My Cooking Class

On Friday afternoon I joined the Home Economics Club for a cooking lesson. Our guest teacher – a rather well experienced local lady – taught is all how to make Dango jiro. – and it is not just a martial art.

From what I can gather, from besides my immediate consumption experience, is a rather well known dumpling soup from Kyushu, and specifically Oita. It basically consists of miso soup and vegetables, some kind of meat (in our case butaniku/pork) and dango, which are dumplings. The dumplings are made from flour and then stretched to create long noodles.

The vegetables in our version included carrots, daikon, shitakii, some weird root vegetable and a kind or potato.

I am not sure of all the other particulars, as it was a team effort and my translator Momoe kept me busy chopping and dicing while the rest of the group took care of the dumplings and soup. The end result was absolutely delicious and I will try to get a recipe or a translation of the one we used. Though there must be something on the net somewhere.

Though one thing I will not understand, or get used to, is the need to put seaweed in everything…