Healthy Cooking with the Shonan Ladies

After Aunt Kathy scrounged up an apron Friday morning, we met the American Shonan Ladies at the Daiei Gate and hiked about half a mile to a community center behind the JR train station. A bell started clanging just after Aunt Kathy and I crossed the train tracks. "Hurry up, Mimi-san, a train is coming!"

"Aunt Kathy, isn't that Takako the Artist?" "Yes, Flatty. She organized today's class. Our Japanese friends are going to show us how to prepare a traditional Japanese New Year's meal."

The cooking classroom is on the fifth floor of the community center. There are five work stations, each featuring a sink, stove, oven, and work surface. We found cooking utensils, pots, pans, and a chopping board in the cupboards and drawers under our work station. Serving dishes were stored in a big cupboard on the long wall of the classroom.

"This is really neat, Aunt Kathy. Are there classrooms like this in community centers back home?"

"I'm not sure, Flatty, but you're going to have to be quiet now so I can listen to the instructions. I'm going to tuck you into my apron bib so you can watch the ladies work."

Aunt Kathy said Mineko and Misa must have drawn the short straw today. We were assigned to their work station. Mary Beth and Corey were the other American ladies in our group.

Misa is mixing rice and black beans in a flat wooden bowl. She is using a wooden spatula, the essential utensil in every Japanese kitchen.

One Japanese New Year's tradition is to eat one black bean for every year of your age. "I don't think there are enough black beans for you, Aunt Kathy." "Hush, Flatty, or I will zip you into my purse."


We boiled sweet potatoes to make Chestnut and Sweet Potato Paste. Mineko and Misa boiled a marigold seed along with the potatoes to turn them a rich golden color. "So you will enjoy wealth in the New Year," they explained.

"If it works," Aunt Kathy decided, "I'm going to use some of that wealth to buy one of those flat wooden bowls for mixing rice. I can think of all sorts of practical uses for a flat wooden bowl." "Maybe you should buy more than one, Aunt Kathy." "For a kid with a flat brain, Stan, you sure are a smarty pants."

When the potatoes were soft, we grated them by pushing them through fine horsehair mesh with our wooden spatula. Why is Mimi using a metal spoon instead of a wooden spatula? This is not the proper way to grate a Japanese sweet potato.

We put the grated potatoes back into the saucepan and beat them with the wooden spatula (Mimi probably used a spoon). We added some of the liquid from the canned chestnuts, like you would add milk or cream to mashed potatoes, until the sweet potatoes were creamy. Finally, we gently stirred in the chestnuts. Aunt Kathy thought it looked like lumpy yellow mashed potatoes.

Mineko spooned the paste into five bowls and covered them with saran wrap. "We will garnish them later," she decided. "Let's make sesame tofu with greens next."

Misa poured about two cups of sesame seeds into a huge bowl. "Why are there ridges on the inside of the bowl, Aunt Kathy?" "Heck if I know, Stan, but I've seen these sorts of bowls at pottery shops all around Japan."

Misa told us the bowl is a mortar. She handed us a wooden bat that looked like a lopsided rolling pin. "This is a pestle," she explained. She showed us how to use the pestle to grind the sesame seeds into a creamy paste.

Aunt Kathy, Corey, and Mary Beth took turns grinding the seeds. The seeds started looking and smelling like peanut butter after about 30 minutes. After 45 minutes Misa let them add two bricks of tofu to the bowl. "Oh, boy!" said Corey and Mary Beth. "Ugh," said Aunt Kathy.

While Aunt Kathy pounded every tiny lump out of that tofu, Misa boiled these greens. Then she squeezed the water out of them and chopped them into little pieces. Aunt Kathy stirred the chopped greens into the sesame tofu.

Mary Beth couldn't wait to taste the Sesame Tofu with Greens so Mineko decided to let everyone have a little taste. Aunt Kathy is very polite so she took the teeniest tiniest taste possible.

Mary Beth smacked her lips and sighed, "Mmmmm, this would make a wonderful dip."

If anyone reading today's post would like to taste Sesame Tofu with Greens, Aunt Kathy can refer you to Mary Beth. Something tells me Aunt Kathy will not be whipping up a batch anytime soon as much as she is longing for an excuse to buy a mortar and pestle.

On to the dumplings! This mixture that looks like raw meatloaf is the filling: minced pork, coarsely grated onions, and two tablespoons of ginger juice.

Mary Beth grated ginger for quite a while to extract those two tablespoons of juice. Aunt Kathy was a little worried about the size of the onion chunks -- she prefers her onions minced so tiny you need a microscope to see them -- but she couldn't even taste the onions once the dumplings were cooked.


We used store-bought dumpling pastry. It comes in a plastic bag and looks like thinly-sliced mozzarella cheese. Mineko told us to make an OK sign with our thumb and index finger, turn our wrist to make the O parallel to the ground, drape a pastry square over the hole, scoop a tablespoon of meat filling into the center of the square, and then pat the edges in place. She covered the bottom of a steamer pot with lettuce and then Mary Beth arranged all the dumplings on top of the lettuce.

While the dumplings were steaming, everyone shaped a scoop of the black beans and rice into a triangle.

Well, everyone except Aunt Kathy, who tried to make an Anpanman face.

Takako made rice with scallops for everyone to try. Misa used that wooden spatula to scoop our portions into a little metal mold that gave a pretty shape to the rice.

At last, time to eat!

Aunt Kathy was very happy when Misa said, "Oh, Kathy-san, you must be so full. Please don't feel you have to finish the Sesame Tofu with Greens." Aunt Kathy was so happy, in fact, that she brought some dumplings home to share with Uncle Mike.