We Ate Meals From Japan For A Week • Mom In Progress

Whoa. Kind of like ramen. It is surprisingly sour, right? How would you describe this? Oh no. Ooh, look at that. Look at them. So good. But excuse me. It smells so good. This just made my day. Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm the World's Okayest Mom. And it's that time again. I'm going to make international dishes for one whole week. So I'm only cooking Japanese recipes for seven whole days. And I'm really excited, but also very nervous. So wish me luck. I really wanted to make Japanese food that was attainable and pretty accessible for me here. I didn't want to make too many substitutions. I also wanted a balance of sweet, savory, and snacks, just because it's really fun to try all sorts of different foods. I want my kids to grow up with diverse palates. I think that tasting food and experiencing smells and senses of different flavors like that is a great step into cultural appreciation. The boys and I put together our shopping list. There were a lot of specialty ingredients on there. So I called up my friend, Kat, who lives in Los Angeles. Hi, long time no talk. How's the family? Oh my gosh, we're good. We're actually doing something really fun this week. You know how we do our food weeks. So I actually wanted to ask a favor of you. Sure. We are doing Japanese food for a whole week and I'm having some trouble sourcing ingredients. Yeah, that makes sense in the desert. I've got a Japanese market down the street here in Hollywood. Do you want me to pop in, get some stuff for you guys and send it your way? Oh my gosh, that would be amazing because we have a little list. It's like stuff like natto, golden curry, pickled plums. The boys really want a lot of snacks. Oh, it's all delicious. The snacks especially are my favorite part. Okay, well, I can pay you if you go take a trip to the store. How do you want me to send the money? Just send me the money with Zelle. Let me just pull it up right now. Awesome, I'll pull up my banking app on my end too. Did you get it? Yes, just got it. Yay, oh my gosh. Isn't it crazy? We have different banks and it's that easy. Honestly, the hardest part about these weeks is sourcing recipes that are authentic. So I got to reach out to Mayuk. Hi Mayuk. Hi. Who works on Tasty Japan to give me some pointers and some advice and recipe recommendations. Japanese foods are easy to make but also sometimes delicate sushi. Maybe that's the first thing you can imagine when thinking about Japanese food. Traditionally, we have like rice and fish and miso soup. We didn't try natto. I'm so excited to try these. I just hope we do it justice. Back with another recipe. Very excited for this one because I ordered something special from the Asian market. I got these pickled plums, aka umeboshi. And I'm making onigiri, which is like a rice triangle with a filling. I have my rice in a bowl and I'm gonna push it around. Yeah, the purpose of this week is to try new flavors and scents. And so my kids know what tuna tastes like. My kids know what salmon tastes like. So I wanted to try something different. So I'm really curious to see how these taste. Whoa, really salty, really sour. Can I try one? Oh, it's like a really good pickle. So I got these plums and tried my best to form it into these triangles. Ooh, they look so good. Oh wait, what is that? Is that pickled plum? The subtle sweetness of the rice, the nori wrapper, and then having this really, really tart center. It is surprisingly sour, right? Really, really sour. It's sour? Henry's palate is adjusting. A little too sour? Now it wouldn't be a Japanese week without sampling a lot of Japanese snacks. This was the one thing that the kids were begging to try. Mama, it's where you wick it and then dip it in the powder. I'll try it. Kind of spicy, Mama. Oh, so good. There's such a visual aspect to the experience of eating so many Japanese foods, and snacks are not left out of that equation. There were sweets, there was savory. Jackson found a new favorite candy. Wyatt was just going to town on everything, and Henry was just begging for scraps, basically. Okay, we are gonna try one of these suggested snacks. I've been really wanting to try it for a while. It's called natto, and it's a fermented soybean. I've actually seen a lot of people taste this, too, all over the internet. It smells so good. It smells nutty. There's, I think it's a vinegar and a mustard. The one consensus I've seen in so many of the taste tests is that people were not preparing it correctly. The way that I read you have to do it, and I asked a few people how they eat it, and it's definitely use the sauce that comes with it. Somebody also suggested serve it with some rice with soy sauce. It's one of those foods that I think is an acquired taste for some people. I think the texture is one of its most unique aspects. I wanted to make sure we were tasting it