鶏串- にわとりくし Niwatori Kushi - Chicken Skewers

Konnichi-wa! Your Gaijin-Gourmet is back from another round in the dojo and back in the kitchen to bring you something simple and easy to make to suit your Japanese inspired tastes. Now with spring officially here, barbecuing season will be kicking into full swing before long. So to start spring off I thought I would give you something we were inspired to make while watching an episode of the 2004 NHK Taiga Drama Shinsengumi. Spring had hit the show and the Samurai were all enjoying teriyaki chicken skewers along the rest stops along the Old Tokaido Road. It looked so OIISHII that this modern day Bushi had to try it ourselves and offer it to you. Niwatori Kushi or teriyaki chicken on skewers as an easy dish you can make anywhere.  And when I mean anywhere I mean here in the US or in Japan with ease. As I have stated before, what I offer here is nothing original but simple easy to make Japanese inspired dishes where ingredients and ease of assembly make Japanese cooking accessible to anyone. And with that disclaimer out of the way, let's get cooking!

As with any meal found on here, you'll need a few ingredients to get started.
1/2 lb of chicken breast
1/2 Cup of Teriyaki Sauce for Marinade
1 pkg Wooden Skewers
1 pkg Aluminum Foil
1 Basting Brush

OK this might not sound like rocket science but its always good to cover the basics. Take a 1/2 lb package of chicken breasts and clean with cold water. Cut away any excess fat for preparation. You can use thigh meat but you'll spend more time trimming fat so I recommend sticking with breast meat.

Once your meat is cleaned and trimmed of fat, take your breast meat and cut in 1 1/2 to 2 inch bite size slices.

Place your chicken slices and place into a bowl or mixing container.
Pour the Teriyaki Sauce to marinate.
Refrigerate for one hour.

Easy enough so far ne?

Good! - Let's continue!

After a good hour, take out your wooden skewers and place up to four pieces of teriyaki marinated chicken on each skewer. Don't place more than four per skewer. If you have ever seen anyone eating Niwatori Kushi on an NHK Taiga Drama, you'll only see four pieces on that skewer. Remember, it's not a Shish kabob. It's Japanese!

Now if you noticed, we earlier mentioned using aluminum foil. You'll use this for your gas BBQ or Japanese Hibachi Grill. Either method of grilling will work out fine. I reccommend taking the foil and lining the edge of the grill. The reason for this is if you have ever grilled shish kabobs before it's not uncommon for the skewers to catch fire and burn away. Lining your grill with foil will help prevent that so you can cook a nice presentable Niwatori. Remember, in Japanese cooking presentation is very important. わかりますか?

Line your niwatori right up to the edge of the foil. After 15 minutes, baste with a brush additional teriyaki sauce for flavor and according to taste. We really love teriyaki so we baste this a few times before serving. Remember to baste both sides.

Cook until golden. Don't do like the Ren-Faire guys do and burn the meat. Remember, presentation!

This dish can be served with sushi rice, noodles, or our favorite Yasai-no-Fukumeni which we previously posted how to make here.  We hope you have a prosperous spring and fun おいいしい Japanese inspired cooking! Enjoy!

おいいしい!

おやこ どんぶり Oyako Donburi

Welcome back! Today I present to you an easy Donburi. If you are new to Japanese cooking, Donburi means rice bowl dish. Donburi's can be made with chicken, meats, or fish. For today I offer you an easy chicken donburi made with simple ingredients you can find pretty much anywhere. Now as we have stated in the very beginning of this blog , this is not my original creation or am I trying to deprive anyone of making money. My intention is to show you my cooking experience and how you can easily follow along to make both traditional Japanese meals or easy to make Japanese inspired meals. Wakarimasu ka? Okay then!

Now that I have my usual disclaimer out of the way let’s get cooking. よい? はじめましょお!

So let’s go over what we’ll need:

1/2 lb chicken breast - or more
4 eggs
4 dried Shitake Mushrooms – or more!
1 onion
¼ cup Water
1tsp Sugar
3tsp Mirin
4 tsp of Soy Sauce
Rice
Garnish - みつば - Optional

So the first thing you’ll want to do is unpack those dried shitake mushrooms and soak them in water. Soak them for no less than ten minutes. If there are any stems cut them off.

You’ll later slice the mushrooms in half before you are ready to use them.

