Today I decided to cook 3 new things all at once for dinner. Utter chaos ensued but that’s just how I roll! On the menu tonight was: Nikuman (steamed pork buns), pork ramen, spicy beansprout salad and petit pots de creme au chocolat with orange blossom cream. Yum!!!
Cooking Japanese food when one mamber of the family is on a low iodine diet proved… tricky. She can’t have soy, she can’t have anything from the sea and dairy is discouraged. As it was I just left out the soy sauce where called for and the rest of us just added it at the table.
The nikuman were something of a gamble. I took 3 different recipes and hashed them together to do what I wanted. They tasted good even though the aesthetic aspects could do with some work, but that’s going to come with practice. I have great memories of eating Nikuman in Japan in the winter. They also had a kind called Pizzaman, which I will be attempting soon!
Ramen is such a great rainy day food, which today certainly called for. Pork ramen turned out to be slightly more complex than I had assumed but quite simple once you really got down to it. If ‘d been doing any of these recipes individually it would have been fine but because it was all done at once it became a bit hectic.
The petit pots de creme au chocolat with orange blossom cream (I love writing that, it’s the most pretentious sounding thing I make!!) were easy if a little time consuming. I eat these all the time in France where’ they’re a standard dessert found among the yogurts. They’re perfect for dinner parties as it’s all done in advance. I did, in fact, serve these at my very first (and so far only) dinner party when I was 17 but my mum helped me and it was 7 years ago so tonight was essentially the first time I made these.
I’m going to separate the recipes out into their own posts so this isn’t quite so overwhelming for you as it was for me!
Anna in the kitchen 