Apple Cider: Or, How I Found Another Way to Get Drunk

I pitched the yeast into my apple cider yesterday and its started fermenting. Good times! I can't wait to try this, but for better or worse, it takes a bit more patience than a month long kit.

The recipe was jacked from EdWort on the home brewing forums. EdWort's Apfelwein

Its reported that this comes out very dry, but since I'm no expert on wines or ciders and the like, I'm not sure if I will like it that way or not. I plan on bottle carbing 2 2litre bottles, and corking the rest. I also read that people in Germany who prefer it to be sweeter will just cut it with a bit of Sprite. Easy enough!

Needs more fermented bean paste!

Tonight I made miso soup!

4 cups water
1.5 tsp of iriko dashi (a powdered stock made from dried sardines)
About 5 big shiitake  mushrooms (destalked and sliced in strips)
A half cube of silken tofu (Should have picked up a firmer tofu)
1/2 cup of white miso paste

Once again I got the basics of the recipe from internet browsing and made due with what I had available (mushrooms instead of leeks).

Now, surprisingly enough, I never had any miso soup while I was in Japan, so I'm not sure how close I am to the real deal, but it was most definitely edible and very filling. I had 2 bowls and I'm still stuffed.

For anyone interested in getting some of the harder to find ingredients in Japanese cooking, and haven't had much luck at their local Asian store. I highly recommend this website!http://www.marukaiestore.com/ 

Alcohol: It gets you drunk!

In addition to my making bad food, I've also recently stumbled onto the art of brewing/ wine making. It seems to me, a natural conclusion, that along with food, most people enjoy something to drink. So, why not make my own?

In this first go at making something drinkable, I purchased a kit at my local Patterson's Do-It Center. Island Mist Green Apple Riesling.....do it! Do it!

When making curry, you have to crack a few...coconuts?!

As my first real post in this blog, I'd like to share my photographed attempt at a Indian/Japanese fusion favorite of mine known as curry rice. This was my first quasi-successful attempt at curry rice, as before I had always tried making it with the roux blocks that they sell in grocery stores. I've never had those turn out so well, so for this shot, I tried taking a, ever so slightly more, from scratch version that I found posted somewhere on some website To my surprise it wasn't quite as horrible as the others. I also tried baking naan along with this. Let's just say it was "edible". 

Introduction

Dear internets,

My name is Heath. I'm a 27 year old college graduate with a B.A. in Japanese and a minor in Asian Studies. Not that I pretend to know much about either anymore (Its been a long time).

I've always been curious about cooking, and when I went to Japan to study abroad I fell in love with the food. I don't think I need to mention that this blog's title is a pun of one of my favorite Japanese cooking programs, 料理の鉄人 (Ryouri no tetsujin), or as we English speaking viewers know it, Iron Chef. The pun in the title also refers to the fact that I have absolutely no training in cooking whatsoever, and most of my experiments have met with horrid disgusting failure.

But this in no way has lessened my enthusiasm toward attempting to reproduce some of my favorite dishes. As they say, "Practice makes perfect."

Lately, I've been inundating my Facebook with photos of my various attempts at various things, and I figured it was about time I just bite the bullet and set up a blog to record this part of my life.