Next, take your chicken breasts and slice them diagonally and then into to bite sized pieces. And then return them to the refrigerator until ready to use.
At this early stage you’ll also want to slice up your onion into thin slices. Now don’t be shy! You’ll want those onions in there. Trust me!

Depending on how much food you plan to make you may need to add an additional egg or two.
 
But if it’s just for two then stick with the program and beat four eggs together until they are ready for use.
 
 
 
 
So now if you have your chicken, mushrooms, and oinions sliced, you are almost ready to go. But first you'll need to mix your simmering sauce. I had made this Donburi before from Yukio Moriyama's book Japanese Cuisine. But as I have discovered there is always a slight deviation from her recipie when I am cooking. Sometimes, I stray from the measurements and just eyeball it to my taste. I think many people do this and in most cases it's ok. But if you are not sure of your cooking abilities then for the time being stick with the recipie.
 
So if you are ready to make your simmiring sauce, mix together 1.4 cup of water into a bowl. Do not go over a 1/4 cup as I ususally tend to do or you will end up having to drain the water midway during cooking. This can skew your results so try to avoid this. Mix your water together with the soy sauce, mirin, and no more than that tsp of sugar.
 

Next, pour your simmiring sauce into a good sized skillet and bring to a boil. Once boiling add in your chicken, onions, and mushrooms. Cook them until the chicken appears done and the onions tender.
 
This should take about 2-3 minutes.
 
 
 
 
 

 
If your chicken, onion, mushroom mix appears ready, pour the beaten eggs into the mix and cover for around one minute.
 

The optional part of the recipie calls for a garnish to be added in. The Japanese recipie uses a garnish called mitsuba but if you can not find mitsuba any regular garnish in small amounts will do. This is mostly done for presentation. This is of course entirely optional.
 
 
 
 
 
If you have your rice already cooked then you can serve up the contents of your skillet. Place rice into a bowl then place the chicken & egg mix over the rice. If you have any left over simmering sauce left over you can pour a small amount to sweeten your donburi. This makes for an easy meal suitable for lunch or a light dinner. Not to mention it is relatively inexpensive to make. And you know that's always a plus! So please come again! I hope you enjoy this recipie. Enjoy!
 

Kamotosoba

Thanksgiving time marks the beginning of the winter holiday season and with that comes holiday cooking. And with any great holiday cooking comes some planning. Oh yes, depending on what you serve and for how many people you have at your holiday dinner table there may be some leftovers.
By chance you are like me who is anything but traditional, turkey is just not going to do. For starters, it takes too long to make, it’s too big, too bland, it puts me into a catatonic state after I eat it, and finally, I am stuck with lots of leftovers. Especially when you only live with one other person, too many leftovers will get old quick. I have nothing against turkey or people who prefer turkey at the holidays. But if you would like to opt for something different then we take our holiday planning into consideration.

For Thanksgiving, we opted for a duck. Ducks are generally half the size of a turkey and often come with a premade packet of orange sauce. Before using that sauce you can add a qtr cup of orange juice & vermouth or vodka into the mix. Stir the mix and store it to cool while you prepare your duck. You can use prepackaged seasonings but if you can not find them you can make your own seasonings using white pepper, paprika, Lawry’s seasoning salt, and fresh ground pepper.

You’ll bake that duck according to its weight and internal temperature which should be around 180* when ready. Serve with sautéed mushrooms, green onions and mix with a wild rice and a side of cranberry.

Baste the orange sauce in the last ten minutes of cooking and you’ll have one memorable holiday dinner!


So now that we’ve covered our alternative to turkey and what to serve with it we are back to those leftovers. And here’s why I recommend a plan what you want to serve because unless you have a large family present you are going to be stuck with a lot of leftovers that will either bore you to death or end up in the dumpster.

Our six pound duck produced enough meat to feed four people. That left us with enough food to produce a second dinner. But why do the same thing twice? When I was a kid, if we did not have traditional Mexican tamales to off set the heavy turkey leftovers we would end up serving déjà vu of the night before and somehow it just wasn’t the same. But what do you want from leftovers? The late George Carlin had a great sketch about leftovers but you don’t necessarily have to rehash the same holiday plate that has since lost its luster. This is why when you consider any holiday bird consider the size, how many people you intend to feed, and what you plan to do with the leftover meat once the holiday is past. Hence our solution which we will call Kamotosoba (Duck with Noodles).

