Japanese Canadian Heritage Cooking Class
Jewpanese Cooking with Carmel Tanaka
by Amy Newman and John Endo Greenaway
On August 24, we had the pleasure of attending one of JCCA’s Japanese Canadian Heritage Cooking Classes at Tonari Gumi. The class was led by Vancouver’s own activist/mover and shaker/facilitator/food enthusiast Carmel Tanaka. The focus? Jewpanese cooking. As the founder of the Jewpanese Oral History Project (Instagram: @JewpaneseProject), the theme is near and dear to her heart, and it shows in her infectious enthusiasm for all things cross-cultural, especially food. Which is why we found ourselves at Tonari Gumi on this late summer night, ready to get down and dirty with a variety of spices, sharp implements, and all manner of delicious condiments.
A generous dozen of us gathered in a large room with tables pre-set for us to prepare the meal. After some introductions, which included meeting Carmel’s Jewish and Japanese parents (do you sense a theme here?) and nephew, Carmel set us up to prep our first dish – miso maple glazed trout (or smoked tofu for the non-meat eaters among us). We set about chopping garlic and ginger, mixing in miso paste, squeezing oranges, and adding maple syrup, all the while schmoozing with our neighbours and cooking mates. We generously spread the sumptuous paste onto the trout and tofu, and then the trays were whisked off to the kitchen for baking. Dish one prepared!
Next we created a Japanese eggplant salad, slicing them up, adding plenty of olive oil and a ton of parsley, before sending it off to the kitchen to be cooked in a ginormous wok by Cooking Class coordinator Michael Tora Speier – another member of the Jewpanese tribe.
Last on the job list was putting together a cucumber salad using Japanese cucumbers. With the smell of baking trout wafting in from the kitchen and making our stomachs growl, we were given various options for prepping the cucumbers but smashing them was by far the most fun, eliciting a lot of laughs, and not just from the kids in attendance. To the sliced and smashed cucumbers we added some Japanese chili oil and garlic. Yum!
One of the highlights of the evening was watching Michael go at the baked trout and tofu with a blowtorch to finish it up. Who doesn’t like fire?
And then it was time to eat! With a collective “itadakimasu” we sat together to enjoy the meal we had collectively created. And what a meal it was! Every item was delicious. Eating together opened space for us to get to know our table mates a little more and discover commonalities, shared histories, interests and dreams. And all for 16 dollars!
Our guest chef Carmel did a wonderful job of demonstrating the cooking techniques, peppering the demonstration with Japanese and Jewish anecdotes, from her own family and beyond. Her own mother, Dalia, chimed in at times with tips on how to choose the best ingredients. There were nods around the room as she spoke, signaling that many of us have experienced cooking and eating these foods in a similar way. It turns out that the majority of the participants were either Jewish or Japanese or jewpanese and two people were even on a date!
Having Jewpanese daughters who were brought up to celebrate and value both cultures, the class had special meaning, but you didn’t have to be Jewish or Japanese, or anything else for that matter, to enjoy the class or the food. Carmel’s enthusiasm was infectious and made for a fun, performative evening! Michael cooked the dishes to perfection, and Cary and Peter from the GVJCCA served as the perfect hosts for the evening.
After the main meal, Carmel provided a large bowl of raw dates, apricots, fresh black and green figs. She told us stories about eating these fruits growing up and then passed the bowl to the guests. We all enjoyed the fruits before heading out into the remains of the evening.
To register for future cooking classes, visit
http://bit.ly/3P30lhO. Classes sell out quickly!
Note: The Japanese Canadian Heritage Cooking Classes are looking for Japanese Canadian home cooks to share their recipes for future classes.