respectfully. Take a little, just for you guys to get a first taste, okay? You will never guess who loved this the most. Take a wild guess. I'll give you a second. Who wants to try it first? Me, me, me. Wyatt wolfed this down. Mm, this is so good. What does it taste like? I got soy in my mouth. Yeah. It tastes kind of like rice and some salt. Salty. It tastes really good. How's the texture? I thought it was gonna be hard for a second. Oh, it's soft? Yeah, it was soft. It's my turn. How would you describe this? Wyatt's having a whole bowl. It's like nutty, salty, with a little bite at the end almost, like a little interesting aftertaste. I'm tasting a little sweet flavor. A little sweetness? I wonder if that's from the sauce that goes on it, or maybe it is from the soybeans. It's delicious. We're gonna finish this. So the next dish that I got to make is called curry udon. A little sake. Now you can make your own curry roux, or you can buy it, and honestly, when it comes to something like that, I'm just gonna go store-bought. You wanna dissolve this completely. Because there's no way I can come close to making anything as good as the product that comes from Japan. Needs a little more curry. So good. We're not like mastering culinary arts here. I definitely struggled with this recipe. I still need to skim it again. But it was really exciting to try making a broth with ingredients I've never used to make a soup base. Do you know what this is? It's chicken corn. It's Japanese curry udon. Mm. Yummy. Kind of like ramen? Little bit. What? Who made that? You did. It smells like curry. Yep. Curry udon. You like it? Yeah. I'm debating even leaving the room right now to make lunch. Because it sounds very rowdy out there. I wanted to make sushi that I was able to source correctly in the desert. This is called tamaki sushi, and it's essentially a hand roll. I really want the kids to smell and taste the imitation crab. Now this felt a little ambitious for me just because there's a lot of assembly involved and I wanted to involve the kids in it. Second attempt. I'm gonna use a little less rice so that I can pat it down better. I just really like the taste of this rice. And I think I will add a little avocado to this. Ooh! I was nervous that it was just gonna result in a giant mess and that my kids would get too silly with it or wouldn't take it seriously or wouldn't try to make it correctly. But I was so wrong. Tamaki. Can you say it, Henry? Tamaki. Tamaki sushi. This is the best lunch ever. This is the best lunch ever, ever, ever. Really? You get your nori, you spread your rice down, you lay your hand roll ingredients, and really it's just a ratio of not overfilling and not overdoing the rice. These are visually stunning. One of the best lunches we've ever had. Holy moly. So we really don't have much Asian food at all up here in the desert, but I found something. So for dessert, for a little treat after the hand rolls, I picked up some taiyaki. I'm so happy to find it because it takes a special mold to cook it that I don't have and probably couldn't get in time. Is that a fish? This is sweet potato, and I think that's one of the popular flavors of this. But it smells like a cake. It smells delicious. You want to try it? What does it taste like? Kind of like sweet potatoes. Yeah. The cake tastes like sugar. It tastes like sugar? Oh, it's a lighter color. Oh, it tastes so good in the middle. You have to get to the middle. What do you think? This just made my day. So after the success of the tamaki hand rolls and the taiyaki, I wanted to try something a little more difficult again, and I decided to make chicken katsu. I have my flour, egg, panko breadcrumb, and I've salt and peppered chicken thighs. So the two things that are key for this chicken katsu were thin chicken, making sure I pounded it really thin, and breading it really evenly. You want to press this into the panko so that it sticks really nicely because panko breadcrumbs are so light and fluffy. I didn't want to fry it too long. You want to make sure your oil is hot enough, and you want to get a good crisp all around on that chicken. Chicken katsu is one of those beautiful, just like colorful, golden, amazing dishes. And so I wanted to plate it alongside stuff that really complimented it. And I could hear the crunch. Yep, I gave you the dip on the side. Do you want to try your crispy chicken? Dip it. I get a good crunch. Okay, let's go. Crunch! I hear a good crunch. You're hearing a good crunch? This is a dish that I would save for a special occasion. It was a lot of work for me. I think just because I need to practice more, I definitely feel like I have a good grasp of it after that first attempt, but there's always room for improvement. So it's something I will definitely make again when I have the time. Good morning. I really want to make one of those Japanese fruit sandwiches. It seemed a little too simple, so