As for tradition, JETAA Toronto hosted its annual Japanese cooking class for departing JETs as part of their Japanese cultural training. This year, the cooking class was held on Wednesday, July 9th between 5:30-8pm at the Trinity St. Paul’s United Church at Yonge-Spadina. Around 25 participants, including new JETs, JETAA and JAVA volunteers turned up to cook up a storm in the tiny community kitchen.
At first, there was chaos with too many cooks in the kitchen. But eventually our JET instincts kicked in and we were able to organize and coordinate ourselves into team-functioning groups. And the results were delicious!
Each group got to test out and try Curry Rice, Okonomiyaki, Onigiri, Miso Soup, Gommae Salad, and Cold Tofu. Participants got to learn about basic Japanese cooking ingredients like dashi, miso paste, furikake and many more. Although there wasn’t enough time for each group to cook everything, there was definitely more than enough time to try all the food.
Between cooking, groups could also sit down in our very own Japanese-sized closet room for some well deserved treats and snacks. After filling our bellies and clean up Souji time, JETAA passed on the tradition of ending the night with a chilled and delicious Ramune. Thanks everyone for coming out. And good luck to all the new JETs leaving in a few weeks. Hopefully you picked up a few cooking tricks and if you’ve forgotten them already, don’t worry, the recipes are posted below.
Here are the recipes of the delicious Japanese dishes JETs got to make. Enjoy!