Cooking with duck opens possibilities. I wanted to make something Japanese with my leftover duck but opted to improvise with the items I had available on hand.

As stated in our title, this meal falls under Japanese inspired cooking. So here’s what we used:


Your leftover Duck
6 Shitake Mushrooms
2 pkg Yaki Soba Noodles
½ Onion
1 Carrot
1 tblsp Sesame Oil
1 cup Orange Sauce
Fresh ground pepper

The first thing you want to do is prepare your vegetables.

Cut the stems off the mushrooms and then cut the heads in half.
Next slice your carrots in wedges.
Then cut your onion in ¼” slices.

If you have a wok or a decent sized skillet, line your tablespoon of sesame oil to get the vegetables started.

Add your vegetables to your wok or skillet and occasionally stir while simmering. This should take no more than four minutes.

While your onions are doing their thing, slice your duck meat into smaller bite sized wedges then add them into the skillet or wok. Add pepper and stir for about two minutes. While the meat is cooking unpack the Yaki Soba noodles and add to the mix and stir for another minute.

Now if you managed to save some of the orange sauce from the night before you’re in luck!

As with any storage of sauces or liquids, evaporation can occur. To reconstitute your sauce add a ¼ cup of orange juice to your sauce and stir. This will bring life back to your sauce and remove any leftover trace of the previous night’s vermouth flavor. Once properly mixed, pour your orange sauce into the skillet or wok with the simmering meat & vegetables and stir for one minute and serve! This should serve about two to three people and will prove to be anything but the same old boring rehash of the night before.

You see, with proper planning you can have two great meals for the holiday and the day after without settling for the same old-same old. Our Kamotosoba came out very OIISHII and we hope yours will too!

Enjoy!

*L*

Gyūtsukune

Last week we posted our little experiment we got from NHK and it was a big success. Not only did our Sake no Ebi Tsukune came out OIISHII, but people wrote to me directly and loved the recipe! Given the popularity of our take on Salmon Tsukune, we thought we would try our hand at Gyūtsukune which is literally a beef version of what we previously made. Like with Sake no Ebi Tsukune, we rarely follow instructions to the letter for one logistical reason or another but we do our best to show you or at least inspire you to do on your own.

Remember, were not trying to deprive anyone of making a living or claiming credit for something we didn't invent but merely showing you how we did at making some of the best Japanese dishes we can get our hands on. So if you're cool with that and not calling your lawyer...let's get cooking! Hajime!

Gyūtsukune at a glance looks allot like our earlier stab at Sake no Ebi Tsukune. The preparation methodology is the same but the ingredients make this it's own Tsukune. Now earlier this week I had bought a thing of basil leaves and shitake mushrooms. What drove me nuts was that somewhere in the middle of my 101 distractions which are impeding the completion of my Samurai Novel I am writing, I forgot what the hell I bought the basil leaves for! Ok, now that our memory came back to us after a heavy workout in the Shinkendo Dojo, my delayed memory recalled researching recipes at NHK's cooking page. It was there that I was introduced to both the fish and meat Tsukune recipes. As I previously mentioned before, I don't always follow or in some cases understand some of the directions I come across but that never stops me from making a good meal and neither should it stop you. As in my subtitle for my page, I will give you both Japanese and Japanese inspired cooking.

So getting back to our Gyūtsukune.... as with any recipe you'll some ingredients. The original recipe called for ground beef and pork. I have a general distrust of pork in this country so I opted to make my Gyūtsukune without pork otherwise I would have to call it Nikutsukune(Niku=meat / Gyū=beef). So here's what we used:

1lb of Ground Beef


5 Shitake Mushrooms

3 Basil Leaves

1/2 Carrot

1/2 Onion

1 Egg

1/2 Cup of Mirin

1/2 Cup of Soy Sauce

2tsp of Oil ( We use Olive Oil but Vegitable Oil is ok too)

2tsp of Sugar

2tsp Flour

Salt & Pepper (to taste)

3 Basil Leaves

As with our earlier fish based Tsukune, we recommend prepping your main ingredients first and the sauce second.
 

 
So first thing is first.
Take your Shitake Mushrooms and cut the stems off first.
Take a good sized mixing bowl and be ready to throw them in.
Slice and dice your mushrooms into tiny pieces.
 
You will repeat this slice & dice process with the onions and the carrots.
 
 
 
 

 
The original recipe called for six basil leaves.
 
We used three so the basil wouldn't overpower our dish.
If you have ever cut fresh basil leaves then you'll know exatly what I mean!

 
Once you have your basil, mushrooms, carrots, and onions chopped up into little pieces throw them all into the same mixing bowl.
 
By this point this should be smelling pretty good and you haven't thrown in the meat yet!
 
 
 
 
 

When working with raw ground beef, I like to use Lawry's Seasoning Salt. No Japanese recipe I know calls for it but that's what I like to use it and it's never thrown a dish so far so we'll use it here. Throw in your ground beef and use a dash or two or in my case three of the seasoning salt. You'll want to add roughly around the same amount of pepper into your ground beef. If you happen to have a black peppercorn grinder bottle like me then you're in even better shape.I recommend them.
 
Mix your meat with the vegetables into the mixing bowl. Add one raw egg and two tablespoons of flour. Mix everything we've mentioned so far in the mixing bowl until your meat becomes sticky. You'll want it that way to shape them. With the addition of an egg and some flour those of you who tried to make the Sake no Ebi Tsukune will appreciate this. After you have all that mixed return your meat to the refrigerator to keep cool while we move on to our sauce.

Like before, you'll take your 1/2 cup of Mirin, 1/2 cup of Soy Sauce and your 2 tsp of Sugar and pour into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and let simmer for about two minutes. After that you'll want to place your mixture in the refrigerator to cool down and retrieve your meat so you can move onto the next step.

The idea of this next step is to take your ground beef and shape them into a small flat hamburger like shape.


Once you have your meat shaped and ready to go, break out your sauce mixture and turn up that fire.



Add a tablespoon of oil into your sauce and stir it in before you add your meat.

Like with the previous tsukune post you'll want to fry them until evenly browned on both sides. This should take around five to six minutes depending on how big yours comes out.

After your Tsukune is browned and ready, serve it with a good Teriyaki sauce. We recommend Kikkoman Original for this dish and believe me it brings out a zesty flavor you are bound to enjoy. You'll never want to make teriyaki burgers the same way again!


So there I was, standing there with a handful of mixed ground beef when Tina suddenly goes over to Soy Sauce Queen's page and discovers she just happened to post a different variation of the same idea. Hers is called Hakusai Hamburger Steak. I was like oh shit! What's the chance of that happening! Seriously, I didn't see her blog until I was halfway done cooking. Hopefully Misa isn't going to think I'm trying to rip her off! We wouldn't do that to Misa Sensei. She has been very supportive in our endeavors as we are of hers so please visit her page if you'd like to see another way how to cook with hamburger meat the Japanese way.

We sure hope you have enjoyed this recipes and all the recipes we've posted here.
We appreciate all your comments!
Enjoy!
*L*

Yasai no Fukumeni

Shitake Mushrooms & Cabbage

Here’s an easy side dish we tried over the weekend I am sure you will enjoy.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1. 1 pkg. Dried Shitake Mushrooms
2. 1 Cabbage
   1/3 tsp of Mirin
3. 3 tsp of Japanese Soy Sauce

Now I’ve worked with Shitake mushrooms before but never understood which was better to purchase them dried or fresh. With this recipe the use of using dried Shitake becomes all too clear.


Many Japanese meals may contain either a broth or simmering stock I didn’t understand this before until this was explained to me such as I in turn will explain to you the reader of this blog. In this recipe, using dried Shitake Mushrooms ( cut in halves, or quarters depending on the size of the Shitake) soak them in water until soft. Don’t throw out the water just yet because you’ll need that for your simmering sauce. No, that’s not the sauce but that is the prime component of it so this is where buying dried Shitake comes in handy.

While the Shitake is soaking, cut half a cabbage into quarters. Remember that regardless of what ethnic cooking you are doing, presentation is part of the game so make those quarters neat!


Your nest step is to make your simmering sauce.
To do that, take 1 ¼ cup to 1 ½ cup of the water left over from the Shitake Mushrooms.

Next, add 1/3rd tsp Mirin and 3 tsp of Japanese Soy Sauce.




Mix these ingredients together and pour them into a wok or a large simmering pot. Heat to boiling.
Once the sauce is boiling lower to moderate heat and add the Shitake Mushrooms and let simmer for another five minutes.
Add your cabbage squares and cook until soft then serve!
Enjoy!