Food: More Japanese-style Cooking At Home
I was pretty pleased with the response to my first post about cooking and I have of course continued cooking and trying new things so I thought it was once again time to share. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to cook as much thanks to my hand injuries so this is a smaller post featuring three dishes I’ve made over the past few weeks: a chilli prawn and pork ramen soup, a second helping of oyakodon and teriyaki chicken and kakiage.
The soup for this meal was a combination of dashi stock and a relatively generous dash of chilli powder. The pork and prawns were simmered in a separate pan with some of the soup and chopped fresh chilli to give them some extra kick, which worked out really nicely. All of that was then of course put in the bowl with the soup and ramen noodles and then finished with the vegetables and egg. I usually add vegetables to soup just before serving because I like them to stay fairly crunchy. I was really pleased with how this meal turned out; it had just the right amount of heat from the chilli for me but plenty of other nice flavours as well.
Oyakodon was included in my first cooking post, and I mentioned that although tasty it wasn’t quite eggy enough. I used the same recipe as last time but with more egg and it certainly worked well. I tried oyakodon in a Japanese restaurant between my two attempts at making it, and it was just like this recipe which is nice to know. This is a really delicious dish that really quite easy to make, so I recommend giving it a try!
I’ve made teriyaki chicken quite a few times before, so this time I wanted to try something a little different by adding kakiage. Kakiage is mixed vegetables fried in tempura batter and was served at my favourite restaurant here in Perth before it unfortunately closed down. I’m not sure why I’ve never tried making it before, but now that I have I’ll certainly be doing it again. I used a mixture of onion, carrot, potato and sweet potato for this kakiage and it was a very tasty combination. The chicken was marinated in teriyaki sauce (which I’ve started making at home) then coated in cornflour, pan-fried in oil, and finished by simmering in more of the sauce. I think it turned out particularly well tonight, and the kakiage rounded out the meal beautifully.
Once again I’d love to hear what your favourite dishes are – to prepare or just to eat – if you feel like sharing!
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[...] known as beef bowl. The beef for gyuudon is cooked with onions in dashi, similar to the chicken in oyakodon. I also added ginger to the mix for some extra flavour, and the result was a very refreshing taste. [...]
Oooh, I’ll really have to try the kakiage some day ^^
One thing I loved in Tokyo, were these little yakitori. My favourite were the ones that had whole gloves of garlic – they were fairly plain, just chicken and garlic. They were roasted in this… thing, where they would slot them in almost as if the yakitori were on a merry-go-round, and it would roast them all up.
My friends were hesitant in eating whole gloves of garlic at once, but it was soooOooOo delicious.
I’m pretty fond of garlic so I’d be game to try that!
The kakiage was fairly easy to make. There was a bit of trial and error in getting the size right with the first couple, but I intentionally made enough batter to compensate for that.. You should definitely try making some!
Looks delicious =)
yum yum, how long did it take you to make it?
anyway its nice you can cook. i should start learning or else ill starve to death =/
On average it probably takes me around 30 minutes to cook a meal, though of course it goes up and down depending on the dish.
The best way to learn is just to try! Find some recipes and give it a shot, that’s all I’ve ever done. This is a good place to start if you want to cook some Japanese stuff:
http://japanesefood.about.com/
30 minutes. ah that good i guess =) pretty quick actually.
Thanks for the link! Ill sure try my best.
Seems like you really like to cook and I think you’re pretty good with Japanese cuisine. I’ve only tried making california rolls, miso soup, shoyu ramen and sukiyaki and I guess they turned out edible. Lol. I’d like to learn to cook takoyaki and okonomiyaki and I’ve always been fascinated by the skills of a good sushi chef. ^^
Thanks! I really appreciate the compliment. I completely agree with you about sushi chefs, some of the skills required are so impressive.
wow I am really impressed with your cooking skills, I can’t get certain ingredients here on my island to attempt making interesting Japanese dishes.
Thanks so much! I’m not sure how impressive my cooking skills really are though. ^^;
I am lucky to have a few good stores around where I can pick up ingredients for Japanese meals. You might be surprised at how many seemingly hard-to-find things that you could substitute or even put together from more common ingredients, though!