Japanese Night with Crispy Gyoza and Dragon Rolls

by Des Japanese food probably tops our list of most favorite nomnom, it's so tasty and it looks so good! We are not alone for sure but for some reason in Ghent, rarely do I see Japanese restaurants around town. I've seen one take-away Japanese food shop somewhere near the train station and once we ate at a Japanese restaurant by the center but the quality was disappointing. Gentanaars might be too focused on their frites and waffles that they surely are missing out on food variety. Kumpir could be the saving grace but we eat it a lot that for this particular night, we made Japanese food ourselves. Tadaan!

Spinach Bacon Crispy Cheese Gyoza by Yoann. Dragon rolls by moi!

For the gyoza recipe, Yoann made it by following the instructions on this Youtube upload. I've been watching Ochikeron's recipe videos for sometime now. She is Japanese and she makes Japanese cooking very doable. She makes fun bentos and I'm a fan of that, too. Yoann made everything from scratch, including the paste and here is how it's made. He used frozen spinach and normal bacon for the filling, sauteed it together with some onions and garlic and put the melted cheese in the pan while frying the gyoza.

Gyoza ng kainan! Sprinkled sesame seeds on top before rolling.

I'm not going to lie and mislead you into thinking these are hard, impossible kitchen tasks (no, no, not at all). But it took us almost 2 hours to finish our preparations! It's not as hard as it looks although it takes time and there are more steps to follow than when cooking adobo for sure. For the dragon rolls, I had to cook and prepare the sushi rice, de-vein and prepare the batter and deep fry the shrimps, slice the avocado and mango and cucumber thinly, and only then was I able to make the roll. Afterwhich I had to prepare the sauce. Just rewriting the steps now makes me feel a bit tired already! Haha, I kid. Good thing this website by another Japanese living in France provides a step-by-step instruction, she also has the steps to make sushi rice. I started making Japanese rolls more than a year ago while living in Lyon because I simply wanted to see if I can make it, afterall I'm Asian! Silly as it may sound, imagine my sense of accomplishment when I have proven myself correct. Try it too and prove yourself right! Bonus: it's a good exercise of patience. Bon courage! :)