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Japanese Recipes

Chicken Teriyaki

Nov 18th, 2009
by dave.
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Chicken Teriyaki

This isn’t the first time I’ve made Teriyaki sauce but surprisingly (after leafing through my notes), I’d never made Chicken Teriyaki before. Boggles my mind actually, I could only find notes on making Salmon Teriyaki over the past 2-3 years.

So here it is. I ended up slicing a full chicken breast in half and then pounding the halves flat prior to marinating overnight. I also used grated ginger instead of ginger powder this time, which I think works out better too. It’s not in the picture here, but I’ve also cooked up an egg for one of the leftover meals, it works pretty well too!

One more thing, I did end up making Japanese sushi rice to go with the chicken. It’s just some mirin, rice vinegar and sugar mixed together and added to cooked Japanese short-grain rice.

Chicken Teriyaki

Time : 20 minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients:
1 lb Chicken Breast, halved, pounded thin
1 Onion, sliced
Broccoli Florets
Sesame seeds, for garnish

Marinade:
3 tbsp Light soy sauce
3 tbsp Mirin
2 tbsp Sake
2 tsp sugar
A little grated ginger
Dash of garlic powder

Method:
1. Marinate Chicken breasts overnight.
2. Add reserved marinade and onion to a frying pan, saute for a few minutes.
3. Add chicken to pan and cook undisturbed for a couple minutes.
4. In the meanwhile, boil the broccoli florets for 2 minutes.
5. Stir-fry chicken and onions for another couple minutes.
6. Serve over rice.

Pari Pari Chicken

Nov 4th, 2009
by dave.
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Pari Pari Chicken

For the record, I met my October goals and successfully lost 6 pounds. Funny though, I don’t think I really changed my eating habits all that much (well, except for maybe eating out only 1-2 times a week instead of 4-5). I have been eating more chicken lately and cutting out some of the carbs (Crazy how much rice I sometimes use with a meal). But I think it has to do more with the exercise. After all, if you work it all off, you should be able to eat everything you want right?

I’ve also been accumulating cookbooks lately, trying to find a couple cookbooks that “define” a particular cuisine. Two of the most recent have been Japanese cookbooks, one of the Asian cuisines I’m not very familiar with, except for maybe a few things I’ve tried on my own like Katsu or Teriyaki. One cook I’ve read a lot about is Harumi Kurihara, one of the most renowned writers in Japanese cooking. She’s likened as the Japanese Martha Stewart and has just started releasing cookbooks in English! I picked up Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking, trying to pick a cookbook that had a more homestyle feel to it.

Today’s recipe is the first one I’ve tried out of this cookbook and probably the easiest one too. It’s a quick chicken marinade with a little bit of extra sesame oil for flavor and can be paired with any medley of vegetables, I chose to slice up and stir-fry some bok choy.

Pari Pari Style Chicken

Serves 4
Time : 30 minutes active time (overnight marination)

Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 lb Chicken Thighs (boneless, skin better for marinating)
- 1 tbsp Dry sherry
- 1 tbsp Light Soy sauce
- 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- Couple grinds of white pepper
- 2 tbsp Sesame oil for brushing on chicken
- Worcestershire sauce on the side

Method:
1. Mix together the chicken with everything but the 2 tbsp Sesame oil and worcestershire sauce. Marinade at least 15 minutes but overnight would be the best.
2. Bake chicken at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes.
3. Brush the extra sesame oil on the chicken and then bake another 10 minutes or so.
4. Serve over rice with some worcestershire sauce on the side and some vegetables.

Hotate Hokkaiyaki (Baked Scallops in Spicy Mayo)

Oct 7th, 2009
by dave.
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Hotate Hokkaiyaki

Everytime I’m in a Japanese restaurant, I absolutely crave this stuff. Really. I get it every time…provided they have it. And if they don’t, I ask. Trust me, I’ve embarrassed myself a couple time doing this already =P

But anyway, I’ve never figured out how to make it. And lacking good resources online and in the two cookbooks I have, I was forced to improvise. And if you know me, that’s never a good thing ; I’m no good at balancing ingredients together. So off I went, with the bare minimum of ingredients, hoping for the best.

And wow, it actually turned out alright! A bit spicy, which was great but it definitely had evidence of the flavor I crave. I bet there’s more mayo but I can’t bring myself to use more than I have already.

