Although I am generally very happy with my life, I’ve been feeling a little stagnant creatively, including food. I feel like I need / want to do new, different, things to try and jump myself out of this rut I feel like I’m in.
So, rather than the traditional Thai food stylings for The Sunday Crowd, Jo and I made some Japanese food. Same same, but different. Frying of the stirring variety, similar kitchen kit required, but very different flavours. The decision was definitely inspired by the most excellent time we had at Haiku on Friday for Salty Cracker (review to follow there later), and by our wuv (and owning two cookbooks of) Wagamama noodle bar in London *. So, we spent the morning poring / drooling over the books and making a (long!) shortlist of what we wanted to cook. We ended up going for:
- Tori Kara Age (Deep fried chickeny bits with rosemary and oregano and OMG it is tasty.)
- Ebi Yakitori (stuff on stick! Prawns and veggies in this case.)
- Cha Han (Stir fried chicken and prawns and veggies and rice, yakitori flavours.)
- Poached hake with shiitake mushrooms (Nom!)
- Pork mince and prawns w/ crispy noodles (they say use rice vermicelli, but we used cheap 2m-type noodles with good results. Flash deep fry them for crispy, crunchy goodness.)
- Chive and Chilli noodles (side dish, chilli, vinegar and lime dressing)
Took a bit longer than usual (had to keep looking up stuff in these “recipe” things. They’re basically lists of ingredients and instructions and tell you how / what / when to cook stuff. Kinda cool.), but it was a success! 
New flavours. Good flavours. We will be doing this again.
* We used to frequent the Leicester Square branch quite often. Hidden downstairs, just off the Square itself, we somehow always managed to arrive before there there was a queue. A bowl of chilli chicken ramen and a plate of gyoza (Japanese dumplings. Mostly we had pork, but sometimes duck or prawn), and a bottle of something white and Australian. Nom!
