Events

New Zealand Cooking and Culture Class held in Fukushima City

Pavlova? While the word may seem foreign to many outside New Zealand and Australia, the number of enlightened people in Fukushima has increased slightly after the first ever CIR-run Cooking and Culture class held in Fukushima City on Saturday May 20th. This time the class focussed on New Zealand food and culture.

On the menu was a warm lamb salad with asparagus, capsicum, tomato and a balsamic vinegar dressing which is popular in the summer months, and the aforementioned Pavlova, a fluffy meringue-like dessert first* made in the 1920s to commemorate the New Zealand visit of the famed Russian ballerina, Anna Pavlova. In New Zealand, the dessert is usually baked in an oven for 20-30 minutes, leaving a crispy outer layer with fluffy meingue inside. However, due to a general shortage of ovens in Japan we used a microwaveable version which turns out great nonetheless.
*Australians may dispute these origins - personally I'm not too fussed about the details.

After an introductory talk, the 20 participants divided into groups of 4-5 and got to work chopping and dicing in the kitchen. The pavlova recipe was a fun one to make as it only requires beating together the ingredients and rises up in the microwave in just 2 minutes. The participants found plenty of creative designs to decorate the pavlova, using whipped cream, strawberries, kiwifruit and lemon juice. The lamb salad was also relatively straightforward to prepare, and all the groups managed to produce a result that looked and tasted pretty good.

After everyone had finished cooking, we went upstairs and had a small 'party', where we ate the aforementioned food, talked, watched a video about New Zealand nature and I gave a brief presentation about New Zealand life and culture. I was especially glad that there was no leftover food (from the huge lot we cooked up) at the end, so everyone's cooking skills can't have been too bad. One participant even decided that she would make the lamb salad again at home that evening!

It was a fun event where people in the local community got the chance to experience new tastes and culture. Hopefully we'll be organising a similar event in the near future - this time introducing another country's culture and cuisine.

Thanks to everyone who attended and all the people at Fukushima International Association who helped us make this event a success!