First Cooked Meal

I finally got around to cooking my first full meal in Japan.  When you start cooking, you realize what you are missing and this also helped to identify the things I need to buy (like something to stir stuff while frying).  The day started off with a horrible thunderstorm going by:


This dish was very random.  Basically, I went to the mall to eat something for lunch after waking up a bit later today (and it being a holiday).  However, a baseball game was beginning in a few hours so the mall was packed with people trying to eat or get food for the game (a little bit annoying living next to such a large sports venue).  Each restaurant had tons of people lined up waiting outside each restaurant (there are small stools and such so that people can actually sit while they wait).  So I decided I'll go to the grocery store and buy some stuff to cook at home.  I actually ended up buying some unidentified baked stuff at the bakery which I ate for lunch, but I did buy ingredients for dinner cooking.

First of all, some seafood.  I wanted to buy beef, but after I saw the prices, I decided to stick with seafood - quite the opposite from Canada!  So I got some squid parts for around $1.50 and some nice autumn salmon for around $3.  That is super cheap!  They also had these large (~1.5foot) squids for sale that people were buying for basically $1 (per some weight I assume but still...).  Next time :P.

 I also got a bunch of mushrooms and green onions.  It is funny but you basically can't buy green onions here whole but there are tons of packaged already sliced ones!

I also felt like noodles and I saw these ramen noodles - basically your standard chinese thing egg noodle.

The mushrooms were Shiitake (on the left) and Enoki (on the right).  The Shiitake were awesome - so nice and soft, much nicer than the ones I used to get in Canada.

So I cut them all up plus some garlic and the green onions.

I cooked the noodles for a few minutes to warm them up - they were fresh noodles so quite tasty!

I washed the seafood:

Then I fried the garlic and each of the seafood and the mushrooms.  I added a bit of oyster sauce which I found at the store after a while of looking around (there weren't too many choices of that compared to the like 100s of soya sauces).

I couldn't operate the stove.  When I would put it to frying mode, it would shut off after a few seconds.  So I cooked everything using the boiling mode.  The stove is a ceramic plate and is very very fast at heating things!  The Shiitake needed a little bit of time to fry through but the Enoki were done in a few seconds.

Finally, the end result:

Taste conclusion:  it was actually pretty tasty.  The salmon was ok (well, tasted like salmon because I didn't do much to prepare it) but the squid was delicious!  My first time cooking squid and it was awesome!  The mushrooms were also very tasty and the noodles were great too!  I have enough left over for lunch tomorrow!  I celebrated with a coconut milk and some pearls dessert: