Pseudo-Japanese Style Cooking Party

Now that most of my uni friends are out on placement, I hardly ever get to see them. The first week was weirdest because I effectively lost all my lunch-time gossip buddies and that was my favorite time of the day.

Feasting in action

With full schedules and a shared desire to spend spare time sleeping or resting, it's not easy finding time to catch up. We decided to make the most of it with a cooking party.

This was pretty much a spontaneous decision so there wasn't a lot of time to think about recipes. Initially, I thought my foodie girlfriend would do whatever she wanted (first suggestion was pie) but then I got hit by an annoying Japanese food craving so I requested something along those lines.

We ended up attempting to stick by a Japanese food theme but the lunch was sort of 50/50 Japanese and 'other' types of cuisine. Still, it was great fun.

My plate

The recipes that will be blogged are as follows:

• Japanese potato salad
• Karaage chicken
• Sweet salmon curry

Freshly frosted cupcake

Dessert was a combination of cupcakes (though I had mine at the start of the meal) and sticky date pudding which doesn't even pretend to be Japanese but was a lovely sweet way to end our meal. Having decided I was fed up with dish washing, we opted to eat the pudding scooped directly out of the tin or out of makeshift cardboard 'plates'.

Sticky date served on a bed of cardboard box

It was a fun day and great opportunity for making up on lost conversation.