The class takes place in a small house in a tiny backstreet behind the showy facades of Shinsekai. Most of this kind of older urban housing has been swept away by tower blocks, so it was a treat to experience one. It seemed similar to the Victorian two-up, two-downs so typical in Britain’s industrial towns, before renovation and expansion turned their cramped spaces into our staple urban housing. We didn’t see upstairs, but down was a tiny space comprising two rooms and a galley kitchen. Later, in Tokyo, we'd see a model of almost the exact same floorplan in the Edo Museum's section on post-war housing.
We entered into the standard area to take off and leave shoes (perhaps five feet long and two wide)just inside a sliding door. Once you change into slippers you can step up to room level. We left all our things in the first room before stepping into the second, as it's almost entirely filled by a high table/cooking area that comfortably accommodates eight students. Comfortable when concentrating on the space in front of you, but don’t swing your arm too far back or you risk putting your hand through a sliding screen. And tall people must mind their heads between every room; a lesson anyone over 6 feet learns quickly in Japan.Most of the cooking took place on plug-in grills or hobs brought out as needed, since the kitchen was too small for much more than hand washing and noodle boiling.
Our instructor, Yasuko, was a bundle of energy and kept us going through the preparation of three dishes despite the heat rising. (Cold beer helped, as well.) Osakans promote the casual, constantly-partying nature of their town, including a rich legacy of street food. That's what we were concentrating on. Takoyaki, crispy balls of octopus and dough, are the most famous local treats, but the rapid flipping required to turn a layer of batter into individual balls is far too advanced for a basic class. We started with simpler fare, though some skill was definitely still required.
Our menu: kitsune udon, chicken yakitori and chopstick okonomiyaki. The second was the easiest and most likely to make it into the home cooking rotation, the third the tastiest though most challenging. And it was the first that showed me I can still learn things about my husband.
Miso soup is as ubiquitous to Japanese cuisine as bread is to start European meals. This often gets dropped in the West; if you order sushi or tempura, you'll just get those things. But in Japan, a bowl or cup of miso seems to come out as a side to pretty much every order. Sometimes it's a work of art, studded with interesting ingredients and served in an extravagant lidded bowl. Sometimes it's as basic as a slurp of broth with a few tofu cubes and a piece of seaweed. It's consumed at all three meals, and 75% of Japanese people drink miso at least once a day. It's the basis for udon, ramen and all the other noodle dishes that form the backbone of simple, everyday Japanese food. And my husband ... who, before this trip was confident he loved Japanese food ... hates it. Turns out he dislikes clear broths of any sort. Something I never knew, but now explains why he's never interested in any of the chicken soups I make. He's fine with stock as a base ingredient to make something else, but as a finished dish he doesn't like soups unless they are creamy, either literally or in texture.
Thus the kitsune udon was our only shared noodle experience in three weeks in Japan. I went on to slurp other variations, but we never made it to any of the ubiquitous noodle bars that many tourists make a mainstay of their visit.
Kitsune means "fox", though there's none of that particular vermin in the soup. It may bear the name because of its colour, or it could be linked to the shinto fox-god of luck and business. Whatever the origin, it's a Japanese favourite differentiated by thick, flat noodles and a fried piece of tofu. The process for making udon, it turns out, is almost exactly the same as making Italian pici: make dough, roll dough, fold accordion-style, cut thin ribbons, toss in a bit of flour to prevent sticking. The Japanese method has two important differences. Once made and wrapped in a double layer of plastic, Yasuko had us knead our ball of dough by marching on it. Then we "developed" it by wearing the stomped disc of dough next to our skin for half an hour. On that hot, humid night, it must have been like putting dough in a steamer. Whether that's a gimmick or a critical step, the finished noodles were excellent.
Yasuko's secret on the yakitori was a generous glug of Japanese whisky. My big lesson: cook low and slow with complete attention. All the sugar in the marinade makes it very easy to burn your meat skewers once you start cooking.
Okonomiyake was the most intriguing of the dishes. It's a pancake, filled with anything you can imagine, then cooked, rolled and topped with kewpie mayonnaise and a special okonomiyake sauce that delivers an intense umami hit. (Happily, both sauces are available online in the UK.) We made the version beloved of street festivals. The pancake starts normally, poured in a circle on a flat grill. You put a large shiso leaf on the grill first, giving the finished pancake a bit of tang and a finished look. Rather than flipping it, however, you roll it around two chopsticks that become the stick for the sausage-shaped treat above. The flipping was a test of manual dexterity, but not impossible once you get the hang of it. Tellingly, each student cook did better than the one before, learning from earlier examples.After cooking our three dishes, we discovered there were benches underneath the work surfaces that pulled out, turning our student kitchen into a dining room. Our fellow cooks were one Australian and three other English, all using the rugby as en excuse to explore Japan. Conversation and beer flowed, our food was delicious and we all enjoyed the company until we wrapped up at 9:30. That's early enough to take in the lights of Shinsekai, and to perhaps get another drink somewhere. But we called it a night. There were more adventures to come.
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