I'm going to try to make my own Japanese milk bread from scratch and use that bread to make the fruit sandwiches. So I got my starter ready. I got my ingredients prepped, and I decided I wanted to double this recipe because I wanted to make it worth my while. I wanted two loaves out of this. I'm already off to a terrible start. So the reason I doubled it is because the amount of starter in the recipe is for two loaves, and so I was going to double the rest, but I already doubled the starter, so now I have enough for four loaves. So we've got the aesthetics and the beauty of the fruit and that whole assembly, and then we've got the milk bread, which could go so very wrong. Oh, my gosh. How am I going to do this? What? It says form it into a ball. How am I supposed to do that when it's so sticky? Okay, I have it in a bowl. I'm going to cover this, and it needs to rest in a warm spot for 40 to 60 minutes. It's one of the wildest recipes I've ever made because it's just, like, puffing up like crazy. I'm going to roll it around. This beautiful, delicate, delicate, beautiful dough. Fresh out the oven. Whoo! Oh, my goodness. It's like eating a cloud. It is a milk-based white bread that is super fluffy. No, don't eat it. What do you think? That's good. What do you think? Don't eat that one. Do you like it? Don't eat that one. Do you want it? Okay. So, I got mango, kiwi, and strawberry, mostly because that's what was ripe at my grocery store, and that's what I could get. Oh, no! This is a lot harder than it looks. I swear it looks cuter in person. Let's just look at this slice. Is it yummy? I'm going to make kiwi add this. Do you want to take a bite of the sandwich? Okay, try it. Why? What do you think? Why? You kind of like to eat the fruit. I would absolutely make the milk bread again. That is something that just can't be bought. It is so good. If you live near a Japanese bakery, run. If you can find some milk bread, run. I'm going to be making Kansai-style okonomiyaki because this is Mayuk's hometown, and he sent me the recipe. It is a cabbage pancake with meat and amazing toppings, like two different sauces and all of this wild stuff. I got bonito flakes, which is dried tuna, and from what I've seen of these, they can move around sometimes, and I think it's going to be so cool. Knowing my boys, I think they're going to flip out over having these on top. First attempt down. Let's see. I think I have my heat too high. So what I wanted to do was make a test pancake just to try it myself and improve for whatever the kids were going to try, so I assembled it all. It has a couple different sauces. Okay, I got the bonito open. I'm really excited to see. It smells really good. It smells smoky. Well, excuse me. I was a little nervous to see how my kids would react to the bonito flakes. Okay, do you want to know what this is called? What? Bonito flakes. It's bonito flakes, and it's really, really thinly sliced, so, so, so thin that when there's any heat... It moves? It moves. Look at that. Look at them. My kids are not huge cabbage people, and so I was excited for them to try this because I thought it could be the dish that makes them like cabbage, honestly. Can I have some bonito flakes on mine? Yeah. Looks like pancakes. Any description I use is not going to do this justice because it is so delicious. As I was cooking Japanese food this week, there was another huge project in the works, and that's why Matt wasn't with us. For the majority of this week, so at the end of this week, the kids and I needed to travel. Here in LA, we're visiting my mom, and you know what LA has? A lot of Japanese restaurants. I had been cooking a lot this week, but there was one more dish we really wanted to try, and that was yakisoba. It was a great way to finish out the week before another crazy project full of so much work starts. It smells so good. Are you ready? Yeah. Okay. Are you eating with your chopsticks? How's the yakisoba? I will try it. Okay. I want some yakisoba. You want some yakisoba? You have it right there on your plate. You were using your chopsticks. That's really good. He did it. Have you had those noodles before? How they taste? So after this week of Japanese food, and after doing this several times with so many international dishes, I just feel like it keeps getting better and better. I feel like we're getting a better grasp on how to source our recipes, how to source our ingredients, and so it's something I just wanna keep doing forever. Honestly, seeing the joy on my kids' faces as they're enjoying another culture's cuisine is priceless. So that's all for now. I'm Hannah, and what did you think of Japanese Week? Were there any recipes I missed? Let me know on Instagram, and if you try any of these, please message me a picture, or if you have any other suggestions of other countries' cuisine that I should be cooking. Yep. Yep, did you like the Japanese food? Yep.