I was at home alone and hungry last night, so I decided to rummage through my pantry and see what I could come up with for dinner. I found unagi, rice, tofu, and kabocha. With these ingredients I decided to make hiyayakko, kabocha no nimono, and unagi donburi. About half way through cooking dinner, I got a surprise visit from my bestest friend Squiddie, rendering this blog title useless, but adding a fantastic cocktail to our scavenged dinner. With ingredients she found in my pantry: gin, sugar and cucumber, she made an amazingly refreshing cocktail, that actually paired really well with the Japanese food.

All of these dishes were so simple to make, there is no need to even post a recipe. I will however, tell you the components to each. We just eyed all the dishes, without measuring. The unagi was cut in half and added to the broiler with a store bought sauce. Hiyayakko is made with silken tofu, shoyu, katsuoboshi and negi. The kabocha no nimono was made from dashi, shoyu, mirin and of course kabocha. That was simmered at a low temperature for about 15 minutes. Finally, Squiddie’s awesome cucumber cocktail was made from purred cucumber and gin, with just a splash of simple syrup. I would not usually pair a cocktail with Japanese food, but this went so well. It was light, refreshing, and had a very subtle flavor that worked well with the other dishes.

July 16th, 2009 by John (Cho-Tabetai)