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There is only a handful of people who get this post, but it cracked me up and I’d like to memorialize it.  Yesterday I prepared the only gourmet meal I know how to make.  Agedashi tofu and vegetable-stuffed chicken tempura.  In these 2 dishes, it’s all about the sauces.  As you know, tofu has no taste.  So you deep fry it with a flour coating (corn starch would’ve worked better, but it’s been over 14 years since I’ve made this dish before so all I remember is white flour-y tofu cubes.  Anyway, it makes for an absorbant skin that will soak up the tempura sauce with grated daikon and ginger and green onion Os.  The superfabulous chicken tempura sauce (shoyu, mirin and sherry with some grated garlic) gets absorbed by the tempura batter and the vegetables (bean sprouts, onions and carrots) rolled inside the chicken.  The chicken is double-saran-wrapped and boiled so as to hold its shape while you tempura it.  Like that?  I used tempura as a verb! 

My dishes were awesome.  At least G and I thought so.  Baby Mochi opted, instead, for some Kraft Easy mac, some green beans and half a banana.  Big Mochi was annoyed that her beloved tofu (which she eats in cold raw naked cubes) was now warm and soggy from a brown sauce which she didn’t particularly care for.  Instead, she just ate rice and the chicken, but she peeled off its tempura skin and removed the vegetables inside that I worked so hard to put IN there!!! 

In the end, I still had a big fat 6″ piece of daikon left.  I don’t do anything with it so I sadly told G I was going to throw it away, to which he replied, “You cannot make ‘um yellow or something?” 

I said I didn’t know, but leave it to my faithful Hongwanji Cook Book to give me the recipe for takuan!

The next morning, my stinky fridge told me it was ready, and with the exception of it being white (because I don’t own food coloring), it tastes like home!