I’ve made a Japanese recipe! I mean, Tomoko, my room-mate, says it tastes right.
I had been trying to make a “chicken ball” with the taste of Tomoko’s chicken balls… I’d smelled them, and tried to imagine how they tasted, and how I could make something that tasted the way they smelled. Finally, Tomoko told me what things she had put in the chicken balls….
I had made a failed cashew pate (too gooey) with garlic and onion, and I added shiso leaves and ginger, and formed blobs/croquettes on a teflex sheet in the dehydrator, and dehydrated for about 18 hours.
The result came out hard/crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Tomoko says it tastes good. Pushed, she says it tastes like Japanese food. (this is my goal – to make a Japanese recipe that tastes like Japanese food to Japanese people.)