Travel the World Through Your Taste Buds: Japan
Welcome back to our international journey through our taste buds. Last week we started out in my home state in my home country, Ohio, USA. This week we are traveling to my second home. I was lucky enough to get to go to this country for an entire year while in high school thanks to an amazing service organization known as Rotary and Rotary Youth International. Thanks to these incredible people I was able to begin my travels and can now share them with you.
Where are we going?
We are headed to Kofu, Yamanashi, Japan! I stayed in this city for 11 months my junior year of high school and fell in love with it. Kofu is located in the fruit kingdom and because of this I was surrounded by all the freshest fruits you could imagine, so this entree probably has fruit in it right? Sorry to disappoint but this is actually a spicy meat dish!
What are we making?
Today’s dish is called Mapo Dofu or Mapo Tofu depending on where you are making it. This is one of my all time favorite dishes from Japan. It is a spicy tofu stew with pork and scallions, it actually originated in China but is now a Japanese dish. I have only made it once before and that was while I was in Japan with access to all the real ingredients.
The first time I had this dish was at my first host family, Mama made it for me and I thought it was the best thing I had ever eaten. I then got the chance to make it with my schools cooking club and it was so complicated that we had 3 different groups of people working on different stages. This time around it wasn’t as difficult but it was still difficult.
The final product was not exactly what I was used to, it was less like a stew and more like a stir fry. Even though it wasn’t the same as when I ate it in Japan it was still comforting and reminded me of home.
Now that we’ve had our dinner let’s move on to everyone’s favorite meal, Dessert! Check back later this week when I will be making my own twist on a Japanese favorite!
And Remember to Take a Bite Out of Life!
Ratings:
Taste – 4 stars
Difficulty – 4 stars
Appearance – 3 stars
Would I Make it Again – 5 stars
You’re off to a really nice start on the blogging. Keep it up.
I have a few suggestions as you find your form/style.
*Learn to float your images left or right to let text wrap around them, esp with smaller images. (I do think some of your images just need to be bigger, and those should be centered. I know the 2mb challenge can complicate, but you can work resizing carefully or use Google images, enable sharing on the image, and I think you can embed it using the “insert from URL” option in the add media window of WP.)
*I’m seeing some of the really interesting content is the context behind your travel and cuisine choices. I think this can be played up a bit more. It’s about food and a rating, but the larger experience is something ONLY YOU have available. You might make more of that as you go forward.
*link opportunities? maybe to recipes?
*Ratings is a great idea, and it gives a structure you can replicate. (Does it make sense to put it early, up top, sort of like we find in reviews of products? You might even make little star icons or something that you can put in there. just a thought)
Keep it coming.
you can/should delete unapprove my comment once you’ve read and thought about it. It doesn’t need to be distracting from your blog content/topic.