn’t buy vinegar. I just can’t figure out which among those bottles with transparent liquid contain vinegar. I bought some canned pineapples instead. I thought they’d be good substitutes for vinegar. Just in case my Adobo is not successful, I’ll have something that tastes like Pata Tim (another Filipino favorite) or Sweet and Sour pork. Haha! And I didn’t put garlic, one of the essential spices of the dish. So how did my first experiment turn out? 🙂 My judgment: FAILED! :p Too bad I cooked a lot, I have to eat my “experiment” for 3 days. And I have to smile while eating it and pretend it’s good. Haha!

Experiment #2: Chicken Adobo – same thing, but this time I used chicken. Big difference? Nothing. I still didn’t buy vinegar. I thought: “maybe I just need to put some salt and sugar…” Hahaha! And I decided to put more pineapples. Result? Ma, ma.. (So-so). Again, I have to eat it for several days. By that time I was getting a little frustrated. I can’t cook adobo! Gee… Then I thought: “Okay. Back to basics. Cook simpler dishes, Cherry.”

Experiment #3: Blackened Salmon – People laugh at me when I mention the name of this recipe. It’s a good excuse for burning my salmon, they say. Haha! But since this is experiment #3 and in stories, case #3 always turn out to be different from the first two cases, I’d say my blackened salmon is a SUCCESS. Haha! Actually, I got the recipe from the internet. It is “blackened” not because it is burned but because of the pepper and basil crust. 😀 I just put a twist to the original recipe by marinating the salmon in pineapple juice before dipping it to the basil, pepper and salt mixture. It’s very easy to cook because you just have to fry it either in butter or oil. 😀 Easy, delicious, classic! If I want to put a Hawaiian twist to it, I just put pineapple rings on top. 😀

After experiment #3, I got my confidence back and I was able to discover some magic ingredients. Basil is one of them. I won’t tell what the other magic ingredients are. Haha! Because I can’t read the kanji. :p Just to prove that I do cook now, say “Mom! I’m not skimping on food! :D”, and offer my cooking and (ehem!) cake-making skills (for a fee) to friends who will go to Japan, here are some pictures. 😀

Just Buttered Veggies

Veggies, Chicken burger patty, baked potatoes

Blackened Salmon w/ a Twist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Christmas cakes! One I brought to Japanese class, the other one I gave to my aunt in Saitama.

Kurismas ke-ki desu!

Cake for Tita!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are other easy-to-do and successful experiments. 😀

Baked Potatoes

Salmon, Veggies and Potatoes for Lunch!

There! Sorry for the bad picture quality. My cellphone camera doesn’t give justice to my creations.

No food for thought for today. 😀 Just food. Simple, easy-to-prepare, healthy, colorful food. Itta dakimasu! 😀