Hotate Hokkaiyaki

Serves 4 as an appetizer
Time : 20 minutes

Ingredients:
- 6 Sea Scallops, sliced
- 12-18 Crab Sticks (Kani) – Pulled apart
- 4 tbsp Flying Fish Roe
- 6 tbsp Japanese Mayo
- Generous squeeze Sriracha
- Optional : Sliced up Enoki mushrooms

Method:
1. Mix everything but the scallops together in a bowl. Taste and adjust flavor as necessary.
2. Add scallops, mix again, then set in a bakeable dish.
3. Bake for 10 minutes at 475 or until done.

Hotate Hokkaiyaki

Chicken Katsu Curry

Nov 9th, 2008
by dave.
1 comment


There are a few local Japanese restaurants, including one of my favorites Cafe Mami, that serve some very homestyle Japanese food. Simple, tasty, and cheap. And one of my regular dishes is a Katsu Curry, a fried pork/chicken cutlet with curry on top, served with a fried egg, cheese, and sometimes some pickles.

But sometimes I’m a little lazy to travel across the river to get to Cafe Mami so I tried my hand at making it myself. I do use the boxed curry though, I’ve read through the ingredients on how to make curry paste and decided it wasn’t for me (probably to the chagrin of many). I also add onions, carrots, and potatoes, to make it a heartier stew-like meal. Boiling the carrots and potatoes in advance does help too, as it lessens the amount of time to simmer the curry.

I used to make this without cheese but after reading a couple other blogs and getting some testimony, I added the mozzarella and it does actually add a lot of taste!

Chicken Katsu Curry

Serves 4-6
Time : 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:
- 4-6 chicken breasts, pounded thin
- 2-3 eggs, beaten
- ½ cup flour
- 1 cup panko bread crumbs

- 1 box S&B Hot curry
- 15-20 baby carrots, chopped
- 1 medium onion chopped
- Optional (A couple boiled potatoes, chopped)
- 3.5 cups water (or stock)
- 2-3 cloves garlic, minced

- Eggs for afterwards
- Some mozzarella cheese

Method:
1. Dredge chicken in flour, eggs, then bread crumbs (Can do twice if you like)
2. Bake or pan fry chicken (bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 or pan fry for 5-10 minutes), set aside
3. Heat a sauté pan under medium, add a little canola oil, add garlic. Stir fry for 30 seconds until fragrant, add onions and carrots.
4. Stir fry vegetables for 3-4 minutes, then add water/stock. Stir in the curry mix and add boiled potatoes (if you have them)
5. Simmer for 45 minutes until potatoes and carrots are soft
6. Serve chicken over rice. Add some mozzarella cheese on top and pour curry over. Top with a fried egg if you like.

Notes:
- Can substitute the baked chicken (with eggs, flour, bread crumbs) with chopped beef chuck. Add the beef after the garlic in this case.

Pork Katsu-don

May 29th, 2008
by dave.
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One of my favorite dishes to get for lunch at the Porter Exchange (most notably, Cafe Mami) is Pork cutlet-don. They have the meat pre-marinated and then fried up to order, mixed with some onions and an egg, and served steamy and hot! Quick, cheap, and very tasty!

The pork katsu-don always seemed like something that I could try my hand at making but my previous attempts weren’t so great (read : failures). I never could get the sauce right, either it ended up too salty or just plain flavorless.

But then my roommate cooked it up once using a couple recipes and it tasted great, so I had to try one more time. I grabbed the recipes he used and then compared them to a couple other I found online and came up with the version I’m posting today. (This is the version I closely modeled : mmm-yoso)

Anyway, on to the food!

Pork Katsu-don

Ingredients
4 Pork cutlets (boneless pork chops – about 3/4 a pound)
1 medium onion, sliced
4 eggs, lightly beaten (can use more if you like)

Sauce
3 tbsp sake (or other rice wine or sherry)
3 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp mirin
5 tbsp soy sauce
3/4 cup water
1/3 tsp Dashi

For Dredging
Flour
Panko Breadcrumbs
More eggs, beaten

Method
1. Use a meat tenderizer to flatten out the cutlets.
2. Dredge the cutlets first in the flour, egg, then breadcrumbs.
3. Pan fry until almost cooked through, set aside.
4. In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil and then add the sake, sugar, mirin, and soy sauce. Return to a boil, add the dashi and simmer.
5. Pour 1/4 of the sauce into a small frying pan and bring the sauce to a simmer under medium heat. Add 1/4 of the onion.
6. Slice a cutlet along the width (try to maintain the shape of the cutlet) and place in the pan on top of the onions. Then pour 1/4 of the eggs on either sie of the cutlet. Cover and simmer for about a minute or so.
7. Remove cover and serve over rice.
8. Repeat 4-7 for the rest of the cutlets.
9. Top with some chopped scallions

NOTE: If you really like sauce, you can add 50% more to the recipe or even double it.

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