Tenshinhan

Today we will talk about recipes. What are ingredients? In this case, the ingredients are: Peanut butter, plenty. Whole wheat bread, two slices. Avocado, 1. Sweet onion chutney, one tablespoon. Tomato, 1. Now, the rest of the recipe. Take one slice of bread and spread the peanut butter on it. Peel and slice the avocado and place the slices on top of the bread. Then, slice the tomatoes and place them on top of the avocado. Next, spread the sweet onion chutney on the other slice of bread and put the two slices together. There you go. This is my favourite sandwich. What shall I call it? Ah. I know. I will call it “Anna’s Delight”. Then it is Hi-san’s turn, and he describes a tasty sandwich in which the bread is toasted and then layered with scrambled eggs, mayonnaise, and three slices of ham.

We take some time matching recipe verbs like slice, chop, pour, and add to the corresponding pictures and finding more things you can slice, pour, and chop.

Then, we need more practice. I describe a recipe to him, and he guesses correctly that it is Spaghetti with meat sauce. I teach him both the dictionary rendering (spaghetti bolognese) for this, teacherly adding that the recipe stems from an Italian city called Bologna; and the actual British vernacular “spag bol”.

Then he launches his description. For this recipe, we need eggs, rice, green peas, crabs, which he mimes with his robot hands, not knowing the word, chicken stock, and a white powder called “katakuriko”, which I’ve never heard before and can’t translate for him. From his description, I gather that it must be some sort of gelling agent. You throw the green peas, crab meat, and eggs into a frying pan, stir the whole mixture, and fry it, but only for a very short time. Then you cook the rice and put the egg mixture on top. Finally, you mix the chicken soup with the katakuriko until it “becomes like honey” and pour it over the rice and the eggs.

I have not had this dish before and cannot guess what it is. Hi-san tells me that this is “tenshinhan”, his favourite Chinese dish. When I hear the word “tenshin” I have to think of “Tenshikan” karate which was named after Kancho, my karate master’s nick name, “tenshin” meaning sincerity. What a nice dish, I think. I have to try and make it. It is quite surprising that Hi-san can cook. F-san, to draw on another students’ cooking skills for comparison, does not know what colour melons have on the outside because he buys them peeled, cut into pieces, and packaged into snack-sized plastic, ready with tooth picks to avoid sticky hands.

The recipe Hi-san describes to me is not named after sincerity. It is named after a city in Northern China. He writes the kanji on the board for me. Both sincerity and Tensin have Heaven as their first character, however, and it sounds tasty, so I feel undeterred in my wish to try and make this.

Finally, my favourite part of the lesson arrives. Unfortunately rather late. I have brought a multitude of ingredients that do not fit together, and cannot wait to play “Ready-Steady-Cook”. I quickly explain the concept of the show to Hi-san and tell him he will now be a TV chef trying to win a cooking contest. The ingredients are as follows:

Potatoes

Carrots

Furikake, wakame flavour

Rum

Green Tea

Rolled Oats

Canned tuna

As our class time is over, this has to be homework: create at least a two course menu out of these ingredients and describe the recipes to me next time. “Impossible!” he exclaims. I promise, I will do the same, and next time we can have a competition who has come up with the tastiest impossible recipe. Hi-san stands in the elevator smiling. I smile back and wave good bye. My manager has taught me this. It is kihon dosa (behavioural basics as required at work). Walk out into the hall with your students, wait for the elevator with them, then, once they have stepped in, stand there and smile, and wave good bye until the door closes. This time, I am enjoying my kihon dosa. On my way home I buy the ingredients for tenshinhan at Sone Hankyu department store whose grocery department is open till 11 o’clock. And spend my walk back listening to pirate music and trying to combine carrots, potatoes, green tea, and rum. When the time comes, I want to be ready and steady to cook.